Sande Berger's Open Salon Blog

The Lie That Binds

Sat, 6 Apr 2013 13:04:14 -0400

Shortly before she passes away, my 99-year-old Aunt Irene asks if I would continue the upkeep of her sister’s grave. Something she had done for decades− since the bleak November morning, when Jean, her name was Jean, fastened her chestnut hair into plastic rollers, ordered lamb chops from her butcher, then hanged herself with the belt of a chenille bathrobe¾an item from her brand new trousseau. She had been married ten days.

            “Of course,” I say, and we finish lunch locked in a hammering silence.

I am tugged back to 1951, a time of post-war jubilation. Our family, following many of our closest cousins, had packed up and said farewell to Brooklyn, taking up residence in the second promised land—the wide-open-spaces of south shore Long Island. Adored grandparents and favorite aunts were no longer a jubilant skip or hopscotch away. Visiting anyone meant nauseating car rides on rutted roads, causing me to vomit in the backseat.

Maybe that was why Aunt Jean, already in her 40’s, decided to try her hand at marriage. She was brave, then, to become a bride¾ to up and leave her brother’s comfortable Brooklyn home and the family’s lucrative knitting business where she had worked since the age of sixteen.

For her husband, she chose an affable blue-eyed man she knew briefly through business, whose forearm bore the indelible stamp of Auschwitz. His name was Max, a Polish Jew, who was not, at all, reticent when it came to recounting the horrors and turbulence of a world Jean had deserted thirty years prior. I vaguely recall his warm cheer while he responded to the many rapid-fire questions I asked while perched on his lap¾ my fingers tracing the blurred gray numbers emblazoned under his shirtsleeve. With heads barely touching, Aunt Jean and Max formed a loving arc above my choppy bangs and pigtails.

            Then, like a random flurry in April, my aunt vanished from my life.

Desperately needing answers, I became a champion eavesdropper, hoping to decipher the strange, broken Yiddish the family spoke mostly around the kinder. Shaped like a beanpole, I leaned into dim-lit rooms, and listened to the tribal sounds of grief: wailing, muttering, shushing always followed by loud, almost comical nose-blowing. But the only truth was the vivid imagination of a young child left to fill in the blanks—a child, whose suffering multiplied inside a fragile shell of the unknown.

            Day after day, while my mother primped me for school, I tried cracking the secret code: “Mommy, please tell, where is Aunt Jean?” And whenever she responded with more than a shrug, she said my aunt and her new husband had gone on a “far away” trip. Some long honeymoon, I thought. And why never a postcard to her favorite little niece− the one she called shana madele?

I became sullen, then angry at both of them for abandoning me so easily. They had to have been the biggest fakers. Then, one night, on a sleepover at my cousin Franny’s house I was enlightened by her younger brother, Richard. Uninvited, he came galloping through the bedroom wearing his cowboy Dr. Denton’s and a homemade noose around his neck.

            “This is how Aunt Jean died,” Richard croaked between giddy yaps, jumping on and off the bed while I lay frozen in horror.

            Everything clicked. Floating fragments of a naïve hope settled on the swirling carpet, instantly banishing the lie. Soaked in sweat and shivering with fear, I begged to be driven home.

Though my parents offered more outright denial, now, at least, there were discussionsâ”€ a hinting of my aunt’s previous, undiagnosed depression. Another secret is revealed: there was a younger brother who had decided to remain in Riga while his siblings fled to America. During the war, he, his wife and baby daughter were murdered when, during the high holy days, the Nazis set their synagogue on fire.

Jean took this news the hardest. She stopped eating, barely slept and became plagued with hallucinations. Once, while working in the knitwear factory, sewing gold fleur de lis crests on a slew of cardigans, her entire body began to quake. She pleaded with my grandfather to quickly remove the crests, convinced they were Swastikas.

