I Lost Touch With My Childhood Love When We Fled Poland, but Decades Later, He Sent Me Something I Never Expected
\nThe Swallow Pendant
\nPart One: The Courtyard
\nMy name is Zofia Lewin Berman. Everyone has called me Zoe since I came to America, but that was not the name my mother gave me.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m ninety-six years old. I live in a brick two-flat on the Northwest Side of Chicago with my granddaughter, Maya, and a cat named Pierogi who believes he owns the building. My knees don\u2019t work as well as they used to, and my eyes need glasses thick as the bottom of a jar. But my memory is still very good.<\/p>\n
Sometimes too good.<\/p>\n
I was born in Warsaw in 1929, in an apartment building on Twarda Street. It was four stories tall, yellow stone, with iron balconies and a courtyard in the middle where children played and women hung laundry on lines strung between the windows.<\/p>\n
My family lived on the third floor. My father was a watchmaker with a small shop around the corner. My mother taught piano to the children of doctors and lawyers. My little brother, Aron, was four years younger than me and followed me everywhere like a duckling.<\/p>\n
Our grandmother lived with us too. Babcia Ruchla. She had white hair pinned up in a bun and hands that smelled of cinnamon, and every Friday evening she lit two tall brass candlesticks on our dining table and sang a blessing in a voice so soft you had to lean in to hear it.<\/p>\n
Across the hall from us lived the Nowak family.<\/p>\n
Mr. Nowak drove a streetcar. Mrs. Nowak sewed dresses for half the women in the building. They had one son, Stanislaw, who was eleven months older than me and the most stubborn boy in all of Warsaw.<\/p>\n
He had brown hair that stuck up in the back no matter how much his mother wet it down. He had a gap between his front teeth and freckles across his nose, and he could whistle louder than anyone I\u2019d ever heard.<\/p>\n
He was my best friend.<\/p>\n
We walked to school together every morning. His school was Catholic and mine was not, but they were on the same street, so we walked side by side until the corner. Then he\u2019d go left and I\u2019d go right, and we\u2019d meet at the same corner every afternoon.<\/p>\n
We traded books. He liked adventure stories about pirates and explorers. I liked stories about girls who did brave things. We\u2019d read each other\u2019s favorites and then argue about them for days.<\/p>\n
In the summer, we stayed outside in the courtyard until our mothers leaned out the windows and called us home. We played tag with the other children. We caught fireflies in jars. We sat on the stone steps and talked about what we\u2019d do when we grew up.<\/p>\n
He wanted to build bridges.<\/p>\n
\u201cBig ones,\u201d he said. \u201cOver rivers. So big they reach the clouds.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBridges don\u2019t reach the clouds,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMine will,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I wanted to be a teacher. Like my mother, but for reading instead of piano.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019d be good at that,\u201d Stanislaw said. \u201cYou\u2019re always telling me what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
I hit him on the arm. He laughed so hard he fell off the step.<\/p>\n
Part Two: The Promise
\nIt was a warm evening in June of 1939. I was ten years old.<\/p>\n
We were sitting on the stone steps in the courtyard, eating cherries from a paper bag his mother had bought at the market. We were spitting the pits into a flowerpot to see who could get them in from farther away. I was winning.<\/p>\n
The sun was going down, and the yellow walls of our building had turned orange and pink. Somebody upstairs was playing a gramophone. The swallows were diving over the rooftops the way they did every summer evening, swooping and turning in the last of the light.<\/p>\n
Stanislaw stopped spitting cherry pits. He got very quiet, which was unusual for him.<\/p>\n
\u201cZofia,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen we grow up, I\u2019m going to marry you.\u201d<\/p>\n
I laughed. I couldn\u2019t help it. He looked so serious, with cherry juice on his chin.<\/p>\n
\u201cFine,\u201d I said. \u201cBut you\u2019d better not forget.\u201d<\/p>\n
He held out his hand. His little finger was crooked from when he\u2019d broken it falling out of a tree.<\/p>\n
\u201cI promise,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I hooked my finger around his.<\/p>\n
Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out something wrapped in a handkerchief.<\/p>\n
He unwrapped it carefully. Inside was a tiny pendant on a thin chain. A swallow, made of silver and blue enamel, about the size of my thumbnail. Its wings were spread like it was flying.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother let me pick it out,\u201d he said. \u201cFrom the shop on Marsza\u0142kowska. I saved for four months.\u201d<\/p>\n
He held it out to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cSwallows always come back,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery spring. No matter how far they fly. That\u2019s how you\u2019ll remember.\u201d<\/p>\n
I put it on. It sat right at the base of my throat, cool against my skin.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll never take it off,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019d better not,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
And then he went back to spitting cherry pits like nothing had happened. I won that contest too.<\/p>\n
That was the last summer evening we ever spent together.<\/p>\n
