One day, after she had finished the eighth bag, only to find that it, like the others, did not close, she sat and stared at it hard, and thought about what would make it close. And it came to her, like a flash of light inside her head, that the two strings had to run opposite to each other. Quickly, she snatched a new piece of silk, red, with satin stripes like Poppa’s vest, and painstakingly stitched a new bag. She sewed in string, one going one way and the other going in the opposite direction. Then, with tiny neat stitches, she hemmed the top of the bag, leaving two little spaces for the string to emerge. It took her all afternoon, and she had to concentrate very hard because she was in a hurry. She wanted to finish it today because she did not know when Momma would bring her to the shop again. And she did finish, and the bag worked! It closed and opened, just like a real bag!
But her pleasure in this accomplishment was brief. She showed her bag to Momma, but Momma hardly looked. And then, the next time Momma took her to the shop, she had nothing to do. She no longer wanted to make string bags, for the one she had was enough. Anyway, she had nothing to put into it.
By now, the children were allowed to sit at the table with Momma and Poppa for dinner, all except Eugenia, Euga (which they pronounced Aowga), the baby who had just come. But something was wrong. Momma no longer bobbed her head and laughed at everything Poppa said. She looked away when he spoke, and he spoke very loudly now, and sometimes after he had drunk many glasses of wine, he talked funny too. Momma would mutter things about “her,” “she.” Poppa would stand and yell, rip his napkin from his belt and storm from the table. Bella gaped with alarm. She froze in her chair and heard nothing, saw nothing.
One night Poppa was late for dinner. Momma had been to the shop but had come home early. She didn’t run anymore, her body moved as if it was tired. She set the round table and lighted the gas in the fringed lamp hanging over it. She set out the two chickens she had roasted and rutabaga sprinkled with dill and mashed potatoes and creamed spinach. Everything was getting cold and Momma was fretting. She walked back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room, and when the servant girl said something to her, she retorted sharply. Then they heard his step on the stairs, but it sounded funny, draggy. And he threw open the apartment door and strode in and slid on the floor and cursed, and Momma put her hand to her mouth in alarm, and stood very straight in front of the table. And Poppa came into the dining room, and his face had slipped, he was sneering at them, and he glanced around the room and peered at the table. “You know I hate creamed spinach!” he roared and strode over and picked up the bowl of creamed spinach and hurled it against the wall. Then he turned around and strode out, and lumbered down the hall and out the door and down the stairs. They heard him slip and curse; then he began to descend again. Momma told the children to sit at the table. She went into the kitchen and found a rag and came back in and got down on her hands and knees and wiped up the creamed spinach. Bella’s mouth was watering in frustration: she loved creamed spinach. She concentrated on the dinner they would eat as soon as Momma finished. Every dish on the table made her mouth water: the crispy brown chickens, the soft luscious potatoes, the tangy rutabaga with its sprinkle of dill. She wondered what there was for dessert. Maybe it could make up for the loss of the creamed spinach. She tried not to watch Momma, but she couldn’t help it. Momma was hunched over, wiping up the gooey mess, her shoulders slumped. The servant girl, wide-eyed, was bringing her clean cloths, and taking away the ugly gooey greenish ones. Momma sighed hard. Slowly, she bent to pick up the pieces of the china dish. Quietly, the servant girl picked up those that had flown across the room. When it was all over, Momma sat down at the table and carved the chickens. She told the children to eat. Bella gobbled her food; she was so hungry she could not get full. She tried to savor the delicious tastes, but somehow, she couldn’t. Maybe the dinner was too cold. As she spooned the food into her mouth, she kept seeing Momma on her hands and knees, with her back bent, wiping up the mess.
3
WHEN BELLA WAS FIVE and a half, Momma sent her to school. She had a new dress, and stiff new boots, and a pair of eyeglasses. Momma kept reminding her she was not to lose them or break them. Momma gave her directions, and kissed her, but only perfunctorily, for she worried about Euga, who had a cold. Momma was carrying her around, bouncing her, talking to her to keep her from crying, but she still cried.
