Tender Earth

‘Oh, Laila – what a lovely surprise!’ she says as she opens the door, reaching up a little to stroke my hair. She always does that; does it to Kez too. ‘But Kezia isn’t here. Didn’t she tell you she’s got physio?’

‘Ah yes, your mysterious bag. Come in, come in. I’m glad of the company. Pull up a chair!’ Bubbe orders.

‘Actually, I’m grounded . . . I’ve got to get back before Mum gets home from work.’

‘I’m sure Uma won’t mind you spending a little time with me. I’ll text her to let her know we’re having our chat,’ Bubbe says, tapping the table.

I sit down beside her. There’s a candle lit in a glass jar and a plant next to it that I’ve never seen before. The candle looks like it’s been burning for a long time.

‘No, no. I could do with the company. It’s nice to have someone to share the memories with.’

‘I like that little tree!’ I say pointing to a bonsai tree like the one on the box I found Nana’s chime in.

‘Isn’t it beautiful? Hannah bought it for me today,’ Bubbe says. ‘So delicate and old-looking! She probably thought it looked a bit like me!’ Bubbe laughs. ‘Oh, look, it’s still got the tag on – what does it say? I can’t find my glasses anywhere.’

May this bonsai tree bring harmony, peace, order of thoughts, balance and all that is good in nature. This evergreen bonsai is easy to care for. Give it light and space. Keep out of draughts. This specimen is from the Chinese Elm family (Ulmus parvifolia) – the tree of harmony. The Elm symbolizes inner strength, intuition and wisdom.

‘Well, that’s a bit of a tall order! I’ve never been very successful at growing things, but I’ll give it a go.’ Bubbe laughs. ‘Here’s hoping! Talking of harmony, I was hoping to have a little word with you, Laila. I don’t want to interfere between you and Kezia, but I’m going to say one thing and get it out of the way . . . clear the air.’ She wafts her hands around her head, as if to get rid of smoke.

‘I’m pleased to hear that – but as I explained to Kezia, if she’d only talked through her decision about the tutor groups with you in the summer, there would have been no need for all this tension. You girls are growing up so fast . . . it happens in every friendship. You have to be honest, try to understand what the other person’s going through and take the people you love with you.’

Kez would call this one of Bubbe’s ‘lectures’. She can go on a bit – but it’s Bubbe, so I don’t mind. ‘Really, everything’s fine now, Bubbe,’ I reassure her. ‘Can I have the bag now?’

She nods, goes into the hallway and pushes a button on the wall, which is actually a hidden cupboard. It’s so smooth the way it slides back.

‘I tucked it under there behind all the shoes . . . I’ve thrown a coat over it.’ Bubbe points it out for me.

I bend down on my hands and knees to get hold of the handle. ‘Thanks for not showing it to anyone,’ I say.

Bubbe nods and inspects the bag again like she really wants me to tell her about it.

‘Put that down on the chair for a moment. You’ll have a cup of tea and a slice of strudel with me while we chat. It was always Stan’s favourite.’

Bubbe brings a dish with a tea towel over it to the table, cuts us a slice each and hands me a plate. It’s so delicious the way the apple squidges out of the thin pastry. Bubbe laughs at the mess I’m making, pulls open a drawer in the table and hands me a serviette.

I glance down at the newspaper clipping that’s open on the table. It’s a brown colour, like it’s been tea-stained.

‘I was just about to read Stan’s obituary. I get it out every year,’ Bubbe tells me. ‘But I can’t find where I’ve put my glasses down. I should keep them around my neck really.’

‘Thanks, Laila. Let me get you a drink and then I can give it my full attention. What would you like? Apple juice?’

‘Tea!’ Bubbe sighs. ‘You girls are growing up so fast . . . I don’t know. Still, I’m the lucky one, living long enough to see Kezia’s bat mitzvah.’ Bubbe switches the kettle on and nods that she’s ready for me to start reading.

‘Stanley Levi Braverman (1930–2000), beloved husband of Dara Braverman and father of Hannah, both of whom survive him, died peacefully on 15th October 2000.

‘Stanley was a child of the Kindertransport. He arrived from Germany, aged nine, in 1939. He lived in a hostel for several years before being adopted by Dr and Mrs Feinstein of Manchester. From an early age he was a promising student with a passion for social justice. After finishing his schooling in Manchester he moved to London to study Law. At a dance in Camden Town, North London, he met his wife Dara, who was studying to be a teacher at the time . . .’

I pause. Bubbe’s standing over by the kitchen counter staring out of the window. ‘Carry on . . .’ she says. ‘The best is to come!’

‘. . . They discovered that she was also one of the Kinder. They married in 1956 and had one child, Hannah, who was born in 1966. Stanley and Dara are respected members of the North London Reform Synagogue. Our thoughts are with the family at this time.’

Bubbe keeps her back turned away from me for a while. ‘He was a treasure of a man, my Stan.’ Then she turns around. ‘He’d have loved you and Kez; he would have felt much nachas for you both.’

‘Yes, very proud he would have been of his family.’ Bubbe smiles and holds out her hand for me to give her back the newspaper clipping, then she places it carefully into a silver box with the initials SLB engraved on the top.

‘That’s kind of what this bag is, Bubbe. We had a letter from an old friend of my nana’s to pick up some of her things. I shouldn’t have gone but . . .’

I wasn’t planning to tell Bubbe the truth about the letter and going to collect the Protest Book and how Simon gave me the Banner Bag. I wasn’t going to say anything, but Bubbe has that way about her, of making it easy to talk. She sits quietly and listens. It feels so good to tell Bubbe everything.

‘That’s why I needed to hide it at yours, because no one else knows about this,’ I say as I finish. ‘Are you going to tell Mum where I was?’

