a
woman who worked the
night shift at a box factory to get
by, getting the phone call, the
news of stolen wealth, Nazi
scavenging, a treasure hunt
thru dusty communist archives
and Berlin's vanished Jewish
past. Maybe she is sitting with
her feet sore in a small house
of cheap knickknacks and doilies,
her hands still swollen, rough.
maybe she is in a daze hearing
her own story, her father's
story. Maybe she wishes she
had something better to wear
when the lawyer comes than
khakis and flats, a sweater with
embroidered flowers. Think of her
in this one stop light South Jersey.
There's a photograph of her
father in dirty overalls, a man who
died 12 years after getting to America,
so long back her 7 children have no
image of him. This woman, in her
70's, knew little, almost nothing
about her past. She and her borthers
dragged 100 pound feed bags,
broke ice in the troughs on cold
winter mornings so the chickens
could drink. Her father knew no
thing about farming, how and
when to plant corn. her mother
cleaned, kept eggs and graded
dozens of eggs daily in their dark
basement. On Sundays, as a child,
she walked to the little white Methodist
Church up the road with bible school in
its choir left. She was 8 when she
came. She made friends, came home
from school and listened to The Shadow.
her parents anglicized their name.
Little was said about the past, Now
she sits at the kitchen table with her
husband, a retired button factory
owner. She pulls out a box of
yellowed photograph os her father's
earlier days, before the war, before
things turn gloomy. He is smiling,
wears a lether jacket and sash made
of laurel leaves surounded by friends
after a motorcycle race. He never loked
that happy on the farm. Before her
mother died, she broke out of her shell
to heave one important clue. She told
her daughter about a hunting lodge she
and her husband owned, loatter shuttered
behind the Iron curtain. When the Berlin
Wall came down, she pushe a claim,
got 70,000 for the lodge still standing
in a clump of woods. Though she thought
it was the end of it, it was only the
beginning. |
Spring
'07