Part Three: September
\nBy August, everyone in our building was whispering.<\/p>\n
The grown-ups gathered in the stairwell and talked in low voices. My father stayed late at his shop listening to the radio. My mother stopped giving piano lessons. Babcia Ruchla spent more time at the window than she used to, watching the street.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t understand most of what they said. I only understood that something was coming, and that the grown-ups were afraid.<\/p>\n
One night at the end of August, my father sat me down at the kitchen table.<\/p>\n
\u201cZofia,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re going on a trip. A long one. To America.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAmerica?\u201d I said. \u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t answer right away. He looked at my mother. My mother looked at the floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause it\u2019s safer,\u201d he said finally. \u201cFor people like us. My cousin in Chicago sent us papers. We have to go now, while we still can.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cTomorrow night,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat about Stanislaw?\u201d<\/p>\n
My father put his hand on mine.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can say goodbye in the morning,\u201d he said. \u201cBut you can\u2019t tell him where we\u2019re going, Zofia. You can\u2019t tell anyone. Do you understand?\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t understand. But I nodded.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t get to say goodbye.<\/p>\n
In the morning, the Nowaks\u2019 door was locked. Mrs. Nowak had taken Stanislaw to visit her sister in the countryside for two days. They\u2019d left before dawn.<\/p>\n
I stood in front of their door for a long time. I knocked. Nobody answered.<\/p>\n
We left that night.<\/p>\n
We could each bring one suitcase. My mother packed clothes and photographs. My father packed his watchmaker\u2019s tools wrapped in velvet. Aron packed his wooden horse.<\/p>\n
I packed my school notebook, two dresses, and the book Stanislaw had lent me the week before. It was an adventure story about two children lost in Africa. I hadn\u2019t finished it yet.<\/p>\n
Babcia Ruchla didn\u2019t come.<\/p>\n
She stood in the doorway in her nightgown and refused. She said she was too old for boats and trains and strange countries. She said she\u2019d been born in Warsaw and she\u2019d die in Warsaw. She said somebody had to stay and keep the apartment.<\/p>\n
My father begged her. My mother cried. Babcia only shook her head.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be fine,\u201d she said. \u201cThe Nowaks are right across the hall. They\u2019ll look after me.\u201d<\/p>\n
She kissed each of us on the forehead. When she got to me, she held my face in her cinnamon-smelling hands.<\/p>\n
\u201cBe brave, my little bird,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd come back someday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then she pressed something into my hand. A small iron key on a loop of string.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe key to our door,\u201d she said. \u201cSo you can always get back in.\u201d<\/p>\n
We left Warsaw on a train at midnight. Then another train. Then a boat. Then another boat, much bigger, that took eleven days to cross the ocean.<\/p>\n
On September first, while we were on the train to the coast, the war began.<\/p>\n
We arrived in New York in October. Then we took a train to Chicago, where my father\u2019s cousin had found us a tiny apartment above a bakery on Milwaukee Avenue.<\/p>\n
It was cold. The buildings were tall and dark. Everyone spoke English so fast I couldn\u2019t understand a word.<\/p>\n
My teacher at the new school couldn\u2019t pronounce Zofia. She called me Sophie. Then the other children started calling me Zoe. By the end of the first year, even my parents had started using it.<\/p>\n
Part Four: The Silence
\nWe wrote letters.<\/p>\n
My mother wrote to Babcia every week. I wrote to Stanislaw. I told him about Chicago, about the lake that looked like an ocean, about the snow that came up to my knees. I told him I still wore the swallow every day.<\/p>\n
None of the letters were ever answered.<\/p>\n
The war went on for six years.<\/p>\n
We heard things on the radio. Terrible things. We saw pictures in the newspapers that my mother tore out and hid before Aron could see them. My father stopped talking at dinner. He\u2019d sit at the table and stare at nothing, turning his wedding ring around and around on his finger.<\/p>\n
When the war ended in 1945, my father wrote to the Red Cross. He wrote to every agency and organization he could find. He asked about Babcia Ruchla. He asked about the Nowak family. He asked about our building on Twarda Street.<\/p>\n
The answers came slowly, over many years.<\/p>\n
Our building had been destroyed. Most of the street was gone. There were no records of Ruchla Lewin after 1942. There were no records of the Nowak family at all.<\/p>\n
My father put the letters in a drawer and never spoke about them again.<\/p>\n
I kept the swallow pendant.<\/p>\n
I wore it every day through high school. I wore it when I went to college at the University of Illinois and studied to become a teacher, just like I\u2019d told Stanislaw I would.<\/p>\n
I wore it the day I met Abe Berman at a dance at the Jewish community center. He was tall and gentle and laughed at all my jokes, even the bad ones.<\/p>\n
I married Abe in 1951.<\/p>\n
On my wedding day, I took the swallow off for the first time in twelve years. I put it in a small velvet box in my dresser drawer.<\/p>\n
