SHOSHANNA KAPLAN, GIRL DETECTIVE

[NOTE -- NOT SURE IF THIS WAS SUBMITTED PROPELY THE FIRST TIME]

Shoshanna Kaplan, Girl Detective                

By Andrew Paul Grell

SK detective entry, October 27, 1967

“Who died? I haven’t seen this many cars in the driveway and on our street since Zedah went to Gan Eden. I still hope he had an easy time getting out of the dirt and into Paradise. But then the house was filled with trays and dishes and pots and my parents were sitting on boxes. No boxes tonight, and none of the mirrors were covered. I must get to the bottom of this.” 

I was still dressed in my good clothes from Friday night Sabbath services at the Reformed Temple of Massapequa; I recognized most of the visitors from our Synagogue. Three weeks of holidays were over, and there was a victory in a war in Israel. There was no end of jokes. This isn’t part of the Case of the Too Many Cars, but I’m going to write some down for the Pal Set, to go over this, part, the invisible ink.

How many speeds on an Egyptian tank?

Five, one forward and four reverse.

What’s the forward gear for?

In case they get attacked from the rear.          

An Egyptian tank and an Israeli tank collide in the Negev Desert. The Arab gets out and says ‘I surrender, I surrender!’ The Jew gets out of his tank and says ‘Whiplash, whiplash!’

Mom and Dad passed me around the room  for everyone to pinch my cheek and declare that I had a schoeneh punim. Mr. Zukerman tried to pinch where Adam Liphshitz tried to pinch me while we were at the Kiddy Kiddush after services before I punched him. I don’t think I’m allowed to punch Mr. Zukerman. Mom put me to bed with a lullaby in Ladino she learned from her own Bubbie. Then I had to wait blind, with no knowledge of what was going on, until the second putting-to-bed; Mom and Dad would come in to see my ‘angel face’ and make sure I was okay and asleep.

“Materials and Methods. Funny term. But my big brother Bernie in Princeton insisted if I were going to solve cases, I had to stick to Prokul. I needed to know what was going on in our living room. I would use the $1.95 see-through-walls from the back of an Archie comic book and the real stethsoap I took from Adam when I didn’t like the way he wanted to play doctor. I had at least one hole in a wall of every room with thin enough walls. Getting down to spy on the living room was always dangerous. Sunroom to back porch, outside stairs to the basement, in through the kitchen, around the den, and then I had access to through-the-walls holes four and six. With Adam’s stethsoap and holes four and six, I had eyes and ears in the target room. Now I just wait and see what happens. This is not going to be as simple as the Case of the Maid and the Missing Silverware.”

I don’t think anyone died. Even without Adam’s stethsoap I could hear laughing and giggling and sometimes a squeal. What could they be doing in there? And how long can I lie on my belly, holding the stethsoap to the wall, and keeping my eye on the see-through-walls gadget, and writing my case notes? Wow! Not long at all. My mom said she was going to turn down the stereo so it wouldn’t wake me!

“Transcription. Voice 1, a man.   Anyone hear of the Syosset Yank? Makes the game just a bit more interesting."“Game?  Are my parents playing a game without inviting me? I can beat all my friends at Hearts and Chinese Checkers. They ARE playing a game! Dad reached up to the op of the hall closet and brought down the Monopoly set; Mrs. Levine took the play money and started passing it out to the men. She put down five soup bowls on the coffee table.

“Mrs. Levine: Place your bids, gentlemen.

“The men took turns putting money into the bowls; some put in all the bills in one bowl and others put bills in different bowls. More laughing. Monopoly isn’t really a funny game. I wish I could weigh the soup bowls like I weighed the maid’s pocketbook and then the babysitter’s handbag.

“Mrs. Levine: Sylvia, you’re up first.

“When my brother took me to the opera, he was able to get us seats because he was in a music program, but they were scoring seats; I could only see part of the action, but I loved the music. Even with the Archie comic device, I was seeing less than that. There was a hand in a sleeve that I remembered being Mrs. Posner’s dress. The hand fished out a play money bill.

“Sylvia: A hundred-dollar bill. Who is that, Frank?

“I could see her knees walk the money over to where Mr. Lapidus was seated. Even through a solid wall nobody could miss his fancy shoes. A hand came up and took the hundred and then came up again, disappeared inside Mrs. Posner’s dress, and came back out with something soft. 

“Mr. Lapidus: We should send a delegation to Syosset to thank them for their new rule.

“A bell rang so close to the wall that I fell over, then I heard my dad’s deep voice.

