No One Must Know (11 page)

“You didn’t have the right address,” Mom said. “That’s why it took so long for your letter to arrive. How did you find our house?”

“Your neighbors next door told me you live here,” Jutka said.

“My darling Jutka, I’m so glad that both of us got to Canada! Do you remember how we used to dream about coming here?” Mom asked.

“How could I forget?” Jutka said. “It’s a miracle that I’m here. I was taken to another camp when we were separated, and after I was liberated, I spent months in a DP camp. I was sick with typhus for a long time and nearly died. When I finally recovered, I discovered that no one was left. Neither my mama nor my papa had survived. Nor had my brother. My grandmama was also gone. I was an orphan. I thought that you, too, were lost to me, dear Agi. There seemed to be no point in returning home.” She wiped her eyes. “Anyway, after a long, long time, I
received my papers and immigrated to Canada. I was finally able to turn our childhood dream into a reality.”

“My poor dear,” Mom said, her own eyes bright with unshed tears.

Agi laughed wryly. “Hold on! My tale of woe becomes even more desperate.” The smile on her lips masked the sadness of her eyes. “Once I got here, I quickly realized that the streets of Canada are not paved with gold as we had always thought.”

“It must have been very difficult for you,” Dad said.

“It was. I was so young, so lonely. But I didn’t give up. I went back to school and received my high school diploma. I met a wonderful man whom I love very much. Now I’m enrolled in university.” She laughed. “I’m the oldest student in my class, but I’ll be graduating in another year.” She smiled proudly. “Life is good.”

“How did you find us?” I asked.

“Yes, how?” echoed Mom.

“Oh, my dear, it took me a long time. After the war, I wrote to your grandmama’s housekeeper. Julia wrote back that both you and Jonah had come back and had married. Finally, news that someone I loved was still alive!” She squeezed Mom’s hand. “Julia also told me that you had changed your name from Goldberg to Gal, and that you had immigrated to Canada. But she didn’t have your address.”

“We wanted to cut all ties with the old country,” Mom mumbled. I noticed that she was staring at the table-cloth, not meeting Jutka’s eyes.

“All this talking is making me thirsty,” Jutka said. She drank from the glass of water in front of her before continuing with her story. “Well, I was desperate to find you. I asked everyone I could think of if they knew where you were. I was able to trace you to Toronto, but then you seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth.

“Finally, when I was at my doctor’s for a checkup, I came up with the idea to write to the medical associations in all the provinces to find out if there was a Dr. Jonah Gal on their rosters. When I received your address, I almost fainted from joy. I wrote you immediately, and when you didn’t reply, I decided to book a train ticket and come here myself. And here I am!” she said, breaking into tears once again.

“And I’m so glad!” Mom said, leaning across the table and hugging her.

Then Jutka’s tone became serious. “I’m overjoyed to see both you and Jonah again–and to meet your wonderful daughter. It gives me the greatest pleasure.” She patted my hand. “So tell me, Jutka, about your life in Canada. You must be doing well, for you have such a lovely home. But there are several things I don’t understand. Why is your
daughter wearing a cross around her neck? And why don’t you have a mezuzah on your doorpost?”

Mom’s face paled, and Dad looked grim. Neither of them uttered a word.

“What is Jutka talking about, Mom? Dad?” I asked. “Why shouldn’t I wear a cross? And why would we have a mezuzah at the door? Jacob told me that Jewish people have them. Why would
we
have one?”

My parents remained silent.

“I’m sorry,” said Jutka at last. “I didn’t realize…I didn’t mean to…” She shifted in her chair. “Agi, you must know that I would never intentionally hurt you.”

Dad slapped his fist into his palm. “I knew I shouldn’t have listened to you, Agi! I knew this would happen! It was a horrendous mistake. I would never have agreed to it if I hadn’t had to worry about making a living for my family. Did you actually believe we could live a lie forever? We must tell Alexandra the truth.”

