Magnified

Excerpt

Magnified
Mell Eight © 2021
All Rights Reserved

2004

“Gramma, are you really dying?” Shira asked. She spoke around the thumb tucked in her mouth, but Great-grandma Chana still smiled down gently at the small three-year-old girl and her very chubby cheeks. Yani’s sister was such a baby, but she could say things that Yani didn’t dare. He was thirteen after all, and post-bar-mitzvah children knew better.

“I’m sorry to say that is finally true,” Gramma replied gently. The Eastern European accent she had never lost despite her many years living in the US, softened her consonants. Yani had heard her kind voice almost every day of his life, and it hurt to know that was about to end. “It is my time, as such a time comes to us all. God writes in his book, every Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, who will live and who will die. Shira, this year I asked God to take me to him. I have been on this earth for long enough.”

“But I’m gonna miss you, Gramma,” Shira sniffled.

Mom came over then and pulled Shira into a hug. Yani wished he were still young enough to get the same treatment. He could use a hug too. Gramma had been around for forever. She was nearly a hundred years old, although since her original birth certificate had been lost, no one was exactly certain of her precise birthdate. Instead, they celebrated on the day she had finally earned enough money to buy an actual house and move the entire family out of the city.

Gramma Chana was such a constant fixture in Yani’s life that he couldn’t imagine what it would be like with her gone. She had held him when he was born and had attended every birthday party and Passover Seder. In fact, just ten years ago, she’d still held Thanksgiving dinner at her house. Tzimmes for Thanksgiving was weird, according to Yani’s non-Jewish friends, but the sweet-potato-and-marshmallow dish was a staple for his stomach, and he couldn’t understand why no one else had it too. It was one of Gramma’s specialties.

Gramma had stood tall at his bar mitzvah just a few months back when she read an aliyah. Her hug after he read from the Torah while she stood next to him and watched with pride visible in every bone had been the strongest one of that day. In fact, Yani couldn’t think of a single important moment when Gramma hadn’t been there with a wide smile on her face.

But now she was lying in bed at a hospital, surrounded by her family. Grandpa Gideon was there, holding her hand while his younger brothers, Aharon and Shmuley, and their two much younger sisters and all their kids and grandkids hovered nearby. Great-uncle Shimon stood in the corner watching with tears in his eyes; Gramma had raised him too.

Mom was still holding Shira, standing next to Grandpa with her two older brothers. All of Yani’s many cousins were across the room. In fact, the room was packed with people.

Gramma sighed and smiled happily as she looked around the room. “Truly, I have been blessed. To have such a family. If only—” She paused on another sigh. “Yani.” She beckoned toward him. “I have a story to tell you. A very important story.”

Yani slowly walked closer to her bed, taking her wrinkled and scarred hand in his. She had worked hard when she first immigrated to America. Sixteen-hour days mending and sewing in a tiny basement apartment, trying to feed five people while learning to speak and read English and all of the new and strange American customs, had left their scars.

“I’ve already heard all of your important stories, Gramma,” Yani said gently, hoping to escape from one last telling of her days as cargo with four young children in tow aboard the steam ship that had brought her and her entire family across the Atlantic Ocean to America.

“Not this one, my dear,” Gramma Chana said with a very gentle smile. “This one I have not told you, but it is my most important story. It is the story I have kept close to my heart all these years; the story of survival and love in utmost adversity. In fact, everyone should listen and remember, Shimon especially,” she added in a louder voice to the rest of the room. “About my younger brother, Yakov.”

“Yakov? He stayed behind in Europe,” Grandpa Gideon said, but Gramma just continued to smile and began telling her tale.

*

1944

The woods were frightening at night. They were frightening during the day too. In these times, everything was frightening. Chana knew that, but she still put on a brave face for the children. She was the oldest left in the family, and they all looked to her for guidance.

Mother and Father were smoke and ash now. Even Chana had heard the rumors about Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. She couldn’t miss those rumors in the Ghetto, although most adults laughed that such terrible things could actually occur. Giant chimneys where the bodies of thousands of murdered Jews were immolated? Preposterous. No human being could condone such gruesome and inhumane acts. But Chana did not doubt the cruelty of the Nazis.

Just two nights prior, the Ghetto had been emptied. All of their meager belongings had been left behind while every single man, woman, and child of every age had been loaded aboard a train in cattle cars. Mother and Father had been rounded up the previous month with many of the other older adults. They had been told that there were jobs for them elsewhere. Mother had promised to write the minute she arrived in her new home, but no letter had ever come.

Bubbie had died in the Ghetto, and Zayde had buried her in the basement of the house they shared with four other families. There hadn’t been a graveyard in the Ghetto. Zayde had limped aboard the train and passed away from the heat and lack of water within a few hours, but he had passed with a smile because he could finally join Bubbie in heaven.

And then the train broke down, and the lurching, crashing halt broke one of the bolts on the car door. The day was scorching hot for midautumn, and while the train idled, people died. Inside the metal train cars, the air sat heavy with human stench. Water wasn’t available and the captives were suffering. The only breeze came through the tiny barred windows at the very top of the car, which didn’t do anything to cool them or alleviate the human stench. In the middle of the night, some of the men managed to force the door open. Chana gathered what was left of her family, and they ran. People around them died as guns fired and bullets struck, but Chana managed to keep her family safe and moving.

“Mama, I’m hungry.” Five-year-old Shmuley didn’t understand why dinner or breakfast wasn’t served. He and his young siblings always got something to eat, even when the adults went hungry for days at a time.

“We’ll find something to eat soon,” Chana tried to reassure not just Shmuley but all of the family. All they could do was keep walking. At some point, they would find an abandoned farm where they could hide and scrounge for food. She hoped.