‘You can tell her when you’re ready,’ Bubbe says. ‘Though I can’t pretend I’m not intrigued to have a look at the Protest Book myself when you’re ready to show me! Your nana and I were about the same age, I think. You never know, we might have been on some of those marches together.’

‘No, Laila, you hold on to your nana’s precious things. You’ll find a way to tell your family what happened when the time’s right.’ She taps my hand. ‘Now, don’t tell anyone this or they’ll think I’m losing my marbles, but sometimes when I’m looking through Stan’s old things I feel like he’s actually here sitting with me, drinking tea and listening to the radio . . . nothing ghostly, just companionable, you know?’ Bubbe laughs. ‘It’s silly, I know.’

‘So, tell me, Laila!’ she says, changing the subject. ‘How are you getting on at school? Kezia tells me you’ve made a new friend.’

She waits for a minute to see if I want to tell her anything else about my new friend, and when I don’t she nods and carries on. Bubbe knows me as well as I know Kez. Sometimes I don’t need to say anything and she gets what I’m thinking . . . ‘You know, the bat mitzvah really does take a lot of time to prepare for and Kezia’s committed to doing it as well as she can, but it’ll all be over by December and you can spend more time together then.’

‘I don’t think I really get the bat mitzvah thing. I didn’t even know she was religious before this.’

Bubbe folds her hands together. I follow the candle flame flickering this way and that, and for a moment I worry I’ve insulted her.

‘How can I explain? It’s this feeling of belonging to something beyond yourself – I think Kezia really needs that at the moment. There’s this saying in the Shabbat prayer, let me see if I can translate it . . .’ Bubbe mumbles it to herself in Hebrew. ‘First you must find who you are and then you can start to see how you connect to your community . . . The way I see it, a bat mitzvah gives you this . . . compass to help you on your way. At your age it’s quite natural to question where you belong in the world, and I think Kezia is just waking up to what’s ahead of her – but she’s not the only one, is she, Laila?’

‘And then of course there’s the getting dressed up and the party afterwards! Oh my goodness, now that’s quite something! I never had one myself. There were only bar mitzvahs in my day, for the boys.’

Bubbe holds her hands in the air as if to say, ‘Just a moment –’ as if I’ve been the one chatting on, not her.

No matter where you are in a conversation, if there’s something she’s really interested in on the news, Bubbe stops to listen. She goes over to the radio, turns up the volume and leans against the counter while she listens. Right now a politician’s being interviewed.

‘Listen to the language they use! Quotas, swarms . . . as if people are insects – or vermin!’ She holds on to the delicate gold necklace that she always wears as she concentrates.

The presenter is now interviewing a boy called Amit – his voice sounds so sweet and young.

I am ten years old. I make this journey on my own. My feet always hurting from walking so far. Nothing in my home is left. All is destroyed with shelling. I don’t know where is my mother, where is my father, my sisters . . . We have no clean water, not enough food, and here are some not good people, you know? Please, give us some safety. Make your hearts open. How can you close your borders to us? We are only children. If you turn your backs from us, we will die. Once already I have died to lose my family. Now we die a second time.

The reporter goes on to talk about something else, but Bubbe stares silently at the flickering flame of the candle for what seems like ages. Then she turns off the radio, walks over to a shelf and takes down two photos. I remember she brought them into an assembly talk she did when we were in Year Six. She places them gently on the table.

There’s a black-and-white photo of a little boy wearing shorts and a really tall girl with long, thick bunches who looks a bit like Kez.

‘Stan and me. We didn’t know each other then . . . but he was sure he remembered me from the train. Peas in a pod, he used to call us.’

Bubbe straightens up and sticks her chin in the air, like she’s trying to remember what it felt like to be tall.

‘Maybe that’s why he noticed me! I was tall when I was ten, Laila. People used to think I was a really tall girl, but that’s about as far as I got!’ She laughs.

You can still see the little girl in Bubbe’s face, even through all her lines and wrinkles.

‘I suppose you would call it chestnut. Like Kezia’s before she dyed it. Mine was quite a mane too!’ Bubbe touches her shoulder as if she can still feel curls there.

‘Stan had this story he used to tell people: he swore that we sat opposite each other on the train from Harwich to Liverpool Street. Remember the statue I took you and Kezia to see?’

‘Sometimes Stan and I would go and sit on that platform we stepped out on to. I don’t think he can really have remembered me . . . I didn’t remember him. But he said I was crying so much I wouldn’t have. It’s true that I did cry all the way. That little boy’s voice –’ she nods towards the radio – ‘took me right back there. That’s the strange thing about parting. I remember it like it was yesterday.’ Bubbe looks over to my bag. ‘Do you remember my little suitcase I brought into school when I came to talk to you?’

She goes through to her bedroom. I look at the photo of ten-year-old Bubbe, holding the suitcase. She looks so frightened.

Bubbe returns with the little leather suitcase she let us hold when she came into school. She puts it on the table, opens the clasp and takes out a pair of little shoes.

‘People might look at these –’ she points from the Banner Bag to her suitcase – ‘and see two old bags!’ She’s joking, but I don’t feel like laughing and I don’t think she does either. ‘They say you shouldn’t put new shoes on the table . . . but these are pretty old. We didn’t come with much, but these are the shoes I arrived in, Laila.’

They are plain little black shoes with silver buckles. They look a bit like tap shoes.

‘Do you know the strangest thing, Laila? They never grew at all from when I arrived. Not even half a size! Look – I’m still being carried around on my ten-year-old feet!’ Bubbe takes the shoes off and puts them back in the case. ‘I don’t get them out much.’

When I look down at Bubbe’s tiny old feet it makes me feel so sad. Like a bit of her could never grow properly again after she was forced to leave her home.