The end of the war turned everything upside down. (Maybe not for the Germans and the Japanese, but they weren’t coming to my little table.) People were getting married and having babies and buying houses, going to school and getting divorced, all double-time. Aside from the two grieving Gold Star Mothers who came every week, to see if I could give them a reason to live, the women at La Bella Donna came to ask me about the future, not the past, and they were not taking no for an answer. A friend of Mrs. Russo’s came by to say that she was thinking of moving back to Pennsylvania without her husband. I’ve got a farmhouse there, she said. And friends. What do the cards say about that? One woman came to me, a new bride. All she wanted to hear was how many boys, how many girls, and would she be pregnant by Christmas. Two of each, I said, and absolutely.

  When the soldiers came back, business boomed for the car dealers and the beauty parlors and for me.

  Francisco and I had found a pair of rooms for my little business on Danny’s first day of school. Francisco kept muttering, High traffic, low rent, easy parking, and he found what he was looking for. He’d negotiated my low rent with a man his age and size and when they finished, they smoked their cigars on the back step. Who’d you say I was, I asked. You’re my youngest daughter, he said. Plus, you have a gift, just like my late wife, may she rest in peace. You won’t charge him for a reading, if he ever wants one and you lock up by eight o’clock. No funny business.

  We carried up my shepherdess lamp and two small chairs and the folding table I brought back from La Bella Donna. (Take the chairs, Carnie said. Take the tablecloth too, Bea said. Good luck, honey, they cried out from the steps of La Bella Donna.) We bought four fat safety candles from the hardware store and covered the furniture with pieces of Iris’s old dresses (lace over black silk for the table and green velveteen stapled to the chairs). Francisco painted every piece of glass black. He got a bolt of chicken wire for the windows and layered old scarves and sheets over them until every view was of a cloudy night sky.

  Psychics, like dress designers and psychoanalysts and madams, have to pay attention to their place of business. If I’d had money, I would have gone for opulent fabric and Oriental rugs and maybe a little samovar whistling in the corner. Malachite objects would dot the shelves, along with a mysterious, large mahogany box and a faded photograph of a sad-eyed little girl with long curls and a floppy satin bow. Depending on the customer, she could be a relative, a murdered Romanov, my young self (And who’s to say that you yourself are not an escaped Romanov, is what my father would have said), or my spiritual guide. (You’d be amazed. Every kind of child, every kind of medieval healer, every kind of dear departed auntie, serves as someone’s guide to the spirit world. I have noticed that no one uses foreigners, unless they can master the accent. You don’t see Italian psychics, for example, with Norwegian guides. Or vice versa. The afterlife is worse than East Brooklyn.)

  Francisco liked my setup. He liked that the women could pick up cookies from Stricoff’s and a roast chicken from Arrandale Rotisserie and finish their reading with me before the kids came home from school. He said he wasn’t sure that men would appreciate all that. But, he said, a man who has to go to a psychic is in such deep shit, he doesn’t care where he is.

  I hung a small sign in the window, ASSOCIATION FOR METAPHYSICAL RESEARCH. Like the Star of David at Danny’s orphanage, meaningful to those in the know. I offered free readings to the ladies at Stricoff’s bakery, in exchange for day-old everything. I offered a two-for-one for sisters and I offered packages of five, for those who expected to need it. The whole world was bursting with things for women to buy, and I was one of them.

  19

  Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year

  Letter from Gus

  Trutzhain, Germany

  August 1945

  Dear Evie,

  A tree is measured best when it’s down. That’s what they said about Lincoln and that’s what they’ll say about Roosevelt. I hear that in Tel Aviv, they trimmed all the flags in black and flew them at half-mast. I hear a Negro man played Haydn on the accordion as the funeral procession passed through Warm Springs, Georgia. The women here are weeping like they’re all Eleanor. Maybe all Jewish women are Eleanor Roosevelt—better-looking, not as good a writer, but the good heart, the sharp mind, the endless mixing into other people’s business. We have four rabbis now, so we had a lively service. No one here says, He didn’t do enough. One man here, his brother was on the St. Louis when it got turned around and the relief people got him to Israel, where he’s now eating oranges. So, no harm, no foul. The people here loved that fucking jaunty cigarette holder, the stiff upper lip, the expensive overcoat. Our goy. I remember the Republican bankers and the fat cats who accused him of being secretly Jewish. The Jew Deal. President Rosenfeld. Clearly, there was no other explanation for the man’s decency and concern for the poor. Flattering, I guess.

