1922
On the morning of February 28, 1922, I gathered together my belongings, my hands moving like those of a mechanical puppet I’d seen in London. I pulled back my dark hair and tied it so severely that my forehead felt stretched. I didn’t know what to wear, so I put on my school uniform. When I looked in the mirror, I saw that my face was tired and peaked, with two bright spots flushing my cheekbones.
I was ready long before noon, sitting straight up on the neat bed, my battered English suitcase on the ground. More than ever before, my bed, the dormitory room with its row of identical beds, and the windows looking out onto the garden felt secure and familiar.
“I’m afraid,” I whispered into the silence. My stomach was tight as a drum as I waited to be summoned, but by ten past twelve no one had come to the door or called my name. Eventually I stood up and peered down the hallway. One of the older girls, Chava, was hurrying from the direction of Matron’s office.
When she saw me she scowled and called out irritably, “Hurry, Devorah, Matron’s waiting for you and she’s cross.”
“I’ve been ready,” I squeaked. “I thought I was supposed to—”
But there wasn’t time to explain. Chava snatched up my suitcase and hurried back down the hallway. I followed, my eyes prickling at the unfairness.
At Matron’s office, Chava opened the door and gave me a little push inside. I stumbled awkwardly into the room and opened my mouth. I wanted to say that I had been ready, that I had been waiting in the dormitory. But Matron was tapping her pencil on the desk and she didn’t give me a chance.
“Finally, there you are. Devorah, meet Mr. and Mrs. Kagan, who have very kindly adopted you. This is Devorah Lehrman.”
A tall man got up from the edge of the chair where he was perched and came toward me with his hand outstretched. His long, thin arms and legs made him look like a huge gangling spider, and I shrank back. But his voice was gentle as he took my hand. “Hello, my dear. We’re very glad to meet you.”
Then I felt myself being pulled against a corseted, substantial bosom and kissed firmly on the top of my head. A large woman with a florid face and beads of sweat on her upper lip beamed at me.
“You need some fattening up, poor child. Nearly starved in that terrible country. Going to see to it, get some good food in you now. All you have, that one little suitcase? That’s all, Matron? All the papers signed at last? So many papers. And in this heat. Affects me worse every year. All right, come along now, Mr. Kagan. Get this little one home, shall we?”
In a burst of half sentences, and trailing Mr. Kagan and me behind her, Mrs. Kagan bustled to the door, thanked Matron, and set off down the long driveway. I looked back helplessly. Goodbye, Cape Jewish Orphanage, goodbye. Another goodbye.
The next few hours spun by dizzily, propelled by Mrs. Kagan’s brisk bossiness and energy. It wasn’t until the end of the day, when I was finally alone in the room I was to call my own, that I had time to sort through the startling changes in my life.
The Kagans lived in a flat in a three-story building about twenty minutes’ walk from the orphanage. There wasn’t much space and my room wasn’t really a room, more like a large walk-in cupboard under the stairs to the upstairs neighbor. But it had been vigorously cleaned until the floorboards shone and the little window gleamed. There was a pretty yellowwood washstand backed with six green tiles, and a woven rug next to the bed. I was glad to sit down on the white knobby bedspread, rest my elbows on my knees and my head on my hands, and think for a while.
My thoughts went first to Mr. Kagan. I liked him, but of course not in the way I had liked my own father. Mr. Kagan wasn’t strong and fun, he wasn’t someone who could toss you up to his shoulders or silence you with a single look when you had been too noisy. He was very quiet, timid maybe; his voice was gentle and his light blue eyes were soft and droopy, like a puppy’s eyes. Mrs. Kagan must have thought so, too, because she treated him just like a favorite dog. She told him where to go and what to do, and once I saw her stroke the fine hair on his head indulgently.
Her own dark blond hair was carefully arranged in waves and sprayed so that the waves never shifted. A thick layer of powder sat on the reddish skin of her cheeks, and when she perspired, the powder gathered in moist wrinkles. And yet her face was kind.
I couldn’t decide about Mrs. Kagan yet. She was big and solid, and she moved like the three girls at my school who sometimes linked arms and plowed through the crowds on the playground chanting: “We. Walk. Straight. So. You’d-Better-Get-Out-of-the-Way.” She seemed to me like a strong wind, almost a storm. She made you want to brace yourself and stand firm, so you wouldn’t blow over. I had to smile a little: it seemed clear that Mr. Kagan had lain right down when that wind first hit him.
“Cleaned this room out for you myself on the weekend, so no need to worry about spiders,” she had said as her busy hands shoved the little bed close up against the wall and straightened the towel hanging on the washstand. Then she had insisted on helping me unpack my small suitcase. When the few clothes were lifted out and she saw my old photograph packed carefully at the bottom, Mrs. Kagan suffocated me for a moment in a massive hug.