It became convenient to hurl blame on Aunt Jean’s husband for sharing the atrocities he’d witnessed in the concentration camp. Some surmised these tales triggered her survivor’s guilt and each new bout of depression. Everyone had a theory, including that my aunt had not been prepared for her husband’s sexual advances. Could she have felt repulsed or defamed, trapped in humiliation and knew no other way out?

As I grew older, I hated that our family’s shame about Aunt Jean’s death served to eradicate all memory of her. It was as if she had never really existed. Hadn’t she, as a kind, loving person, deserved reverence? For too long, they shared a lie about her death rather than celebrating the fact that she had lived. Ten years after Jean’s death, my grandfather bought a plot for himself and twelve remaining relatives. It was 50 miles from the cemetery where his sister was buried− a place, nobody visited.

After lunch, Aunt Irene hands me the rest of her “important papers,” bundled in thick pink rubber bands. A thumbnail photo of Jean spills from a plastic holder onto the oilcloth. I press it close to my face; “Oh, how beautiful, she was.”

My Aunt hears me, though our eyes never meet.

Sande Boritz Berger has been published in over 20 anthologies, and reviews. She received an MFA in Writing and Literature from Stony Brook Southampton College where she has completed a novel entitled: "The Sweetness."

The End of Innocence

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 12:12:59 -0500

He asks if I’ve heard about the tragedy, though, at 10, he slightly mispronounces the word. I don’t correct him, already chilled by the fact he has been told too much any child his age should ever have to know, or try to comprehend.

I nod my head knowing that his parents (I’m the grandparent) have already shared what they think he can handle, but, in truth, only what they want him to know. They have never had to do this before, and so quickly, before he hears it on the bus, playground or outside the safety of his home. But how do you shield any child in a world where IPhones, IPads, and Cable are so easily accessible? Where 10 second sound bites, accompanied by graphic visuals, spill from the screen at first click.

He is an active and interested fourth-grade boy, a child who loves to read, play and enjoys his family, though sometimes fights with his younger sister, but mostly asks a lot of questions. I know instantly that he is testing me and needs more info, but this is not my job. I can only reinforce what he has already heard: that he is loved, and safe, and that the person who committed this unimaginable act was a very, very sick young man.

“What kind of sick?” He asks, trying to remember a big word he recently heard (schizophrenia), while I am already feeling more than uncomfortable, squirming under his nervous and curious gaze.

“You are safe, sweetie,” I remind him, “you don’t have to worry about any of this.”

I’ll do the worrying, I think, more vigilantly than ever, because turns out the unimaginable can and does happen! People lied to me once, too, a long time ago, and so I am braced for the worst, as though that could soften the blows of any painful reality.

Later, I notice him sitting at the kitchen counter busily typing on his IPad, a gift definitely not bought by me. He looks up, sheepishly, knowing he’s been caught seeking more information…that what he was given was not enough or that with the resource for information, right there, he decided to take the matter literally into his own hands.

But for now, all I can do is stall him, say: “put that away, it is enough.” Do I add: “this is all lies? Make-believe?” He is much too smart for that and has, perhaps, already lost his innocence, while we… those who love him most, until today, had not noticed.

Another Brother

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 10:07:04 -0400

The night my little brother Ricky was born I ran a very high fever. Since my father, recently home from his stint in the Navy, was at the hospital with my mother and her parents, my sitter for the night was my Dad’s older brother, Uncle Barry, who woke me from my delirium with the bad news.

I did not want another brother. I pulled the blanket over my head and wailed, but Uncle Barry sat on the edge of my parent’s bed shaking my foot. “Come on, Sande,” he repeated, “you have a new baby brother!” So many years later, I can remember the tugging pain of disappointment, and the sensation of loss. I already had a brother, an annoying one at that, and I had prayed every single night for months for a sisterâ”€ someone to take care of but mostly to play with, enjoying the games I’d vividly imagined, like tea parties, paper dolls, and baking cookies. Now that I was past seven, I imagined my baby sister would look up to me, and ask me to read her stories like Cinderella, Snow White, and Hansel and Gretel. If she became frightened by scary witches, or mean stepmothers, I would hold her tightly against me and rock her, kiss the top of her head until she stopped crying.

