Bella found she could read the sign where they got off: Farmingdale, it said. She didn’t know what dale meant, but she understood that the place was a place for farming. There was a small white house near the tracks, that people were coming out of to get on the train, but beyond them, for miles around, there was nothing at all but fields. Bella looked at Momma, expecting her to burst into tears, but Momma seemed to know where she was going. She set off, and Bella followed, dragging a little on the basket. They walked for a long time, down a road surrounded on all sides by fields. Then they left the road and walked across the fields. The sun was directly overhead now, and very hot. Far off in the distance, Bella spied a small lump on the horizon. That must be where they were going. It was still miles away. Bella wondered how Momma knew to find it, but then, she thought, Momma always did know where things were and how to reach them.
Eventually, the building took shape: tall, gaunt, dark redbrick, sooty with age. The narrow windows had bars on them, and there were rusting black fire escapes on the sides. Bella shuddered. It looked like a prison. They had to walk around it to the front, because it was enclosed in a high fence of black metal poles. They had to stop at the gate and Momma had to talk to the policeman there, who sat in a little booth. But once inside…there they were! Eddie, Wally, and Euga! And they cried out, and Momma cried out and dropped her end of the basket and ran to them, and they all ran to her, and then they were all mixed together, the four of them, all their bodies intertwined, and Momma was crying, and Wally was whimpering, and Euga was staring wide-eyed, and Momma picked her up in her arms, and she kept saying, “Moje drogie, moje biedne sieroty,” my dears, my poor orphans, and wiping her eyes, and hugging one of them, saying “Moja najdroższa, najdroższal My dearest! Sweetheart! Kochanie!”
Bella stood there with the basket, which was resting on the ground in front of her. Momma had completely forgotten her. She didn’t matter. Then Eddie saw her, and came over and smiled and said, “You got something to eat?” and she was shocked: it was the first time he had ever spoken to her in English. She nodded, and he bent and lifted the handles and started toward the building. Wally was drawn toward the food, and he turned too, and Momma followed them, with Euga in her arms. At the door, she turned. Bella was still standing by the gate. “Come, Bella!” Momma called gaily, and she ran to join them.
They were sent to the auditorium, a large dark room with chairs fixed into the floor, and a stage in the front. There was no one else there. They sat on the chairs in a back row, Momma with Euga on one side and the basket on the other, and Momma took out the food. She didn’t know where to put it, though, so Eddie got up and carried the basket to the wide aisle, and sat down on the floor beside it. They all followed, except Momma didn’t sit on the floor, and she wouldn’t let Bella sit there either. “You’ll dirty your dress.” So Momma crouched down and laid the plates out in front of the three children, and put Bella’s plate on a seat. Then she cut up the chicken, and spooned out the stuffing, and took the towels off the potato salad and the cucumbers, and let the children help themselves. Momma and Bella sat on their stiff seats, their plates in their laps. The children ate greedily, cramming food into their mouths with their hands. Momma said nothing. Momma hardly ate anything, she watched them, and sometimes she’d grab an arm or leg and cry out, “Oh, so thin, so thin!” and begin to weep. The children ignored her. They kept stuffing their mouths. They ate the two chickens, all the stuffing, all the potato salad, and most of the cucumbers. Then Momma uncovered the cakes, and their eyes opened wide. But they could not eat more than one big slice each, so Momma wrapped the rest up in a towel, and gave it to Eddie. “You keep it. You give it to Wally and Euga.” Eddie tried to explain that he never saw Euga, that she was in the girls’ section, and boys were not allowed there. But Eddie stumbled over this explanation—he had begun to forget his Polish, although Frances, willfully perhaps, did not notice this. Bella had to help him out. So then Momma took another towel and cut off a big chunk of cake and gave it to Euga. Momma’s eyes were still shining, and after she gave Euga the cake, she reached down from her seat and picked Euga up and rocked her against her body, saying “Moja droga, moja biedna sierota,” over and over.
