Letters From Rifka by Karen Hesse
Soon I will be in New York City, America. Soon I will be with Mama and Papa and all my giant brothers, Nathan and Saul, and Isaac and Asher and Reuben, brothers I don’t even know.
In America, maybe, I will write poems.
Shalom, my cousin,
Rifka
… When suddenly,
A storm! And the wide sea was rearing …
The helmsman and the crew were lost.
No sailor by the storm was tossed
Ashore—but I, who had been singing.
I chant the songs I loved of yore,
And on the sunned and rocky shore
I dry my robes, all wet and clinging.
—Pushkin
September 21, 1920
Atlantic Ocean
Dear Tovah,
I have lost so much already, and now it seems I must lose more.
I nearly drowned at sea in a horrible storm. But I am alive. Everyone did not have my luck. But I am alive.
Our ship, which seemed so large and safe when first I boarded, barely survived the fury of this storm.
The tempest started during the night while we slept. I had dreams of pogroms, of cossacks on their horses, snapping whips at me, pointing rifles. I heard the crack of gunshot. In my dream the countryside was burning. I trembled in your cellar while the fire raged around me.
I woke from one terror into another. I had been thrown to the floor of my cabin, tossed from my bed by the rising seas.
Quickly I pulled on my clothes, tying my kerchief with trembling fingers. I opened my cabin door. Though it was still night, the sky was a sickly yellow, like an old bruise. I bashed against the ship’s walls, flung back and forth by the tossing sea as I made my way toward the deck. The ship shivered in the hateful ocean. Twice the floor dropped beneath me suddenly, and I fell.
There was so much confusion on deck. No rain yet, but a wind that roared. The seas, which had seemed so gentle yesterday, rose like hungry beasts, mouths open, hovering and crashing over the sides of the ship.
Sailors ran like spiders, back and forth in the yellow light. They yelled to each other over the wind, shouting directions. Pieter, my Pieter, clung to a pillar as a wave broke over his shoulders.
All the horrors of Russia returned to me. The storm frightened me as much as any pogrom, when the peasants would come after the Jews to burn our homes, to break into our stores, to murder us.
My stomach twisted and I knew I would be sick, so I crawled, making my way with difficulty, toward the side of the ship. The ship rolled, my stomach rolled with it. I clung to the rail, trying to raise up off my knees so I would not soil myself with my own sickness. The ship plummeted from beneath me and I hit my head on the metal rail.
Someone came up behind me and wrapped a blanket around my shoulders.
“Pieter!” I cried.
I didn’t realize the waves had drenched me.
“Come, Rifka!” Pieter yelled over the wind. “You must come away from the side.”
I started shivering. I could taste blood in my mouth and smell it in my nose. It had a cold, metallic taste that made my stomach twist inside out. I tore away from Pieter’s grip and ran back to the rail, emptying my stomach over the side.
Before I could finish, water, a wall of water, rose up over me. Pieter grabbed me around the waist and hurled me away from the side. The water came crashing down over our heads, slamming us onto the deck.
Pieter held on to me as the water sucked at my body, trying to pull me overboard. If he had not been there, Tovah, the ocean would have claimed me. He saved my life. Pieter held me until the wave lost its power and slipped away. Then he lifted me to my feet again before another monstrous wave could attack us.
“Come,” he cried, guiding me toward a hatch. “Quickly. You must stay down in the hold while the storm lasts.” Pieter shouted over the violent wind.
I descended into the ship’s hold, looking up once at my friend. His hair lay plastered against his head and water streamed from his storm clothes.
“Pieter,” I called, “are you putting me in steerage?”
Pieter laughed. “Brave and clever!” he called down to me. The wind screamed around him.
“Be careful, Pieter!” I cried.
“I will, Rifka,” he answered.
I could hear the fear under the calm in his voice. It echoed in my ears as I stumbled down the ship’s steep steps.
When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I found many of the other passengers already in the hold, huddled together. We were still equal. We were equally miserable, equally frightened for our lives.
Everyone got sick, even me. It stank worse than a flood of soured milk down there.
Women rocked back and forth weeping. Men held their stomachs and moaned. All the time I worried for Pieter and the others. I doubted, Tovah, that I would live to see my family again.
If I’d had the Pushkin, I could have read from it. I could have opened it to the pages that held my golden Star of David, woven from broom straws, and prayed for our lives on it. But the Pushkin remained above, in my cabin, and I could not go after it.
We shivered and sweated and retched for thirty-six hours, until the ship stopped its pitching. At last the hatch was opened and we climbed up out of our hole.
There was no more deck left to the ship. Everything once bolted down had been ripped away. The player piano had crashed against a wall and shattered into pieces.
Most of the deck chairs were gone too, torn right out of the floor. Twisted metal and bolts stuck up as signs of where the chairs had been.
The parquet tiles, what remained of them, were thick with filth from the sea.