But now as Uncle Barry felt my forehead for the tenth time, my brother, Marky, galloped through our parent’s room, the only bedroom in our apartment, yelping with joy. Only fifteen months younger than me, Marky was already excited about his new brother and soon-to-be roommate in our new home when we moved to the suburbs in the fall. I remember all the car trips we had taken looking for our special house. The one my parent’s had chosen was somewhere near sprawling white beaches and the big Atlantic Ocean, which we saw whenever we visited Coney Island.

“Oh honey, you’re burning up, but don’t worry, your Daddy will be home soon.” I didn’t believe a word my uncle said. First about the reality of another boy and that I didn’t know when my mother would be coming home from the hospital. Finally, the huge dam burst wide open, and I began sobbing into my pillow. Uncle Barry looked puzzled, as if he didn’t know what he should do. I’m sure he felt terrible because when it was time for me to go to sleep, he let me remain sprawled on my parent’s bed instead of making me go across the room and climb into what my mother called “the children’s daybeds.” She always used that term with a hint of a British accent, which didn’t fool me but might have impressed others. The fact was, until we moved, we all slept together in that one big room. And now there was going to be yet another child, another boy no less.

Daybed was a glorified label for what was Marky and my original cribs – where we had both slept since the day we were brought home from the hospital. The cribs were placed parallel to my parent’s huge bed, and we were separated by a blond wood double dresser. If we stood up in our cribs, we were able to easily lean over and reach inside that forbidden land: Daddy’s top drawer. And it was obvious from the drawer’s contents that my parents had never considered childproofing their bedroom, which had become our bedroom as well. Inside that mysterious drawer, we discovered packages of razor blades, strange-looking coins, packets of little rubber disks (we’d broken and tried blowing up one or two), but best of all was this especially delicious chocolate candy in a bright blue wrapper that we ate only once before learning a most uncomfortable lesson.

A few months before, when my cousin Arnie, Uncle Barry’s son, was babysitting for us, he most likely assumed we were fast asleep. Sharing a bedroom with our mother and father had taught us to be very quiet, especially during our mischievous times. Arnie, a handsome, body-builder type was probably down the hallway and in the kitchen, talking on the phone to one of his several girlfriends. Maybe an hour went by, maybe less, when Arnie heard the scampering of his charges’ little feet as we rushed into the only bathroom, Marky and me, doubled over with the most awful stomach pains, practically tearing each other from the toilet seat. By the time we were discovered, we had shared an entire bar of Ex-Lax, which caused much discomfort that continued well into the next day. Only after a few mashed bananas did we begin to feel better. It has always amazed me that, even having experienced that sickening incident, I became and still am addicted to anything chocolate.

But that night, the night my baby brother was born, I lay in my parents’ bed shivering. I could fall asleep only after I heard the front door open and shut, and recognized my uncle’s and Dad’s voices as they laughed together out in the dark hallway. Knowing how I had felt that night, the wretched disappointment, I’m sure I must have thought: Sure! Right! They are both so overjoyed. Doesn’t everyone love little boys, especially fathers who dream of baseball, games of catch, and fishing? Aren’t they so much more fun than us silly girls? At school, on the playground during recess, I’d already noticed how the girls were always being teased, how they seemed to be their own worst enemies as they hung around the boys waiting for a twig of attention. Yet girls were the best at taunting one another while the boys looked on with either boredom or a detached fascination. If only the girls knew then that they might have benefitted had they bonded together. But what was most noticeable and caused a kind of festering resentment, was how the women in our family performed an almost sun-worshipping, mystical dance around our family’s eclectic troop of men. It was not uncommon to hear things like: “shush, shush, they’ll be home soon, we shouldn’t upset them, or use of: “my Charlie, my Nate, my Fred, my poor boy, Roy,” all said with a strange mix of devotion, responsibility, and possessiveness. And so now there was another they could add to their list.