“Dad: Last call, everyone. We don’t want any arrests or crashers tonight. Probably pretty bad to be breaking the law while committing a sin…

“Mom went around picking up glasses, putting down coffee cups, handing out salmiakki and korvapuutsi. The women kept going pulling play money from bowls until every mother had a man’s hand reach into her dress. Even Rabbi Veikkanen participated. For an hour, there was a return to music, dancing, and joking until dad got everyone together.

“Dad: Key time!”

Some detective. I didn’t have any idea of what was going on except that women were picking men in a Monopoly game and men were picking women by their keys they threw into an Abraham Lincoln hat. The only thing I could think of was that they decided to drive each other’s cars to see whose were better or maybe to see if they wanted to buy new cars. But how did the hands in dresses game come into play? Dads with the moms they picked headed toward the front door; I could see just a sliver of it. Dad was leaving with Mrs. Lapidus! And mom is alone with the Rabbi! I should change position, see if I could get upstairs before mom thinks of checking on me. I was getting nervous. If underwear was involved, there might be wieners and sissies involved too, and not with the people they’re supposed to be involved with. I grabbed my notebook, stethsoap, and see-through-walls and made it up to my room. I could hear two people walking upstairs. I started counting. When I got to 49 Mississippi, mom opened my door a crack and then closed it. I’m in position to win this game of Chinese checkers. I counted to two-hundred Mississippi and knocked on my parent’s door.

“Mommy! Mommy! I’m thirsty, can I have a glass of milk? Mommy???”

“Shoshanna, what are you doing up? You know where the milk is.” The rabbi’s head was just barely recognizable to Shoshanna and he was able to see that the girl had spotted him. 

“Mom, what are you doing with the Rabbi?”            

“Shah, baby. Shah, it’s okay, he’s the Rabbi, just go back to bed, I’ll get you your milk.” The Rabbi could not resist doing what Rabbis do when children ask questions. He would answer her. Mrs. Kaplan tried to head him off, but he insisted.

“Miriam, she’s old enough to know.” He turned to the girl, patted the bed, and the three of them seated themselves as comfortably as they could.

“Shoshanna, you know that thee are many people in the Temple who survived the Nazis, don’t you? You’ve seen the people with numbers tattooed on their arms?” The girl nodded.

“Did you know that there were many times that our people were threatened with destruction? Your brother’s Bar Mitzvah, the Torah portion was the story of Amalek, who went after the weakest of the Israelites.” He was getting through; the girl loved the solving of bad deeds. This looked like a real bad one.

“Jews in Russia had a hard time, there were riots, Pogroms they’re called, many people killed. Jewish men were drafted into the Czar’s army for 25 years. Twenty-five years they couldn’t see their families. Just 25 years ago, Jews were desperate to get out of Germany, Poland, Hungary. Sometimes people made it to here, the new world, the free world. A few made it to Finland, the few who just couldn’t cope with being caught again, the far north of Finland where the Lapland people, fishermen mostly,  took them in. Not many, but some. My family. Your family. The families of the moms and dads who were here tonight.”

“But Rabbi, what does this have to do with underwear?”

“A good question, Shoshanna. Fishing is dangerous work in the far north. A tradition took hold with the people of the far north. A man could always go out on a boat but not always come back. He had to know his wife and children would be taken care of. If Aggie died, he would die knowing Doffa would care for his family. To seal that, once a year, everyone would wear two different socks and the husbands would switch wives for a night. When we came to America, some of us came here, to Long Island, we found that people here already did that for fun. Now we don’t fish except for fun, but we carry on our tradition. Your bubby and zedeh, who you never met, died in the camps. But you, Shoshanna, you can now know that if something bad happens to your parents, another family here will love you just as much. You’re safe.

The Case of the Too Many Cars couldn’t be closed, yet, anyway. Mrs. Levi at the library told me I was the youngest patron to use the Reader’s Guide to Periodic Literature. It looked like the Rabbi was not exactly lying, but not really telling the truth, either. Jewish veterans from the Czar’s Army were free to live anywhere in Finland; they didn’t have to fish the Arctic Ocean. There were refugees from the Nazis, not many, kept safe in Finland. There was no record of Jews fleeing pogroms heading to Lapland. And if Mom’s bubbie spoke Ladino, our family ws nowhere near Finland. As I handed Mrs. Levi more and more buckslips for articles  about Finland, refugees, and life in Lapland, the more she stared at me. Eventually she came over and gave me a hug.

“You know, Miss Kaplan, grownups do a lot of stupid things for very stupid reasons. I think that sums up the object of your research, but now you know it for yourself.”