The Devil's Arithmetic Page 4

  “You will wear the dress I wore as a child for Shmuel’s Bar Mitzvah. He was so handsome—and so nervous. Just like today. It is too bad that your wonderful clothes from Lublin had to be burned along with your bedding, but the doctors said they carried the disease. As you arrived just two days ago, there was no time to make you anything else. But do not worry, Chaya, I will make you new clothes before winter comes.”

  While Hannah stood in the center of the room, wondering which chest she should try first, Gitl went to the standing wardrobe, opened it, and pulled out a dark blue sailor-suit dress with white piping at the sleeves and neck, and a blue sash belt. It was the ugliest thing Hannah had ever seen. And babyish.

  “Lovely,” Gitl said. “Nicer than anything any of the girls in our shtetl or Fayge’s have. All the other girls will be jealous.”

  “Jealous? Of that?” Hannah was momentarily speechless, then muttered under her breath, “It’s a rag, a shmatte.”

  Gitl made a sound of disgust. “In Lublin it may be a shmatte. But here it is fit for a princess. Even Fayge in her wedding dress will not be as beautiful. Now, young lady, no more nonsense. Perhaps we have been babying you too long, Miss I-know-what-a-wedding-night-is.”

  Hannah’s face must have shown its instant apology through burning cheeks, for Gitl came over immediately and put her arm around Hannah. “There, there, child, forgive me. I am crazy with all this wedding business, and my tongue is sometimes quicker than my heart. Put on the dress. Perhaps it is, after all, a little out of fashion, but then so are we here in our shtetl. And you are not in Lublin now.”

  She paused for a moment as if waiting for Hannah’s reply. When there was none, she went on as before. “Try on the stockings and shoes. I only used them for shul and for the photographer. And then I grew, in one year, too big for them. They still have plenty of wear left and I think they will fit you nicely. I was just your size at fifteen. At sixteen I was a giant! Then I will do your hair for you and everything will look fine, you will see.”

  Hannah pulled the dress on. It fit her perfectly in the bodice and the sleeves, but came down way over her knees. Gitl didn’t seem to see anything wrong with that. The stockings were a heavy skin-colored cotton that came halfway up her thighs, the shoes shiny black mary janes. Shaking her head, Hannah put them on as well. If she pretended she was going to a Halloween party, the outfit would be bearable.

  Gitl braided her hair into two tight plaits, then held up a pair of blue velvet ribbons. “These I was saving for my own wedding night—about which you know so much.” This time her voice held a hint of laughter. “But who would marry that monster Yitzchak, who leaves his precious children outside like yard goods? Besides, the ribbons will look beautiful in your brown hair.” She tied them around the ends of the plaits, then pinned the plaits on top of Hannah’s head like a crown. “There! Look!” She pushed Hannah toward a mirror that hung on the wall.

  Hannah looked. Gone were her braces. Gone was the light coral lipstick her mother had allowed her to wear to the Seder. The girl who stared back had the same heart-shaped face, the same slightly crooked smile, the same brown hair, the same gray eyes as Hannah Stern of New Rochelle, New York, in America. But there was something old-fashioned and unfamiliar about this Chaya Abramowicz, something haunting, like one of the old photographs on Grandma Belle’s grand piano. Photographs of Grandma’s family but none of Grandpa Will’s, because, Aunt Eva had once explained, no photographs had been saved in the death camps. “We are our own photos. Those pictures are engraved only in our memories. When we are gone, they are gone.”

  Hannah smiled awkwardly at her reflection and turned away.

  By noon, half the shtetl was gathered outside their door, laughing and trading stories so loudly the chickens hid in the barn, refusing to come out even when three little boys in short pants and yarmulkes tried to coax them with corn.

  Hannah felt a lot like the chickens, nervous about all the loud, strange men and the laughing, chattering women. She, too, would have hidden in the barn if she could. Sensing Hannah’s timidity, Gitl kept her close as she greeted everyone by name, thanking them for the gifts as if she were the bride herself.