Then a door swung open and a grey-haired woman carrying a whole ring of keys came in. She nodded to the children, who looked up at her blankly. Eddie turned to Momma. “We have to go now, Momma.”
“NO, NO, NO!” Momma cried, and began to sob again, as hard as she had the day they were taken away. The woman started to walk forward, her mouth a thin line, and Eddie glanced at her and got up. He wiped his mouth and hands on a napkin, and pulled Wally up by his arm. Eddie bent to kiss Momma, and Momma grabbed him and held on to him, crushing Euga on her lap. She was crying his name, crying out about her dears, her poor little orphans, and Wally came up and put his head on her lap, and she wailed louder, and the woman came near and said, “Please, Mrs. Brez,” but Momma didn’t even hear her. The woman nodded her head at Eddie, and he walked toward her, pulling Wally behind him. Wally’s mouth was smeared with grease and cake crumbs, but Momma didn’t notice. Finally, the woman came and took Euga out of Momma’s arms, and Momma’s arms stayed extended long after they were empty, as she screamed in rage and sorrow. Euga was crying now too, peering over the shoulder of the woman and clutching her towel-wrapped cake. When they had all vanished behind the swinging door, Momma let her arms down, and her head fell, and she wrenched her throat with sobs, her whole body jolting with them.
Finally, she calmed down to sniffling, and bent wearily, the old Momma again, and cleaned up the plates, the forks, the unused knives, and stuffed everything back into the basket. She wiped her hands on one of the clean napkins, kept wiping them, over and over. She was still sniffling as they walked back across the fields, the sun halfway down now, but still hot, the grass whispering around their ankles. Bella noticed tiny spots of color among the green, and occasionally she would stop to examine them more closely. They were tiny wildflowers. She began to pick them. Momma turned around. “Hurry, or we’ll miss the train,” she called. Bella ran, but she still stopped once in a while to grab a pretty blue, or yellow, or white blossom. Momma could carry the basket alone now. As they neared the station, Bella ran up to Momma and smiled, and held out her bouquet.
“Look, Momma, aren’t they pretty? They’re for you!”
“Oh, what do I want with a bunch of weeds!” Momma said in disgust, and taking them from Bella, threw them down on the tracks where the train would run over them.
After that, they went to the orphanage every two weeks. It was cooler in the fall, when the sky was a beautiful blue, and the clouds like white puffs. And one Sunday, Bella saw from the train, a line of trees with colored leaves—red, gold, orange—that made her gasp with their beauty. Aside from that, though, the journey was always the same.
4
THE NIGHT BEFORE SCHOOL reopened, Momma reminded Bella that she had to get up early the next morning. Bella looked at her blankly, not thinking to ask what time she should get up, or how she would know what time it was. Momma always seemed to know what time it was, Bella didn’t know how. She had no sense that Frances had been raised in the country, and told time by the sun; nor did Frances perceive that Bella did not share this ability.
When Bella woke the next morning, after a whole summer of rising after the room was soaked with heat, the room was already hot. She leaped up. Momma had long since gone. She was probably already late for school. She dressed hurriedly, her haste keeping her from the dreadful thought of what awaited her: repeating third grade. She had been taller than many of the other children even last year, partly because her birthday was in January, and many of the others had been born six months later. But she was just tall, tall and gawky. This year she would feel like a giant among the smaller children, a year or more younger than she. Humiliation sheathed her in sweat, and she grabbed her tablet and pen and ran out without even stopping to drink the coffee Momma had left at the side of t
he stove.
She didn’t know how long it took to get to school from then-new house, so she ran all the way. But when she arrived, the schoolyard was empty, the doors of the school locked. She leaned against the fence and waited. She waited a long time, and her heart kept making little pings. Maybe Momma was wrong, maybe school didn’t open until tomorrow. People would look at her and think how stupid she was, coming a day early. She stared firmly toward the yard, away from the street, so she would not see the people passing who might gaze at her as if she was an idiot.
