Under a Red Sky Page 4

  My narrow bed is separated from my parents’ bed by a bookcase that serves as our room divider. The back of the bookcase faces my bed. The shelves face my parents’ side of the room and are packed with art books and a thick, leather-bound volume of the complete works of William Shakespeare. Mama has sewn a curtain out of a sheet and hung it at the foot of my bed to fill the gap between the bookcase and the wall. “Now you have your own little room,” she says, drawing the curtain after tucking me in. The light from the bedroom filters through the yellow material with its blue cornflower pattern. Wedged against the bookcase is my night table, a heavy iron safe decorated with Roman soldiers in full armor—helmets, shields, and spears. The lid of the safe is so heavy, I have to ask for help each time I want to lift it open. The underside of the lid houses the safe mechanism, lots of wheels and gears, all in need of oil. Stored inside this safe is my most important treasure, a collection of dog-eared comic books that Tata’s artist friends have smuggled in from France.

  On warm summer evenings Tata lays out a thick green army-issue blanket on the cold floor of the terrace and fluffs my pillow. He covers me with a soft cotton blanket and surveys the night sky before returning to our room.

  “Look at these stars,” he whispers, gazing up at the moonless expanse. “These very same stars shine over other countries,” he says, turning to me and pointing to a cluster of bright stars directly above my head. “Far away from here,” he whispers. I don’t know if he’s referring to the stars above or to other countries. Both feel equally remote to me.

  “Is it different in other countries?” I ask.

  “Very,” he answers before returning to our bedroom. “In other countries the stars do not rise in a red sky.” I want to ask him what he means by “a red sky,” since all I can see above is the black night shimmering with countless stars, but his voice stops me. “Good night. Go to sleep now.”

  “I want to say good night to Mama,” I tell his shadow standing against the yellow light of the bedroom.

  My mother’s silhouette appears in the doorway. She sits down next to me on the blanket and tucks her legs in.

  “Tell me about when I was born,” I ask just before drifting off.

  “You were the most wanted child in the world,” she whispers, stroking my head. “The doctor said I could no longer get pregnant. I had lost too many babies during the war. He said that I had a hysterical pregnancy, that I wanted a baby so much, I was imagining being pregnant. But I knew that he was wrong, so here you are.”

  “Did it hurt?” I ask.

  “Did what hurt?”

  “When I came out,” I answer impatiently.

  “Sure it hurt.”

  “How bad?”

  “Bad enough for me to pass out until the pain woke me up again.” She laughs, then adds quickly, “You are worth it. I named you Eva because you are my one and only girl, after Eve, the very first woman in the world. But you were given another name as well by our neighbors, your godparents.”

  “Mama, who are they?”

  “They were a very religious old couple from Cluj, your father’s hometown. They took us in when you were a tiny infant, when no other Hungarians would lease a room to a young Romanian woman from Bucharest with a newborn. They were childless, so they asked me to allow them to give you a name. So I did.”

  “How come?”

  “They were kind, good people, and it was a mitzvah.”

  “What’s a mitzvah?” I ask.

  “Shhh, go to sleep,” she whispers. “It’s a good deed, just like what they did for us.”

  “What name did they give me?”

  “I don’t know. I let them take you to their temple, but I didn’t go to the naming ceremony. They were so happy and very grateful when they returned with you.”

  “Can’t we call them up on the telephone and ask them my name?”

  “I don’t think so,” Mama answers. “Those people are long gone. They were very old.”

  “You really don’t remember the name that they gave me?”

  “No, I don’t. I’m sorry. It didn’t seem to matter at the time. It was more important to just let them give you a name, to do the good deed.”

  I drift off to sleep hoping that someday I will find my lost name.

