Reborn
"How can I make my blow dryer work in Poland?" The duty free salesman stopped stacking boxes of cigars long enough to take in Tamar's perfectly styled wavy blond hair.
"Adaptors, two aisles over."
"Thanks." Tamar walked past the rows of liquor and chocolate. She stopped for a moment. Two hours until takeoff, three hours until plane food. She grabbed a handful of low-fat Luna bars off the shelf.
Tamar walked back to the LOT check-in counter, unwrapped one of the candy bars, and sat down on her suitcase, hoping she wasn't crushing her new Ralph Lauren wool sweater. She rubbed her eyes blearily. Only two hours of sleep the previous night had been a mistake. She looked around the bustling airport. Where was her grandmother? She finished the Luna bar, and put the wrapper in her pocket. She was too tired to find a trash can. She rested her cheek on her hand, and closed her eyes.
"Tamarale!" Tamar turned as she heard the unmistakable high-pitched voice. In an instant, she was enveloped in a tight embrace, surrounded by the smells of Charlie perfume and coffee that always lingered in her grandmother's Queens apartment. No one knew how old Estelle Bloom was. If anyone asked her, she would say "young enough to walk a mile, and old enough to be blessed with five wonderful grandchildren." Tamar's mom had recently figured out that she must be about 80, but not even Tamar, the oldest granddaughter, was brave enough to ask. Now, Estelle was wearing her trademark sneakers, and she had pulled her thinning gray hair up in a bun. "Did you get here okay? Here, let me fix your collar. There you go. Tamar, you're so thin. Have you been eating? Come, let's check in. Did I tell you that you look exactly like your mother did when she was your age?" She began to walk at a rapid pace, pulling a worn black suitcase on wheels behind her. Tamar tried not to laugh as she followed her grandmother. She wondered how her mother had grown up so laid back.
"Grandma, tell me again what city we're going to."
"Chmielnik. It's where I grew up."
"Oh, right. I knew it was somewhere starting with a "C" that I couldn't pronounce."
As they settled in on the plane, Estelle peppered Tamar with questions. "So, how's school? I hear you're doing well. Your mother told me you got A's on your tests? And the social life? Any fellows? You know, college is the easiest time to meet boys. You should be looking now. The good ones will all be gone in a few years." Finally, at a few thousand feet, she quieted down and took her knitting from her carry-on. Tamar took out a Danielle Steele novel, and began to read. She had barely finished the first chapter when a stewardess came with her kosher meal. She ate quickly and went back to the book, but a few pages later she was fast asleep.
Tamar was awakened by a voice over the loudspeaker, speaking in an unfamiliar, harsh-sounding language. She looked around in confusion. Her grandmother was placidly tying and snipping the ends of a long blue scarf. The voice switched to accented English. "We will soon begin our decent into Poland. The temperature on the ground is minus three degrees Celsius, and we will be arriving at the gate at 12:00 noon local time. Please take your seats, and return all traytables to an upright and locked position. Thank you for flying LOT. We hope you enjoyed your flight."
"Grandma?"
Estelle looked up. "Good morning, sleeping beauty."
"Grandma, where are we going now? Do you have to get money? Where's the food?" Now it was Tamar who was suddenly full of questions.
Her grandmother smiled. "Calm down, Tamarale. It's taken care of. We'll change money at the airport, and I have reservations for us at a hotel in Chmielnik. It wasn't there in my time, but the travel agent said it's perfectly nice. I have plenty of food in my suitcase, and we'll make you a good sandwich when we get to the hotel."
"Okay. Grandma…are you excited? It's been so long since you've been here."
Estelle's smile faded. "Excited? No. It's not my home. We don't belong there. But you must understand your history, Tamar." She seemed to forget where she was for a moment. "You'll tell your children about the marketplace, the boys running through the streets, our home with the piano in the living room…" She suddenly shook her head. "What am I saying? We'll go together, Tamar, and we'll see what's left." She busily began to stuff her knitting back into her carry-on as the plane descended.
They followed the long line of people shuffling off the flight. A baby cried as its mother rubbed its ears to alleviate its pain. They walked down a long gray corridor, and suddenly Tamar heard her grandmother gasp, and saw her shoulders tense. "Grandma?"