“We’ll take care of you now, dearie. Climb in bed and get a good night’s sleep.” With a kiss on the top of my head and a bang of the door, she was gone, leaving quiet in her wake.
I guessed that the Kagans were sitting together on the hard, overstuffed couch in the living room, a room heavy with framed photographs taken by Mr. Kagan. There were photographs of white brides, stiff Bar Mitzvah boys, plump babies, and unsmiling grandparents.
“Will I be related to all these people now—now that you’ve adopted me?” I had asked.
Mrs. Kagan, straightening an ornate frame, had laughed. “Oh, none of these people are Kagans, my dear. I don’t know any of them at all.”
I gazed around the living room, surrounded by strangers. But Mrs. Kagan bustled on. She was very proud of her husband’s photography and showed me his tiny darkroom at the back of the flat as if it were a stateroom for a king. It was a scary place, I thought, very dark and smelling of chemicals. There were buckets of shiny liquid and clothespins on long cords that brushed my hair like cobwebs.
“Does Mr. Kagan work in here every day?” I asked.
Mrs. Kagan’s cheeks grew pinker and she said a little too loudly, “Mr. Kagan used to have a large photographic studio in Stellenbosch …” She looked closely at me and gave the specific address as if I was daring to disbelieve her. “Muller’s Buildings on Plein Street in Stellenbosch. But his talent was not appreciated. Not fully appreciated by those … farmers. Anyway, Mr. Kagan’s health was not good at the time. Quite well now, thank God. So we decided it’d be best for him not to bother with the public but to do photo developing right here. Yes, at home on Caledon Street.”
She shut the door of the darkroom carefully before showing me the rest of the small flat. It consisted of the living room with an alcove for a dining table, Mr. and Mrs. Kagan’s bedroom, a bathroom with a very short but deep tub on clawed feet, and my own room under the stairs. There was also a steamy little kitchen, where a black woman named Elizabeth smiled at me and wished me welcome.
“Nice to have three places at the table, my dear,” Mrs. Kagan boomed as we sat down to eat dinner in the dining alcove. Mr. Kagan, too, gave a sweet smile before turning his full attention to the cabbage leaves wrapped around ground beef and rice and onions.
“Another helping, Devorah? Elizabeth’s stuffed cabbage is very good; couldn’t do better myself.” I was just about to agree when Mrs. Kagan, her big serving spoon hovering, went on. “You must be very hungry, my dear. Poor orphans, starving in the streets. Well, you won’t go hungry here.”
Suddenly the pity in Mrs. Kagan’s voice felt unbearable. She wasn’t the only person in the world to give me meals. My mama and papa had fed me very well for many years and after that they’d done the best they could. Madame Engel had seated me like a princess in her huge restaurant kitchen. And I’d had plenty of delicious food at the orphanage before Mrs. Kagan marched me away. I wasn’t a starving child on the street! “I don’t need another helping, thank you,” I said stiffly.
Dessert was fried bananas, and I almost smiled. If my sister had been with me, I could have whispered, “Remember the first time we saw a banana, on our bus ride from the Cape Town harbor to the orphanage?”
A wave of tiredness made me long to lie down. “Is it all right if I go to bed now?” I asked as soon as Elizabeth had removed the plates.
“Of course, dearie,” said Mrs. Kagan. “Want to settle in, no doubt. Say good night, Mr. Kagan.” Mr. Kagan obeyed with another warm smile and a pat on my head.
Now I sat on the bed staring straight ahead of me, without the energy to move. Beyond the wall, Mr. Kagan coughed and the sound moved me to action. I put on the faded green nightdress Matron had distributed to me in the orphanage, brushed my teeth at the nightstand, and washed my face.
Then I went to the little window to say the Shema the way my mama used to. She had always stood quietly for a moment and gazed out at the night before she began. She covered her eyes for the first important line, to concentrate better: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.” Then she continued softly to the end. And I next to her.
Never, except on the Night of the Burning, had I forgotten to say the Shema before I slept. Since That Night I had added a personal thank-you to Aunt Friedka.
“Mama,” I whispered. “Mama and Papa, are you up there?”
The night blinked with its many eyes.
“Mama and Papa, I’m in my new home, but it’s not my real home and I’ll never forget you. I will love you forever.”
Then I climbed into the bed. It was a warm night in the middle of summer, but someone had taken the care to wrap a hot brick in felt and place it between the sheets for my feet. I had never had my own heating brick before, and it felt luxurious and warm against my toes.
It may be all right here. I’ll wait and see, I decided, weariness pulling me deep down into sleep.