Supper was over abruptly. The boys had gone out. Pa was gone into the parlor. Only Rebecca and Ma remained in the kitchen, doing dishes. From time to time Ma muttered under her breath words in that strange sibilant language the farmer’s wife had spoken at their front door, passing too swiftly for Rebecca to grasp, that she knew she was not meant to hear.

When the last dish was dried and put away, Ma said, not smiling at Rebecca, speaking in a sudden sharp voice like a woman waking from sleep, “You were wanted, Rebecca. God wanted you. And I wanted you. Never believe what that man says.”

14

Never say it.

And there would be other things never-to-be-said. That, in time, vanished into oblivion.

Marea was one of these.

Marea-a sound like music, mysterious.

When Rebecca was five years old, in the summer of 1941.

Later, the memory of Marea would be obliterated by her father’s emotion at the time of “Pearl Harbor.”

Marea-“Pearl Harbor”-“World War Too” (for so it sounded to Rebecca’s ears). In that time when Rebecca was still a little girl too young to go to school.

One evening after supper instead of going into the parlor, Pa remained in the kitchen. He and Ma had a surprise for them.

Of Herschel and August it was asked, Would you like a brother?

Of Rebecca it was asked, Would you like two sisters?

Pa was the one to speak so, mysteriously. But there was Ma beside him, very nervous. Giddy and girlish and her eyes shining.

As the children stared, Pa removed from an envelope photographs to be spread carefully on the oilcloth cover of the kitchen table. It was a warm June evening, the cemetery was alive with the sounds of nocturnal insects and there were two or three small moths inside the kitchen, throwing themselves against the bare lightbulb overhead. In his excitement Pa nudged the dangling lightbulb with his head so that the halo of light swung, veered drunkenly across the table; it was Ma who reached out to steady the bulb.

Their cousins. From the town of Kaufbeuren in Germany across the ocean.

And these: their uncle Leon, and their aunt Dora who was their mother’s younger sister.

The boys stared. Rebecca stared. Your cousins. Your uncle, aunt. Never had they heard such words before from their father’s mouth.

“Herschel will remember them, yes? Uncle Leon, Aunt Dora. El-zbieta, your little cousin, maybe you do not. She was just a baby then.”

Herschel crouched over the table to frown at the strangers in the photographs, who squinted up at him in miniature beside Pa’s splayed thumb. He was breathing hoarsely through his nose. “Why’d I remember ‘em?”

“Because you saw them, Herschel. As a child in Munich.”

“”Mew-nik‘“?-what the hell’s that?”

Pa spoke hurriedly, as if the words pained him. “Where we lived. Where you were born. In that other place before this one.”

“Nah,” Herschel said, shaking his head now so vehemently the flesh of his mouth quivered, “I wadna. Not me.”

Their mother touched Pa’s arm. Saying quietly, “Maybe Herschel does not remember, he was so young. And so much since…”

Pa said bluntly, “He remembers.”

“Fuck I don’t! I was born in the fuckin Yoo Ess.”

Ma said, “Herschel.”

Now was a dangerous time. Pa’s hands were shaking. He pushed one of the photographs toward Herschel, to look at. Rebecca saw that the photographs were bent and wrinkled as if they were old, or had come a long distance. When Herschel picked up the photograph to hold to the light, squinting as he peered at the couple, Rebecca worried that he might tear the photograph in two; it was like her older brother to do sudden wild things.

Instead, Herschel grunted and shrugged. Maybe yes, maybe no.

This placated Pa who snatched the photograph back from Herschel and smoothed it out on the table as if it were something precious.

There were five photographs, and each was wrinkled, and somewhat faded. Ma was saying to Rebecca, “Your new sisters, Rebecca? See?”

Rebecca asked what were their names.

Ma spoke the names of the children in the photograph as if they were very special names: “Elzbieta, Freyda, Joel.”

Rebecca repeated in her earnest child-voice: “Elz-bee-ta. Frey-da. Jo-el.”

Elzbieta was the oldest, Ma said. Twelve or thirteen. Freyda, she was the youngest, Rebecca’s age. And Joel was somewhere between.

Rebecca had seen pictures of people in newspapers and magazines but she had never seen photographs, that you could hold in your hand. The Schwarts did not own a camera, for such was a luxury and they could not afford luxuries as Pa said. Strange it seemed to Rebecca, and wonderful, that a picture could be of someone you knew, whose name was known to you. And of children! A little girl Rebecca’s age!

Ma said these were her little nieces and nephew. Her sister Dora’s children.

So strange to hear Anna Schwart speak of nieces, nephews. Sister!

These attractive strangers were not Schwarts but Morgensterns. The name “Morgenstern” was utterly new, and melodic.

In the photographs the Morgenstern children were smiling uncertainly. Almost you might think they were looking at you, because you could look so closely at them. Elzbieta was frowning as she smiled. Or maybe she was not smiling at all. Nor Joel, who squinted as if a light was shining in his eyes. The smallest, Freyda, was the most beautiful child, though you could not see her face clearly for she stood with her head bowed. Shyly she smiled as if to beg Don’t look at me please!

In that instant Rebecca saw that Freyda was her sister.

In that instant Rebecca saw that Freyda had the same dark, shadowed eyes that she had. And except that Freyda had fluffy bangs brushed down on her forehead, and Rebecca’s forehead was bare, their braided hair was the same. In one picture, Rebecca’s favorite for you could see Freyda the clearest, the little girl appeared to be tugging at her braid over her left shoulder in the way that Rebecca sometimes did with hers when she was nervous.

“”Frey-da.“ She can sleep in my bed.”

“That’s right, Rebecca,” Ma said, squeezing her arm in approval, “she can sleep in your bed.”

Pa was saying that the Morgensterns would be “making the crossing” along with nine hundred other passengers on a ship called the Marea, in mid-July, sailing from Lisbon, Portugal, to New York City. They would be journeying then upstate to Milburn, to stay with the Schwarts until they were “settled” in this country.

Rebecca was excited to hear this: her cousins would be crossing the ocean, that Rebecca’s family had crossed before she was born? A strange little story came to her the way such stories often did, like dreams, swift as an eyeblink and vanished before she knew it: that another baby girl would be born, then. The way Rebecca had been born. And so when the Morgensterns came to live with them-would there be a new baby?

It would seem to Rebecca that, yes there would be a new baby in the house. But she knew not to mention this to anyone, not even Ma, for she was beginning to understand that some things she believed to be true were only dreams inside her head.

Herschel said sullenly there wouldn’t be enough room for them all if these new people came, Chrissake would there? “Bad enough livin like hogs.”

Quickly Gus said his cousin Joel could sleep with him in his bed.

And quickly Ma said yes there would be room!

Pa seemed not so certain as Ma, more worried, stoop-shouldered and rubbing his knuckles against his eyes in that way he had, that made him look so tired, and old-seeming, saying yes the house was small, but he and his brother-in-law could enlarge it, maybe. Convert the woodshed into an extra room. Leon was a carpenter, they could work together. Before the Morgensterns arrived, he and the boys could start. Clear out the trash and level the dirt floor and lay down planks for floorboards. Get some tar paper sheets, for insulation.