She waited, it seemed, hours, and then children began to arrive and play in the schoolyard. Finally, a bell rang in the yard, and the teachers came out and lined the children up, preparing to march them into their classrooms. Bella dragged her body to search for the third-grade line. And when she found it, her heart stopped completely, for it was as she feared, she was the tallest in the class. She could not even conceal herself in the crowd. She stuck out like a spindly tree in an empty lot.
They reached the classroom and the teacher called the roll and assigned them seats by height, putting Bella in the back row, where she would not be able to hear. But Bella did not dare to say anything. Then, as she went through their names once more, she stopped at the name of Isabella Brez. She peered at Bella and said sharply, “Isabella, it is expected that you will comb your hair before you come to school.” Bella’s face burned, and the children looked around at her and tittered. She did not hear anything the teacher said the rest of that day.
After school, Bella dawdled, looking into shop windows in the new neighborhood, but not too long. She felt people were looking at her, that they could see she was gawky and stupid, and they would know from her manner that she had no friends. She would go home and drop off her books and take the money Momma had left for her and go right back out to buy food for dinner. Sometimes she passed girls playing ball or jumping rope in the street, and her heart yearned toward them a little, but she pulled herself up. “I am a big girl,” she said to herself.
But then, there were hours to kill before it was time to make dinner, and she would sit at the round table drinking coffee and continuing the daydream she had been creating at school.
Bella/Anastasia had a clock to wake her up in the mornings, one with a bell that rang when it was eight o’clock. No. No. Anastasia/Bella’s momma came in to wake her each morning, saying sweetly, “It’s time to get up, Anastasia, dear,” and when she got downstairs, Momma had cocoa with whipped cream on it, and French toast waiting for her. Yes. And Anastasia’s poppa was there too, in a striped vest with a thick gold watch-chain across it. He was eating his eggs and drinking his coffee, but he always looked up when Anastasia came in, and smiled, and said, “Good morning.” And he would ask her how she slept, and whether she had pleasant dreams, and Anastasia/Bella would say yes, because she always had pleasant dreams.
And Poppa would kiss her forehead before he left for work, and then Momma would sit her on the high stool, and softly brush her long blond hair which, just like Bella’s, was down to her waist. But Anastasia’s hair made long spaghetti curls all by itself, and her momma would brush them into shape and put a pretty hair-ribbon in her hair, one that matched her dress, like Margie Jasinski’s. And Momma would kiss her good-bye, making sure she had her little bag of lunch. Anastasia’s lunch was white bread and butter, with hard candies for dessert. And as she walked to school, people turned in the street and said, “What a pretty little girl,” and Bella would always smile to herself with pleasure, but never let on that she heard. In the schoolyard, the girls her age were jumping rope, and when she entered, they would all turn and smile and cry, “Here’s Bella!” They would wait for her to join them, and she would run, dropping her books, and jump right in, she didn’t even have to take an end, because they liked her so much. She jumped right in and never faltered, she jumped and jumped and her hair bounced, and after a while, she would stop and take an end just out of kindness, because it was only fair. It was fair to give the others a chance, because Bella never missed.
My mother always combed my hair. Every school morning, after breakfast, she would make me sit on the stepladder-stool that was painted the same color as the kitchen table and chairs, but had no decal on it, and would brush my long, thick, knotted hair with a hairbrush of pure pig bristle that she had bought from the Fuller Brush Man, and that, she told me many times, was a very good brush. She told me this in such tones of reverence, almost awe, that I thought it must be something extremely valuable and kept it for thirty years. I was shocked, when finally I was forced to replace it, to find that hairbrushes were not at all expensive.
As she stood behind me brushing, then combing, I would frequently cry out: “Ouch!” Tears would stream down my face. I vowed that when I was grown up and had a little girl, I would not hurt her when I combed her hair. My mother hurt me every morning, and my scalp grew so tough that to this day I can pull out a single hair—the most painful way to pull hair—without feeling it. She brushed vigorously, combed straight down, and my eyes were ringed with red from tearing when she got through. She made two thick braids, and tied them with matching hair ribbons—if I had not lost one. If I had no hair ribbons, she just used the rubber bands.