  The Jews say there were three worlds, Drei velten:

  Die velt (this world),

  yene velt (the next world)

  Roosevelt.

  I can make a joke in Yiddish, which brings me to—

  I’m Jewish now, which I wasn’t when we knew each other. (I don’t think it’ll bother you but the anti-Semitism of decent people keeps surprising me.) With four rabbis hanging around, we steamrolled the conversion process.

  I worry that when we next see each other, I’ll be looking at a grown woman, smart as a whip, funny and straight as a die, and you’ll see a dried-up piece of salami, with a bum leg and a missing incisor. Did you go to college yet? Did some smart guy propose?

  I have to tell you, I’m not exactly making a living. I got myself to a DP camp in Trutzhain, not the best, not the worst. The Trutzhainians, the Trutzhainiks, got rid of all the Nazi criminals. (Except the ones they didn’t get rid of, who are back in their old offices, pretending they were fucking monarchists. I prefer the honest bastards, spit-shining their boots in prison and greeting each morning with “Heil Hitler!”) Then the camp had to make room for the Poles. (Forgive me, but the most anti-Semitic people on earth, with the possible exception of the Ukrainians, who are butchers. I’m hoping none of your people are either one.) We’ve got Polish Jews, some nuns, some whores, and some German Quakers. The lice are unstoppable. You shave your head on Monday and find the little bastards back on Friday. There’s not enough food, and some people are still wearing their uniforms from the camps, prayer shawls wrapped around their feet, tucked inside the boots they’ve been given. God help them. Once a week, we count off to see who’s died.

  I came the way most of us came, limping and bare-ass, the soles of our shoes tied on with string, or wood slabs held to our feet with half a shirt. We had learned to leave everything behind, except food and weapons. I had some rabbit meat and a knife tucked into my belt. The man next to me, a Gypsy who’d lost his way, had black rolls in every pocket and a crowbar down his pants leg. We carried the others, dragged the dying, and dropped the corpses at the feet of the nurses. Some of these people are goodness itself. The rest are the usual mix: liars, cheats, lazy bastards, sadists who couldn’t beat a man in a fair fight but will hold back a bar of soap from forty kids with running sores.

  I’m teaching English—what do you think of that? We call it Rudimentary Conversational English. I give everyone a name Americans will be able to pronounce. When a lot of Jews named Bob wash up in New York with heavy accents, don’t be surprised. I’m teaching them all to say, “Gus sent me.”

  I have a pal, Lev, from Moscow. He told the Americans that he’d be tortured and murdered if he went home. He recited our Declaration of Independence—phonetically. He doesn’t speak English yet. He said, The Poles won’t budge and neither will I.

  In July, they sent a couple of hundred Polish Jews home, in patched pants and jackets, wearing borrowed shoes, carrying one loaf of bread each. They were murdered in Kraków, in Sosnowiec, and in Lublin. In Kielce, they were beaten to death by eight hundred Polish Worker party heroes, who came at them with crowbars and clubs. When some decent people carried the Jews to the hospital, Polish soldiers robbed them. They stole the shoes off the unconscious. Jews ran to the train station and got on trains going anywhere. Passengers threw the Jews off the moving trains. Our Polish correspondent reported that Cardinal August Hlond said that violence in Kielce was unfortunate and probably caused by the concerns of Poles for the safety of their children. Cardinal Adam Stefan Sapieha said that the Jews had brought it on themselves. So, in the last year, a hundred thousand Jews—don’t say we can’t take a hint—left Poland. Here in Trutzhain, we’re not going anywhere. Obviously, I’m a special case. The International Red Cross workers can’t believe I’m even here. They refer to it as the “misunderstanding.” I agree that there seems to have been a misunderstanding.

  Grusse und Kusse, kiddo.

  Gus

  January 1946

  Zei gesundt, Evie!