A sailor lay on the deck, wrapped in gauze from head to toe, moaning. My heart jumped into my throat. What if it’s Pieter? I thought. Oh, Tovah, if only I’d known.
I ran to the sailor’s side, but it wasn’t Pieter.
I asked if there was something I could do for him anyway. He didn’t answer.
Other sailors were limping or bandaged. I looked for Pieter everywhere, but I couldn’t find him.
Finally I stopped one of the officers.
“Have you seen the boy, Pieter?” I asked. “Please, I know you are busy, but could you tell me where I might find him?”
The officer looked down at me. He steadied my shoulders in his hands the way Papa had the night he told me of Uncle Zeb’s death. “We lost one sailor overboard in the storm,” he said.
“Pieter?” I whispered.
The officer nodded.
Tovah, I felt myself smothering. I couldn’t see anything, hear anything.
Somehow I found my way back to my cabin, and for the first time since leaving Berdichev, I cried. All the tears that had collected in this year, in this enormous year, shoved their way out of my heart, and how I cried.
Pieter, who said I was so brave … what would he say to see me now?
I didn’t care. I cried for Pieter, I cried for myself. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop.
I cried until I was empty of tears. Then I was still. As still as the sea after a storm.
I sit in my cabin and wait. Our ship has sent out a distress call. It cannot move anymore on its own steam. The drum of the engines had been like a heartbeat. Now the heart has stopped. The engines are dead.
We must wait for another ship to answer our signal and tow us across the ocean to America. I pray there are no more storms between now and then. We could never survive another fight with the sea.
Tovah, suddenly I feel how defenseless we are—not just Jews, all of us. My mind fills with images of you and Aunt Anna and Bubbe Ruth and Mama and Papa. I see Bubbe Ruth at the rear of the long house, huddled beside her little stove, sipping tea from the samovar. I see Papa and Mama swallowed up by a strange country called America. I see you, Tovah, staring out the window at the empty road, the road that has carried me away from you. I realize how precious our lives are. And how brief. I want to come home.
The telegram the
What will happen when Papa and Mama come to get me and I’m not there? How will they know when to come back? Will I ever see them again?
I’m too tired, Tovah, too tired for all this trouble. At this moment I wish I had never left Berdichev.
Shalom, my Tovah,
Rifka
… And thoughts stir bravely in my head, and
rhymes
Run forth to meet them on light feet, and fingers
Reach for the pen …
—Pushkin
October 1, 1920
Entering New York Harbor
Dear Tovah,
Today we will arrive at Ellis Island. Today I will see Mama and smell her yeasty smell. Today I will feel the tickle of Papa’s dark beard against my cheeks and see my brother Nathan’s dimpled smile and Saul’s wild curly hair. Today I will meet my brothers Asher and Isaac and Reuben.
Already I am wearing my best hat, the black velvet with the shirring and the brim of light blue. I’m hoping that with the hat, Mama will not mind my baldness. I’ve tucked Papa’s tallis into my rucksack, but Mama’s gold locket hangs around my neck.
The captain said his company notified our families and they are awaiting our arrival. I must pass a screening on the island before I can go home with Mama and Papa. Papa wrote about Ellis Island in his letters.
He wrote that at Ellis Island you are neither in nor out of America. Ellis Island is a line separating my future from my past. Until I cross that line, I am still homeless, still an immigrant. Once I leave Ellis Island, though, I will truly be in America.
Papa said in his letter that they ask many questions at Ellis Island. I must take my time and answer correctly. What’s to worry? I am good at answering questions. Even if they ask me a thousand questions, I will have Mama and Papa near me, my mama and papa.
Just one week ago, I did not think I would ever make it to America. We drifted on the sea for days, helpless, waiting for the ship to come and tow us. I assisted with the cleanup as best I could, doing work Pieter would have done if he were there.
Then, once the tow ship arrived it took so long between the securing of the ropes and the exchanges between the two ships, I thought we would never begin moving. At last, when we did, the other ship pulled us so slowly. I could swim faster to America.
In Russia, all America meant to me was excitement, adventure. Now, coming to America means so much more. It is not simply a place you go when you run away. America is a place to begin anew.
In America, I think, life is as good as a clever girl can make it.
Very soon, Tovah, I will be in this America. I hope someday you will come, too.
Shalom, my cousin,
Rifka
P.S. As I was finishing this letter a cry went up from the deck. When I went out to see what it was, I found all the passengers gathered on one side of the ship, looking up. They were looking at Miss Liberty, Tovah, a great statue of a woman standing in the middle of the harbor. She was lifting a lamp to light the way for us.
… Give me your hand. I will return At the beginning of October …
—Pushkin
October 2, 1920
Ellis Island
Dear Tovah,
I don’t know how to tell about what has happened. I feel numb and I can’t believe. I thought if I could tell you, maybe it would make some sense, maybe it would help.
They are holding me, detaining me on Ellis Island, at the hospital for contagious diseases. They won’t let me go to Mama and Papa. They won’t even let me see them. Tovah, I can’t go to America!
