Nana's Gift

Gertrude Swartz passed away peacefully in March, but in her final Christmas, Gertrude or Nana as I knew her gave me a gift that I will treasure for the rest of my life.  As we stood around our Christmas tree, she handed me a small package she had in her wrinkled hands.  I had no way of knowing it at the time, but this would be her last Christmas with us.

“Talia, this is for you.” She smiled as only she could.  

The scent of cinnamon clunk to the air as I peeled back the wrapping paper of what she hand handed me.  I could hear my mother’s voice call out, “Now everyone, we shall follow our Owens’ family tradition of opening one gift on Christmas Eve.”

My father nodded as he had a couple of large mugs of eggnog and was in a most joyous mood.  My younger brothers Evan and Spike were poking each other and giggling as each of them had selected a larger box they knew was an XBox.  Upon my mother’s nod, they tore into the wrapping and let out a “Whoop!” when their wishes were fulfilled. 

“I got an Xbox!” Spike declared.]

“Me too!” Evan added. 

“We can plug them into the television in our room.” Spike’s grin was missing a couple of teeth.  Before anyone could say “Jack Robinson,” both of them bound up the stairs with their new Xboxes in tow.  

“I guess we won’t see them for a while.” Dad said jovially as he took another sip of his eggnog.

“Talia?  You haven’t opened anything.” Mom put her hand on my shoulder.

When I looked at Nana, she was smiling, but her crystal blue eyes seemed all a-glow as she tilted her head toward the package I held in my hand that was still unopened.  I had peeled the delicate wrapping paper off of the box, but had not opened it.   

“Go ahead dear.” Nana urged me.

When you are a senior in high school, Christmas is no longer a mystery since you go with your mother as she does the Christmas shopping.  You witness all of the things she buys for you as you have to try them on.  I know just about everything that is wrapped and under the tree with my name written on the tag.  Next year I will be starting college and it feels like I am destined to inhabit another planet. 

I wanted to tell my parents to slow down the train and give me some time to get my heart to stop thumping against my chest or the headaches I get for thinking too much.

“I am so proud of you my dear.” Nana says as I put my thumbs at the lid of the box.  

Suddenly I am crying.  Not just a few tears.  Nope, the full water works.  Nana is confused at my emotional outburst.

“What is wrong, Talia?” She asks, hugging me close until all I smell is the sweet scent of talc. 

“Oh, Nana…” I could not speak.  Mom and dad came to my side instantly.

“Did someone slap you?” Dad asked teetering on his shoes knowing Evan and Spike were fond of a slapping game which was half the reason they both got an Xbox. 

I just shook my head.

“What is it, dear?” Mom asked.

“I don’t know.” I sobbed into my grandmother’s shoulder. Dad just stood there flummoxed by my emotional outburst.  Mom kept stroking my shoulder, but feeling her touch only made me feel worse. 

“Dear, we are all so proud of you.” Nana said in a voice as sweet as her scent, but this only made me sob harder. “I wish I knew what to say to make you feel better.” 

“I am scared.” I finally was able to say.

“Scared of what?” Mom asked as I lifted my head off my grandmother’s shoulder.

“Of what’s next...the future.” I shuddered.

“The future is bright.” Nana held my shaking hand. 

“How come I don’t feel like it is?” I asked, wiping the last of my tears on the cuff of my blouse.  Mom looked at dad.  Dad looked back at mom.

“Open the box of my liebchen.” She insisted on gently touching my hand.  It was the hand where years ago someone had left an ugly tattoo just above her wrist.  She was my mother’s mother and I had heard some of the stories I wasn’t supposed to as I sat at the top of the stairs.  They were stories of her life in Germany when she was a young girl.  

It sounded like a magical place filled with old castles and hardy food, but there were other stories where her friends and relatives had died in places called concentration camps.  It was no secret to any of us that Gertrude Schwartz was Jewish.  She was proud to be one and would tell me of all of the times she went to temple with her father Abraham.

