Never Home

Never Home

The Otherness of Immigrants

by Norma Armon

Copyright © 2024 Norma Armon

Published by SkillBites LLC

https://skillbites.net/

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a book of fiction loosely based on a narrative and notes derived from a few photographs and grudgingly surrendered anecdotes as sources for some of the characters, incidents, and tales portrayed here. This is a novel, NOT a true story.

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-952281-71-6

eBook ISBN: 978-1-952281-72-3

Table of Contents

Dedication

Prologue

BREADWINNER

ENTREPRENEUR

THE HEART HAS EYES

GETTING ON WITH IT

THE DESTINED ONE

BEST LAID PLANS

WANDERING JEWS

STREETS PAVED WITH GOLD

PREGNANT PAUSES

GOITTIE’S CASTLE

AT LONG LAST

Glossary

Acknowledgments

Author bio

Dedication

To displaced persons who become immigrants: may your dream of belonging come true.

Prologue

S  o, you want to hear the family lore: you keep asking where our ancestors came from, why they left their birthplace, and how they ended up where they did. You get that from your mother who, years ago, also begged to hear our stories. One day, if I keep up writing, you’ll learn about your grandparents’ and their parent’s adventures; to glean who they were through their memorable actions; to better understand what made them tick by listening to their tales and what they lived through.

The massive, weather-beaten, locked-up trunk kept in one of the empty rooms next to the garage at the back of the house at Campeones #37, fascinated your mother. Whenever I spring-cleaned, she hovered around hoping I’d let her look inside the once-black trunk I dusted carefully: maybe she could talk me into telling an anecdote prompted by the sepia photographs and yellowing letters with the thin, black, spidery handwriting it contained.

You’ve interviewed me and asked myriad questions so as to clarify relationships and family connections. You’ve done it gingerly, without emphasis, almost off-handedly, afraid to show too much interest, hoping to delay my inevitable "Why do you want to hear such bobe maises?"¹ when you pressed too much.

Because you never came up with a good enough reply, my question cut off the conversation. Now I can tell you the answer: so those who come after us can know; to recognize the elder from whom that particular character trait derived or understand the source of a peculiar emotional tic. To identify roots and connect to the past.

Don’t be disappointed if others in the family dismiss these stories. I expect that every character in the cast will have an objection to some part of it. Unconditional love is an ideal that most of us do not easily achieve. And having one’s dirty laundry hung in public is never pleasant. But, no story is worth telling unless the characters are true to life, warts and all.

I’ve always been reluctant to speak about the past, leading everyone to think the topic was almost forbidden. Although the Torah commands Recall the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy elders, and they will tell thee. (Deut. 32-7), your grandfather and I chose not to. We ignored l’dor va dor – the biblical injunction to maintain a link from one generation to the next.

When I die, you’ll inherit those photo albums and can become the custodian of our past. The albums contain pictures that have often served to prompt my memories. They were all I saved in the fire that destroyed my home.

To tell is one thing, to commit to paper is another. I haven’t been very successful at it. I’ve been piecing together scraps of notes with anecdotes grudgingly surrendered by some of the protagonists, years after the events took place. Those tidbits were but kernels of the tales. I’m trying to weave them together into a novel that flows.

Clearly, even the facts come through each narrator’s prism, colored by emotion, selected to make their point, to meet a particular agenda. After all, much of what I’ve gathered is based on siblings assessing siblings, and you know how hairy that can be. Certainly, some of their judgments are biased, and of course, there will be unwitting distortions of my own. Keep in mind that some of the stories are based on hearsay, pieced together through deduction and conjecture, and many are inconclusive.

It’s taken much of my life to become willing to share my past, particularly with family. I didn’t want anyone to know my failings: the many times I dodged being caught flaunting rules or regulations or avoided showing love to my dear ones. Most of the time, I didn’t have empathy for others’ lesser capabilities or fewer advantages to deal with the ups and downs of life. Decades of experiences have served as a process of healing. I never thought I could love you or my children so much or just enjoy playing with Rover in the yard or delight in inviting everyone in our extended family to come here to celebrate holidays and reunions.

Life didn’t use to be this way. I was much more driven when I was young, proud to be considered a never-satisfied, unbending taskmaster. My purpose in life was to be a truthteller, no matter how hurtful; to be perceived by others as the model of meeting goals I set; and above all, to have those around me meet those goals even when they wouldn’t or couldn’t. My expectations allowed me no understanding of human nature or the ability to enjoy the learning derived from being supportive instead of dismissive, the pleasure of giving and receiving. I am forever grateful for the lessons derived and for being older yet happier, healthier, surrounded by people I admire and love, and feeling loved as well.