  THE ORPHANAGE

  BEFORE I ENTER FIRST GRADE, I spend most afternoons jumping rope and playing hopscotch by myself in our large front yard. First, I jump rope while counting to one hundred. Then I do it again to two hundred, this time twirling the rope horizontally beneath my feet. When I am finally exhausted, I draw a hopscotch grid with white chalk on the yard’s gray pavement, throw a pebble in one of the squares, and hop one-legged around the grid, alternating between winning and losing since there is no one to play with.

  Next door, however, there are lots of other children. Our yard abuts a state-run orphanage, whose courtyard is at the top of a six-foot wall that separates our property from theirs. The wrought-iron fence that keeps the orphanage children from falling into our yard is topped with black arrowheads that slice the air between our two worlds. The liberated squeals of the children next door, when they are let out from what I imagine to be stone-cold corridors, sound like a flock of birds taking off. The boys and girls are about my age, and they wear gray checkered uniforms. The boys’ hair is cut so short, you can see their scalps. My mother claims it’s for protection against head lice, but all the girls have shoulder-length hair just like mine, except theirs is pulled back with white headbands, while mine is kept off my forehead with a bobby pin.

  The day is overcast. The orphan kids next door are out in the yard. Their shrill voices are jarring, but I ignore them and go about my usual routine—jumping rope and playing hopscotch. When I tire, I lean against the wall and gaze up across the yard to watch the other children. They’re standing in a circle, clapping and singing a familiar Romanian nursery rhyme, while a boy runs around the outer perimeter of the circle waving a white handkerchief: “Mi’am pierdut o batistua, m bate mmica, cine are s mio deie, îi srut guria.—I’ve lost my little hankie, Mama’s going to beat me, whoever finds it and returns it, I’ll reward with a kiss on the mouth.” The boy drops the hankie behind one of the girls’ backs. She swishes around to pick it up, her braids flying above her head, but a breeze breaks the heavy stillness of the air and floats the hankie down into our yard. All of their eyes are suddenly upon me. “Pick it up! Pick it up!” they shout in unison, clutching their hands into fists around the black bars of the fence.

  I press my back against the yard wall and feel its hardness as I glance at the white patch of cotton that has just landed at my feet. I don’t know what to do. “Pick it up, and bring it back!” the girl with the braids screeches. I step forward into the hopscotch grid on my right foot, my left leg dangling in the air. I bend down and retrieve the white handkerchief just as if I were picking up a hopscotch pebble. I break into a run out of our yard and stop abruptly by the orphanage gate. I wait for the boy to come and retrieve his handkerchief, but instead he pulls me into their yard, right into the middle of their circle. “She’s it! She’s it!” he cries. “You’ve got to kiss her!” All the orphan kids are singing at the top of their lungs and twirling around me so fast that I cannot see straight. My ears are pounding as the boy plants a big, wet kiss on my cheek before I grab my jump rope and run breathlessly home.

  AFTER THE HANDKERCHIEF INCIDENT, I try to ignore the kids next door, but the girl with the braids does not ignore me. One day, after the others have gone inside, she stays behind and places her face between the fence bars.

  “What’s your name? Mine is Eugenia,” she volunteers.

  “Eva,” I answer, not wanting to continue the conversation.

  “That’s pretty,” she says without taking her eyes off my jump rope.

  “Uh-huh,” I mumble.

  “Can I test your jump rope?”

  I really don’t feel like sharing, but I go to the wall and throw my rope up through the fence bars. Eugenia catch
es it and starts to jump as if she’s been doing it her whole life.

  “Can you keep count for me?” she yells breathlessly.

  I count to one hundred and Eugenia isn’t even breaking a sweat. At one fifty she stops abruptly and throws back my rope.

  “Thank you very much,” she says, running into the orphanage building.

  I wonder how come no one seems to have missed her all this time. I bet if she were living at home with her family someone would have noticed that she was gone, the way my mother and Grandpa Yosef did when I went off by myself to the park.

  “Grandpa,” I ask at breakfast the next day, “why are the children next door orphans?”

  “Because their parents are either dead or not able to care for them,” Grandpa answers, looking at me.