I told myself it was time to let go.<\/p>\n
Part Five: A Long Life
\nAbe and I had a good life. A very good life. I want to make sure you understand that.<\/p>\n
We had three children. Ruth, David, and Miriam. We bought a little brick house in Albany Park. Abe worked as an accountant for forty years. I taught third grade at a public school on Lawrence Avenue for thirty-four years.<\/p>\n
I taught thousands of children to read. Some of them were immigrants like I\u2019d been, who arrived not knowing a word of English. I always made sure to learn how to pronounce their names correctly.<\/p>\n
Abe died in 2009. A stroke, very fast. He was eighty-two. We\u2019d been married fifty-eight years.<\/p>\n
After the funeral, I sat alone in our bedroom and opened the dresser drawer. The velvet box was still there.<\/p>\n
I took out the swallow. I held it for a long time.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t put it on. But I didn\u2019t put it back in the drawer either. I kept it in my pocket for a week before I finally returned it.<\/p>\n
My children grew up and had children of their own. I became a grandmother. Then a great-grandmother.<\/p>\n
Poland and Stanislaw became distant memories from another life. Sometimes I dreamed about the courtyard on Twarda Street. The orange light on the yellow walls. The swallows diving over the rooftops. Cherry pits in a flowerpot.<\/p>\n
But when I woke up, I was in Chicago, and I was old, and that little girl was gone.<\/p>\n
My granddaughter Maya moved in with me three years ago.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s my daughter Miriam\u2019s youngest. She\u2019s twenty-nine, with dark curly hair like mine used to be and a laugh like Abe\u2019s. She\u2019s a physical therapist. She helps old people learn to walk again after strokes and surgeries.<\/p>\n
She said she moved in to help me with groceries and stairs. But I think she moved in because she was lonely after a breakup and needed somewhere soft to land. We take care of each other.<\/p>\n
When Maya graduated from her physical therapy program, I gave her the swallow pendant.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d thought about it for a long time. My daughters had never been interested in old jewelry. My other grandchildren lived far away.<\/p>\n
But Maya used to sit with me when she was little and ask about Warsaw. She was the only one who ever wanted to hear the stories. She would sit on the floor with her chin in her hands and say, \u201cTell me about the courtyard again, Grandma.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a swallow,\u201d I told her, as I fastened it around her neck. \u201cThey always come back. No matter how far they fly.\u201d<\/p>\n
She touched it with her fingertips.<\/p>\n
\u201cWho gave it to you?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cA boy,\u201d I said. \u201cA long time ago. In Warsaw.\u201d<\/p>\n
She smiled. \u201cWas he cute?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had a gap in his teeth and cherry juice on his chin,\u201d I said. \u201cHe was the most stubborn boy in Poland.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maya laughed.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s worn it every day since.<\/p>\n
Part Six: The Package
\nIt was a Tuesday evening in early October. The leaves on the maple tree outside our window were turning red. I was in the kitchen making chicken soup, because it was cold and Maya had looked tired that morning.<\/p>\n
I heard her come up the stairs. She was walking slower than usual.<\/p>\n
When she came into the kitchen, she was holding a small package. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with old-fashioned string.<\/p>\n
Her face looked strange. Pale.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrandma,\u201d she said. \u201cSomething really strange happened at work today.\u201d<\/p>\n
I turned off the stove.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
She set the package on the kitchen table very carefully, like it might break.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know I\u2019ve been working at Saint Hedwig\u2019s Senior Residence,\u201d she said. \u201cOn Belmont Avenue.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Polish one,\u201d I said. \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a man there,\u201d Maya said. \u201cHe\u2019s in the memory care wing, but he\u2019s not confused. He just moved there because he fell last spring and broke his hip. I\u2019ve been doing his physical therapy for six weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
She sat down at the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s very old,\u201d she said. \u201cNinety-seven, I think. He doesn\u2019t talk much. He mostly just watches the window. But he\u2019s always polite. He always says thank you in Polish.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cToday,\u201d Maya said, \u201cI was helping him with his walker exercises. And he kept staring at me. At my neck.\u201d<\/p>\n
She reached up and touched the swallow pendant.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe asked where I got it,\u201d she said. \u201cI told him my grandmother gave it to me. He asked where my grandmother was from. I said Warsaw.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her voice got very quiet.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe stopped walking,\u201d she said. \u201cHe just stood there holding the walker, staring at me. And then he asked if my grandmother\u2019s name was Zofia.\u201d<\/p>\n
My heart skipped.<\/p>\n