Bella walked the streets very carefully, reaching up every few seconds to touch her eyeglasses, to make sure they were still on her head. She found the building, and went where Momma said, into the office. There a grey-haired woman looked up and spoke to her. Bella simply stood there. She could not understand what the woman was saying. It was some sound like “o,” but it meant nothing to Bella. Finally, the woman waved her hand at Bella, as if she wanted her to leave, and returned to her work. When Bella did not move, the woman came out from behind the high desk, and took Bella by the arm and thrust her out the door.
Bella sat on the curb and cried. She was afraid to go home, where the servant girl would mock her, or worse. She was afraid to go to Poppa’s shop, because she was not allowed to go there unless Momma took her. She stayed on the curb, lifting one foot, then the other, for her feet hurt in me stiff new boots. She watched the trolleys, the great drays that sometimes passed, the iceman’s wagon. She was hungry. She stayed until the school doors burst open and the children sprang out like peas ejected from a BB gun, and ran in all directions shouting, teasing, laughing. She stood up and turned around and looked at them. Why were they better than she was? Why were they allowed in the school and she not? She felt near tears again, but did not want to cry in front of them. She waited until most of the children were gone, and then set off toward home.
Her body was stiff with terror. What would Momma and Poppa say about her when they found out the school didn’t want her? A school that took all the other children, even those from their block, for she’d seen Jan Szcepanski and Myron Goldstein running past her on their way home. But if they didn’t find out, what would she do then? Would she have to come here every day and sit on the curb? Suppose it rained? Or snowed?
She remained tense and stiff as she entered the house, but only the servant girl was there, and she said nothing. And when Momma came home early to nurse the baby, she was busy, and then she had to get dinner. Bella stayed out of the way, on the floor behind the bed, staring at the grain of the wood floor. And then, when Poppa came, Bella shuddered, but he said nothing either, not even when they all sat down to dinner. Maybe they would never find out.
But then, after dinner, it was Eddie who brought it up—oh, Eddie! her face pleaded with him, but he did not stop. He asked her who her teacher was and if she was in that ugly corner room that got so hot and had paint peeling from the ceiling in big flakes that drifted down and settled on your head making everybody laugh and point to you.
Bella couldn’t speak, but Eddie kept it up. Finally, he pointed to her laughing, “Cat got your tongue? I bet you didn’t even go to school, scaredy-cat! I bet you were too scared!”
“I did! I did!” she protested, her face hot in splotches.
“Then what’s your teacher’s name?”
Bella burst into tears.
By this time, Momma and Poppa were paying attention, and they listened when Bella, sobbing and sniffling, told how she’d been expelled from school before she even entered. Poppa was angry, but not with her. She would go again tomorrow, they decided, but Momma would go with her.
The next day, she put on her new dress, which was wrinkled and dirty from sitting on the curb, and the stiff new boots and the new eyeglasses, and went with Momma back to the office of the terrible woman. And Momma talked to the woman in the same kind of words the woman used, and the woman made a face at Bella and looked at Momma as if she were dirty—although Momma had worn her hat, her black hat with the veil, that Bella loved. The woman pushed a piece of paper at Momma and Momma wrote things on it. Then the woman took Bella into the hall and down a long
corridor with doors in it, and opened one of the doors and said something incomprehensible to Bella and took her in and whispered to a lady who was standing in front of lots of other children Bella’s size who were sitting at little desks.
