When Raven Dances, page 25
“That’s all very nice, Mama,” I said, still holding back now meaningless giggles. “But all I know is he hurt you. Right now, that is all that’s important to me.” Laughter extinguished, fury prevailed.
“But, Marisol.” Mama spoke quietly, “we need to find a way to forgive him. He is terribly disappointed in himself, and devastated that he has hurt us…” she rattled on.
“I don’t care right now, Mama. He hurt you.”
“But I hurt him back!” she said. “Really, Marisol, he is in as much pain as I am, I know. Emotionally as well as physically. We are going to need to help him. He is, after all, our friend and a human being.”
“I’ve heard you say that before, Mama. But right now I am not in a mood to forgive.”
“Marisol, think about it. He is and has been our friend.” Mama managed to pull herself up and get the box of Kleenex from the nightstand. Both of our noses were running from tears of laughter and pain. “I have been thinking. Seriously, I think we both need to talk with Father Paul. Separately, I think. Perhaps he can help us work this out, and help us begin to forgive. After all it was partially my fault.”
“Mama! Are you kidding? What if this had happened to me, and I said just what you just said? Mama! You gave him your respect, and you trusted him. I don’t want you to blame yourself. You just can’t.”
“I just feel ashamed…”
“You haven’t done anything to be ashamed of!”
“But he’s a friend.” She began to cry, a sound coming so low from within her that it became a groan.
She needed to be alone, I thought, and I began to realize that some of the experiences I had tucked in the box, in the back of my mind, would now need to be dealt with. “How about if you just lie down and rest for awhile?” I said, and I backed out of the room leaving the door open just a crack in case she needed me.
MY CONCEPT OF CRUELTY DEEPENS
March 1949
Sure enough, Mama’s scratches and frostbite healed. Stitches were removed from the bump on her head and her hair grew back. The bruise on her side began to lose its ugly color. That hand print on her arm was fading, too. But each time I saw it, it infuriated me.
Mama began visiting Father Paul. With her goodwill and his support, her heart began to heal, too. Even so, I knew that every moment of that episode would remain indelibly with her no matter how slight the scars became.
Mama was correct when she said that gossip would fly around town. That, alone, annoyed me. But every time she said something about men having certain needs, I would shoot her a sharp look. If I had known how to curl my lip, I would have. She had cautioned me many times about never giving away any personal part of me just because somebody asked for it.
Yet here she was, making excuses for Major O’Keefe’s actions. To me that statement about a man and his needs was no more than a simple statement of fact, as in Jane’s face is brown, or my socks are dirty, or the flower is dying. So what? Men needed to learn to get over it and go on.
***
One ray of sunshine did bless me during those days. I got a letter from Silvio!
Here is what he said:
Dear Marisol,
How are you doing? I have gotten your notes and I am sorry I have not written to you. I just am not good about writing but I remember our days on the ship really well. I like Juneau a lot and I love football. I ski too. What are you doing up in Seward? Someday I am going to come there but I don’t know when. Father is very busy. He gets to help design buildings and there are a lot of buildings going up here. My mother is not doing so well. The long dark days make her miss Italy. I do have some very big news from our house. I have a baby sister!! Her name is Gianna and she is almost a year old. I really love her, I play with her and she is like a wind up toy. She never stops and never goes where we think she will. I have some good friends at school. Sometimes we sneak over to the billiard hall. Well, Marisol, I better go now.
Your friend,
Silvio
There is no way to explain my joy. I had actually gotten a letter from him! I could have taught him how to write a better paragraph, but nothing could dampen my euphoria. I kept the letter under my wooden jewelry box and I read it over and over.
With few exceptions, I was still spending two or three hours at the Peterson house every Saturday. Byron would pretend I wasn’t there and I would do my best to stay out of his way.
Once in awhile, Byron or his dad still rode the horses to town or beside the lagoon near their house.
I cannot imagine that Mrs. Peterson didn’t observe our behavior, but I guess she figured we would work things out in our own way some day. After all, five years did separate our ages. She was wise; we did work things out eventually. It just didn’t come about as anyone would have expected.
Sometimes the Peterson family took the train to Anchorage or Fairbanks for a few days, and that meant I could feed and care for Daisy and Buck. When they were restless, they liked me to talk to them low and slow, without looking them in the eye, gently rubbing their noses and heads. I brushed them, fed them turnips, and told them my secrets. They always listened, nudged my hand and snuffled. I told them that I didn’t think much of men right now, and at least Daisy was sympathetic.
As you can guess, my real source of support was my friend Cynthia. She never told me to understand or forgive, she just listened. I think she knew that I would come around to forgiving all by myself.
We spent a lot of time together on those long winter days playing games and trying to figure out just what this world was all about. One day, when I was going on about Rancho San Pablo and the terrifying portrait of Doña Inéz, Cynthia shrugged her shoulders and remarked absently, “I never had a chance to know about those relatives, and I certainly never saw them. My mother’s father was born in Bucovina, Romania.”