Nobody had called me Zofia in decades. In America, everyone knew me as Zoe. Even my children. Even Abe, most of the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did you say?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said yes,\u201d Maya said. \u201cAnd he sat down right there in the hallway. On the floor. With his broken hip. The nurses came running.\u201d<\/p>\n
My hands were shaking. I put them on the table to make them stop.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs he all right?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s fine,\u201d Maya said. \u201cHe wouldn\u2019t let them help him up for a long time. He just sat there crying. Then he asked me to wait. He asked one of the nurses to bring something from his room.\u201d<\/p>\n
She pushed the package toward me across the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe asked me to give you this,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow did he know you were my granddaughter?\u201d I asked. My voice sounded very far away.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe swallow,\u201d Maya said. \u201cHe said he\u2019d know it anywhere. He said he picked it out himself.\u201d<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t breathe.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid he tell you his name?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
Maya shook her head.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d she said. \u201cI asked. He said you\u2019d know. He said if you didn\u2019t know, then it didn\u2019t matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe asked me to tell you one more thing,\u201d Maya said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n
She looked at me with her dark eyes. Abe\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said,\u201d she said slowly, \u201cyou have to keep your promise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Part Seven: What Was Inside
\nMy hands began to tremble so badly that Maya had to help me untie the string.<\/p>\n
The paper was old. Soft. It had been folded and unfolded many times. Inside was a small wooden box, the kind that cigars used to come in, with a brass clasp.<\/p>\n
I opened it.<\/p>\n
The first thing I saw was a book.<\/p>\n
A small hardcover, faded green, with a picture of an elephant and two children on the cover. The corners were worn round. The spine was cracked.<\/p>\n
W pustyni i w puszczy. In Desert and Wilderness. The adventure story about two children lost in Africa.<\/p>\n
The book I\u2019d borrowed from Stanislaw in August of 1939. The book I\u2019d taken with me on the train. The book I\u2019d thought I\u2019d lost somewhere in the crossing.<\/p>\n
No.<\/p>\n
I hadn\u2019t taken it.<\/p>\n
I remembered now. I\u2019d left it on the kitchen table that last night, in the rush, while my mother was crying and Babcia was refusing to come. I\u2019d meant to grab it. I never did.<\/p>\n
I opened the cover with shaking fingers. On the first page, in a child\u2019s careful handwriting, it said:<\/p>\n
This book belongs to Stanislaw Nowak. Lent to Zofia Lewin. She has to give it back.<\/p>\n
Under the book was a photograph.<\/p>\n
It was small and brown and curled at the edges. Two children sitting on stone steps. A boy with hair sticking up in the back and a gap in his front teeth. A girl with dark braids and a tiny pendant at her throat.<\/p>\n
They were both squinting into the sun. The boy was grinning. The girl was laughing.<\/p>\n
I had never seen this photograph before. I didn\u2019t even know it existed.<\/p>\n
On the back, in faded pencil, someone had written: Sta\u015b i Zosia. Czerwiec 1939.<\/p>\n
Stas and Zosia. June 1939.<\/p>\n
Under the photograph was something wrapped in a scrap of faded blue fabric.<\/p>\n
I unwrapped it.<\/p>\n
It was a ring.<\/p>\n
Not a real ring. A child\u2019s ring, made from a twist of copper wire, with a tiny blue glass bead where a stone would go. The wire was dark with age. The bead was chipped.<\/p>\n
And under the ring was a small iron key on a loop of string.<\/p>\n
My grandmother\u2019s key.<\/p>\n
The key she had pressed into my hand at the door. The key I had held in my fist on the train. The key I thought I\u2019d lost somewhere between Warsaw and Chicago.<\/p>\n
I had not lost it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d left it on the table too. Beside the book.<\/p>\n
At the bottom of the box was a folded piece of paper.<\/p>\n
I unfolded it. It was a letter, written in Polish, in shaky old-man handwriting.<\/p>\n
I hadn\u2019t read Polish in years. I had to go slowly.<\/p>\n
Zofia,<\/p>\n
I kept the book. I kept the key. I made the ring the week after you left, because I wanted to be ready when you came back.<\/p>\n
You did not come back. But I never stopped being ready.<\/p>\n
I am at Saint Hedwig\u2019s, Room 214. I am very old and very slow. But I am still the most stubborn boy in Warsaw.<\/p>\n
You said I\u2019d better not forget.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Sta\u015b<\/p>\n
The moment I finished reading, I lost the ability to speak.<\/p>\n
I sat at my kitchen table with a cigar box in my lap, holding a copper wire ring and a little iron key, and I cried like I had not cried since I was ten years old.<\/p>\n
Maya came around the table and wrapped her arms around me.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t say anything. She just held on.<\/p>\n
Part Eight: Room 214
\nWe went the next morning.<\/p>\n