“He had the name of the Father of the Jewish faith.” She would tell me when she drank kosher wine at Hanukkah. “He was a good man.  He would have loved you.” 

“I wish I could meet him.” I could smell the strong aroma of the wine she was drinking.

“He died a long time ago.” She would smile and shake her head. 

“Do you have a picture of him?” I asked.

“I wish I did.  We were poor and only rich people could afford to take pictures.” She explained.  

Death was such an enigma to me.  It seemed a lot of people close to Nana had died, but she never talked about it.  Even my pain in the ass brothers would cause me unbearable grief if something were to happen to them.  My friend Marcy lost her brother in some place called Vietnam.  She still grieves for him even though the school counselor tells her she needs to "let him go." I know she won't.  When she comes over to my house, sometimes I find her crying in our broom closet.  I hold her hand and let her cry for him.

Nana doesn't cry.  When grandpa died, I never saw her shed a single tear through the three days of the Shiva.  Mom was a wreck, but Nana held her as if she was just a young child, stroking her hair and talking to her in that stance language she calls Yiddish.  

"He was such a handsome man." She would smile whenever I ask her about Grandpa Saul. "And so smart."

"What happened to him?" I would ask her and a strange expression Always crossed her face.  It was the closest she ever came to grief, but then her smile would reappear.

"It was a long time ago." She' d answer in what I called her ghost voice.  I called it that because It was barely a whisper and yet it went straight to my heart as if he was in the room watching over us Still.

"I'm so scared." I told her as she sat next to me on my bed.  I could hear Evan and Spike laughing uproariously in their room next to mine.

"Why?" She gently stroked my hair just like she did when I was a little girl.

"I will miss my friends." I took a deep sigh.

"Oh Talia, you are so smart and kind, you will make new friends." She kissed me on the top of my head.   I wouldn't even let mom do that anymore.

"I don't want new friends." I whined.

"Sometimes we don't get a choice." She held my hand, "Sometimes life doesn't give us a choice."

"Life is stupid!" I blurted out, but when I looked at her, I saw her expression change to a much more somber one. She looked so hurt and sad. "I'm sorry, Nana."

"Liebchen, life can be cruel at times. " She said in her ghost voice, "Please open the box. It will make you feel better, I promise."

This time I did as she requested.  Inside the cardboard box was delicate wrapping paper and she I reached inside, past the paper and confetti that she liked to wrap her gifts in, was a locket.

"Open it." She urged me. "The clasp is right here."

Pressing the clasp, the locket opened and instantly revealed inside was a faded photograph of three people, two adults and a very small child.

"That child is me." Her finger touched the glass protecting the photograph.  When I took a close look, I could see her crystal blue eyes I had come to know and love over the years.

"My parents Ida and Abe." She had tears in her eyes. This was truly astounding to me, because I had never seen Nana cry. "They Both died in the camps before the liberation."

Camps?  Liberation? My history teacher, Mr. Barton had briefly mentioned this as his father Survived the landing at Omaha Beach during D Day.  Anything else was just an add on to the narration.

"I tell you the story of that locket you hold in your hand, lipschen." She took a tissue from her pocket and dabbed her red eyes.

***********

While I tell many people that we were from Germany, that isn’t quite true.  My father changed his name to Schwartz to blend in as a German after the invasion.  He went to work in a German factory in Dresden, but we were really from Krakow in Poland. Our real name was Zlotofacet or Goldman.  My father was a devout Jewish man, but with what was happening, he had to give up his religion or wear the gold star.  Those wearing such a thing were seized by the Gestapo and would disappear.  We knew where they had been taken.  It was no secret.  

But in February 1943, we were taken to a place called Auschwitz despite my father’s testimony we were good German citizens.  It was our landlady Fraulein Schenze who turned us into the Gestapo.  I had just turned seventeen and thought I had my whole life ahead of me.  I played on the girl’s soccer team at school, because I was such a Tom-boy back then.  I never thought for a minute that I would be packed into a cattle car with so many other people.  It was so hard to breathe.  Many of the older people passed out, but they could not even make it to the floor of the car, because there were so many of us.