Jutka leaned forward and faced Mom. “Tell your daughter our story, Agi. You can’t protect her from the truth.”

“It seems that I have no choice,” Mom said in a resigned tone. “We wanted to protect you,” she began, grasping my hands. “We never wanted you to know how much we suffered. It breaks my heart that this is no longer possible. Your father and Jutka are right, however.
You must be told the truth. It will upset you and may even make you weep, but that can’t be helped either.”

Her words flowed haltingly at first, but then she began to speak with more and more force. “My darling daughter, we are not who you thought we were. We are not Catholic–we are Jewish,” she said.

I gaped at her. “What do you mean?”

“You heard me right,” she said. “We are Jews, not Catholics. We suffered terribly for our faith. We were imprisoned in concentration camps. The three of us survived, but so many did not. The Nazis murdered our families.”

“It was more terrible in the camps than you can imagine.” Jutka picked up the story. “They abused us, tattooed us, herded us like cattle. Your dear mother saved my life. When one of the SS guards wanted to shoot me, she threw herself on top of me and took the bullet in her leg in my stead.” Her voice cracked with emotion. “I wouldn’t be here today without you, Agi!” she said.

Mom held up her hand. “Hush, Jutka. The less said about that, the better it is. I don’t want Alexandra to know the horror of it. I vowed to myself in Auschwitz that if by some miracle I survived and had a normal life, I would make sure that no child of mine would suffer like we suffered. I wanted to keep you safe,” she said to me. “I
didn’t want you to know about the wretchedness we endured. I’m certainly not going to tell you about it now.”

“But I don’t understand,” I said. “What kind of camp were you in? And how did you get free if you’d been shot?”

“At the end of the war, when the Soviets came and liberated the few of us who were still alive,” she said with a bitter smile, “I was wounded, maimed, almost dead, but free!” She stopped talking for a moment, taking my hands again and grasping them so tightly that she was hurting me.

“Listen to me carefully,” she said. “As I lay in the hospital week after week, being nursed back to health, I kept repeating my vow–to keep any future child of mine safe. After I’d recovered, I went back home to look for my family. My story is the same as Jutka’s. Not a single person from my family returned. None of them survived the camps–not my mother, not my father, not any of my relatives. Nobody at all! I thought Jutka was dead too. Then, miraculously, your father came home some weeks later!” She smiled, misty eyed, at Dad before turning back to me.

“We were sweethearts before he was deported, and when we saw each other again, we fell in love once more. I was nineteen years old and all alone in the world,” she continued, “as was your father, so we decided to marry. But I was still scared. I didn’t feel safe in a place
where many of our own countrymen wanted us dead. I convinced your father that we should change our name. It used to be Goldberg, but Gal sounds more Hungarian. It didn’t help. Our neighbors told us they’d known nothing about the camps. They’d ask, ‘Where is your papa? What happened to your dear mama and grandmama?’ I realized then that our future lay elsewhere.

“One day, I noticed that the scarlet-and-gold curtains that had hung in our parlor before the war were blowing in the windows of a house down the street. I knew they were our drapes because they’d been the talk of the town when my mama brought them home after one of her visits to Budapest. I asked for them back, but their new owners denied they were mine. There was nothing I could do.

“When I found out that I was expecting a baby, I begged your father to emigrate. I wanted to leave Hungary. It wasn’t my home any more.” She kissed my cheek. “I loved you even before you were born, and I wanted a good life for you. Before we were taken away, we’d buried all our money and jewelry in the cellar. But a neighbor had found it. Everything was gone. Your belongings too,” she said to Jutka.

“I can’t say I’m surprised.” She shrugged.

“Fortunately, Julia, our housekeeper–God bless her–had managed to rescue my mama’s fur coat, our silver candlesticks, and the precious photographs that you
discovered in my dresser. The dear soul returned everything to me after the war. I couldn’t bear to part with the candlesticks, so I sold Mama’s coat to pay for our passage to our new country. That reminds me,” she said to Jutka, “I have something that’s yours.” She grasped hold of her cane and limped out of the room. A minute later, she was back with the book I’d found in her dresser clasped under her arm. She handed it to Jutka. “Aren’t you glad you gave it to Julia for safekeeping?” she asked.