  Looking surprisingly beautiful in a dark green dress with a broad white lace collar, Gitl made sure all the tributes were piled onto two wagons: crocks of butter, lengths of cloth, a white lace tablecloth, wooden bowls, and a pair of truly ugly silver candlesticks that Shmuel announced had been sent over by the rendar himself. Even the cages of chickens went into the wagons, one in each. Gitl kept rearranging the gifts, making them seem to be twice as numerous, saying again, “Those schnorrers in Viosk will know we honor our own.”

  Near the barn, Shmuel and the other men stood smoking and laughing at one joke after another. When Gitl disappeared inside for a moment, Hannah thought she’d stand next to Shmuel, since she really knew no one else. But when she got close, Yitzchak shooed her away as if she were one of the chickens, waving his massive hands at her and saying, “Men-talk is not for young ladies.”

  Embarrassed at being singled out that way, Hannah spun around, right into the arms of a girl her own age, who looked at her with great, startled green eyes. Hannah was so relieved to see another girl, she almost cried out.

  “So—you are Lublin Chaya,” the girl said, her voice catching strangely in mid-sentence. Before Hannah could deny it, the girl had threaded her arm through Hannah’s, calling out to a knot of girls who were standing by a newly arrived wagon. “I have found her, Lublin Chaya.”

  They came over at a run, hair ribbons flying.

  “You see, we have all been waiting to meet you,” the startled-looking girl explained, the breathiness in her voice more pronounced. “Ever since we heard you were coming. Imagine, someone from Lublin living in our shtetl. But Tante Gitl is so fierce. Do you know my father calls her Gitl the Bear?”

  “My father, too,” one of the other girls said.

  “She said we could not meet you until you had rested because you had been so seriously ill. Almost died, she said.” The startled girl pulled each statement out as if it were a rare gift to be examined, breathing deeply after every sentence. “Ten weeks in the hospital, and no one here knowing. But she promised we would meet you. At the wedding. And here you are.”

  Hannah pulled a smile across her face in greeting. At least the dream—or whatever it was—would be more interesting with girls her own age in it.

  “Now let me introduce you,” the breathless girl said. “This is Shifre, Esther, and Yente—but we call her the Cossack!”

  They each bobbed a head in turn.

  “And I,” she drew in a deep, heavy breath, “I am Rachel. I am going to be your best friend.”

  “I already have a best friend,” Hannah said. “At home. Her name is Rosemary.”

  “What kind of a name is Rosemary?” asked one of the girls. Hannah thought it might have been Shifre.

  “It is a goyish name,” Rachel said at once. “Do you mean to say your best friend is not a Jew?”

  “As a matter of fact, she’s Catholic,” Hannah said. “As if that matters.”

  “As if that matters!” The girls were clearly shocked, and Esther added, “My father will not let me even talk to a goy.”

  “Esther, your father will not let you talk to someone from Viosk,” said Rachel.

  “Well, I am going to talk to someone from Viosk today!” Esther answered. “After I talk to Lublin Chaya.”

  Hannah turned to Rachel, shaking her head slowly. “You can be my second-best friend, Rachel. My first-best here.” It seemed somehow important to keep the two worlds separate. She was sure Rosemary would understand.

  The girls all smiled at her, waiting for something else, and Hannah could not figure out what. Trying to memorize their faces, to distinguish them, she saw that Shifre had a pale freckled face and eyelashes so light they could not be seen. It made her eyes look shifty. Shifre—shifty. She could remember that. And Esther was plump with rosy cheeks and a mo
uth that seemed to rest in a pout. She was round like an Easter egg. Esther-Easter. The third girl, the Cossack Yente, had a ferrety face, sharp in chin and nose, and a yellowish complexion. Yente—yellow. It was a special way of remembering Aunt Eva had taught her. It worked so well, she got As in school using it. And Rachel was just Rachel. Her second-best friend, first here in the shtetl, in the dream.

  “So,” Rachel said, interrupting her thoughts, “tell us about Lublin.”

  Hannah realized it would be as useless telling them she lived in New Rochelle as it had been trying to convince Gitl and Shmuel. The truth was, she was beginning to wonder herself whether she was Hannah and Chaya was the dream or if she was Chaya and Hannah was some kind of mishigaas, some craziness in her mind from the sickness. Yet there were all those memories—of house and school and Seder; of Mother and Father and Aaron and Aunt Eva and the rest. She couldn’t have made them all up. Unless she was a genius. Or crazy. Or both.