Bella’s heart leaped. Would she be allowed to sit at a little desk like that and write on paper with a pen, the way they were doing? Bella had never held a pen. The terrible woman went out and the lady—she must be the teacher, Bella wanted to know her name, suppose Eddie asked her?—said something to Bella. But Bella just stood there. So the lady came to Bella and took her hand and led her to a little desk. Bella slid into the seat and smiled a dazzled, grateful, happy smile at the lady. And the lady spoke to her, kindly, to her, Bella, right in front of all the children! Bella stopped smiling, and lines of anxiety formed on her forehead. Would it be like this all the time? The teacher had stopped speaking; she sighed and her shoulders drooped, and she went to the big desk in front of the room and came back to Bella and put a piece of paper and a pen on Bella’s desk. Bella understood that she was supposed to have her own pen and paper, and was humiliated. She knew the other children thought she was so poor she could not afford pen and paper. The teacher poked open the lid of the inkwell and showed Bella how to dip a pen in it, and how to hold the pen to write. But when Bella tried it, she made a big blot. The teacher sighed again, marched to the desk, and slammed a blotter down. Then she returned to the front of the class and said something. Bella heard her own name—Isabella Brez. That was all she understood.
Her heart was squeezed tight. She could hear the word “stupid, stupid” running through her brain, and knew that was what they all thought—the teacher and the terrible woman and all the children. And she was stupid. That was why she could not understand their words. They all understood each other, even Alicia from the next block, who was sitting in the first row giggling behind her hand and glancing at Bella. But she would not cry. She would try to conceal her stupidity, so that people would not laugh at her. She practiced with her pen.
She watched the other children following the teacher’s directions, and she did whatever they did. Even in kindergarten, they taught words to this potpourri of children from different backgrounds, and Bella copied meaningless words from the blackboard: BOY GIRL DOG CAT. In time, she came to understand what these words meant, but she could not put them in a sentence.
She went home that day and sat quietly waiting until Momma arrived. Then Bella told her she had to have a pen, a tablet, and a blotter. Momma said she had no money. Bella threw a tantrum. So astonishing was this to Momma that she left the house and walked back to the shop and got a nickel from Poppa and returned and gave it to Bella. With a shaky pride—only partly believing she had accomplished this—Bella walked to the stationery store on the corner clutching her nickel, directed the purchase of the tools of her education, and with great dignity, returned home.
She did not do well in school, but somehow, she passed. She was impeded by the fact that she did not hear everything that was being said, and did not know she was not hearing everything. But she admired—oh, she admired!—the children who had 100 written on the top of their test papers, or even 85. She fell into her usual pattern of behavior quiet, docile, obedient, and somewhat abstracted. (Stupid, stupid!) She was promoted, from first to second, second to third. But by then everything had changed.
My sophisticated mother blows smoke across the room. “Oh, I was so stupid. I was so stupid I was left back in the third grade.”
My mother’s mother’s name was Frances Bzychkowska. She was the daughter of a storekeeper in Zmegrud, a tiny village in the Carpathian Mountains. Her friend Dafna Pasek was a distant cousin—most people in this village were somehow related—who would be the mother of my father. Frances was not a peasant. It was important that Bella understand that neither of her parents was a peasant. Frances went to a church school, and was taught to read and write in Latin; she could speak German, the language of the invader, the only language permitted in public forums. At home, she spoke and learned to read and write in Polish.
Why did she leave?
For it must have been a terrifying journey for a girl of thirteen who had never even been to Kraków—all the way to Bremen, alone; buying her passage with the money Aunt Sophie had sent her from America; traveling steerage in the immigrant ship, locked in the bottommost deck with hundreds of others, some sick, babies crying, no privacy. And then the horror of Ellis Island, being treated like some subhuman creature by self-satisfied grey men important over their pens, their ledgers, their stamp pads. Maybe Aunt Sophie met her. I am writing that Aunt Sophie met her, because I can’t bear it to have been any other way.
So she went to Aunt Sophie’s and slept on a cot near the wood stove in the kitchen, and got a job as a servant girl in a Jewish family. She was abused, overworked, and underpaid; she developed a strain of anti-Semitism. Perhaps she had brought it with her. But she never built upon it. She saved all her money and sent it back to Poland, for passage for her two younger sisters. Why did they want to come?
