My Family for the War (17 page)

What makes this night different from all the other nights? Why is it that on all other nights we eat leavened bread or matzoh, but on this night we eat only matzoh? Why is it that on all other nights we eat all kinds of herbs, but on this night we eat only bitter herbs? Why…

When I finished, the room remained so quiet that you could have heard a pin fall. I leaned back, suddenly exhausted.

“Wow,” Gary said later. “That was eerie. What happened?”

How could I have explained it to him? I had thought of some of my favorite people and entrusted them to Jesus and his Father.

Wasn’t this the Passover feast, the meal celebrating the rescue of the people of Israel? Aren’t the people of Israel God’s people? Aren’t they in trouble again?

And for one inconceivable, unforgettable second, I felt that my prayer had been heard.

Dr. Shepard told the story of the departure of the Israelites from the land of exile, and we sang and ate matzoh, radish, and a sweet mixture of apples and nuts. After all that, the actual meal began. Mrs. Shepard and Gary carried the food in from the kitchen.

Gary’s grandmother turned to me. “If you’re from Berlin, you must find it exceptionally dull here.”

And the way she said it! Her look was condescending and conspiratorial at the same time, as if I knew exactly what she meant! I didn’t dare contradict her, but
not agreeing
with her was something else—I hoped. So I swallowed the “No” and answered, “Actually, I think it’s very nice here.”

“Nice? Aha…” Her tone became overly sweet and made me think of Kaa, the snake in
The Jungle Book
. “And what exactly do you find
nice,
my child?”

“The family,” I replied awkwardly. “I learn English,” I added more confidently, “and many more things. It is nice to be in an Orthodox family.”

I added that last bit to make her happy, because Mrs. Shepard and Gary had joined us again and I felt responsible for keeping the grandmother in a good mood.

But Julia Shepard smiled coolly. “You are not with an Orthodox family,” she said.

That left me completely speechless. Gary’s grandmother lost all interest in me on the spot, turned away, and critically
examined the chicken soup that Dr. Shepard ladled into the bowls. Neither he nor Gary commented on that last remark, and Mrs. Shepard, who was still making herself invisible, certainly didn’t. I must have misunderstood again.

Hours later, when the older Shepards got into their car, Dr. Shepard took his wife by the hand to take a little walk. Gary and I stayed behind by ourselves. I finally felt like I could take a deep breath.

“Well?” Gary asked after a brief silence. “What do you think?”

“Well…” I said. While I was still pondering whether I could honestly tell Gary that I thought his grandmother was the second-most evil woman I had ever met (right after our old neighbor Frau Bergmann), he had already interpreted my “well” correctly and replied, “Once a year it’s tolerable.”

“I hope your other grandparents are nicer,” I muttered.

“The O’Learys?” He gave me a sad sideways glance. “I don’t even know them. They don’t want to have anything to do with us.”

There was no way around it. I thought about what he had just said, turned the sentences this way and that, but there was nothing good to be found. This time, I knew I had understood correctly.

“There’s something about my mum that you should know,” Gary said.

When he was little, his mother sat down with him and together they wrote two letters. One of them, to the O’Learys in Dublin, came back unopened. The other one resulted in a visit from his Shepard grandparents, who reluctantly
decided to get acquainted with their only grandchild. At that point, Gary didn’t yet know that in their eyes, he had no right to be alive.

The annual visit was established. Gary and his parents were never invited to Sussex, to the big house on the ocean his father told him about. But still, he felt that he must mean something to them, and that they wanted to love him, but didn’t know how.

“At least they keep coming, even though it’s hard for them,” he said bitterly. “The others don’t even give us a chance.”

The O’Learys had thoroughly planned their oldest daughter’s life. Amanda was allowed to attend school until she was sixteen, then go to London for a year to serve the war effort as a telecommunications assistant, and when she got back she would be introduced to suitable young men. The O’Learys didn’t have anything against Jews. They had never thought about Jews; after all, they didn’t know any. But when Amanda returned from London and introduced Matthew Shepard to them, they must have instinctively sensed that something was terribly wrong. After a single evening, which had been very pleasant and friendly, they made it clear to their daughter that she would under no circumstances be allowed to see this young man again.

And even when they noticed they were being disobeyed, they hadn’t immediately lost their cool. They trusted that their daughter would come to her senses on her own and choose someone from her own cultural background. A Protestant would have been a big enough catastrophe, but a Jew! Insecure, the O’Learys turned to their priest, who recommended
more drastic measures. Amanda was shut up in her room.

“Mum jumped from the second-story bathroom window,” Gary explained. “She didn’t notice until the next day that she had broken her foot, but by then she was already in London. Dad had arranged for her to stay with friends, because his rabbi didn’t want to help them.”

“Are you meshugeh?” the rabbi had ranted. “I should hide a goy?” a derogatory word for non-Jews that I had never heard before.

“She will convert to Judaism,” came the answer.

“But not under my roof! A Catholic cannot become Jewish. Never. She will never be anything but a converted goy…”

They found another rabbi who taught Amanda, and a year and a half after she had fled from her home, she formally converted to Judaism. Then they had a wedding according to the Jewish rituals, under a chuppah, including stomping on a glass, dancing and singing, but without even a single relative. The newlyweds moved to Camden, into a large apartment, because they wanted to have lots of children, and lived strictly according to the kashrut, Jewish dietary laws, and the halakhah, the entire body of rituals.

It took two years until a doctor suspected that the halakhah itself might be the reason why the children the Shepards so longed for weren’t forthcoming. “As long as a woman bleeds plus seven days,” Gary explained awkwardly, “a man can’t touch his wife. That’s usually two weeks, but sometimes longer, and then the fertile days can already be over.”