Maya drove. I sat in the passenger seat holding the cigar box on my lap. I\u2019d put on my good blue dress and my pearl earrings, and then I\u2019d taken them off, and then put them back on. I felt ridiculous. I felt ten years old.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrandma,\u201d Maya said gently at a red light. \u201cAre you okay?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m ninety-six years old,\u201d I said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m nervous about meeting a boy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maya laughed. Then she reached over and squeezed my hand.<\/p>\n
Saint Hedwig\u2019s Senior Residence is a red brick building on Belmont Avenue with white columns and a garden out front full of marigolds. A statue of a saint stands near the entrance. The lobby smelled like coffee and floor polish.<\/p>\n
Maya signed us in at the front desk. She pushed my wheelchair down a long hallway with framed pictures of Polish churches on the walls.<\/p>\n
We stopped in front of Room 214.<\/p>\n
The door was open.<\/p>\n
Inside was a small room with a bed, a dresser, an armchair by the window, and a bookshelf crammed with books. On the windowsill was a pot of red geraniums.<\/p>\n
In the armchair by the window sat an old man.<\/p>\n
He was small, the way very old men get small. His shoulders were stooped. His hands were spotted and knotted with arthritis, folded on top of a wooden cane. He wore a gray cardigan buttoned wrong.<\/p>\n
His hair was white and thin. But it stuck up in the back.<\/p>\n
He turned his head when he heard the wheelchair.<\/p>\n
He looked at me.<\/p>\n
For a long moment, neither of us said anything.<\/p>\n
Then he smiled.<\/p>\n
And there, between his front teeth, was the gap.<\/p>\n
\u201cZosia,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
His voice was thin and cracked, like an old record. But I knew it. I knew it the way you know a song you haven\u2019t heard in eighty-seven years.<\/p>\n
\u201cSta\u015b,\u201d I whispered.<\/p>\n
He tried to stand up. Maya rushed forward to help him, but he waved her away. He pushed himself up on his cane, one inch at a time, until he was standing.<\/p>\n
Then he walked toward me. Slowly. Three steps. Four.<\/p>\n
He stopped in front of my wheelchair. He looked down at me with watery blue eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou got old,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo did you,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m still taller,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
And then we were both laughing. And crying. And he was bending down, and I was reaching up, and we held on to each other in the middle of Room 214 at Saint Hedwig\u2019s Senior Residence while my granddaughter stood in the doorway with her hands over her mouth.<\/p>\n
Part Nine: What Happened
\nWe talked for six hours that first day.<\/p>\n
Maya brought us coffee and sandwiches from the cafeteria. Then she brought us dinner. Then she sat in the hallway with her phone and called her mother and her aunt and her uncle and told them all to come.<\/p>\n
Stanislaw and I sat by the window with our knees almost touching, holding hands like children.<\/p>\n
He told me everything.<\/p>\n
When his mother brought him back from the countryside that September, he ran up the stairs to our apartment. The door was open. We were gone.<\/p>\n
Babcia Ruchla was sitting alone at the dining table with the brass candlesticks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere\u2019s Zofia?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
Babcia shook her head. She held out the book and the key.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe left these for you,\u201d she said. \u201cBy accident. Keep them safe for her.\u201d<\/p>\n
The war came. Warsaw was bombed. Our building was damaged but still standing. The Nowaks stayed.<\/p>\n
When things got worse, when people like my grandmother were being taken from their homes, Mrs. Nowak did something very brave and very dangerous.<\/p>\n
She brought Babcia Ruchla across the hall to their apartment. She hid her in a small room behind a wardrobe.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor two years,\u201d Stanislaw said, \u201cyour grandmother lived with us. She slept in that little room. She taught me to play chess. She taught my mother to make cinnamon bread. Every Friday night, after the curtains were closed, she lit those two candles and sang. Very quietly.\u201d<\/p>\n
He swallowed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI learned the words,\u201d he said. \u201cI still know them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Babcia got sick in the winter of 1942. Pneumonia. There was no doctor they could call, no hospital where she would be safe.<\/p>\n
Mrs. Nowak sat with her every night. So did Stanislaw.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe died in February,\u201d he said. \u201cIn her sleep. My mother held her hand.\u201d<\/p>\n
He squeezed my fingers.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer last words were about you,\u201d he said. \u201cShe said, Tell my little bird she was right to go. Tell her to come back someday.\u201d<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t speak.<\/p>\n
For eighty-four years, I had not known what happened to my grandmother. My father had searched until the day he died. There were no records. No grave. No answers.<\/p>\n
And all that time, she\u2019d been safe. Loved. Held. By the family across the hall.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t bury her properly,\u201d Stanislaw said quietly. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t safe. My father and I carried her at night to the old cemetery on Okopowa Street. We put her near the wall. My mother wrote her name on a stone and buried it beside her, so someone would know someday.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the war,\u201d he said, \u201cI went back. The stone was still there. I had a proper marker made. It says Ruchla Lewin. Grandmother. Beloved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Part Ten: Chicago