  She had no choice. “In Lublin,” she began, thinking of New Rochelle, “I live in a house that has eight rooms and the toilets are inside the house. One upstairs and one downstairs.”

  “In the house?” Rachel let it out in a single breath.

  “Imagine,” said Yente, “your parents must have been fabulously wealthy. Richer than Yitzchak the butcher. As rich, almost, as the rendar himself.”

  “The rendar’s house has twelve rooms,” Rachel said.

  “Thirteen,” Yente corrected. “My mother’s sister is his housekeeper.” Her sharp nosed twitched as she talked.

  “Your mother’s sister cannot count,” said Rachel. “She thinks there are thirteen eggs in a dozen.”

  “She thinks there are nine days of Chanukah,” added Shifre.

  “She thinks there are five fingers on a hand,” Esther put in dreamily.

  “Idiot, there are five fingers on a hand,” Rachel said to Esther.

  “I know that.”

  “Never mind her,” Rachel confided to Hannah. “She never understands a joke. Now, Chaya, tell us more.”

  “More,” Hannah said, trying to think what might interest them. “Well, during the week I go to school, but on the weekends I go with Rosemary to the mall and . . .”

  “School, too!” Esther said with a sigh. “Only boys are allowed to go to school here. I always wanted to go.”

  “You want to go?” Hannah was shocked. “No one I know does. We can’t wait for the weekends. That’s when we can have fun, go shopping, and . . .”

  It was the girls’ turn to be shocked. “Shopping? On the Sabbath?” Rachel asked.

  Esther was still thinking about the school. “I heard once about a girl who disguised herself as a boy and went into a yeshivah to study Torah. I do not believe it.”

  “I know that story.” Hannah’s voice rose in excitement. It’s called Yentl and stars Barbra Streisand in the movie. She chops off her hair and . . .”

  “Chops off her hair!” Appalled, Shifre put her hands up to her own pale braids. “And not married?”

  “We have never seen a movie,” said Esther. “But I have heard of them.”

  “Never mind from movies,” Rachel said sternly, the breathiness gone from her voice for once. “And no more interruptions. Tell us the story of this Yentl, Chaya. From the beginning.”

  7

  STORIES SEEMED TO TUMBLE OUT OF HANNAH’S MOUTH, reruns of all the movies and books she could think of. She told the girls about Yentl and then about Conan the Barbarian with equal vigor; about Star Wars, which confused them; and Fiddler on the Roof, which did not. She told them the plot of Little Women in ten minutes, a miracle of compression, especially since her book report had been seven typed pages.

  She mesmerized them with her tellings. After the first one, which they had interrupted every third sentence with questions, they were an attentive audience, and silent except for their frequent loud sighs and Esther’s nervous laughter at all the wrong moments.

  Rachel cried at the end of Yentl, when Hannah described Barbra Streisand bravely sailing off to America alone. And all four had tears running down their cheeks when Beth died in Little Women. Hannah wondered at this strange power she held in her mouth. It was true Aaron had always liked her stories. So did Rosemary, but as her best friend she had to. And the Brodie twins, whom she’d only started to babysit, could usually be kept quiet with a tale. But she’d never had such a large, appreciative audience before.

  Walking through the woods behind the wagons, the girls kept jostling one another for the place of honor by Hannah’s side. Hannah wondered about that most of all. In New Rochelle, except for Rosemary and two other friends, who had all been together since first grade, she was not very popular. There was even one clique of girls—Rosemary called them “the Snubs”—who never spoke to her, though three were in her Hebrew class and one was actually Rosemary’s cousin. She remembered vividly standing with Rosemary at the school’s water fountain, giggling and splashing each other. The Snubs came over and called them babies just when Jordan Mandel went by. He’d laughed at them and Hannah had thought she’d die on the spot. Yet here, wherever here was, she was suddenly the most popular girl on the block. Except there wasn’t any block. She realized that she couldn’t have made up that powerful memory. She was Hannah. But these girls, who were hanging on her every word, believed she was Chaya. And it was great to be so popular. She wasn’t going to spoil it by trying to convince them she really was someone else.