"Tamar, stay with me." Tamar looked around, but she didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Only the customs officials sitting in their sharp green uniforms in the enclosed glass stalls. They walked up to one of the booths. Estelle took Tamar's passport and pushed the two documents under the glass together. The official looked at them and Estelle seemed to shrink back from his stare. He said something in Polish. Tamar listened in amazement as her grandmother answered back. She sounded so…foreign. And her voice was unsteady. The Pole stamped their passports, one, two, and handed them back, already looking on toward the next passenger.
"Grandma? That was just customs, right?"
"Yes, Tamar, just customs. It was only customs." She sounded like she was reassuring herself. "Come. Let's get our bags."
Tamar looked around the airport. She couldn't read the signs on the walls, or understand what the people around her were saying to one another. They retrieved their luggage and walked outside. A blast of frozen wind nearly knocked Tamar off her feet. For a moment, she almost couldn't breathe. They got into a taxi, and her grandmother gave an address to the cabdriver. Tamar looked out the window as they drove down the long highway. It looked so grey…so cold. There were trees and woods everywhere, but the trees were bare except for a few evergreens and the woods seemed foreboding, not like the blooming forests Tamar had envisioned. There were a few houses visible from the road. They were small, like cardboard boxes thrown haphazardly onto the side of a street. Her grandmother couldn't be from this dark place.
The taxi came to a town and slowed down. Tamar watched the few pedestrians; they could have been Americans. The men wore jeans and wool sweaters, the women, tights and heavy coats. Yet something about them was different. Tamar couldn't put her finger on it at first. Then she realized. No one was laughing, or even smiling. They were rushing from their small black cars into the run-down buildings that lined the road, their heads bowed against the cold. She didn't see any couples walking hand in hand. A few policemen patrolled the area, and they seemed like extras in a slow-moving play. Tamar looked at her grandmother. Estelle's expression was blank as she gazed steadily out the window. Tamar thought she saw tears in her eyes, but she couldn't be certain.
"You see that corner?" Estelle asked. Tamar nodded "That's where I used to meet my friends to walk to school every day." The taxi drove for another minute, before Estelle spoke again. "The school was down that street over there." She pointed as they drove past a narrow, unevenly paved road. Tamar looked, but all she could see was an unending row of houses.
They pulled up at their hotel. It was a dingy building among other similar buildings. A bare tree stood in front of it, with scrawny branches waving nakedly in the wind. A few yards behind the hotel, a large forest loomed. A sign hung over the front entrance. Tamar couldn't read the writing. Her grandmother paid the driver in what looked to Tamar like monopoly money. They checked in, and put their luggage down in the sparse room. "This building used to be the doctor's office. It was just one floor back then. He had a small waiting room, right where the front desk is now. He lived in the side room with his family."
Tamar looked around. No TV. A rotary telephone stood on the night-table. "Grandma Esti, can I go out for a walk?"
"Not giving the old lady a minute to rest?"
"I can go by myself. I just want to see what's around."
"No, Tamar. If we go out, we go together. Don't ever wander around alone. It's not safe."
Tamar shrugged. She lived in New York. She didn't think Chmielnik could be much more dangerous, but she wasn't about to argue. She wasn't eager to get lost in a country where she didn't know the language. "Ok, I can wait until you're ready."
"Such an energetic one, my Tamarale is. Come, let me show you my family's home."
"Is it far?" Tamar asked. "Should we take a cab?"
Her grandmother shook her head. "It's not far. A few blocks."
Outside, they began to walk through the biting air. Tamar walked slowly so her grandmother could keep up with her on the uneven pavement. She wrapped her woolen scarf tightly around her neck and up over her nose, hoping the hot air from her breath would warm her face. Her navy NYPD hat was pulled over her ears, so all that was showing were her eyes. Even those stung from the wind. She glanced at her grandmother, who wore only an old rain hat and a thin scarf tucked inside her coat. Estelle looked wistful as her eyes darted right and left. She didn't seem to notice the weather.
"See this intersection?" Estelle gestured at the near-empty crossing of two one-lane roads. "This was the marketplace. Every Friday, Mama, your great-grandmother, would send us here to buy food for Shabbos. You could smell the cinnamon and ginger from the street. We always ran from the house to make sure that we had an extra minute or two to walk around. In that corner was the fishmonger. We would go to his shop just long enough to buy the carp Mama used for gefilte fish, and then we would run away. We were scared if we stayed longer, the fish smell would stick to our clothes and we wouldn't be able to wash it off. We stopped every time by Aron the baker. His assistant was a year older than me and I think he took a fancy to me. He always snuck me cookies when Aron wasn't looking. Vera and I split them on the way home."
