relief when at last he tapped on her window in the middle of the night and whispered, “Now. It’s time now.”
She wrapped her feather comforter around things she regarded as her dowry: a bronze mortar and pestle and brass candlesticks with curlicued stems. She slipped into her clothes, a long shift, an ankle-length sweater, a head kerchief and an extra pair of long underwear. She neither said good-bye nor left a note for her parents. Once they discovered the vacant place left by her perrina, they would understand.
It was one in the morning, uncommonly dark, the air tinged with frost but not yet too cold. They pressed themselves against buildings as they silently made their way to the port. The sky paled as Misha motioned toward their seagoing vessel. With shaky fingers he tapped his coat pocket for their tickets.
After the hours of silence and anguish, the rattle of their footsteps on the gangplank startled them. Hastily, they scrambled below deck, where they found body crouched next to body on the cold planks. Exhausted, apprehensive, uncomfortable, they counted their every breath.
How long did they sit there? An hour? Five? Suddenly they felt the roll of the ship. The hundreds of passengers cried out in relief. Every swerve and rock of the ship meant a movement toward freedom. It was during the midst of this communal jubilation that Manya, the kitchen helper, realized that she had forgotten to pack food.
“So what did you live on?” I asked, lying close to her warm body in the folding bed we shared, as if I hadn’t asked the question a dozen times before. “We lived on love,” came the answer.
I neither enjoyed nor cared for the second half of my grandmother’s saga, what we called “the sad part.” Though Misha had contracted a mild cough during their long journey, he passed the medical tests at Ellis Island. To see whether immigrants commanded average intelligence, Ellis Island clerks handed them crude pieces of wood, a puzzle to fit into a wooden frame. Misha finished his in less than a minute and Manya followed a few minutes later.
Then, to enhance their anxiety, men and women were separated during their physical examinations. A doctor probed Manya’s vagina with an iron apparatus that resembled tongs, the metal crude and unyielding and causing intense pain. The overworked doctor poked his skinny moist finger up her vagina and the same finger examined her teeth and mouth. Then he directed her to a cage where children, young women and the elderly waited, shaking with fear.
The worst sight—and she told me this over and over—were the women with pox or coughs that yielded blood, who were told they either had to be quarantined for several months or sent home. “They screamed, they pulled their hair,” she recalled, as if still seeing their misery before her eyes. “They didn’t know whether they would find their husbands or parents or children again. The men too.” Informed that they couldn’t come into America, they cried like babies.
“I cried the whole time until I saw Misha again,” Bubby admitted. “ ‘Animals,’ the clerks called us. ‘These people are animals.’ ”
They hadn’t bathed for more than a month and cold water without soap left their hands grimy. But my grandparents were elated, expectant, eager to begin their new existence together. An indifferent clerk translated their Russian name, Rakidovski, into Roth, the formalities ended and they boarded the ferry to Battery Park.
No one waited for them, but almost every passerby on the sidewalk spoke Yiddish and directed them to the Jewish quarter. The uncle, whose name and address they clutched so proudly, could not be found.
Having exchanged their rubles for dollars, they rented a basement room on Ludlow Street. It was so dark, so dank, it reminded them of the cellar back in Odessa that housed the hand-set printing press. Their room contained a mattress, one chair and a patched-together table with a small gas cooking
She wrapped her feather comforter around things she regarded as her dowry: a bronze mortar and pestle and brass candlesticks with curlicued stems. She slipped into her clothes, a long shift, an ankle-length sweater, a head kerchief and an extra pair of long underwear. She neither said good-bye nor left a note for her parents. Once they discovered the vacant place left by her perrina, they would understand.
It was one in the morning, uncommonly dark, the air tinged with frost but not yet too cold. They pressed themselves against buildings as they silently made their way to the port. The sky paled as Misha motioned toward their seagoing vessel. With shaky fingers he tapped his coat pocket for their tickets.
After the hours of silence and anguish, the rattle of their footsteps on the gangplank startled them. Hastily, they scrambled below deck, where they found body crouched next to body on the cold planks. Exhausted, apprehensive, uncomfortable, they counted their every breath.
How long did they sit there? An hour? Five? Suddenly they felt the roll of the ship. The hundreds of passengers cried out in relief. Every swerve and rock of the ship meant a movement toward freedom. It was during the midst of this communal jubilation that Manya, the kitchen helper, realized that she had forgotten to pack food.
“So what did you live on?” I asked, lying close to her warm body in the folding bed we shared, as if I hadn’t asked the question a dozen times before. “We lived on love,” came the answer.
I neither enjoyed nor cared for the second half of my grandmother’s saga, what we called “the sad part.” Though Misha had contracted a mild cough during their long journey, he passed the medical tests at Ellis Island. To see whether immigrants commanded average intelligence, Ellis Island clerks handed them crude pieces of wood, a puzzle to fit into a wooden frame. Misha finished his in less than a minute and Manya followed a few minutes later.
Then, to enhance their anxiety, men and women were separated during their physical examinations. A doctor probed Manya’s vagina with an iron apparatus that resembled tongs, the metal crude and unyielding and causing intense pain. The overworked doctor poked his skinny moist finger up her vagina and the same finger examined her teeth and mouth. Then he directed her to a cage where children, young women and the elderly waited, shaking with fear.
The worst sight—and she told me this over and over—were the women with pox or coughs that yielded blood, who were told they either had to be quarantined for several months or sent home. “They screamed, they pulled their hair,” she recalled, as if still seeing their misery before her eyes. “They didn’t know whether they would find their husbands or parents or children again. The men too.” Informed that they couldn’t come into America, they cried like babies.
“I cried the whole time until I saw Misha again,” Bubby admitted. “ ‘Animals,’ the clerks called us. ‘These people are animals.’ ”
They hadn’t bathed for more than a month and cold water without soap left their hands grimy. But my grandparents were elated, expectant, eager to begin their new existence together. An indifferent clerk translated their Russian name, Rakidovski, into Roth, the formalities ended and they boarded the ferry to Battery Park.
No one waited for them, but almost every passerby on the sidewalk spoke Yiddish and directed them to the Jewish quarter. The uncle, whose name and address they clutched so proudly, could not be found.
Having exchanged their rubles for dollars, they rented a basement room on Ludlow Street. It was so dark, so dank, it reminded them of the cellar back in Odessa that housed the hand-set printing press. Their room contained a mattress, one chair and a patched-together table with a small gas cooking
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