I leafed furiously through my dictionary. Gary turned red.
“I’ll just say that my parents broke a law in order to have me. They were almost banished from the congregation. Today only a few people know about it, but still, I always have the feeling that they’re looking at me strangely because I should never have been born. And in their opinion, I’m not even Jewish, because for them, only people whose mothers are Jewish are true Jews.”

“I didn’t know you could
convert
to Judaism,” I said, amazed. “Before I came here I didn’t even know there were people who are happy to be Jewish!”

“What do you think?” he replied. “Is my mother Jewish? Am I?”

He looked at me with a smile and I could tell how anxiously he awaited my answer.

“I think so,” I said thoughtfully. “Anyway, I’ve only wanted to be Jewish since I met you. You’re contagious, you and your mother, and no one can pass something on to others that they don’t have themselves. Of course you’re Jewish,” I said triumphantly. “I’m the proof!”

I surprised myself as I heard what I said, and even before I had finished I knew that for once I had said exactly the right thing. So I wasn’t entirely unprepared when Gary leaned forward and gave me a kiss, my first
real
kiss; just on the cheek, but still, my first sweet, respectful kiss from a young man! It felt like I must be fourteen, at least.

I went to bed sure that I was in love with Gary, and certain that I had all the answers. And confused that there were people who gave up everything and broke off contact with their families, taking on hate and scorn, only to become what I had never wanted to be.

While the Seder meal consisted of very simple foods, the actual day of Pesach was celebrated with a feast. I had never eaten anything more delicious than Mrs. Shepard’s roast, but of course her parents-in-law didn’t say a single word about it. I sank my eyes, ashamed. In my excitement following the conversation with Gary, I had completely forgotten that I let her be made invisible, and avoided her for the entire evening. Me, who knew all too well how painful that was!

I thought about the time at school when the other children started to treat us differently. There were some who stood apart when Ruben, Bekka, or I were abused, who didn’t attack, but whose faces clearly showed that they didn’t approve. Had they been on our side? They hadn’t had the courage to help us, and it didn’t take long before they just kept their distance so they didn’t have to see what was happening in the first place.

I had despised those children. And last night I had done exactly the same thing. I had looked away. With burning eyes I looked up at Mrs. Shepard, so long that she got nervous and it was hard for her to pretend that she didn’t notice me looking at her.

I’ll make it up to you!

No one said anything during the meal. How could I come to her aid if nothing happened? As the main course was coming to an end, it became clear that there wouldn’t be any further harsh words, only an icy, silent meal, then the grandparents would drive away. I could have helped the night before, with a glance or a smile. I wouldn’t get a second chance.

It was my darkest hour in that house. With every bite from my plate, I thought of more good things I had experienced with Mrs. Shepard, and how I had betrayed her with my cowardice. By the time dessert was brought in, I was so desperate that I wanted to smash my little glass bowl against the wall. Dr. Shepard lifted the bowl with the dessert and said the blessing.
Dear God, forget the stupid dessert and help me instead!
I pleaded quietly.

And then it came to me!

“Excuse me,” I murmured. My knees felt like jelly when I stood up. I dashed to the foyer, to the wardrobe mirror. My fingers trembled. I could have done it at the table, but I wanted to see it, I wanted to see myself, before and after. I must have looked at myself in the mirror for a full minute before I returned to the dining room.

Julia Shepard uttered a little gasp of dismay even before I sat down across from her. By the time the others looked up from their food, she had already grasped everything. There it was again, that look, with all that belonged to it, that I had hated and feared for years.

And I felt—nothing. No rage, no fear, I just stared back at her and noticed that the look couldn’t affect me anymore. Because that was ME.

“What is that?” Julia Shepard asked hoarsely.

“That is a cross, Mother,” Dr. Shepard answered quietly. “The Nazis persecute assimilated Jews too, didn’t you know?”

“You took in a Christian?” she hissed. “From all the thousands of Jewish refugee children that are coming into our country, you chose a Christian?” She turned to face her
daughter-in-law in rage. “Surely we have
you
to thank for this!”

“Mum wasn’t even with us,” Gary protested.

Mrs. Shepard sat up straight to utter her first words in this round and declared firmly, “If I
had
been there, I would have chosen her.” And even though I remembered perfectly well that it had been very different between us at the beginning, I knew she wasn’t lying, but confirming something I had long since known: Now that we had gotten to know each other, she would
borrow
me again anytime.

Gary’s grandparents looked at each other silently.

“Marcus,” his grandmother said, putting down her napkin, “I believe we’re leaving.”

The two elderly people stood up. I could see how Julia Shepard was trembling, and at that moment I almost felt sorry for her. Dr. Shepard and Gary accompanied them to the door.

“Don’t feel too sorry for her,” Mrs. Shepard said to me. “A little setback won’t hurt them. They’ve made our lives very difficult.”

“I saw that,” I answered sheepishly. “I’m sorry about last night.”

“It’s all right. I should have told you the truth right from the start. Are you very lonely with us?”

“Oh, not anymore. I was just a little…”

“Confused?” She laughed quietly, bent over the table, and I thought she wanted to take my hand, but instead she only ran her finger very lightly over it. “Believe me, it was just the same for me at the beginning. But you learned so fast, much faster than me!”

Dr. Shepard and Gary came back and sat down. Several seconds passed. Then Gary gave me a satisfied little kick under the table and Dr. Shepard raised his glass. “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has granted us life, sustained us, and brought us to this moment…”

It was the Shehecheyanu, the blessing for everything new that he had prayed on the day of my arrival. Back then it had been nothing more than a gesture, but now I really felt it.

I had arrived. I was no longer Ziska. From now on I was Frances, and would never want to be anyone else again.

Book Two

Blackout

1939–1940