At the squeal of the school bus brakes, Esther closed her notebook. She’d find time after dinner to finish her lesson plans. Teaching was more challenging than she expected, especially helping her students to make artistic connections between their academic subjects and the natural world. By the time she opened the front door, Oliver was flying down the driveway, unzipped jacket flapping like the gawky wings of a fledgling, backpack dragging, and gravel spraying behind his sneakers.
“Stop kicking rocks at me.” Molly trailed behind her brother.
“Careful,” Esther called to him. “And watch your pack.”
Oliver hugged the backpack to his chest, making his running gait even more ungainly. Esther knew how much he treasured the steel gray pack, new in September for kindergarten. Like the big kids’; no more Cookie Monster or Flintstones.
Esther caught the backpack he tossed at her as he darted into the house.
“I’ve got something so cool to show you, Esther,” Molly said.
Esther still felt a tingle of joy every time Molly or Oliver called her by her given name. She and Jake had always encouraged it, hoping it would breed respect for each person in the family as an individual, not just a role. Her women’s group back in Detroit had argued the issue for weeks without coming to a conclusion, but it felt right, even though whenever her children were upset or unhappy the names Mommy and Daddy magically reappeared. Esther stood in the doorway for a moment, looking at the front yard. Thanksgiving was still two weeks away, but already the leaves were brown crisps blowing across the front yard. Following her children into the kitchen, she wondered how Rosa’s daughter addressed her mom.
Oliver teetered on a kitchen chair pulled up to the counter, grabbing peanut butter and graham crackers from the cupboard. Esther helped him climb down, took two glasses from the dish drainer, and poured milk. When she turned back to the table, Oliver was licking peanut butter off his fingers.
Molly stood at the table holding an origami crane in each hand. “Look what I made today for our unit on Japan. Mrs. Sullivan showed us a movie about Sadako. She was this girl my age who got leukemia from the bomb we dropped on her city.”
Esther caught her breath. Her head spun and her vision blurred. She managed to put the glasses on the table and sit down without spilling the milk.
Molly flew the sparkly green crane in front of Esther’s face. “There was a legend that if she folded a thousand origami cranes, she’d get better.”
“Mommy?” Oliver’s voice sounded far away.
“But she died before she could finish. It really happened. Mrs. Sullivan said there’s even a book about it. Could we go to the library right now and get the book? Please?”
Oliver climbed into Esther’s lap and captured her face between his hands, sticky with peanut butter. “Mommy?”
“I’m okay, sweetie.” Esther turned to Molly. “You surprised me, that’s all. I heard about Sadako when I was your age. At summer camp. There was no book yet, but my counselor told us the story.”
Oliver sucked peanut butter from his pinkie. “You went to camp?”
“Can we get the book today?” Molly asked. “I want to do a book report on it. And some origami paper too, okay?”
Esther leaned back against the hard kitchen chair. Could Molly possibly remember the origami cranes mobile that once hung over her crib, the mobile that somehow got lost in the move to Massachusetts? It made Esther dizzy to think that Molly had inherited Esther’s fascination for Sadako’s story, along with her DNA and artistic talent.
Oliver’s voice dragged her back to the kitchen. “I want to go to camp.”
“You’re too young,” Esther said. What about Molly, though? Might be more exciting than hanging around this backwater every summer. “Maybe you’d like to go to sleep-away camp this summer, Mol?”
“I’d rather take horseback riding lessons. Rachel’s mom found a place and we could go together.”
“You know what Jake says. It’s—”
Oliver finished her sentence, “—too dangerous.”
“Jake thinks everything’s too dangerous. Rachel’s parents let her ride.” Molly rubbed her fingernail along the crane’s wing fold. “Can we go to the library now? I want to keep this book forever.”
“Homework first,” Esther said. “Then we’ll think about it.”
“It’s Friday. I’ve got all weekend for homework.” Molly put her arms around Esther’s neck. “Can we please go now?”
Late Sunday afternoon, Esther sat at her desk in the alcove off the kitchen. Jake insisted on a late season meal of chicken grilled on the patio, and was trying to convince the charcoal. She reached into the bottom drawer for the red box. She liked to display Rosa’s photo when she wrote, but there wasn’t enough privacy. Mustard scratched at the chair and meowed, so Esther scooped up the yellow cat, unable to jump lap-high anymore. She stroked the silkiness of his abundant belly and opened her notebook to a fresh page. Dear Rosa, she began.
