Banana Rose

  “I love summer, don’t you, Nell?” Alice asked.

  I nodded, holding my cup of Lapsang souchong in both hands.

  “Especially after a winter here, it is such a relief,” Alice continued.

  I nodded again. I was content that she was addressing me.

  “Two winters ago it didn’t go above twenty below for four months straight,” Alice said.

  I sat up in my seat. “Really,” I said, amazed. “I knew it was bad but not that bad.”

  She nodded emphatically. “Oh, yes.” She was pleased she was impressing me. “But it doesn’t matter what the weather is, my Volks always works.”

  “That’s good news,” I said.

  Gauguin coughed and got up and headed for the bathroom.

  “You know, they were designed for the Third Reich. Every time it started that winter, I’d say to myself, “Thank God for Hitler!’ ”

  Just then, the space in that summer kitchen became twenty below. Outside the window I could see the lilac branches freeze, standing still against the white picket fence.

  I never heard thankfulness and Hitler used in the same sentence.

  Hitler had invented the Volkswagen, and life in Minneapolis, Minnesota, some thirty years later was easier because of it.

  I said nothing, but my whole body was an ice brick.

  Alice knew something terrible had happened. She didn’t know quite what, but she could sense it.

  Then I reached my hand across the table for a jar. I asked her in an unfamiliar voice if she wanted wild honey for her tea.

  Her hands flew to her face. “I must be hurrying home. The ham I took out of the freezer this morning must already be defrosted.” She got up suddenly and blew out the front door. “Oh, say good night to Gauguin.”

  I was stiff as a cadaver. I heard her pull away in her Volkswagen.

  The toilet flushed. Gauguin walked into the kitchen. “Hey, where’s—” He looked around. “What happened?”

  I turned my head and looked at him blankly. All emotion was flushed out of me. “How do I get to your mother’s house? She left her pie plate. I know she’ll want it. She told me she plans to bake some more.”

  “Nell—”

  “Just give me the directions,” I demanded.

  I got in the car and put the key in the ignition. How could she say that about Hitler in front of me? I pulled out of the parking space and turned left at the corner. Six million Jews were murdered because of that monster. Those are my people! Turning onto the freeway, I started to sob. I was crying so hard, I could hardly see the exit signs, but I kept driving. I pulled off at Cretin Vandalia in St. Paul. I had driven in the wrong direction, farther away from Alice’s, but I didn’t care.

  At the light I made a left and drove down an unfamiliar residential street. “Ashland Avenue,” the sign read. I pulled over in front of a row of duplexes and fumbled in the glove compartment for a tissue. Snot was running out my nose. Glancing in the rearview mirror, I could see by the light of a passing car that my eyes were swollen. I’d been crying a full twenty minutes. I found a tissue, blew my nose into it, and crumpled it in my tight fist.

  And what she said about my grandfather! I’m not spoiled—he liked to play with me. He liked the kindala. The thought of my grandfather made me collapse over the steering wheel and sob anew. I loved him and I loved being a Jew.

  At home my family had talked about the Holocaust so much, I was sick of it. When I came back from college, I used to say to my mother, “Yeah, but the U.S. is doing it now in Vietnam, and the Turks did it to the Armenians.”

  “It’s different,” my mother cried.

  I didn’t believe it was different; I didn’t understand that it was different because the Nazis had done it to my people. At the time, I was afraid to identify as a Jew. But now, sitting in this car in St. Paul, I was all Jew, every cell in me, all the way back in an unbroken line to Moses. No one could take my Jewishness away from me. And no one around me was going to slur my people. I felt my body grow as big and as deep-rooted as a tree. I had to get out of that car before I burst through it.

  It began to rain. A few drops fell through the open window, dampening my left arm. Suddenly I wanted nothing in the world more than to be in that beautiful rain, beating on the black street, with the streetlights glittering in the puddles and on the slick asphalt. I shoved open the car door and flung myself out. I thundered down the sidewalk, past stoops and garbage cans lined neatly along the curb for the next morning’s pickup. The rain fed me, and I gobbled it up.