  This means Be in good health. The Yiddish is coming along. I am now the senior lecturer in English at the Free University of Trutzhain (there’s no junior lecturer). I make up job application forms and have people practice filling them out. I’ve explained that Americans are as punctual as Germans but more casual in their speech. I tell them someone will give them a nickname and they should accept it. I don’t tell them that even in America, they can round you up and keep you in with barbed wire. Why rain on their westward-ho parade? Everyone here will settle in the Bronx, Brooklyn, or Queens, places where I know the street addresses. My dead parents are now sponsoring twenty-seven people. Also, I’ve given everyone here an advanced degree from 1932, when that could have happened. I gave myself a certificate from Bonn (engineering) and an advanced degree from the University of Pforzheim (mathematics).

  (Do you remember Pforzheim? Did those letters reach you? Do these? Exactly once, we’ve had mail. A woman got a letter from New Jersey. Everyone in the camp touched it, for luck.)

  Six weddings and four babies in the last three months. Lev changed his name to Lew Stern. For a few days, he was Louis Smith, but since he couldn’t pronounce his own goddamn name (Louise Smeet, he kept saying), we decided to aim a little lower.

  Two starving Jews, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Ellenbogen, are sitting on a park bench, sharing their last piece of bread.

  They look across the park and a priest’s putting up a big sign in front of his church: CONVERT NOW AND WE’LL GIVE YOU $1,000!

  “Oh, boy,” says Cohen. “I’ll do it!”

  An hour later, he comes out, looking happy.

  Ellenbogen says to him, “Did they give you the money?”

  Cohen spits in his direction. “Is that all you people ever think about?”

  Your Gus

  February 1946

  Dear Evie,

  We have six soccer clubs. We’ve got one made up entirely of orphans, Die Yesomim, and another, A Schanda und a Charpeh (A Scandal and a Disgrace), for cripples. They are some tough, toothless SOBs and to watch a pair of them on crutches, scrambling down the field is to believe in … something. You tell me.

  Yesterday, Mr. Schwartzwald, six blue numbers tattooed on his left arm, called Mr. Warburg, also with six blue numbers tattooed on his left arm, a Nazi. They were in Auschwitz together. They lay in a ditch next to the crematorium chimney and watched their wives and children go up in smoke. They crawled here, lame and sick with grief. They’ve recovered, so they can fight over our infirmary supplies. After Mr. Schwartzwald called Mr. Warburg a Nazi, Mr. Warburg called him an anti-Semitic SOB. I’m sure there is a phrase in Yiddish for this kind of thing, but I don’t know what it is.

  Your Gus

  20

  To Each His Own

  RUTHIE POST WAS OUR SAVIOR. SHE HAD LOVED DANNY SINCE the beginning of third grade (or whatever it was she felt for him—she dragged him around town like a pull toy). Her friendship and Mrs. Post’s introductions to the small grocery store and the smaller candy store (making sure that Mr. Herman and Mr. Davis knew that although it seemed unlikely, I could and would pay my bills) made our new life on Old Tree Lane manageable. Ruthie was our guide to all aspects of Arrandale School’s fourth grade. What Ruthie said, went. She told Danny what kind of Buster Browns to wear, to keep his ears clean (Billy Moore did not and no one would sit with him, ever), and that it was important to start out with a lunch ticket in fourth grade. Apparently, everyone knew who had a card and would experience the satisfying exchange with the lunchroom monitor and the sharp sound of the paper punch, and who would not. According to Ruthie, if you established your high status in September, no one held it against you if you were brought low and forced to carry a lunch from home in November.

  Ruthie Post had told Danny that the school bus came to our corner at 8:18. She told him that he’d be standing with three skinny little white girls (and she didn’t say white trash, because Mrs. Post would not have let her, but her eyelids drooped and we knew) and a Negro boy with thick glasses. Ruthie felt that the three girls were not the troublesome kind and that Danny’d have no trouble with Roger, the Negro boy (son of the idiot cousin). Ruthie told Danny to be nice, but not too nice. She said he should say hello to her cousin Roger but not sit with him on the bus. Ruthie told Danny that that would be bad for both of them. Danny asked Ruthie if she would be on the bus both ways and walk him home. Ruthie said, as I wanted to, and never did, “You’re big. You walk yourself home.” I was so grateful to have such a brutally plainspoken girl around, I promised Danny I’d wait for him with milk and cookies on his first day.