I’m the only one who can pass these stories on, and I’m beginning to forget them. They should be made available to the next generation, and inspire you to become the keeper of memories for those who come after. Our ancestors bequeath us our past; without it, we belong to no one.

G.G.

New York

1978

¹ This book contains several words and phrases that are in Yiddish. A glossary of terms can be found at the end of the book.

BREADWINNER

Krasnoe

1.

In the fading afternoon light, Binyamin Gesheftman strained to make out the Hebrew characters in the musty book. Behind the glasses, his brown eyes narrowed to discern the dots and slashes on the page. He intoned the passages he had to memorize, pondering on the significance of his impending bar mitzvah . Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha olam …Binyamin shuddered; once those blessings were uttered, he’d be bound to the commandments, now held accountable before God and counted one of the minyan . Binyamin cringed. It was an awesome responsibility, indeed!

Earlier in the day, the crack that rippled along the ceiling allowed in a shaft of light; by now, with the sun sinking into the horizon, the central room of the tiny house was almost dark. Binyamin hesitated before lighting the candle. He got one a week on Shabbat and it had only been two days ago. He remained seated in the now dark corner; hugged by dusky shadows that helped conceal him from his siblings. Although slight of build, Binyamin was quick and sometimes able to evade corpulent Menashe’s physical attacks. With his sharp wit, he easily parried Esther’s and Raisl’s taunts. However, Binyamin preferred to avoid conflict altogether. He thought fighting was a waste of time, so he hid to avoid his tormentors.

Tatte was his sole ally in the household, providing the only encouragement he received. Binyamin remembered watching Yosef sternly hush the others and place a candle next to him, saying, Leave the boy alone, he’s done his chores, let him read in peace.

Menashe had become the oldest male child when Isaiah, the firstborn, was killed. Isaiah had been drafted into the Tzar’s army during the build-up after the Russo-Japanese War. Menashe wielded the rights of the eldest imperiously. Just 13 with the defiant attitude of one much older, the short, stocky youth demanded—and received—what few advantages were available in the Gesheftman household. Right after his bar mitzvah, Menashe was apprenticed to Shuster, the village shoemaker. A year later, Yosef brought from Vinnytsia a machine to cut the holes to thread the shoelaces.

Soon, Menashe had his own thriving business making shoe toppers for Shuster. Hearing the ping and thwap of the hole puncher brought visions of clinking coins to Binyamin’s mind. His was the personality of an entrepreneur who chafed at having to follow anyone’s orders. Binyamin raged inwardly at the order of birth succession which kept him from being the boss.

Once Yosef left for America, Menashe would become the breadwinner— which meant the younger children would painstakingly produce the shoe toppers while Menashe ordered them around, collected and stashed the profits, and occasionally gave Mama a few groschen to feed the family.

Binyamin was certain his work days would grow longer once Yosef left. Beatings would be more frequent and school forbidden with Menashe in unsupervised charge. Within the traditional Jewish pecking order, Binyamin had few prerogatives as the youngest son. Only his sisters, being girls, suffered more abuse than he.

The thought of his father’s departure was enough to twist Binyamin’s stomach into knots. In an effort to quell his fear, Binyamin chanted the bar mitzvah lesson over and over determined to memorize the Hebrew texts to avoid dwelling on what was sure to be Menashe’s unbridled reign of terror. I need to come up with a scheme to get rid of that mamzer! Like Jacob in the Bible, he needed to overturn the accident of birth that favored his Esau-like brother.

As if thinking about him materialized Menashe, Binyamin heard him call out, You there, Binyamin! You’ll be in the White Army against us, the Red Army. He was playing war games with his friends and was intent on dragging his younger brother into the fray.

Binyamin didn’t respond, but he could hear the stomp of Menashe’s feet and the whoosh of the rope that he used as a whip to emphasize his pronouncements.

You’ll be in the opposing army against me, Menashe thundered, his beady, brown eyes flashing dangerously. For a real battle, they need another soldier, so drop the books and get yourself (whoosh) outside (whoosh).

I’m no soldier. I don’t fight, Binyamin protested. Fighting is stupid and make-believe fighting is even more stupid.

