'Rosha's Story'

Fiction by Sande Boritz Berger

Vilna, Lithuania, 1941
    Like most Friday nights I wait for Poppa by the cracked parlor window. I lean against the glass where someone recently threw a fistful of stones and run my fingers along the spidery break. Bubbe looks up from her crocheting (she is making a wool cap for me in this heat). She warns me to move away. There is such fright in her voice that tiny hairs jump up on my neck and arms. Still I don’t budge.

    “They might see you,” Bubbe says, “no matter what, Rosha, you must not let them see you.”

    And because I am not certain who is watching me, and Bubbe’s words create more curiosity in my mind, I must have one more little peek.

    “I am looking for Poppa, like always, Bubbe, what’s the harm?”

    My grandmother raises herself up from the creaky wooden rocking chair and crosses the room. The floor creaks with each of her heavy steps. My fingers are twisted tightly around a piece of lacy white curtain. Seeing her, I twist the fabric harder. One finger pokes through a circular hole. It is a small hole, the center of a floral pattern, roses, and very convenient to peek from. Bubbe peels my fingers from the curtains.

    “Ouch,” I complain, though Bubbe is not really hurting me.

    “Never mind, mein kind,” she says. She takes both my shaky hands in hers and kisses the top of my forehead. Her breath smells from pickled herring and onions and yet I allow her to kiss me, mostly because she has not yet smacked me. She smacked me only the other day, for the very first time, when she caught me stealing the melted wax from a yahrzeit candle. Bubbe lighted the large white candle for her husband, Grandpa Yussel, who died last year of something called pneumonia. Bubbe had slapped my hands until they stung. She said I might have put the entire house on fire, and that children should stay away from matches, flames, and anything hot. But it was so much fun to pour the melted wax into the palm of my hand. I rolled the soft glob into shapes feeling the warmth squeeze between my fingers. I worked quickly, before the wax hardened and became brittle like peanut candy. I’d made a little bear like the ones Poppa says live inside Ponary Forest, only a few miles away from Vilna. Another time, when I didn’t get caught, I’d made a tall giraffe out of the shabbos candles. But I’d been careless and broke the neck in two. I’ve saved the pieces and will try to mend him.

    “Come sit with your Bubbe, and let me hear you read.” She licks her fingers and smoothes my long braids, and now all I can think is now I, too, will smell of pickled herring and onions. I don’t move. I look up at my grandmother and smile as if I am really happy. I show her my new two front teeth that take up too much space in my mouth.
So my question —  What can be the harm in standing by the window — goes unanswered. Much like all the questions asked in our house, this one is ignored. Instead, like always, someone stands up and moves around and says something that has nothing to do with your question, until you become very confused. Exactly like I am now.
Still, I try to do what I am told. Especially because of all the tears and sadness since Grandpa Yussel was buried, and Bubbe and Poppa threw red dirt on the long box that carried his body. Since then, Bubbe spends a lot of time with us upstairs, on our floor, though she has her own place downstairs at 118 Sadowa Street. She and Grandpa Yussel have owned this building for many years, since the family moved here, from many different places, places like Riga in Latvia, Prague, in a place I cannot say, and some from as far as Budapest, which Poppa says is in Hungary and has nothing to do with hunger.

    Bubbe is Poppa’s mother, and so he often teases her that she spends much too much of her time worrying about things that aren’t real. And I think, oh yes, like over me burning down the house and putting us out on the street to live. Thank you, Poppa.

    Once I almost said, Poppa, now I see why you are so careful to always do or say the right thing, so not to make a mistake; isn’t that a little bit like worrying? But I kept the thought inside. Besides, I love to watch when Poppa thinks long and hard about a problem. I laugh when the pointy V appears between his bushy dark eyebrows, and his tongue pokes in and out like bait teasing for an answer. No matter how hard the question, Poppa finds an answer.

    Lately, there are lots of people with questions, and talk that sounds mostly like worry. Wherever we go, to the grocer, the butcher, the tailor, or to the open market before each weekend, all you hear are people’s deep sighs, clucking sounds from their tongues, heads shaking, and darkness, like a fishing net dropping over their faces. All of which makes me think I am not paying enough attention. That I am indeed a dreamer as Bubbe has mentioned time and time again. Maybe I, too, should drink a cupful of this worry once in a while.

    Wearing her Friday evening dress-up apron, Mama walks out of the kitchen and marches straight to the scrunched-up curtains. She pretends to be fluffing them out, but I think she is looking for Poppa. I know because of what she says next. What no one has ever said before.

    “It is nearly sundown, and Mordecai is late. Could he have forgotten today is Friday?” she asks Bubbe. “No one in our shtetl is to be out past dark. Everywhere they have patrols.”  Mama stops talking as fast as she started. I think she realizes I am listening to her every word.

 TO BE CONTINUED

    “Rosha’s Story” is from Sande Boritz Berger’s second novel, “The Sweetness.” She is completing an M.F.A. at Stony Brook Southampton. A longer version of this story won third prize in Moment magazine’s fiction contest.