Tamar looked around. She couldn't imagine a bustling marketplace. The street corner was almost deserted. Some cars drove by, but she didn't see any people. A few dilapidated stores sat on the street corners, their doors shut to the wind and their shutters half-covering the windows. "Was it a Jewish marketplace?"
"No, it was the main market of Chmielnik. Jews, non-Jews, we lived together. You see that building over there?" Estelle pointed to a tall spire a short distance away. "That's the church. And over there?" She gestured to the opposite end of the old market area. "That was the synagogue."
Tamar didn't see anything. "Where is it?"
"The Germans burned it." She said it so matter-of-factly that it took Tamar a moment to register what she had said.
"Where did Grandpa live?"
Her grandmother looked surprised at the question. "Grandpa? I married your grandpa after the war."
"Really? I didn't know that. Where did you meet him?"
"In a DP camp. We were waiting to hear from our families. I met him, a few months later he discovered he had a cousin in America, so we got married and he brought me over."
"Wow. But…did you love him? I mean, in only a few months?"
Estelle shrugged. "I grew to love him. We spent 30 years together."
Tamar was silent for a moment. She listened to the honking of cars in the distance, and the blowing of the wind in the trees. "Was Vera, the one you went to the market with, your sister? You never talk about her."
"She's gone. Over there," Estelle waved her hand vaguely.
Tamar looked in the direction of her hand. All she saw was a row of houses and the treetops of a forest behind them. "The forest?"
Estelle nodded. "The forest. The camps. All of them."
"All of…?" Tamar was confused.
"Yoel, Vera, Hannah, and Leibel. I was the oldest, I was living in the forests by then, with the partisans. I would visit the house and bring food. One day I came and they were gone." Her voice had taken on a clipped tone, and she spoke matter-of-factly. But Tamar saw a sad, yearning expression bring out the wrinkles on her face. It was a look she had never seen before on her energetic grandmother. Estelle suddenly stopped walking. "Here we are. This was our home."
It was a small two-story house with peeling white paint. A clothesline in the backyard, with a brown wool skirt, two blouses, and a few pairs of underwear, was only half obscured by the side of the house. A low step led up to the wooden front door. Estelle knocked. After a moment, they heard a woman's voice speaking in Polish. Estelle answered back, telling the woman her name. The women talked for a few seconds, and Estelle looked confused.
"Grandma, what did she just say?" Tamar asked.
Estelle shook her head. "She talks quickly, in a heavy accent. I don't know."
The woman opened the door a crack and stared at them silently. She was an elderly woman and wore a faded red scarf around her hair. Estelle spoke in slow English. "This used to be my home. Please, can we come in?" The woman didn't answer and Estelle switched back to Polish.
The woman finally responded and moved to shut the door.
Estelle stuck her hand out to keep the door open, speaking a few words and motioning at Tamar.
"Grandma, what's going on?"
"She told me this isn't my home. That her family lived here for 60 years. How she got it 60 years ago is what I want to know. But I told her you're my granddaughter and I want to show you the house."
The Polish woman's gaze shifted to Tamar. Her eyes seemed to soften and she nodded, relenting and opening the door.
Estelle turned to Tamar. "She's giving us a few minutes." Estelle thanked the old woman and they walked inside. The furniture was old and dusty. Tamar saw her grandmother pause suddenly by an old couch and stroke it lightly with her fingertips.
The Polish woman suddenly spoke sharply.
Tamar saw a flash of anger in her grandmother's generally placid expression. "Don't touch? Who does she think bought this couch?" Estelle pursed her lips, but didn't speak to the woman. Tamar followed her grandmother as she slowly walked through the rooms of the house. The walls were lined with faded photographs. They reached the kitchen, with its old-fashioned stove and oven, and a naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling. "Mama used to live in this kitchen. Even when it was hot, she'd be standing over the stove. When we came home at night, she would have food ready on the table. I tried to copy her chicken soup—it never came out the same way. She always told us ‘If you don't eat well, you won't find a good husband.' " Estelle smiled.