You fight if I say so, roared Menashe, his fury mounting. He flung Binyamin’s book to the ground, dragged him up from his corner, and shoved him toward the door.

You’ll have to catch me first, countered Binyamin as he raced out, knowing full well that Menashe couldn’t catch up to him. When he was out of sight, Binyamin doubled back, avoiding his brother’s wrath.

While Menashe and other boys excitedly recreated war encounters, Binyamin stayed away. Of course, he’d heard the rumors that filtered into the village about new armies being gathered and men once again being taken from their families. He knew his father was leaving to avoid being drafted. The new battles being fought were among various factions with strange-sounding names: White Russians, Bolsheviks, and Communists.

Binyamin had only been nine years old when his eldest brother, Isaiah, was taken away to serve in the Tzar’s army. Four years later, he hardly remembered Isaiah. But he would never forget his father’s piercing wail as he read the note informing them Isaiah had been killed in action in the Russo-Japanese War.

The seven days that followed Isaiah’s death compounded Binyamin’s belief that war was the worst of horrors and to be avoided at all costs. The house was shuttered down, the mirror covered by a sheet, and his somber-faced, silent parents sat on cushions on the ground while neighbors filed in to mouth hushed condolences.

Binyamin salivated at the mountainous platters of gefilte fish and cholent and kishkah that visitors brought, catering to the Jewish belief that events were made happier—or less sorrowful—on a full stomach. But the pain and sorrow displayed, as Isaiah’s death was mourned during the shivah, made it crystal clear to Binyamin: I will never serve in any Army; I will do everything I can to avoid fighting of any kind.

In spite of his pacifist tendencies, now and then Binyamin yearned for one of those armies to reach Krasnoe. He wondered whether they ever would—and what that would mean for him. He was 13 and too young to be drafted, but Menashe, ah yes! Menashe was older, as Binyamin was never allowed to forget. Maybe, just maybe, Menashe would be taken away, Binyamin thought with relish. Binyamin dreamed of being in charge, certain he would do a much better job of it than his tyrannical brother. Sooner than he imagined, he too would have occasion to recall his father’s oft-repeated warning, Be careful what you wish for—you never know when God will grant it as punishment!

Soon, there’ll be no hiding, Binyamin murmured. "What will happen when Tatte goes to America? Who’ll protect me from that bastard—that mamzer? Tatte leaves when I become bar mitzvah!" His shoulders sagged and he massaged his Adam’s apple to ease the knot in his throat. Without Yosef’s presence to restrain Menashe, Binyamin feared for his life. He had seen his brother’s bad temper turn to fury and knew firsthand the consequences of his attacks. Would he be able to continue finding ways to avoid his brother’s violent outbursts and aggressions?

2.

Not that his father was much protection; Yosef Gesheftman never came back home before the sun set. And two days a week he was on the road from their village, Krasnoe, to Vinnytsia, the market town to the North, only to return home even later. Binyamin once asked Yosef why the family didn’t just move to Vinnytsia so he wouldn’t have to travel so much.

Jews aren’t allowed to live in Vinnytsia, his father replied. The year Yankl was born, the Tzar granted the Cossacks the right to kill any Jew they found closer than 35 kilometers from a town. We have to live in villages at the proper distance from the town.

So we’re forced to live in a Jewish ghetto, Binyamin said.

"No, my son, think of it as undzere shtetl, our village," Yosef corrected kindly.

Yosef bought, sold, and bartered the goods of the shtetl among the villagers. On Mondays and Thursdays, he traveled the 35 kilometers to Vinnytsia to sell the remaining wares and purchase staples ordered by his neighbors: flour for the widow Sopher who was cooking for her entire family for Rosh Hashanah; a new wheel for Mendel’s cart; a feather to brighten up little Hannah’s wedding dress.

The rest of the week, Binyamin’s father, the rag peddler, could be seen ambling along the dirt roads of the shtetl coaxing Beheime, their mangy-looking mare, to keep pulling the cart. To the village housewives, Yosef was a familiar sight in his worn dark blue jacket and carefully mended white shirt, more suited for sitting behind a desk than collecting and delivering odds and ends. He sported a faded fedora precariously perched on his abundant curly black hair in an attempt to keep the dust off.