“Romania? I’ve never even heard of such a place. Where is that?” We were playing rummy and I was dealing.
“It’s a long ways away, that’s for sure,” she said. “It’s a country in the east part of Europe, a country that Russia and Turkey have fought over for more years than I can count. Russians, Romanians and Turks, they didn’t like each other much then, but there was one thing they could agree on, I guess, and that is that they all sure didn’t like Jews. There aren’t very many Jews left in Romania.”
“Why?” I asked. I thought of my grandmothers, and wondered about Granny Bridey’s people still in Ireland.
Cynthia sighed, putting her cards neatly on the bed face down. “All I know is that everybody who wasn’t a Jew wanted to kill the Jews.”
“Kill Jews? I just can’t imagine, Cyn. What caused such horrible hatred?”
Cyn’s eyes were now seemingly glued to the rose-blossom pattern on her bedspread. She continued, “Anyway, my grandfather’s family home was destroyed, um, and the family had to make their way to Hamburg, in Germany.”
“But how? Why?”
“Marisol, I don’t know, and I guess I will never know why. It just seems like everybody enjoys hating somebody, and often it’s the Jews.”
We were both quiet until she continued. “That was my mother’s father. My mother’s mother left on foot from Vucovar, Croatia. That’s the country across the Adriatic Sea from Italy. She and her little brother, my great Uncle Moshe, had to watch while their parents were burned alive in their own home.”
“Dear Lord!” I said. I suspect I looked at her as if she were from another planet. How could she speak in such a calm way about this? I couldn’t believe what she was saying.
She continued in a cadenced, unemotional tone, “They began walking and, just kept walking, until they got to Hamburg, too, just the two of them. She was fourteen and her brother was ten. They ate scraps of food from fields, or they begged. Their clothes—well, you can imagine, and their shoes, well they just didn’t have any, and this was in February when they got to Hamburg.”
She looked up, smiling shyly, wiping her tears with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry—and that is where my grandmother met grandfather.”
I wondered at her strength, at how she could say these things as if she were telling me what was for lunch at school. The more she talked, the angrier I got and I decided I didn’t want to be part of such a mean adult world.
“My dear friend, Marisol, too many people, too many people…” she looked down again. “They died when a big group of people in their town just decided it would be fun to kill Jews. That’s called a pogrom.”
“But why?” I was incredulous.
“You don’t need a reason for a pogrom, and it happens all the time,” she shrugged, now pretending to be cavalier. “You just need to hate somebody.”
Still studying her bedspread, she gave out a low, choking groan. I reached over, putting my hand over my friend’s hands. My eyes were full of tears, too, and I felt as helpless as I did when Byron hit me on the head. But this time it wasn’t me, it was my friend who was hurting, and she hurt from deep down inside.
“P-O-G-R-O-M,” I uttered. “Put those letters together and they make such an ugly word.” I squeezed her hands and tried to speak, but whatever I said was inadequate. “You are my friend, Cynthia,” I said, my voice breaking, too. “My best and dearest friend, and I am so very sorry.”
From her chest came a low, quiet sob. It came from the same place Mama’s came from after Major O’Keefe hurt her. I moved across our dealt cards and put my arms around her, rocking and repeating, “You are my friend and you will always be my friend.”
From her chest, the pained sounds continued. So I just held her and let her cry, not hearing any words. When the sobs began to abate, and she was no longer trembling, I pulled away slightly, looked into her face and said to her quietly, “Cynthia,”
“Um?” She said.
“Remember the day I was ready to fall off the grandstand and you reached out and caught me?”
“Yes”
“And if you hadn’t caught me, I was ready to land on my head?”
“Yes?”
“Well,” I hesitated, trying to find the right words. “What you don’t know is that when you grabbed my pants, you, um, you ripped the whole crotch out of my underwear.”
“What?” she grinned.
“Yep, you did, you did, and you pulled my panties completely into two pieces, and I spent the rest of the day worrying about this flap of panty that kept moving around. And it may not have seemed cold to you that day, but my bottom was not used to that much breezy cold air.”
That did it. She coughed and her sobs becoming a guttural laugh, and I joined in. The tension was broken. We put our cards away and allowed ourselves to think of other things…such as the ever-present subject of ourselves and the changes in our bodies.
We tried on shades of Mama’s lipstick and we painted each other’s fingernails with Mama’s precious Chen Yu polish. We laughed about Cynthia’s Toni-induced short bob, and we came upon a terrific idea. We found Mama’s sewing scissors and cut off my braids. The tangled result was a mass of undisciplined auburn curls that tumbled around my face helter-skelter. We wet my head down, and combed, and brushed, deciding the result made me look, well, sophisticated.
But Mama didn’t think so. Stunned, she stared at my braids as they lay on my dresser top, former extensions of my persona, now lifeless carcasses bound with blue bows. She was dismayed, and beyond my new coiffure, I suspect she was not pleased that we had used her sewing scissors.