“My
Canada
book!” Jutka said, stroking the stained cover with gentle fingers. “I thought it was lost forever.”

“Julia returned it to me,” Mom said. “When you didn’t come home, I couldn’t bring myself to leave it behind. It reminded me of you. Open it!”

Jutka burst into tears when she saw the photographs lodged between the cover and the front page of the book. She picked up the picture of the four women.

“My mama and grandmama!” she cried. “I have no pictures of them.”

“You do now,” Mom said. “I want you to have those.” She turned to me. “We weren’t allowed to own cameras during the war. If those photographs had ever been discovered, we would have faced severe punishment.”

She picked up the picture of the girl with the blonde hair who looked like me.

“I was pretty, wasn’t I?” she asked, peering closely at
the photo. “It’s too bad that my mother was our photographer. I don’t have a single picture left of her.”

Jutka kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you, my dear. You’ve given me a priceless gift. But please go on with your story.”

“Where was I?” Mom said.

“You sold you mothers fur coat for your passage to Canada,” I reminded her. “What happened after that?”

“The hard part was escaping from Hungary. But that’s a story for another day. I’ll just say for now that we made it out safely, sailed in a large ship across the ocean, and settled in Toronto. You were born there, Alexandra. As I’ve already told you many times, Dad studied day and night, and he soon learned English and passed his medical exams. Life was good. We joined a synagogue, made friends. Then one day, your father applied for admission privileges at one of the major hospitals. His application was refused. Dad became suspicious when he heard that a doctor with inferior qualifications was approved. A colleague told him that several of the hospitals refused to grant privileges to Jewish physicians. Your father and I were outraged.

“I began to worry that if something like that could happen in Canada, then we weren’t any safer here than in Europe. I convinced your father that the only way to make sure that we wouldn’t suffer because of who we are
was never to reveal the truth to anyone–and that included you. We decided it was safer for you not to know who you are. I even had my tattoo removed,” she said, holding out her arm to display the white scar on its underside. “Fortunately, your father was never given a tattoo,” she continued. “It took some doing, but I convinced him to go along with my plan. We decided to move here and begin a new life as Christians.”

“Against my better judgment,” Dad cut in. “I agreed only because I was worried about supporting my family,” he repeated. “You heard what Mr. McCallum said in the church that day, Alexandra. My friend Sam Kohn is an excellent doctor, yet he’s struggling to make a living. Many patients don’t want to go to a Jewish doctor.”

“So that’s what he was talking about,” I said.

“I knew all the deceit would lead to trouble,” Dad said. “I told your mother that it’s not possible to pack away the past like an old dress in a trunk. I kept wondering if Sam was right and I should have just taken my chances.”

I had never heard my father sound so emotional.

He patted my hair. “You must have a lot of questions, Alexandra,” he said. “But let’s save them for later. Go up to your room and give yourself a chance to think over what your mother has told you. Then we’ll talk.”

I
sat down on the edge of my bed. I felt like crawling back into, it and pulling the covers over my head, but I knew that would solve nothing. I thought of Mom and Dad suffering during the war, of the murder of my grandparents. I thought about how all this had happened because they were Jewish. Not Catholic, like I’d always believed, but Jewish. Did that mean that I was Jewish too? But I felt Catholic! How could I be anything else?

I walked over to my dresser to straighten my hair in the mirror. The girl reflected back at me had my face, my nose, my eyes, my curly hair. She had a mother and a father. She was a ninth-grade student at Lord Selkirk
High, and she attended Sunday school every week at St. Stephen’s Catholic Church. There was a boy she liked a lot called Jacob, and he liked her back. The girl in the mirror was me, yet not me. I was the same, but different. I was not who I thought I was. I watched my reflection in the mirror as I mouthed the words “Who are you?”