After we landed, I sat on a bench in an enormous room with hundreds of others, waiting to hear my name called.
I waited a long time. I just wanted to see Mama and Papa. I kept looking around for them, for Mama’s black hair, for Papa’s beard, but they weren’t there. There were others with thick beards, with dark hair, but they weren’t my mama and papa. Certainly I would know my own mama and papa.
Finally a man called my name. I couldn’t understand what he said to me. I felt nervous and he spoke English so fast, much faster than the lady from the HIAS. Someone found an interpreter for me. I answered their questions, I read from a book to prove I am not a simpleton, but they kept delaying my approval.
The doctor examined me. He took off my hat, my beautiful hat. I didn’t like his taking off my hat any more than I liked the Russian guard touching my hair or the Polish doctor examining me at the border, but just as then, I had no choice.
The first doctor called over another doctor. They spoke fast. They looked at my scalp. They shook their heads. Then they called for a tall man with glasses. The nosepiece was dull with the mark of his thumbprint, so often did he shove the gold rims up on his thin nose.
“What is it?” I asked, pulling on the doctors’ sleeves, but they didn’t answer. The first doctor put a chalk mark on my shoulder and pointed me in the direction of a cage holding the detainees.
Detainees are immigrants who are not welcome in America. They remain on the island until the authorities decide what to do with them. People like criminals and simpletons are detainees. I didn’t belong with them. I could not belong with them.
“Why are you holding me?” I cried in Yiddish. “Why have you put me with these people? I don’t belong here. I belong in America. I have come to America.”
A lady from the HIAS came over. She, too, was short, like the HIAS lady in Antwerp and the HIAS lady in Warsaw, but this one had a red bun on the top of her head.
“Shah,” she said. “Don’t make such a fuss. If you calm down, I will help you.”
She spoke with the doctor. She spoke with the man who wore the gold-rimmed glasses. I saw her face grow less and less hopeful. When she walked back to me, I could tell it was not good news.
She explained to me in Yiddish what the doctors had said. “You must be kept in the hospital for contagious diseases. It’s because of the ringworm you suffered from in Europe.”
“They cured my ringworm!” I cried.
“Mr. Fargate, the tall man with the glasses, says he must be certain the ringworm is gone before you can enter the country,” the lady from the HIAS said. “Perhaps it will only take a day or two.”
“A day or two. I must go to Mama and Papa now! My papers say the ringworm is cured!” I cried. “Why don’t they believe my papers? Why must I wait?”
“It’s not just the ringworm that concerns them,” said the lady from the HIAS. “It’s your hair.” She stroked my cheek with the back of her hand. She had a brown wart on her chin, with red hairs growing out of it. I pulled back from her.
“My hair?” I asked. I tugged at the black velvet hat, pulling it down until it nearly covered my ears.
“The doctors worry about your hair.”
“Why should they worry over such a thing as my hair?” I asked.
“To them it is important,” the HIAS lady said. “Even though your ringworm may be gone, if your hair does not grow back, Rifka, the American government will have to view you as a social responsibility.”
“What does this mean? Social responsibility?” I asked.
“It means the American government is afraid they will have to support you for the rest of your life,” the lady from the HIAS said. “Your lack of hair makes you an undesirable immigrant. They think without hair you will never find a husband to take care of you and so they will have to take care of you instead.”
I couldn’t believe what she was saying.
“Some Jewish women shave their heads on purpose,” I said. “It is written into the Jewish law. To be bald is not a sin.”
The HIAS lady sighed.
“You mean the country will not let me in simply because they are afraid when I grow up no one will want to marry me?”
“That is right.”
“You don’t need hair to be a good wife
“You are a child,” the lady from the HIAS said. “It is not that simple.”
“It is that simple,” I said.
She said, “I can’t change the rules, Rifka. Either your hair grows or they will send you back.”
There it was. What chance did I have of my hair growing now? It had not grown in almost a year.
Tovah, I think maybe you were wrong after all. You said a girl must not depend on her looks, that it is better to be clever. But in America looks are more important, and if it is my looks I must rely on, I am to be sent back. How can this be?
Shalom,
Rifka
… My path is bleak—before me stretch my
morrows:
A tossing sea, foreboding toil and sorrows.
And yet I do not wish to die, be sure;
I want to live—think, suffer, and endure …
—Pushkin
October 7, 1920
Ellis Island
Dear Tovah,
I have been here a week now. It is not so bad a place, really. I am growing used to it. Crowds of people overfill the wards. When they first brought me here, they gave me a choice. I could sleep in a bed with another woman or by myself, in a crib. I said, “I’ll take the crib.”
My feet stuck out one end, but it was better than sleeping with someone I didn’t know. Someone who had a disease I didn’t want. Sometimes it is convenient I am small.
There are so many of us here in the hospital. After two days, I was transferred from one ward to another. In the new ward, I got my own bed.