  My T-shirt was soaked by the time I got back to the car. I slammed the door shut, then began to laugh. At first it was more like a hiccough, but then it grew and grew until I was gasping and wiping my eyes. Eight full years of Hebrew school had left me a devout rebel. It took an ignorant comment by an Iowa-bred farm girl to bring me back to my roots.

  Sitting behind the wheel, I breathed deeply until I regained my composure. Alice’s pie plate sat on the passenger seat. I took an old envelope out of my purse and wrote a note: “Alice, here’s your plate. I thought you might want it. I think you and I should get together in the next week and talk. I’ll call you. Nell.”

  I turned the car around and headed toward Minneapolis. Alice’s street was quiet. I climbed the stairs—the elevator was on the blink again—and left the pie plate with the note at her door.

  I got in the car and hugged the steering wheel. I started the motor and flipped on the radio. John Lennon was singing “Imagine.” I sang along with him as I drove home through the empty streets.

  Alice called me the next week during her lunch hour. We met that Wednesday at Tommy’s Grill. Alice said it was one of her favorite places. I didn’t pay attention to the place and only ordered a bowl of split pea soup. I was nervous, and I wanted to get to the point right away.

  “Alice, you know I get the feeling you don’t understand that I’m Jewish. What it means.” I began shredding the paper napkin in my lap. “Sometimes you make comments that are offensive to me, and I don’t think you realize it.”

  Alice gazed at me intently, and as I spoke, she nodded her head. “I know you’re Jewish.” She stopped nodding. “Of course, I didn’t know any Jews growing up in Iowa, and even here, I’ve rarely met one. There’s Dr. Eisenberg, the dentist down the hall, but he doesn’t look Jewish. I mean, he’s blond.”

  “There are blond Jews, even redheads with freckles, like Gauguin,” I said. I wasn’t going to let her get away with anything. “That’s a stereotype that we’re all dark.”

  “You do seem different to me, though,” she confessed.

  “How?”

  “There’s just something about you—I don’t know,” she said.

  “You mean, that my parents got emotional at the wedding? That my grandfather played with me?” My voice was rising. I took a breath. I had every right to say what I was saying.

  “You don’t seem to want to do the housework. My son—”

  “That’s not Judaism. That’s feminism,” I cut her off.

  “Nell, I’m sorry. I get mixed up.” She put her hands at the edge of the table. “I’ve been so nervous around you. I don’t know, I wanted to be a good mother-in-law to you, the way Camille was to me. I guess I botched everything up, especially my marriage.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “No, you didn’t! He was a terrible husband. He slept around.”

  “Oh, you know? I guess Gauguin told you?” She looked at me beseechingly. She wore a thick layer of face powder, and I noticed how some of it had congealed in the lines at either side of her mouth.

  “Yes.” I hesitated. “He mentioned it.” I could see she was starving for affirmation. “You were very strong to leave.”

  “You know, women of my day stayed married no matter what.”

  “Times are changing.” I nodded my head. “Maybe now you can understand why I don’t want to do all the housework. I’m not a maid.”

  “It’s so hard, Nell. When I see him wi
th another woman—” She looked down.

  “Who? Gauguin?”

  “No, Rip.” She gave a little laugh of recognition. “Well, maybe Gauguin, too. I’ve been awful, haven’t I?” She reached her hand across the table and laid it on mine. “Please forgive me? All I know is the kind of marriage where the wife cooks and cleans and the husband is the boss.”

  Hearing that last word I cringed. “Do you understand it’s different now?”

  Just then, the waiter brought over the check.

  “Please, let me get it.” Alice grabbed it off the tray.

  I had barely touched my soup.

  As we walked out, Alice took my arm. “Please, Nell, give me another chance.”

  I remembered last Friday night and my walk in the rain down Ashland. Alice still didn’t have a clue who I was, but she was Gauguin’s mother and she was trying now.

  “Okay,” I said, “but on one condition.”