It took over ten hours to get to the awful camp where the words “Arbeit Macht Frei,” work makes you free.  

“Gertrude.” My mother called me when the train stopped.

“Mama.” I answered.  

“You must do me a favor.” She said in a low voice so others would not hear.  None of them seemed to care anyway as they all began to groan at the toxic air that filled out lungs.

“What?” I asked.  I was so scared that I was shaking even though I was not really cold.

She took the locket she wore on a chain around her neck and without hesitation ripped the locket from the chain.  “You need to swallow this.”

“Mama?” I shook my head.  “It’s too big.”

“I have some water.” She insisted.

“I do not want to.” I began to cry.

“Swallow this, you must.  It’s all I have.” She also began to let her tears fall on her cheeks.

I took the locket from her hands.

She nodded.

I put it in my mouth.  She handed me a small hip flask of water she had smuggled in her coat pocket.

German soldiers began shouting orders  to those who were leaving the train.  There was a rifle shot.  An old man fell to his knees as he had been struck by the bullet fired from the rifle.  A German officer stood over the wounded man.  He removed the pistol from his holster, put the barrel up to his forehead and shot the wounded man.

Seeing this made me swallow the locket I had put in my mouth.  The old man was a watchmaker, but no more as he lay there in the snow, his eyes open toward the heavens for a moment before a couple of soldiers removed his body.

“They will search you.” Mama told me as we made our way to the gate, “They will take everything you have. Your hair.  All of it. But they won’t be able to get the locket until it passes.  It will most likely pass in a day or so. I will find a hiding place.”

“Yes mama.” I said as a guard seized my mother’s arm.

“Dis way, frauline." He pushed her toward a line of other frightened women who were standing in a line.  

“You are a fine looking specimen.” One of the other guards snickered as he pushed me along.  Soon my mother was lost in a crowd as I walked with the group I had been chosen to be with.

It was the last time I ever saw her.  I had no way of knowing that back then.  There is so much I wanted to say to her, but I have a feeling she already knows.

***********

“This is it, isn’t it?” I said examining it closely.  She just nodded her head. I put my thumbs to the latch.  It popped open immediately. Inside was a photograph of two people holding a toddler.  The man wore glasses, a stiff white shirt with a bow tie while the woman holding the child was wearing a traditional dark Polish peasant dress while the toddler was wearing some sort of dress with leggings. “Is this child you, Nana?”

“Ja, it is.” She hugged me close. “And that is Abraham and Ida. They went to a studio and had that picture taken when I was just three years old.”

“It’s beautiful.” I gasped.

“Ja, my mama treasured it more than anything else she owned.” She tried to smile, “I found a hiding place that no German guard would ever find. I buried it in a small hole near the barbed wire where the search lights would not find me. I would try to go there every Sabbath and open the locket so I could spend some time with them.  I was lucky, but I think they looked after me.”

“What happened to them?” I asked, dreading the answer that would come.

“I went to a Red Cross camp after the war, but we never did find their records.” She held her head in a very thoughtful way, “One of the survivors said that she was taken to the showers where they killed so many of our people.  Another survivor said my father was put into one of the ovens. I don’t wish to think about that. I would like to think that God took his hand and led him away before they could do anything bad to him.”

It would be the only time I would hold her as she sobbed uncontrollably. 

“Talia.” My mother called me from downstairs.

“Yes mother.” I closed my math book.

“I have some bad news.” I could hear the tears in my mother’s voice.

I ran to her.  I did not have to ask what the matter was, I already knew.  We embraced as she began to sob.

“It was peaceful according to the hospice nurse.  She just went to sleep. She’s with Saul and her parents.” My mother managed to say through her tears.

Later in my room, I opened the locket she had given me and let the tears flow as I said my farewell to Gertrude Zlotofacet, my Nana.