  “So let me tell you about The Wizard of Oz,” she said. She couldn’t remember which was the movie and which was the book. Shrugging her shoulders, she began a strange mixture of the two, speeding along until the line “Gosh, Toto, this sure doesn’t look like Kansas.”

  “What is Kansas?” Rachel asked.

  Just then Gitl dropped back and listened to them. Hannah was afraid she would interrupt them or make her ride in the wagon. But all Gitl said was “Kansas, it is in America. Near New Rochelle.” Then she walked away, laughing.

  As they wound on through the forest, Hannah guessed everybody from the shtetl was there. The littlest children and some of the older women rode in the open wagons, but everyone else walked. Sunlight filtered through the canopy of large trees, spotlighting the forest. It was even more magical than the forest in Oz, Hannah thought. When she stopped for a moment to take it all in, the girls complained.

  “Go on, go on,” Shifre said. “What happened next?”

  Putting her arm around Hannah’s waist, Rachel smiled. “Let her be. She is only catching her breath.”

  “You are the one who has trouble catching her breath,” said Yente the Cossack. She wrinkled her long nose. “But Chaya has plenty of breath. Shifre is right. What happened next to this Dorothy Gale?”

  Hannah was in the middle of a muddled version of Hansel and Gretel, having temporarily run out of movies and books and fallen back on the nursery tales she told Aaron or the Brodie twins, when her attention was arrested by a high, thin, musical wail. She stopped in mid-sentence.

  The others heard it at the same time and Yente clapped her hands.

  “The klezmer!” she cried out. “We’re almost there.” She had been holding Hannah’s arm, but pulled away half a step to look longingly toward the front of the line.

  For a moment, Hannah was almost annoyed at having her audience distracted. “Don’t you want to hear any more?” she asked.

  “Never mind her, Chaya,” Rachel said smoothly. “How are you to guess Yente knows songs like you know stories? She will leave the dinner table, even, at the sound of a clarinet. So ignore her and finish about this witch. Does she push Gretel in the oven or not?”

  But the mood was broken and a new mood took over the villagers as the sound from the clarinet reached them. The pace of the walk, which had become leisurely, quickened. Even the horses picked up their step. The constant chatter stopped. Everyone seemed to be straining to listen.

  Then another instrument joined in. It took a moment for Hannah to realize that the se
cond was a violin. It certainly wasn’t like the one she had labored on in Suzuki class so long and with so little result. This violin had a piercing, insistent sweetness of tone, almost like a baby crying.

  The wagons came to a halt as the klezmer band came around a bend in the forest path. Hannah saw that there were three musicians in all: the clarinet, the violin, and an accordion. The music was fast and full of a wild energy.

  The band members strode down the line of villagers. Behind them came Shmuel, dancing with abandon, his hands above his head and his black hair a dark halo around it. Yitzchak followed him, big hands clapping in rhythm. Other men soon joined them. Laughing and shouting encouragement, the women watched from the side. Then they began to sing.

  “Sing, Chaya!” Shmuel called as he danced by her. “Sing!”

  “I don’t know the words,” she called back. But even as she said it, she found herself singing, the words stumbling out as if her mouth remembered what her mind did not, as if her mouth belonged to Chaya, her head to Hannah. She began to clap madly in rhythm until the tune came to an abrupt end.

  “Look,” Rachel cried above the noise, the breathiness back in her voice, “they have even brought a badchan. Fayge’s father must have a lot of money.”

  “Or an only daughter,” Esther added.

  “Then why is she marrying Shmuel?” Shifre blurted out. Looking at Hannah apologetically, she added, “I mean he is handsome but he is not so rich or so learned. And you know about Rabbi Boruch . . .”

  “They say . . . ,” Rachel began, and the girls bent closer to her as her breath gave out, “. . . they say that Fayge is his favorite and always gets her way. They say she saw Shmuel and fell in love.”

  “In love.” The girls breathed the words in rhythm.

  “So?” Hannah was puzzled. “So they fell in love.”

  “So—it may happen in Lublin that a Jewish girl marries for love,” said Shifre. “But here in the country, we still marry the one our parents pick out with the shadchan, the marriage broker.”