Because, by then, they all must have known what it was like here. Sophie first, then Frances: the hard conditions, the strangeness, the near slavery, the awful poverty—families of twelve living in two rooms. So, one can only conclude it was worse at home. The country was partitioned, Polish culture was proscribed. Did they come here to speak Polish freely? My mother says they came for work. Frances worked hard. She moved up, to work in a sweatshop over a sewing machine. She learned to speak English, to read it and even to write it. She learned her way through the maze of Brooklyn, the red tape of American institutions. I like the thought of her then, she isn’t a weight on me. She was slight, slender, sprightly; she edged her way past obstacles, she used charm. Perhaps she had intimations of Poland’s future, accurate ones, for she survived and those left behind did not.
I needed to know…something. So, in 1975 I went to Poland. I had only a little money, because I went without an assignment, hoping I’d find some pictures that would interest somebody. Poland was hardly in the news then. I thought my small budget would be enough, because Poland is poor; I thought I’d get by, as I had in Greece, on three dollars a day. But I was totally ignorant about socialist governments, who set a currency rate and force you to prove you’ve bought money legally. The exchange rate they gave Americans was fifteen złotys a dollar, while the black-market rate was ninety. My trip to Poland was the most expensive I’d ever taken, even though I did not stay in hotels. I came back dead broke and exhausted.
Because I also did not understand that there would not be little hostels, pensione, whatever, for someone like me, that you had to have a hotel reservation for the exact length of your stay in each place, arrive and depart on precisely the date you had stipulated on your visa application. And hotels were booked a year ahead, because there were so few of them. A charming little sandwich seller who spoke to me on the train from Paris to Warsaw hit his cheek with his hand when he heard me say I expected to move around with my backpack and cameras, finding beds, meals, camaraderie wherever I went. He was French, but his parents worked in the French embassy in Warsaw, so he spoke Polish, as well as English. He spent the next hours trying to do something for me. Within an hour, everyone on the train knew about me, and came into my compartment to speak to me. Many brought their children, who were learning English at school and who could, they thought, speak it. People offered me fruit they had stowed away in Paris against the coming dearth—although I didn’t know that then—and I took an orange. The sandwich seller gave me his entire leftover stock at the end of his tour—two sandwiches and a small bottle of wine. For I hadn’t anticipated there being no food on a twenty-four-hour train ride. He also found someone who offered to take me home—a retired judge named Anna Kosakiewicz, who was a little older than I, and as shocked as everyone else at my situation.
Anna did not speak English or French, nor did anyone else on the train. Polish, a little Russian, considerable German: the irony of
invasion. The train moved forward very slowly, and for an hour or more, ran backward. I couldn’t help thinking of all the Polish jokes I’d bristled at in the past. There was no water on the train, which meant that the toilet, after twenty-six hours of travel, was stuffed with soda cans, fruit cores, chicken bones, kielbasa string, and human shit, much of it mine—I was still sick from some mussels I’d eaten in Normandy. Despite all this, the train was noisy and cheerful until we crossed the border into East Germany, when silence and mean-faced guards with huge dogs descended upon us. There was a sigh as we crossed the border into Poland—of sorrow or relief or both I couldn’t tell. Then there was absolute silence. A woman sitting opposite me—the compartment had filled up over the hours—leaned forward, poked the book I was reading and pointed to my suitcase. It took me a few minutes to understand her. I was reading Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex, and she had understood one word of the title. She waved her hand to let me know such a subject was forbidden in Poland. I buried the book among others and, laughing to myself, pulled out Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn. But I had no trouble with immigration, only with the moneyman who came with a black suitcase and refused to give me złotys because my visa said I would remain in Poland for three to four weeks. That, he said, was imprecise and therefore forbidden. I argued that the visa had been granted with that condition. He closed his mouth and his suitcase. I shouted. The people around me were hushed and terrified, and put gentle hands on my arm. I continued to shout: I had paid for that money, I said, and I wanted it! I had no Polish money even to pay for a cab from the train station! He owed me those złotys, having taken my dollars. I could feel the trembling of the bodies seated near me, but I knew my man. He gave me the money.