Fortunately, her shock was only momentary. Laughing ruefully, she trimmed the ragged edges we had left, remarking that I still looked like Olive Oyl, but with an Orphan Annie hairdo.
We three laughed. It was good to hear Mama laugh about something silly again.
A STUNNING DISCOVERY
One Saturday in April, the Peterson family took the train to see a basketball game in Anchorage. When I arrived at their home, there were a few dishes in the sink, so I washed and dried those, putting them into their proper cupboards. As I had many times before, I ironed and folded the sheets and pillowcases, folded the underwear and matched the socks. Next, I carried towels to Mr. and Mrs. Peterson’s bathroom and made up their bed with fresh sheets. Returning to the laundry room, I picked up Byron’s socks, lay them on top of his folded sheets and carried them into his bedroom placing the entire pile on his desk. I picked up the four clean pairs of socks and stopped, frozen.
My eye had caught an item sitting on his dresser that caused me to find that my long-held suspicion was fact. He had forgotten his watch, and there it sat resting on top of a small, soft piece of beautiful white fur, a piece of fur I was sure I recognized. It was the fur from the treasure box. I knew it, I was sure of it.
That sneaky, snotty piece of dirt, I thought. Now I knew what I had suspected, but hadn’t had the courage to put into words until that moment. Byron had stolen our treasures. He was the one who violated our secret hiding place and left us that stupid message. I could have dwelt on wondering why he would do such a thing, but I already knew the answer. He was mean.
I searched under the bed. I explored the area between his sheets and mattress. I thoroughly scoured his drawers, checked in boxes and sacks in his closet, finding only magazines with pretty girls in skimpy bathing suits and Tales from the Crypt comic books.
I sank onto his bed, consumed in anger. My eyes began to systematically scrutinize every surface in his room, looking for any slight clue to the site of our treasured items. Then I examined the log walls of his room. In one corner, about a foot above the floor, I saw that a chink of plaster looked slightly discolored. I crouched, picking at an area about three inches long that looked as if it had been filled in crudely.
Without a speck of guilt, I took Mrs. Peterson’s silver-handled nail file from her dresser and headed back to the rough repair in the mortar. I easily pried out the chink and a small piece of blue and white porcelain nearly fell out into my hands. I was thrilled. I cradled it, almost caressed it. As I did, a plan for revenge manifested itself in my churning mind.
For now, I decided, I had to return it to its hiding place. Back in Mrs. Peterson’s bathroom I found what I sought. A can of Ipana toothpowder stood in the medicine cabinet. I mixed it with water to the right consistency. I surveyed my work; my spackling looked better than Byron’s. With little effort, I found another suspicious spot, and there I beheld the strange plastic-like piece with obscure glyphs scratched on it. I smiled and without removing it, I resealed the chink, admiring my handiwork. I searched his room again, hoping to find the bentwood box, but finally gave up. I would have to be happy with my partial discoveries, I decided.
Doing sneaky things didn’t come easily to me, but I was learning. I remembered being Silvio’s willing accomplice and smiled. Mumbling unkind words, I made Byron’s bed, and got out of there, hoping some malignant shade hadn’t witnessed my actions.
As I walked home that day, I was a thunder cloud. I would get him, I knew. I just didn’t yet know how.
SOME OF THE MANY SIDES OF LOVE
Mama and I were at the station when Major O’Keefe left, headed to Fairbanks and points south. He was downcast, dejected. His mouth betrayed just the slightest mark where a surgical stitch had repaired the damage Mama had done.
Mama was healing well, both outside and emotionally. She found it easy to forgive. I was not yet at that point. I looked at him, and I felt sorry for him. I looked at him, and I recalled the happy moments with him. I looked at him, and I wanted to smack him and ask him how he could have hurt Mama.
Mama actually embraced him, smiling and wishing him well. I just looked at him, my mouth set, my fists rolled up in my jacket pockets.
But when it came to be the minute he was to board, I suddenly began to cry. I walked straight up to him, hit him as hard as I could on the arm and then embraced him as tight as I could. I wasn’t thinking, I wasn’t rational, but I am glad I did that. He was crying, too, as he pulled away and climbed the steps into the train.
I wondered why I reacted that way, and I still don’t know. All I can say is that I loved him more than I hated him.
He wrote Mama a couple of times, but eventually the letters stopped coming.
When Mr. Norman moved into his own house, Mama decided it was time for me to have my own bedroom and I thought so, too. With paint, stencils, fabric, and determination, we created my own private lair. Pale yellow walls embraced walnut single beds.
I had told Cynthia of my discoveries at Byron’s house. She was, at first, astonished, and quickly came around to see that he fit the culprit persona perfectly. Soon we sat cross-legged in my very own bedroom, planning our attack under the watchful eye of my little cloth doll, a wide-eyed, mute witness as our devious plan coalesced.