“We passed a town while on the train,” Yakov insisted. “If nothing else, I can steal some bread. Chana, why don’t you try to get everyone to sleep while I go look?”

Yakov was still young. He was just barely eighteen, and curled in his arms was his newborn child, a child who would never know his mother. The birth had been too difficult in the Ghetto. The baby had been breech, and there hadn’t been a proper midwife to turn him. Somehow, they had saved the baby, but Shira, Yakov’s wife, was buried next to Grandmother and Chana’s own husband. Yakov hadn’t cried. Crying in the Ghetto was a useless endeavor, but then, it had been an arranged marriage insisted upon by the Ghetto elders. Life went on in the Ghetto despite the harsh conditions, and marriage was a part of life. Yakov and Shira had been the proper age, so the wedding had occurred. And now Shira was dead and Yakov had a child he couldn’t take care of in his arms.

Chana took Shimon. She was starving, too, and the younger kids were going to die if they didn’t eat. How could she argue with Yakov when he still had the strength to do something to save them?

Yakov continued walking while Chana guided the children in gathering piles of dead leaves to make beds. The activity distracted them from their woes for a few minutes, and sleep did the rest. Chana closed her eyes, but she didn’t dare drift off. With Yakov gone, she was the only one who could stay alert to the arrival of the Nazis chasing after them. She would be their only warning if they needed to run and hide.

Yakov didn’t return that night. Morning dawned and the forest slowly awakened. The birds sang and sunlight drifted serenely through the leaves. It was a lovely morning for a funeral. Shimon fussed weakly in Gideon’s arms, the starved seven-year-old just barely able to hold the weight of an infant, while Chana gathered Aryeh’s body to her chest with shaking fingers. He was her baby, just four years old and with so much of the future ahead of him. But the cold of the night had taken him no matter how much she begged him to wake up.

She couldn’t bury him without a shovel, but she arranged his body nicely against a tree. The sunlight streamed down on his tiny, unmoving face, too thin and hollow for someone of his age. Chana slowly stood, unwilling to take her eyes off her baby, and took Shimon from Gideon to have something to steady her hands and keep her from falling back to her knees beside Aryeh. She didn’t know all of the burial prayers, but the most important one she had heard too many times. Aryeh deserved to be remembered with the proper prayers, for his memory to be a blessing in G-d’s eyes as much it would always be in her heart.

“Yitgadal v’yit kadash sh’may raba.” (Magnified and sanctified be G-d’s great name.) She chanted the Mourner’s Kaddish in a voice that shook and stuttered over every word. She wanted to cry. She was crying on the inside, but there wasn’t enough water for her to allow actual tears to fall no matter how hard her heart had broken. Gideon gripped her skirt, and Aharon was holding Gideon’s and Shmuley’s hands as they all spoke their goodbyes to Aryeh. The reminder of the rest of her children around her kept her knees locked so she didn’t fall back to the ground in dispair. “O’seh shalom beem-romav, hoo ya’ah-seh shalom aleynu v’al kol Yisrael.” (Let He who makes peace in the heavens, grant peace to all of us and to all Israel.)

The prayer was finished. Aryeh was gone, but she still had four other children to think about. They couldn’t remain at a graveside while they waited for Yakov to return. If they stayed in one place, the chances of the Nazis finding them grew. Chana switched Shimon to her left arm and took Gideon’s hand in her right hand and they walked on. She couldn’t help one last, lingering look back at her baby, but the Ghetto had already hardened her heart to the inevitability of death, so she turned around and kept walking.

They all survived the day. Somehow. But Chana knew night was coming and that Shimon didn’t have the strength to make it to another morning. Aharon might not either. Still, they gathered together piles of leaves for their bedding. Chana kissed Aharon, Gideon, and Shmuley on their foreheads, bidding them good night, and then curled up next to them with Shimon in her arms. She didn’t dare sleep, but exhaustion and weakness were quick to overcome her resolve.

She woke to someone shaking her shoulder. It was better than the bullet in the head the Nazis would have provided, but she still came awake with a yell of fright.

“Chana,” Yakov hissed. “It’s me!” She sat up and cooed at Shimon for a few moments to quiet him before looking at Yakov. He wasn’t smiling, but some of the grim heaviness that had rested on his shoulders had faded. In his hands was a loaf of bread, which he handed to Chana in exchange for Shimon. He picked up a flask and a clean-looking rag from the ground. Inside the flask was actual milk, still warm from the cow. He soaked the rag and let Shimon happily suck on it.

“Mama, eat,” Aharon insisted. He showed her the half-eaten loaf of bread in his hands. She looked to see that Gideon and Shmuley each had one of their own and that there was a fifth loaf, Aryeh’s, on the ground next to them.

She turned to stare incredulously at Yakov even as her hands were busy ripping pieces of bread off the loaf to stuff into her mouth.

“I’ve found us a place to stay,” Yakov explained. “An older gentleman caught me in his kitchen, but when I explained why I was there, he offered us a parlor to stay in and food.”

“Oh, Yakov,” Chana gasped. “Really?”

“There’s a catch,” Yakov said, “but I’ll explain it to you some other time.”

“Yakov,” Chana admonished.

Yakov smiled. It was the first smile Chana had seen any of her family wear in years. Every other happy moment had been forced and under the strain of the Ghetto. Yakov’s smile held true pleasure, and his eyes had a twinkle she hadn’t seen since he was very young.

“It’s a catch I’m willing to pay,” he insisted. “Don’t worry, Chana.”

So she didn’t. The bread was more important at the time anyway.