Leaving the cart on the side of the dirt road, Yosef walked slowly between rows of dilapidated houses, tinkling a bell to announce his coming. The housewives flocked out to pick up the supplies he bought for them, display their cast-offs, or bargain for someone else’s. The women kept up a volley of chatter with the rag peddler while they picked up and placed their orders or showed what they wanted to trade. Yosie’s broad smile was almost completely hidden behind a massive beard and whiskers; but the facial hair couldn’t hide his twinkling hazel eyes.

So, Yosele, what’s new? Did you know that… Have you heard who Yente is seeing in Mintz? What’s wrong with Moishe? They brought the doctor from Chelm to look at him! Yosef’s customers all called out in unison, wanting to be the first to provide the most recent gossip and Yosef seldom needed to respond—he knew it was more about letting them have their say.

Yosef selected his occupation with unerring instinct. It provided a seemly living for his family, allowed him to indulge his delight in exchanging jokes, spreading gossip, and to enjoy the only spotlight available to an ignorant, un-bookish Jewish man. Above all, it offered a much-needed respite from Malkah—his strait-laced, domineering, nit-picking, somber wife and the continuous bickering among their five children. In the evenings, after a grueling day, Yosef was forced to listen to Malkah’s constant daily grousing.

In an attempt to forestall his wife’s barrage of complaints, Yosef told her a little about his day. Today, Frau Melamed said they might soon be having Yente’s wedding…

Bent over, tending the wood fire in the same position he’d left her in the morning, Malkah grumbled without looking up, Why on earth waste time talking to those harpies?

Sha, sha, Malkah, you should be nicer to the neighbors, Yosef replied. Just today, Rifka, the tailor’s wife, asked after you.

Maybe you should talk less and work more, Malkah muttered, wiping her brow with a corner of the ever-present black shawl draped around her shoulders. You run around making nice to those fishwives, enjoying yourself, while I have to add more and more water to the soup to feed your children.

Your children… the harbinger of the complaint contained in the daily litany of the sibling’s squabbles: today, Menashe had pulled the pins out of the dress his sister Esther was altering, then used them as bars between cardboard rounds to cage flies whose wings he had pulled off. Then, he’d hidden Binyamin’s glasses or doodled on his books, or erased the cheating marks on his brother Yankl’s playing cards. Raisl, the youngest, whimpered incessantly about the bloodied nose Menashe had given her when she tattled that he had unraveled Esther’s knitting, while Esther moaned about having lost her hard-earned kopeks playing cards with Yankl.

As Yosef listened to Malkah drone on the recitation of the day’s frustrations, he hung his head in guilt. Soon I’ll be free of her complaints for a few years…and if all goes well, I can bring the family over and if life gets better in America, maybe Malkah will stop with the kvetching. Why is Malkah angry all the time? The matchmaker described Malkah Seltzer as a quiet girl from a well-to-do family from Kishinev. She wasn’t like this when we first married. She didn’t smile much, but she didn’t complain like now. Of course, marriage meant moving to a shtetl from her fancy home in Kishinev, and having so many children and so little money, and having to work hard when she wouldn’t have lifted a finger before.

The decision to go to America after Binyamin’s bar mitzvah had been prompted by the rumblings of new wars and fear of the draft. The last war against the Japanese had taken his first son away, and now there were increasing rumors of other wars and escalating prohibitions against Jews. By emigrating now—with hard work and a little luck—Yosef could get the family over to America before the pogroms—which generally started at the same time as wars—began, looking for Jews to be blamed. His hands became clammy with fear of what he—and the family—would have to face before they were reunited in New York. He understood Malkah’s current source of upset: remaining alone with five children to feed and little income until he started sending money from America.

In his secluded corner, Binyamin tried to drown out his mother’s accusatory recital of the day’s events as he intoned what he believed must be at least the hundredth repetition of the second Torah blessing. The scent of chicken soup wafting up to his nostrils made him salivate. He closed his eyes and visualized Yosef, dressed in the long white robe and embroidered head cover, responding with the prayer traditionally murmured by the bar mitzvah’s father: Baruch she-petarani me-onsho shel zeh. Blessed is He who has freed me of the obligation of my son.

3.

Binyamin’s bar mitzvah took place. He’d recited his portion of the Torah not too haltingly, didn’t falter much or make too many mistakes, and thought his father looked at him with a proud gleam in his eyes. He felt like a man when he managed to swallow his sobs and pretended not to notice his father’s tears as they hugged goodbye, but now Tatte was leaving. He promised it would only be for a few years until he could save up to buy the visas and passages to bring the whole family to America.

America! Binyamin savored the