On special days, when we were going out, she would curl my hair with the curling iron, making long spaghetti curls. I hated this even more than the brushing, mostly because of the awful smell of burning, and I vowed I would never inflict such a thing on any child of my own. Nor would I inflict upon them the morning dose of cod-liver oil my sister and I were fed, in a large tablespoon, before our orange juice. It tasted terrible, but Mommy said we had to have it, that it would keep us healthy. I hated the orange juice too, because it was cold and had little bits of orange in it—Mommy squeezed it fresh every morning—and it made my mouth burn. And then there was the oatmeal with cream. I hated that worse than anything except the cod-liver oil. Sometimes Mommy cooked Cream of Wheat, which was a little better. I would usually leave my glass of milk or drink only as much as Mommy demanded. I began to drink it only when she poured some coffee into it. Sometimes Mommy boiled an egg for me, but in those days, eggs were fresh and had been fertilized, so they had a strong taste which I now love but which in those days bothered my tender child’s palate. All in all, I hated mornings. There wasn’t much anyone could do to please me. The truth was, I didn’t want to get up early, and wasn’t hungry when I did: and this has remained true.
And every night, after the fight to get me to go to bed, my mother would kiss me good night, and send me to Daddy, who would also kiss me, and then Mommy would always say, “Pleasant dreams,” and I’d say it too. I would go up and read by the dim light of my bed lamp until I heard Mommy and Daddy preparing to come upstairs. Then I’d switch off the light, and slide down under the covers and close my eyes and pretend to be asleep. But Mommy always came in to see that I was covered, and if I was awake, she would kiss me good night again.
When I had children of my own, I remembered my own prescriptions, and was very careful combing my little girl’s hair into braids. Once in a great while, I’d pull by mistake, and she’d cry out grouchily, her eyes tearing, and glare at me as if I had committed this crime intentionally. I’d always say I was sorry, but inside I was smiling, thinking about how any misery expands to take up all one’s space. And I never used a curling iron on her hair. But I did inflict braces on her.
And every night, I kissed my children good night and wished them pleasant dreams, and they returned the wish and went into their rooms. And before I went to bed, I would go in to check them, and they would be sound asleep, Arden with her eyes open just a crack, so you couldn’t be sure she was sleeping, and Billy with his thumb in his mouth—clear through until he was ten years old. They would be pink and sweet-smelling from their baths and their sweat, and warm with sleep, and my heart would roll over as I looked at them, and often I’d kneel down by the side of the bed and lay my face on their cheeks and put my arms around them, and kiss th
eir cheeks and just stay there for a while. They never woke, or knew I’d done this. And guessing from the way they act now, it seems they never knew, never felt my love.
And sometimes, as I knelt there beside them, my heart would ache about a cross word, or flash of irritation I’d tossed them that day. Not that they didn’t deserve some reprimand once in a while, but on the whole, they were wonderful kids, and most of my crossness had to do with my own miseries. I felt sorry, I’d vow to be more careful the next day, and I would be, for a while….
I must add that neither of them, or Franny either, has ever reproached me with the little acts of cruelty I visited upon them. There must have been some that I didn’t notice at the time, so wouldn’t remember. I guess if one has to put up with one’s children not recalling the love, one is rewarded by them also forgetting the moments of hate. Or whatever it is. I remember one time, Arden was about thirteen. And she came in from school late, around five, very excited. Some friends were there, I was preparing dinner, Toni was helping me peel vegetables. And Arden was glowing, and cried out, “Oh, Mommy! I’ve found the most wonderful book, it’s like poetry it’s so beautiful. Have you ever heard of it?” And she held up The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran.
I groaned. “Sentimental slop! I found it in the attic, it had been my mother’s, she’d loved it, and at your age I thought it was wonderful too. But it’s trash,” I informed her.