They walked up the stairs into a small room. It was filled with torn boxes, broken chairs and old clothing. Spiderwebs lined the walls and Tamar jumped back as a black bug darted out at her from underneath a half-rotted wooden cane. Estelle spoke almost to herself, "This was my room. Vera and I slept on the bunk bed, and since Hannah was the youngest, we made her sleep on the mattress on the floor. Sometimes she would try to go to sleep early just so she could take one of our beds. I threatened that one day I would tip the bed over with her in it, but that didn't bother her. She said she would just land on her feet and go right back to sleep. Knowing her, she would. Somehow everything seemed to fall into place for Hannah."
Tamar looked around. Tamar looked over at the woman standing with her arms crossed by the entrance of the door, watching them suspiciously. She wondered if the woman ever came into this room anymore. The piles of junk looked like they hadn't been disturbed for years. She absentmindedly reached for a small jewelry box from the top of a broken desk. As she picked it up, a moth flew out of a nearby stack of old magazines. Tamar jerked her hand back, her elbow striking a whole pile of papers, which flew to the floor. "Damn!"
Estelle turned sharply. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing, Grandma. I'm fine, I just knocked some of this junk down."
"Pick it up. We don't want to get in trouble." It was too late. The woman saw the accident and stalked into the room, admonishing Tamar in a fast, annoyed tone of voice.
"I've got it. No big deal." She bent down to pick up the papers: an ad cut out from a Polish magazine, clippings about a model, or maybe an actress, a few letters. The woman grabbed the pile out of her hands, and slammed them back down on top of the magazines. Like a sentry, as soon as she was done, she returned to her post in the doorway, glaring at Tamar from a few feet away.
"Do you think she was a Nazi?" Tamar whispered, her voice barely carrying across the small room to her grandmother.
Her grandmother shrugged. "Do I know who she is? Many Poles helped the Germans, some didn't. Come. Let's go."
"But, Grandma…"
"We're leaving." Estelle grabbed her granddaughter's wrist tightly.
Tamar shook her off. "I'm coming, I'm coming."
They walked down the stairs, and nodded to the Polish woman, who stared with suspicion as they left the house.
They walked without talking until they reached the hotel. Tamar flopped down on one of the twin beds, and Estelle sat on the other one and began emptying her purse. She dumped an amalgam of lipsticks, tissues and coins on the bed and began rummaging through them. Tamar watched her curiously. Her grandmother seemed to find what she was looking for, and she pulled a small object out of the pile.
"What's that?" Tamar asked. Estelle handed it to her, cupping Tamar's hand around it as if it were a precious gem. Tamar opened her fingers and found a small wooden ring. It was perfectly carved, smooth on the inside and rounded on the outside. Tamar slid it over her ring finger; it was too big and she slipped it off again easily. Tamar gave it back to her grandmother and looked at her, puzzled. "What is this?"
"Eli made it for me when we were engaged."
Tamar was even more confused. "Eli? But Grandpa's name was Saul. And you told me you met him after the war."
"I did. But I was also married before the war. I had another life back then. I met Eli when I was 16. He was smart, kind." Estelle smiled. "His father was the kosher butcher. Eli would come to deliver our meat, and I would sneak out of the house to walk through the forest with him. One day his father saw us, and forbade Eli to come to our house. He said it was inappropriate for an unmarried boy and girl to walk alone together."
"So what happened?"
"So the next day he came back to our house, talked to Papa, and asked for permission to marry me." Estelle began to put her things back in her purse.
"And you said yes? Just like that?"
"I loved him. Of course I said yes. We got married a month before the war broke out."
Tamar was stunned. She had never heard any of this before. "And the ring? What happened to him? And Grandpa?" Tamar sat up in bed, staring at her grandmother intently.
Estelle recalled the buried memories like a mantra, seeming unaware of her granddaughter's surprise. "One at a time. Yes, the ring. Eli was always clever with his hands. He made it for me when we were engaged. He said I should wear it so I would always be thinking of him, until we could get married. I never took it off until our wedding day, when he gave me a real ring, the same ring that his grandfather had given to his grandmother."
"So what happened to this ring?"