  “Right. But why?”

  “Why?” Grandpa considers my question while fogging his reading glasses and wiping them with the corner of his shirt. “Sometimes parents die and there are no other family members who can take the child in,” he says, placing his glasses, which are still somewhat greasy, back on the tip of his nose. He scrutinizes me above their frames. “Other times the parents are alive and want to care for their child very much, but they can’t.”

  “Why can’t they?”

  Grandpa looks tired. “I don’t know. Circumstances dictate the situation.”

  “What circumstances? What does circumstances mean?”

  “It’s just another way of saying life, what happens in life, Eva. Suppose both parents are ill or …” Grandpa sighs.

  “Or?”

  “Or in jail.”

  “Why would they ever go to jail, unless they were really bad people?” I ask, swinging my legs under the table.

  “Not everyone who goes to jail is a bad person.” Grandpa looks straight at me, and my legs stop swinging automatically.

  “Did you ever know anyone who went to jail who wasn’t a bad person?”

  “Of course.” Grandpa smiles.

  “Who?”

  “I’ve been in jail, Eva, and so have many other innocent people.”

  “But why?”

  “Because people who are in power don’t always do the right thing.”

  “Oh” is all that I say because now my mind is racing back to Eugenia, whose braids fly in the air while she skips across the orphanage yard and who can jump rope to over one hundred and fifty counts. I wish I knew why she lives in the orphanage, but I’m afraid to ask. Are both her parents dead? Or are they rotting in some Communist jail, living only for the moment they can come home to reclaim their daughter? What will happen to Eugenia if the Party decides that her parents are guilty?

  ALL EYES, ALL EARS, NO TONGUE—SEPTEMBER 1958

  TODAY IS MY FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL, and I’m as excited as the day when I went to the market with Grandpa Yosef for the first time. It’s 6:00 a.m. and I’m already up. My new school uniform is laid out on the chair next to my bed. The uniform is a black-and-white checkered cotton smock that is worn over my regular clothes like a coat, but it buttons at the back. Mama carefully starched and ironed its round white collar until it was so stiff that it leaves red marks against my neck. There’s also a pinafore that wraps around my waist and ties at the back with a bow. It has wavy shoulders that remind me of butterfly wings. On regular school days we are to wear a black pinafore, but on special days and holidays, we get to wear a white one. Since the first day of school is a special occasion, Mama’s been notified in advance that I’m to wear the white one. The notice also specified a white headband to keep my hair off my face, white knee-high socks, and polished black shoes. Finally, my teeth must be brushed thoroughly, and my nails must be cut and spotlessly clean. Each student’s appearance will be inspected by the teacher. I’m nervous, but I’m ready. Eventually I will become a Pioneer and get to wear a red silk scarf. But I won’t be eligible for that until second grade.

  I’m not hungry at breakfast, but Mama insists that I take at least a few bites of bread with butter as I gulp down my hot chocolate. After I’ve brushed my teeth and smiled at myself in the bathroom mirror to make sure they’re white, Mama parts my hair precisely in the middle and braids it into two tight pigtails. She folds each pigtail in half and secures the ends with bobby pins that stick into my scalp. Then she ties two small white bows around the bunches and hands me the white headband. I slide it over my forehead and tuck in a few stray hairs. Everything feels tightly pulled back. I barely recognize myself in the armoire mirror. I have been transformed into a student.

  I’m itching to get going, but Mama pulls me down to sit on the edge of the bed next to her. “I have something important to tell you before you take off,” she says in a serious voice I do not like. “Never, ever, repeat anything you hear in this house to anyone, especially any talk about before or after the war or about the Party. None of our conversations are to be discussed outside this house, not even with the other kids in school,” she adds, looking at me intently as if I’ve already done something wrong.

  “But, Mama, I don’t know any of the kids yet,” I argue. “I have no idea what we’re going to talk about.”