\n\u201cThe Uprising came in 1944,\u201d Stanislaw said. \u201cI was fifteen. I carried messages through the sewers. My father was killed in the fighting. My mother and I survived. Barely.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked out the window at the marigolds.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the war, I studied engineering,\u201d he said. \u201cIn Krak\u00f3w. I built bridges. Real ones. Over the Vistula.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid they reach the clouds?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
He laughed.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot quite,\u201d he said. \u201cBut almost.\u201d<\/p>\n
He married a woman named Halina in 1954. They had two sons. In 1958, when things in Poland were very hard, they came to America.<\/p>\n
To Chicago.<\/p>\n
I stared at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve been in Chicago,\u201d I said slowly, \u201csince 1958?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAvondale,\u201d he said. \u201cThen Jefferson Park. Then Norwood Park.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI lived in Albany Park,\u201d I said. \u201cSince 1952.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo miles,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe three.\u201d<\/p>\n
We looked at each other for a long time.<\/p>\n
Sixty-eight years. Two miles. Maybe three.<\/p>\n
\u201cI looked for you,\u201d Stanislaw said. \u201cWhen I first came. I went to the Jewish agencies. I put notices in the newspapers. I asked for Zofia Lewin.\u201d<\/p>\n
He shook his head.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody had heard of her,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was no Zofia Lewin anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I was Zoe Berman,\u201d I whispered.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause you were Zoe Berman,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d kept looking for years. Every time he met someone from Warsaw, he asked. Every time he saw a dark-haired woman about my age on the bus or at the market, his heart jumped.<\/p>\n
Then life got busy. Children. Work. Bridges. Halina got sick. Halina died in 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought you must be gone,\u201d he said. \u201cI thought you must have died somewhere. Or forgotten me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t forget,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know,\u201d he said. \u201cYou gave the swallow to your granddaughter. Nobody gives away something they\u2019ve forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n
Part Eleven: The Candlesticks
\nNear the end of that first day, when the light outside was turning orange, Stanislaw asked Maya to open his closet.<\/p>\n
\u201cTop shelf,\u201d he said. \u201cIn the back. A box wrapped in a towel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maya stood on a chair and found it. She carried it to his lap.<\/p>\n
Stanislaw unwrapped the towel slowly with his knotted hands.<\/p>\n
Inside were two brass candlesticks.<\/p>\n
Tall. Tarnished. One with a small dent near the base where Aron had knocked it off the table when he was three.<\/p>\n
My grandmother\u2019s Sabbath candlesticks.<\/p>\n
I put both hands over my mouth.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother kept them,\u201d Stanislaw said. \u201cThrough the war. Through the Uprising. She wrapped them in a blanket and buried them under the floor when the soldiers came. When we left Warsaw, she put them in her suitcase.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked at them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we came to America, she put them in mine,\u201d he said. \u201cShe told me, These belong to the Lewins. If you ever find that girl, you give them back.\u201d<\/p>\n
He held them out to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother died in 1971,\u201d he said. \u201cShe asked about you on her last day. She asked if I\u2019d found you yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
His eyes filled with tears.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told her not yet,\u201d he said. \u201cShe said, Then keep looking, Sta\u015b. Swallows always come back.\u201d<\/p>\n
I took the candlesticks.<\/p>\n
They were heavy. Heavier than I remembered. Or maybe I was just weaker.<\/p>\n
I held them against my chest. They smelled like brass and old wood and something faint and sweet underneath. Cinnamon, maybe. Or maybe I just wanted it to be.<\/p>\n
That Friday evening, my whole family came to Saint Hedwig\u2019s.<\/p>\n
My daughters Ruth and Miriam. My son David and his wife. Five of my grandchildren. Two great-grandchildren in strollers. Stanislaw\u2019s son Tomasz came too, with his wife and teenage daughter.<\/p>\n
There were too many of us for Room 214. The staff let us use the small chapel at the end of the hall.<\/p>\n
We set the candlesticks on a table at the front. Maya bought two white candles at the drugstore on the way.<\/p>\n
When the sun went down, I stood up from my wheelchair. Maya held one arm. Stanislaw held the other.<\/p>\n
I struck the match. My hands were shaking so badly it took three tries.<\/p>\n
I lit the candles.<\/p>\n
I covered my eyes the way my grandmother did. I tried to remember the words.<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t. It had been too long. The words were gone.<\/p>\n
Then, beside me, very softly, an old man\u2019s voice began to sing.<\/p>\n