Excerpted from my memoir in progress

Baby Girl by Sande Boritz Berger

Tue, 26 Jun 2012 22:06:06 -0400

Baby Girl

Sandra Fern

I was a war baby, the first child and only girl. In the years when I could finally understand, my mother never missed a chance to tell me that she had suffered two awful miscarriages before me, so I understood that I was her third, and lucky try, yet if not for the difficulties during those previous pregnancies, I would have never arrived. The thought of that was unimaginable to me and more than a bit shocking.

How could my entire existence be so precarious? Instead of a girl, with big hazel eyes, and chubby thighs, I might have been just another egg, sloughed off with all the dozens of others that came before me. Oh, and then the other story she liked to tell was that I was born with the umbilical cord wrapped tightly around my neck and nearly died.

Though these tales fascinated me, I was always aware of my mother’s matter-of-fact approach in their telling. I think what I wanted was to hear how happy she had finally become, or that something miraculous had now changed her life for the better, and that the something was having me, finally, a healthy child- a daughter. I wanted to know that my birth and entry into the world was not paired with memories of remorse or regret.

Fifteen months later, with the war over and my father safely returned from his stint in the Navy, my mother gave birth with little complication to another child, this time a boy. Since we lived across the street from my grandmother’s house in Brooklyn, there were always surrogates to help out with babies. Besides my grandmother, there were my two unmarried aunts. Both were happy to look after their niece and nephew, intent on earning their keep so far from their homeland in Vilna, and living, since they were teenagers, in their brother’s house.

In most of the baby pictures of me, which are just a few, I appear owl-eyed and cautious, even a bit worried. Told again and again that I was a terrible sleeper, I was tossed around a lot, passed from body to body, from scent to scent. Was I searching for her, my mother? A lifetime later, I am still restless.

Sticks and Stones

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 22:06:26 -0400

By Sande Boritz Berger

Even now, an entire lifetime later, it is hard to admit that I was bullied. I said nothing. I told no one. Bullying was usually accompanied by severe warnings: tell and you will be sorry!

But I was already sorry, just for being me, the youngest girl in the seventh grade, the skinniest too, who had earned the nickname: The Stick. While most of the girls were already maturing and menstruating, I looked like a refugee from a third world country, bony and underfed. I woke up each morning nauseous and fearful with a case of dry heaves. Sometimes, I feigned sickness so to stay home from school, but my mother looked for a fever of 101 to make that decision. Sometimes I made it to homeroom only to go immediately to the nurse’s office where, after one look at my jaundiced face, she sent me home. My grades suffered, I fell behind.

The bullies were a few girls the others called…the hoods. They looked a lot older in their tight skirts and fitted sweaters, like grown women. One or two had gotten pregnant, halfway through the year, and had to leave school. Most took beauty culture classes, and walked around all day with hot pink hair, sometimes wearing big rollers and lots of black eyeliner and pale lipstick. Part of me wanted to be just them- to feel empowered. I hated when they surrounded me by my locker, teasing me for my looks: my mousy, flyaway hair, my concave chest, my double- decker braces.

Once, when I opened my locker at the beginning of the school day, what seemed like all the silverware from the cafeteria came spilling out on top of me and onto the floor. Of course, it was the humiliation that was always so painful, the being sorted out for being what? Small? Timid? Shy? Miraculously, I got through this time, the difficult transition to junior high, with the help of some other girls that enjoyed mothering me, and so they took me under their wing. There were advantages to being small, and I learned quickly to use those to my benefit. But just when I thought all the teasing had ceased, a big package arrived one afternoon at our front door. The box was from Saks Fifth Avenue, a store we never frequented. It was addressed to me, but my mother was truly excited as she ripped open the tape surrounding the long rectangular box. A note card simply stated: To Sticky…enjoy! Inside the box, tied in red satin ribbons, were enough sticks to make a small barn fire. Like me, they were brittle, and broken, and dry. I had the opportunity to tell my mother then, but I never did.