"Be patient. I'm coming to that. Even when we were married, we were always at my house. Your great-grandmother baked cookies for us, and we sat in the kitchen and talked, played games with my brothers and sisters. When the war broke out, we knew we could be separated. We hid the ring under a loose floorboard in the corner of my room, under my bed. We promised that if we were separated, whoever came back to the house first would take the ring, and the second to return would know the other one was alive."
"Wow." Tamar absentmindedly began to play with the silver necklace she always wore. "So what happened to him?"
Her grandmother shrugged. Tamar thought she saw tears in her eyes. "Two months after the Germans invaded Poland, they came banging on our door in the middle of the night. They said they were arresting him for questioning. He didn't come back."
Tamar moved over to the other bed, and put her arm around her grandmother, who looked fragile for the first time.
"So how did you get the ring?"
"Today. It was under the floorboard."
Tamar hadn't noticed what her grandmother had been doing while she was being yelled at for toppling the piles of junk. She tried to comfort her. "Maybe…maybe he's like you, he just didn't come back until now."
"Maybe."
Another thought struck Tamar sharply. "How could you marry Grandpa when you were already married? Did he know?"
"He knew later. Then, there was no need to know. Eli disappeared. I waited for months, I asked after him, I searched the books, but no one remembered my Eli. What could I do? He was in the past, I assumed he was dead, with the rest of our families. Tamar, what was before the war didn't exist anymore. Our parents, our friends, my husband, they were gone, all gone. We had to build new lives, we couldn't live in the ashes of the old."
"But…" Tamar hesitated. "But you loved Eli, how could you marry Grandpa?"
"I loved him, yes. But he was gone. I cared for your grandpa, and we were both alone. We had a chance together. We could come to America, and start over, so we did. And I don't regret it—I had three beautiful children and five grandchildren. I got you, Tamarale."
Tamar looked at her grandmother, noticing the wrinkles around her eyes, wondering for the first time when they developed. She marveled at her grandmother's ever-present smile. "Grandma…" Estelle waited expectantly. "I love you, Grandma."
Estelle grabbed her granddaughter in a hug, pulling Tamar tight against her chest. "I love you too, Tamarale." The wooden ring dropped out of Estelle's now-open hand onto the bed.
Tamar quickly grabbed it. "Here, Grandma. Don't lose the ring."
Estelle stared at the ring for a moment, turning it over and rubbing it with her fingers. Then she looked up at her granddaughter and a sense of calmness settled over her face. "What do I need an old ring for? I have the ring your grandpa gave me. I have you with me, I have your mother, all of my children. Come, let's put this ring where it belongs." Estelle grabbed her coat off of the chair where she'd left it and put it on, slinging her purse over her shoulder. Tamar got up, confused, and followed after her grandmother.
They walked outside around the back of the hotel. This time, they both scarcely noticed the freezing cold. Estelle paused at the edge of the forest, staring into the unending rows of tall, brown trees planted on top of the uneven soil. Tamar began to walk into the forest. Estelle spoke softly, as if she were talking to herself. "Tamar, come back. Those bumps in the ground? They weren't there when we ran through the forest. They came later." Tamar looked at the ground under her feet in horror, lifting her legs high and taking large steps as she ran back out of the forest, as if she half expected a corpse to rise out of the ground after her. As Tamar reached her grandmother, Estelle kneeled down on the ground, not noticing as her long skirt soaked up the mud off the ground. Tamar watched in amazed silence as her elderly grandmother began to dig a small hole with her fingertips. When it was an inch deep, she stopped and took the ring out from the front pocket of her purse. She solemnly buried the ring in the cold ground, covering it with dirt. Tamar quietly put her hand on her grandmother's shoulder. Estelle stood up and stared at the patch of earth for a moment, before turning away.
They walked back toward the hotel together. A rusty faucet stood a few feet away from the forest, with a long metal pipe stretching back to the hotel. Estelle walked over to the spout and wiggled the handle until a small stream of water trickled out. She washed the dirt off her hands, drying them with a tissue she pulled out of her skirt pocket. She took her granddaughter's small hand in her own. "Come, Tamar. Let's go home."
Shira Schoenberg
To write to Shira, click here
The views expressed in the articles and posts are those of the writer and not of
the Teen-To-Teen management and editorial board. To find out more about our organization or to make a contribution, please send email to Sarale at write@ttt.org.il
Support our sponsor David's Consultants RGA Ltd. All Rights reserved©, 1997-2008