Stanislaw sang the blessing. In my grandmother\u2019s tune. Every word. Every note.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d learned it in a hidden room behind a wardrobe in Warsaw, from a white-haired woman who smelled like cinnamon. He\u2019d carried it for eighty-four years.<\/p>\n
I took my hands away from my eyes and looked at him. Tears were running down his wrinkled cheeks.<\/p>\n
When he finished, the chapel was completely silent.<\/p>\n
Then my great-granddaughter, who is four, said very loudly, \u201cIs that grandpa Grandma\u2019s boyfriend?\u201d<\/p>\n
Part Twelve: The Promise
\nOver the next month, I visited Stanislaw every day.<\/p>\n
Maya drove me before her shifts. Some days we sat by his window and talked about Warsaw. Some days we didn\u2019t talk at all. We just held hands and watched the leaves fall from the maple trees on Belmont Avenue.<\/p>\n
He read the end of In Desert and Wilderness out loud to me. In Polish. Slowly. I\u2019d never found out how it ended.<\/p>\n
The children made it home safely. Of course they did.<\/p>\n
One afternoon in early November, he took the copper wire ring out of the cigar box.<\/p>\n
He held it in his crooked fingers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI made this out of wire from my father\u2019s toolbox,\u201d he said. \u201cThe bead was from my mother\u2019s sewing basket. I was going to give it to you when you came back.\u201d<\/p>\n
He looked at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m ninety-seven, Zosia,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t have many more springs. But I made you a promise on those stone steps. And you said I\u2019d better not forget.\u201d<\/p>\n
My heart was pounding.<\/p>\n
\u201cSta\u015b,\u201d I said. \u201cWe\u2019re very old.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was married for fifty-eight years. To a wonderful man.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know,\u201d he said. \u201cSo was I. To a wonderful woman.\u201d<\/p>\n
He smiled his gap-toothed smile.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019d understand,\u201d he said. \u201cHalina knew all about you. She used to tease me. She\u2019d say, If your little Warsaw girl ever shows up, I\u2019m going to fight her.\u201d<\/p>\n
I laughed so hard I had to wipe my eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWill you keep your promise?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
I looked at the ring. At the chipped blue bead. At the old man holding it in his shaking hands.<\/p>\n
At the boy with cherry juice on his chin.<\/p>\n
\u201cFine,\u201d I said. \u201cBut you\u2019d better not forget.\u201d<\/p>\n
Part Thirteen: The Wedding
\nWe were married on the second Sunday of December, in the little chapel at Saint Hedwig\u2019s.<\/p>\n
It was not a big wedding. Both of our families came. A few of the residents and nurses. Maya was my maid of honor. Stanislaw\u2019s granddaughter, Ola, was his best person.<\/p>\n
A rabbi and a priest stood together at the front of the chapel. They\u2019d never done a ceremony together before. They said it was the most beautiful wedding either of them had ever performed.<\/p>\n
I wore my good blue dress and my pearl earrings. Maya put the swallow pendant around my neck. It sat at the base of my throat, exactly where it had been when I was ten years old.<\/p>\n
Stanislaw wore a gray suit that his son had to help him button. His hair still stuck up in the back.<\/p>\n
He stood the whole ceremony, leaning on his cane. He wouldn\u2019t sit down.<\/p>\n
When it was time for the ring, he took out the copper wire ring with the chipped blue bead.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t fit. It was made for a ten-year-old\u2019s finger. It stopped at my second knuckle.<\/p>\n
We both laughed. The whole chapel laughed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI should have measured,\u201d Stanislaw said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were ten,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
Maya stepped forward. She\u2019d brought a thin gold chain from her jewelry box. She threaded the copper ring onto it and fastened it around my neck, beside the swallow.<\/p>\n
The ring and the swallow sat together, touching, right over my heart.<\/p>\n
At the end, the rabbi and the priest asked if we\u2019d like to say anything to each other.<\/p>\n
Stanislaw held my hands in his.<\/p>\n
\u201cI promised I\u2019d marry you,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m sorry it took so long.\u201d<\/p>\n
I squeezed his fingers.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou kept it,\u201d I said. \u201cThat\u2019s what matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
My granddaughter cried. My daughters cried. Stanislaw\u2019s son cried. Even the priest took off his glasses and wiped his eyes.<\/p>\n
Then the four-year-old said loudly, \u201cDo they get to have cake now?\u201d<\/p>\n
We had cake.<\/p>\n
Part Fourteen: Spring
\nWe had one winter together.<\/p>\n
I moved into Room 215, across the hall from him. Just like Twarda Street. Every morning, I\u2019d knock on his door, and every morning he\u2019d say, \u201cWho\u2019s there?\u201d like he didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
We read books together. We argued about them. He still liked adventure stories. I still liked stories about brave girls.<\/p>\n
We played chess. He\u2019d learned from my grandmother in a hidden room in Warsaw. He beat me every single time.<\/p>\n