  “Of course,” Alice replied. “What is it?”

  “Please don’t thank God for Hitler.”

  36

  “SO WHAT DO you do all day?” my mother asked.

  “Mom, I found a job, but it doesn’t start for three weeks,” I replied, the telephone receiver cupped between my ear and left shoulder. I was standing in front of my eleventh pear painting. This one was of a corner of the ceiling in the living room, and I had the pears suspended in a hanging planter.

  “Nell, what kind of teaching job starts at the beginning of November?”

  “This one,” I said impatiently. It had been hard to land a job in Minneapolis. Finally, federal funds had come through for a remedial reading teacher in a junior high school.

  “Do you see Alice and Rip—what kind of name is Rip, anyway? Do you see them often? Oh, how I wish you lived in Brooklyn. Am chance of you moving here?”

  “Mom, you ask me that every time I talk to you.” I reached for lemon yellow with my paintbrush.

  “Well, is there a chance?” she tried again.

  “No,” I said emphatically.

  “You should have Gauguin’s parents over every Friday night for dinner,” she insisted.

  “Mom, they’re divorced, get it? They aren’t a couple anymore. Besides, they don’t want to come over so much. And they’re not Jews. Friday is Shabbos.”

  “Why don’t they want to come over?” she asked suspiciously. “Aren’t you keeping a clean house?”

  “Ma, please, I have to go. Send my love to Dad, Grandma, and Riteey. Okay?”

  We hung up.

  I cleaned my brushes and ambled down to the bus stop. It would take two to get out to the Jewish Community Center, but I didn’t care. I liked taking city buses; they made me feel ecological.

  I had joined the health club at the JCC a month ago and was on an intramural volleyball team. It was comforting to be around other Jews, even if they were Midwestern Jews. Of course, I didn’t tell my mother that I had joined the club. It would please her too much.

  In late afternoon, when the bus let me off on the corner, I could see Marian, our upstairs neighbor, sitting on the stoop. I waved, and when I got to our place, I sat down next to her.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Matthew’s not coming home tonight till late. I don’t have to make dinner.” She smiled, pleased.

  “Hey, want to walk over to the Riverside Café for an early dinner?” I ventured. “Gauguin won’t be home till seven.” I was proud that I knew some places now in the city.

  “You know, this is where Gauguin asked me to marry him,” I explained after we sat down, our plates piled high with cheese enchiladas. I took a forkful. “This isn’t bad. Almost as good as New Mexico.”

  “What’s it like there? I’ve never been. My family liked to stay close to home. They played it safe.” She took a swig of water.

  “My family hardly left Brooklyn,” I told her. “I discovered New Mexico later on my own.”

  “You seem different from other people here.”

  “How so?” I asked her.

  “You know, looser. We’re all kind of conservative. No one from my family ever left Minnesota.”

  “You’re kidding.” I took a bite of salad. “Not me. Once I hit New Mexico, I knew I was home.”

  “How come you’re not there now?” she asked.

  “I dunno.” I looked down at my plate and stabbed at my food. I didn’t want to talk about this. “I left, that’s all.” What a dumb answer, I thought to myself.

  I glanced up at Marian. She looked down. I didn’t want to be unfriendly. I just didn’t want to tell her about who I used to be. I wasn’t sure Marian would understand my past life.

  “Hey, look at those dog paintings.” My mouth was full of cornbread. “There, on the brick wall.”

  Marian turned her head around. “Oh, they have monthly shows here, I think.”

  “They do, huh? For anybody?” I asked.

  “I dunno. You could ask,” she said.

  “Just a minute.” I got up and walked over to the cashier. “How do you get to show here?”

  She didn’t know what I was talking about. “On the wall”—I pointed—“the pictures?”

  “Oh, that. Ask Margaret, the manager. She’s behind, in the kitchen. I saw her a minute ago.” She turned her head and yelled, “Hey, Margaret, someone here wants to talk with you.”

  A minute later, a blond woman about my age appeared. “Can I help you?