The strangest thing happened on Friday with Molly. She came home from school with origami cranes. I almost fainted. Her teacher told the class the story of Sadako and taught them how to fold them. Molly made cranes all weekend. She used up the package of origami paper, and kept going—using scraps of wrapping paper, newspaper, even tried to make one out of toilet paper.
She looks so much like you with that red hair, springy curls with energy to spare. She loves to paint, but insists she’s no good. Of course, who am I to talk? I haven’t made art in years. It’s too mixed up in the arrest and what happened to us afterwards. Still, I felt bad a few weeks ago when Molly quit her painting class.
The night after Molly made that announcement, Jake and Esther were lying in bed, talking over the day’s dribs and drabs. Esther mentioned Molly’s decision.
“I really wish she’d keep painting. She’s talented.”
“Maybe she’d just rather do something else for a while,” Jake said.
“No,” Esther said. “She’s scared she won’t be good enough. I know that feeling. But I wish Molly had more gumption. I wish Molly were more like my sister.”
That ended the conversation.
I can’t stop thinking about Molly and Sadako. Do you suppose it could be that mobile I hung over her crib? I was pretty obsessed with cranes too. Remember how I tried to convince you that our tattoos should be cranes? Remember our argument? Remember the concert?
Until that trip, Esther had always listened to Mama’s gloom and doom stories and had never ever hitchhiked before—not even in the Midwest, much less all the way to Berkeley. She felt a fierce liberation in lying to Mama, saying they were leaving the driving to Greyhound and then cashing in the tickets and sticking out their thumbs. It was 1967 and the three of them—Rosa and Maggie and Esther—felt free and invincible. Esther was already pregnant with Molly but didn’t know it yet. She did know that something unusual was happening because her body hummed and glowed from the inside out, even though no one else could see it.
The high point of the California trip was the concert. They almost didn’t go. They weren’t into the new rock group called the Grateful Dead. But a guy selling tickets in People’s Park convinced them that the concert would be incredible. So they took the standing room only bus up the hill to the university stadium in ninety-degree heat that everyone kept saying never happened in the Bay Area in the summer.
Esther never forgot how the lyrics of the songs blazed through her bloodstream that day, detonating every cell. Maybe it didn’t seem like much all these years later, but that summer, they thought the music was utterly profound. With 20,000 other people in the stadium, they were part of something momentous. Right after the concert, they got their tattoos.
Maggie thought we were crazy! She said it was that splendid Mexican weed making the decision and kept fretting about blood poisoning or some bizarre infection. But you and I knew what we wanted—to be branded as sisters in the revolution with our twin red stars, one each on our left breasts. I’m glad we did the stars, instead of peace cranes like I wanted. It was perfection.
I’ll never forget that trip. I don’t think I’ve ever had that much fun, before or since. That was before Danny died, before the demonstration, before it all fell apart. I’m so glad I had that trip and that I didn’t know what was coming.
“Esther, you’d better come look at this,” Jake called from the living room. “On the news.”
She carried the notebook with her, a finger marking the place.
Jake stood in the doorway holding the platter of chicken just off the grill and pointed the barbecue fork to the television. A black and white photograph, the photograph, filled the screen.
“In a rare gubernatorial pardon,” the announcer said, “radical anti-war activist and convicted bomber Rosa Levin was released from a Michigan prison today, seven years before the completion of her sentence.” The camera zoomed in on Rosa, on her oval face and high voltage hair.
The camera cut to the reporter. “Ms. Levin’s early release was based on information in the Church Committee report about the federal Counter Intelligence Program, known as COINTELPRO. FBI targeting of Ms. Levin and perjured testimony by federal agents at her trial were the basis for the pardon. The Governor’s statement alluded to collusion between FBI agents, elected officials, and Detroit Red Squad personnel.”
Esther reminded herself to breathe as she watched Rosa walk down a long concrete sidewalk, flanked by Allen on one side and a girl about Molly’s age on the other. Emma. A crowd of reporters and photographers surrounded them as they reached a car parked at the end of the walkway.
Emma looked smaller than Molly, but her hair was the same tangled mess. The color on their television was lousy, but Emma’s hair didn’t look red like her mother’s.
“Ms. Levin made a short statement to reporters,” the anchorman continued. Rosa’s face again filled the television screen and she spoke directly to the camera.