On Friday nights, we lit the candlesticks together in my room. The nurses learned the words. So did a few of the other residents, a retired Catholic schoolteacher named Wanda and a former train conductor named Jerzy, who both started coming every week.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s nice,\u201d Wanda told me once. \u201cTo have something that comes back. Every week.\u201d<\/p>\n
In March, Stanislaw got pneumonia.<\/p>\n
He went to the hospital for a few days. Then he came back to Saint Hedwig\u2019s. The doctors said there was nothing more they could do. They said he should be comfortable.<\/p>\n
He was ninety-seven. He\u2019d had a long life. He\u2019d built bridges. He\u2019d kept a promise for eighty-seven years.<\/p>\n
He was tired.<\/p>\n
On the last afternoon, I sat beside his bed and held his hand. Maya sat on the other side. His son Tomasz stood by the window.<\/p>\n
The window was open a crack. It was the first warm day of the year. You could smell the dirt in the garden where the marigolds would be planted soon.<\/p>\n
Stanislaw opened his eyes. He looked at the window.<\/p>\n
\u201cZosia,\u201d he whispered. \u201cListen.\u201d<\/p>\n
I listened.<\/p>\n
Outside, high above Belmont Avenue, I heard them. Thin, chattering calls. Little dark shapes diving and swooping over the rooftops.<\/p>\n
The swallows had come back.<\/p>\n
Stanislaw smiled. The gap in his teeth. The same smile from the stone steps.<\/p>\n
\u201cSee?\u201d he whispered. \u201cThey always come back.\u201d<\/p>\n
He squeezed my hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo did you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He closed his eyes.<\/p>\n
He died a little after sunset. I was holding his hand. Just like his mother had held my grandmother\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Part Fifteen: Twarda Street
\nIn June, Maya took me to Warsaw.<\/p>\n
My children thought I was crazy. I\u2019m ninety-seven now. My knees are terrible. I hadn\u2019t been on an airplane in fifteen years.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrandma,\u201d Maya said, when she first suggested it, \u201cyou don\u2019t have to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI do,\u201d I said. \u201cI have a key.\u201d<\/p>\n
Our building on Twarda Street is gone. A tall glass office building stands in its place. But the street is still there. A small part of the old courtyard wall survived, on the side of the building next door. The yellow stone has turned gray.<\/p>\n
Maya pushed my wheelchair to the wall. I put my hand on the old stones.<\/p>\n
I closed my eyes. For a moment, I could hear children playing. A gramophone upstairs. Somebody\u2019s mother calling them home.<\/p>\n
Then we went to the old cemetery on Okopowa Street.<\/p>\n
It took a long time to find. The cemetery is huge and overgrown, full of trees and tilted stones. Maya pushed my wheelchair along the narrow paths for almost an hour.<\/p>\n
Near the old wall, under a big linden tree, we found it.<\/p>\n
A small gray stone, clean and well cared for. Someone had been tending it. Someone had planted geraniums around it.<\/p>\n
RUCHLA LEWIN<\/p>\n
Grandmother. Beloved.<\/p>\n
Hidden by the Nowak family, 1940\u20131942.<\/p>\n
\u201cCome back someday.\u201d<\/p>\n
I sat in my wheelchair in front of my grandmother\u2019s grave and cried for a long time.<\/p>\n
Maya knelt beside me and held my hand.<\/p>\n
When I could speak again, I reached into my purse. I took out the little iron key on its loop of string.<\/p>\n
The key to our door on Twarda Street. The key my grandmother pressed into my hand. The key Stanislaw kept for eighty-six years.<\/p>\n
I set it on top of the stone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came back, Babcia,\u201d I said. \u201cLike you asked. I\u2019m sorry it took so long.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then I took out a small brass candlestick from my bag. Maya helped me light the candle inside. I covered my eyes.<\/p>\n
This time, I remembered every word.<\/p>\n
When I opened my eyes, there was a swallow sitting on the branch of the linden tree above us.<\/p>\n
Just sitting there. Watching.<\/p>\n
Maya saw it too. She squeezed my hand so hard it hurt.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrandma,\u201d she whispered.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
The swallow tilted its head. Then it opened its wings and flew up, high over the cemetery wall, out over the rooftops of Warsaw, until it disappeared into the sky.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m home in Chicago now, in our brick two-flat with Maya and Pierogi the cat. The candlesticks sit on our dining table. We light them every Friday.<\/p>\n
The copper ring and the swallow hang on a gold chain around my neck. I don\u2019t take them off. Not ever.<\/p>\n
In Desert and Wilderness sits on my nightstand. Some nights, I read a few pages before bed. In Polish. Slowly.<\/p>\n
On the first page, a child\u2019s handwriting still says: Lent to Zofia Lewin. She has to give it back.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to give it to Maya someday. With the swallow and the ring and the candlesticks and all the stories.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve already told her what to say when she does.<\/p>\n
I told her to tell the next person what Stanislaw told me on the stone steps. What his mother told him on her last day. What my grandmother told me at the door.<\/p>\n
That the people we love are like swallows.<\/p>\n
They fly very far away. Sometimes for a very long time. Sometimes so long you think they\u2019ll never return.<\/p>\n
But if you keep your promises, and you keep the door open, and you never forget\u2014<\/p>\n
They always come back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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