  “I’m a painter”—as I spoke those words for the first time, my blood raced through me—“and I’d like to have a show here.”

  “We have an opening in February. You frame it, you hang it, if you sell anything, you keep the money,” she told me.

  “For the whole month?” I asked. She nodded.

  “Can I just mat them?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Okay, sign me up.”

  I floated back to the table. “I’m having a show here in February. It’s my first.” I was stunned how quickly it had happened.

  “That’s great,” said Marian. “Let’s toast.” She held up her water glass. “To Nell’s one-woman show, the first of many.” We clicked glasses.

  “I’ve got to get working.” I looked at the walls of the café, figuring out how many paintings it would take. “Twenty. I need to have twenty ready. I’ve got about eight that I like well enough so far.” My mind was buzzing. “And I probably should type up a personal statement.” I paused. “I should sell them cheap since it’s my first.” I looked around. There was a very scruffy clientele, mostly university students. “Otherwise, no one could afford them.”

  Marian looked around. “Do you think these people buy art?”

  “Probably not, but I’ll only charge fifty dollars a painting, just in case.” I popped a cherry tomato into my mouth.

  37

  BY THE SECOND WEEK in December, the weather hit a constant twenty-five below. Gauguin didn’t have to leave for work until later, and it was agony to leave the heat of his sleeping body as I crawled out of bed in the dark. I had to be at school by eight o’clock, and I gave myself at least a half-hour to drive there, especially since there might be ice. When the cold hit my face as I went out to the car each morning, I was thoroughly stunned. I couldn’t get used to it. Never had I experienced weather like this.

  The flu was going around the school and had a strong hold by the middle of December. When I walked into class on the Wednesday before Christmas, not only were the students absent, but Jean, my aide, was too. I usually taught five or six kids at a time, but today only Maurice, an eighth grader, showed up for the fourth-period class. He was chunky and had the sleeves of his gray sweater pushed up to the elbows.

  “Hey, it’s only you and me.” He looked around and smiled.

  “Yes. Why don’t we read a story aloud?” I said enthusiastically, showing him that I thought reading was a treat. Elm Street Junior High was in the northeast section of Minneapolis. Locals called the place Nordeast, and it was like a se
parate country of Norwegian immigrants. Black kids were bused in from the yellow cinderblock tenements on the other side of town.

  “You’ll sit next to me?” he asked. “And help me with words I don’t know? You know, there might be a few I don’t know.”

  “Fine. You pick out a story.” I watched him go over to the rack of books that were easy reading and high interest. He selected a thin volume, then came and sat beside me at a long wooden table.

  The third floor of the school hadn’t been used in five years, but when I arrived to teach in this special program, they’d put me there. It was the only classroom used on that floor, and the janitor, a bulky man in green trousers with a hundred keys hanging from a ring on his belt, quickly informed me, “The third-floor ladies’ room isn’t in our contract. We don’t clean it. You have to use the one on the second floor.” And he pointed to the stairwell.

  The cover of the book Maurice had selected had a photo of a group of boys his age standing around a motorcycle. “I’d like to get me a motorcycle. My mama says I can when I’m fifteen and if I lose weight. A doctor put me on a diet. Mama boils my meat so all the fat goes in the water.”

  “You look thinner, Maurice. I was going to ask you if you were on a diet,” I said.

  “Yeah, for three weeks now. I eat boiled potatoes and no eggs and no cookies, no ice cream, no butter, no french fries, no malts, no Milk Duds, no Jujubes, no cake or pie or Oreo cookies or Twinkies.” His eyes grew large as he counted the different foods off on his fingers.

  “Hmmm, why don’t we open the book and start reading? First the title.” With Maurice, it was easy to get off the subject. I liked teaching reading, especially with such small groups. I got to know kids individually, which was unusual in a public school.

  “ ‘The Boy Who Wanted a Bike.’ ” He pointed to each word with his index finger as he read it. He turned to me. “They don’t mean a bike you pedal. They mean a motor bike.”

  “You’re probably right. Can you tell me who the book is dedicated to?”