  “Say nothing,” she continues. “There are children who have gotten their parents in trouble just because they repeated things that they shouldn’t have heard at home. Surely those kids didn’t mean to cause any harm to their parents, but they did. What innocently came out of their mouths became a weapon the Securitate used as evidence against the parents. These kids now live in orphanages like the one next door because their parents are in jail and there’s no one who can care for them. We don’t want to have that kind of thing happen to us, do we?”

  Mama’s left eyebrow arches as I shake my head vigorously. It occurs to me that Eugenia, the girl with the flying braids, might be one of these children. Mama surveys my face and nods in approval. “Good. If anyone wants to know anything about what we discuss at home, you come and tell me first. Just play dumb and tell them you know nothing. Understood?” I nod again, and she gives me a big hug and kiss. “You’d better run now. Your tata’s going to take you this morning.”

  MY FATHER IS WAITING for me in the foyer and offers me his warm hand as we walk out into the street. He seems happy, whistling a familiar tune and taking great strides past the old houses down our block. I have a hard time keeping up with him because his legs are very long and he walks quickly.

  The school is a big red-brick building. In the lobby there is a giant framed print of a historic monument. “Stand right here next to this picture,” Tata tells me. “I’m going to take a photo of you in front of Trajan’s column.” I lean against the wall and look up. I’m dwarfed as my eyes follow the length of the picture all the way to the vaulted ceiling.

  “Look back at me and smile,” Tata says as his camera starts to click.

  BEFORE I KNOW IT I’m standing in line in front of the classroom door along with many other boys and girls. The girls are all wearing the exact same uniform as I am, and the boys are wearing gray trousers, white shirts, and ties. Tata whispers in my ear, “Just listen to the teacher, do as you’re told, and you’ll be all right.” He offers me his cheek, which I barely have time to brush with a kiss before he waves goodbye and I enter the classroom.

  “Attention, everyone. Children, pay attention!” Comrade Popescu commands. Our teacher is a trim woman with steel blue eyes and a razor-sharp voice. “I want every one of you to line up according to your height, the shortest in the front and the tallest in the back.” We scramble as we look at each other to determine who is taller than whom, and we start to giggle. Comrade Popescu strikes a wooden ruler against her desk with a thud. Our sudden silence is interrupted by a fly buzzing right above my head and by someone whispering in the back of the room. “I didn’t say you could talk while you do this. Silence!” Comrade Popescu says, striking her ruler like a thunderbolt.

  Once we’re seated according to height—the shortest in the front, the tallest in the back—Comrade Popescu reads our names off attendan
ce cards in alphabetical order. Even though I’m sitting in the front row because I’m short, I am the last one on the roll call. “Zimmermann, Eva!” My name reverberates in the room. I raise my hand quickly and answer “Present!”

  Comrade Popescu distributes pencils and notebooks. She outlines all the different subjects that we will be studying throughout the year: the Romanian alphabet, basic grammar, calligraphy, arithmetic, history, and geography. Each subject will have its own homework assignment to be completed in its own separate notebook and handed in the next day. We will be graded on neatness and penmanship as well as content. Attendance and behavior will count equally. Whoever does not advance according to the curriculum will be left back to repeat the grade until he or she gets it right.

  “Those of you who understand what I’ve just said, raise your hands!” She surveys our stiff, outstretched arms. “Good,” she mutters. She speaks slowly to no one in particular, as if all of us were one person. “Stack your notebooks on your desks, and place your pencils and erasers in your pencil holders. Now I want you to stand with your shoulders back and your faces forward. If you slouch, you will be detained in this room instead of going to recess with the rest of the class. You will exit the room single file in the order that you’ve entered it. Does everyone understand this?”

  We listen in silence, still seated, until Comrade Popescu raises her voice and repeats, “Are all forty of you deaf and dumb? Do you not understand? Answer me, ‘Yes, Comrade Popescu, we understand, ’ and stand up immediately!”