“I was entirely innocent of the bombing charges. But in 1970, the government found it easier to lock me away than listen to my accusations about the genocide in Vietnam. Now citizens know the truth. We know about Watergate and about COINTELPRO. We know what the government has been doing in our names. We have no excuse. We have a lot of work to do.”
Rosa turned her back on the camera and edged into the car, awkward, less agile than Esther remembered. Rosa thrust her fist into the spotlight of the slanted November sun. Her face ducked away from the camera, toward the girl and the man next to her in the front seat.
The camera panned the concrete towers and barbed wire crowned prison walls, then cut to a thin man, identified as the warden. “Ms. Levin is outspoken,” he read from a paper on his desk, “but she made significant contributions to the prison community through her literacy work. She earned the respect of both prisoners and Department of Corrections personnel.”
Esther’s throat ached. Would that comment make Rosa proud or pissed off?
Back in the newsroom, the camera returned to Rosa’s half of the old photo while the reporter wrapped up. “Ms. Levin plans to relocate to New York City, where she will live with her boyfriend, civil liberties attorney Allen Jefferson, and their ten-year-old daughter.”
New York. Rosa in Manhattan, three hours to the south. Living the life they had imagined together as young women. Esther pictured a third-floor walkup in the Village. On the windowsill, a droopy geranium with curling brown leaves, forgotten in a life overflowing with activism and friends, meetings and art films and coffeehouses.
And what about the daughter? What had Rosa told Emma about their history? Did Emma know she had an aunt, a cousin? Did Emma go to Loon Lake Camp, just four hours north of the relatives she had never met?
Esther felt Jake’s arms around her, felt his kiss on her forehead. “It’s okay, Essie. No one here will ever suspect she’s your sister. It’ll be all right.”
Esther shook her head, wordless. Sometimes Jake just didn’t get it.
“Chicken’s ready,” he said.
Esther rested her hand on his arm. “Start without me. I need a couple minutes.”
At her desk, trying to ignore the conversation around the kitchen table, Esther opened the notebook and returned to the letter.
I just watched your prison release on television.
Do you ever think about seeing me? It would be legal now; my probation ended long ago. Did you know I had to sign an agreement that I wouldn’t participate in any demonstrations, organizing, or political meetings? And I had to agree to swear I wouldn’t hang out with any known felons. Even my sister. Especially my sister.
Believe it or not, Rosa, I went to a demonstration last month.
Esther wasn’t proud of how well that court-ordered proscription against activism worked; it was eleven years after August 17, 1968 before she attended another demonstration. She read about the pro-choice rally at the high school in Northampton and decided to go. It seemed pretty low-key, but Jake hated the idea.
“But why?” he had asked. “You’re not active in abortion rights work anymore.”
“That’s why,” Esther said. “Because I’m not active in any political work anymore.”
“Sure you are. What do you call all those environmental groups you work with?”
Esther shook her head, imagining Rosa’s opinion of her local Save the Earth committee. “That’s different. I want our kids to develop good politics about big issues—racism and feminism and the environment. How can they do that if we don’t set an example?”
“That was some example you set,” Jake said quietly, then touched her arm. “Sorry. It’s just that I’m worried. Rallies can be dangerous.”
Esther shook her head. “Not this one. It’ll be okay. Anyway, I’m going and taking the kids. You can come with us if you like.”
It hadn’t been okay. Esther had wandered by all the tables, read literature without really seeing a single word, listened to the speeches from the very back of the auditorium. She’d grasped Jake’s hand the whole time, hardly able to breathe.
It was awful. I was so scared. I kept thinking about all those women we helped in Detroit. I kept looking around for the cops, expecting them to spot me, point me out to each other, arrest me, shoot me, worse, I don’t know. Jake was great. He kept the kids involved, although explaining abortion to Molly wasn’t easy.
The odd thing is, I don’t know if I was so uptight, so uncomfortable, because I was afraid I would be identified. Or maybe afraid I wouldn’t be.
Damn, I miss you, Rosa.
But I’m not going to send this letter. You’re the one who called me a traitor, said I wasn’t your sister anymore. You have to make the first move. And I’m sick and tired of not living my life until that happens. So I’m not waiting anymore. You’re out of prison and starting a new life. And I’m going to forgive myself and start living fully, too. I’m going to make art again. Seriously.
Esther tore the pages from her notebook, folded them, and opened the bottom desk drawer. The stack of letters to Rosa had overflowed the Japanese box and now filled a brown envelope with one prong of the metal fastener missing.