  Francisco had promised to come help me with the finishing touches at the shop and I lay on the couch and stared at our blotchy, blooming ceiling until he came. I put the milk back in the refrigerator because I couldn’t buy any more milk if it went bad. I left the cereal bowls and Danny’s crusts and my own socks and shoes and old newspapers and Danny’s toys scattered around, like flares at an automobile accident. I was trying to put a shape to my life with Danny and I don’t know which one of us was more surprised and distressed at my failure. Every morning, I yanked the covers off him and said, Good morning, like I meant it, and watched him wash his face and brush his teeth and cheered him and hustled him through breakfast and out the door. Our day of crying on the couch in the carriage house was behind us. We were like the soldiers in Stalingrad, moving forward only because backward wasn’t possible.

  21

  Not in the Day and Not at Night

  RUTHIE POST LIKED DANNY ACTON BETTER THAN HER GIRLFRIENDS and she liked his strange little family. Her own family was nothing special. Danny sat right next to her in Mr. Hoerger’s class and he was the only other person reading at the Bluebird level. Danny lived three blocks from Ruthie on Old Tree Lane. He had his own room, like Ruthie, and his grandfather lived there, and Danny’s aunt, who was raising him, and the Negro lady, who was like a visiting nurse. Ruthie’s mother had expressed a lot of interest in the Negro lady.

  “I’m just asking you, Ruthie, is she a member of the family?”

  Ruthie said she didn’t think so. She said that Clara Williams sang at the Nite Cap, which was the jazz club on the Island (and Ruthie said it the way the lady did, stretching out “the”). Ruthie didn’t say that she couldn’t say what color Clara Williams was, although Ruthie was sure that the lady was a Negro. She had Negro hair. Her hair looked and smelled like it had Glossine in it, which Ruthie’s mother used on all her ladies. Her skin was no color—it was the color of fat on a pork chop, the frizzled edge of a bug bite after your bath. One time, when Clara Williams was visiting, she didn’t close the bathroom door and Ruthie and Danny watched from the hall as she did her makeup. She patted her face all over with foundation, on a sponge. (“You wipe it off when you use your fingers,” Danny said. “Francisco said you shouldn’t even bother putting it on without a sponge, you’re just coloring your hands.”) She did her eyelids with a tiny brush and a bigger brush for her sparkly plum powder and she spat into a little black box to do her mascara. Danny started to explain and Ruthie punched him in the ribs. She knew. She watched her mother do it every morning. She did not need some fat little white boy telling her about eyelashes. Then Clara Williams did her rouge and they both watched.

  Clara Williams unbuttoned her blouse and Ruthie got goose bumps.

  When she was a grown woman and had learned to look through white people like they weren’t there, had learned to close her ears to the murmurs of black men sitting on stoops and white men passing on the street, their brows lowered over pale, hot eyes, long after she’d memorized the poetry of Nikki Giovanni and could quote Angela Davis on freedom like she’d sat at the sister’s right hand in a previous life, when someone referred to “people of color,” she would think of Clara Williams stroking foundation down her rounded, colorless arms until they turned a pinkish tan, pulling a compact from her emerald-green purse and powdering her now-pink arms, from armpit to fingertip, paying extra attention to the crooks of her arms, pushing the powder into her skin.

  Ruthie and Danny watched Clara Williams come out of the bathroom. She put on her red lipstick and smoothed her eyebrows and snapped her compact closed. She twisted the gold clasp on her purse, and Ruthie and Danny threw themselves back on the rug in Danny’s room. Ruthie thought that Clara Williams might check up on them, and she glued her eyes to Betty and Veronica in the comics, joyriding.

  22

  Step We Grandly

  CLARA WASN’T ENTIRELY READY FOR GOOD-BYE. SHE’D COME UP the walk with a bouquet of flowers Edgar wouldn’t see and a Dutch oven of soup he wouldn’t eat, and Danny watched her struggle and went to find his baseball under the hedges. She forgave him for not helping her. He would miss her, and she would miss him in a different way, and his way was worse. She handed Eva the flowers and the soup and went upstairs.