Raquela by Ruth Gruber

with bedpans and sick people. All that blood. See people dying. Ugh! What does a girl with your talents want that for?”
    Papa, who had been writing in his looseleaf diary, stood up from his desk and paced the room restlessly.
    â€œWe always thought,” he said, “that you were going to be a teacher.”
    â€œPapa, I can’t go to a teachers’ seminary and take courses in education while boys are dying.”
    â€œTeaching is important, too,” Papa said, “Even in wartime. Molding the minds of children is important for the future.”
    â€œThere may be no future if Hitler wins and comes to Palestine. I’ve got to do something about the war. If not nursing, then let me join the ATS.”
    â€œThe ATS!” Mama had burst into tears. “I have two sons in the army. I don’t sleep nights worrying about Jacob and Yair. If you enter the army, too, there’ll be no place for me to put my head.”
    Raquela stared out of the snow-flecked window with relief; they had left Sheikh Jarrah. Looming ahead was the highest mountain in the Holy City, Mount Scopus.
    There it was. Set back from the highway, surrounded by a pine grove, white, starkly beautiful: the Hadassah Hospital, a garden, the nursing school.
    Somewhere she had read that Erich Mendelsohn, the hospital’s German-Jewish architect, had written that he wanted to create something for eternity, something to fit into the eternal hills of Jerusalem “…in the light of the monumental austerity and serenity of the Bible.”
    It was indeed serene, a monumental building of long white tiles that glistened like pristine marble; an open-columned portico with three white cupolas—Mendelsohn’s trademark—topped the sweeping entrance.
    The bus stopped opposite the nursing school. Raquela descended and stared up at the three-story building. It, too, was serene. Monumentally austere. She opened a glass door. A buxom, motherly woman with ink-black hair and lively dark eyes greeted her.
    â€œ Shalom . My goodness, your hand is freezing. Come in. What is your name?”
    Raquela introduced herself.
    â€œAnd my name is Mrs. Hannah Simonson,” the woman said in a high but pleasing voice, leading her into the foyer. “I’m the housemother. You’re the first girl in our special wartime class to arrive. Take your coat off. Here, let me help you. My, you’re soaking wet; we have to get you warmed up.”
    Carefully, Raquela hung her wet coat on a rack and set her suitcase beside it.
    Her teeth were chattering. Was it nerves?
    She followed the housemother through the entrance hall into a luxuriant living room covered with Persian rugs. Glass doors led to a garden patio; jutting into the room was a grand piano, so highly polished Raquela could see her face in it; and scattered in little intimate circles were small tables and chairs catching the morning light through lace-curtained windows.
    Mrs. Simonson waved her toward one of the little circles. “Do sit down and warm up, Miss Levy.”
    Raquela perched herself at the edge of a chair while Mrs. Simon-son shuffled around the room. “In a minute, I’ll go fetch your mother,” she said.
    â€œMy mother?” Raquela was bewildered.
    Mrs. Simonson smiled; her pink cheeks rose above her lips like kneaded dough, dimpling. She shut her eyes when she smiled. “Not your real mother. Every freshman gets her own ‘mother.’ She’s a second- or third-year student who shows you around and helps you adjust to your new home and the nursing school.”
    She went back to the foyer and called, “Judith, can you please come down.”
    Then she returned. “Now, while we’re waiting, let me begin with some of the things you ought to know. The first six months are a trial period. You’ll be on probation.”
    Probation . The word sounded ominous. Six months probation. I’ve got to make it , she thought.