The Last Embrace

“These documents.” She gestured. “That ship. You’ll have to transfer in Gibralter, but there’s no telling when we might get another chance.” But her voice was evasive, and remembering Papa burning the papers, I knew it was something more. I would be leaving them behind in danger.

“Papa and I will follow.” I knew it was a lie. Papa was too weak to travel. She urged me forward onto the rotten-smelling dock, finding gaps in the crowd that I could not see and making her own with shoulders and elbows where none existed. Her hair fanned out around her, a lioness with her cub.

We neared the front of the crowd and Mamma pushed toward a uniformed man and handed him a fistful of bills, saying a few words I could not hear. She turned back. “Come.” We reached the edge where the dock met the ship and my toe caught in the gap. Mamma grabbed my arm hard to keep me from stumbling. “Stay out of sight as much as you can.” Her fingers bit into my skin. “Talk to no one. I will send word to Papa’s brother.” She took her mizpah necklace, with its half-heart pendant made of gold that she had always worn, from around her neck, and fastened it on mine. My father had given it to her years earlier, keeping his half in his breast pocket, close to his own heart. She did not kiss me, but pressed me tightly to her once, firm and hard. Then she released me and, before I could follow, disappeared into the crowd.

“Hey!” The stevedore’s voice came again. My vision cleared. Impatient now, he gestured with his thick hand in the direction of the large building ahead. “You gotta go in there. Police come for the kids who’ve got no one to claim them.” There was a quiet thud in my chest, as I carefully pieced together his words. What did the police do with those kids?

I ran my tongue over the chipped spot on my front tooth as I glanced back over my shoulder at the ship. Once dirty and confining, now it seemed a refuge. But I did not have money for a meal, much less a return ticket. “You can’t go back, only forward.” The man stood with arms folded, blocking the way behind me, and I had no choice but to move in the direction of the building.

Inside the high-ceilinged arrivals hall, bodies pressed together, making the air warm and thick. Conversations in different languages, German, Yiddish, Italian, rose and clashed around me. I hung back from the queue that shuffled forward, trying to figure out what to do. In an alcove to the right, a few of the other kids from the ship sat forlornly on a wood bench. A policeman lorded over them in the doorway. Nothing good was going to happen to that lot and I didn’t want to join them. But I was not about to go up to immigration and announce that I was alone.

I saw a sign for the ladies’ room at the far side of the terminal and made my way toward it. Pressing inside through the wall of stench, I grimaced at my reflection in the cracked mirror. On the boat I had tried to cow my thick dark hair back into braids, as Nonna had done each morning. But pieces stuck out in all directions. The scratch on my cheek had just begun to heal. I pushed my way to the basin where women jostled at the sink like pigs at a trough. Reaching my hands into the fray, I managed to get a few drops of water. I desperately wanted to drink it, but didn’t dare. Instead, I used it to smooth my hair and wipe a smudge from my forehead.

Back in the main hall, the crowds from the ship had thinned. I walked to a newspaper stand in the corner, pretending to be interested in the headlines. Ten minutes passed. “You buying?” the man behind the kiosk asked. I moved away, feeling exposed in the vast, emptying arrivals hall. If I stood here any longer, the policeman who took the kids was going to notice. In the short queue which remained ahead, a family with several children was nearing the immigration desk. I moved close to them, hoping to slip through with them.

But as the family stepped past the desk, a hand caught my shoulder, stopping me.

“Papers?” I drew myself up to my full four feet eight inches, then handed my passport to the man in a dark blue cap and jacket whose eyes darted back and forth as he scanned the paper in front of him. An open pack of Lucky Strikes peeked out of his breast pocket. I held my breath, praying that the papers were good, and that the money my mother had given the ship’s purser was enough to have my name added to the manifest. The waiting room on the far side of the immigration desk, where cleared arrivals met their hosts, stood just feet but oceans away.

The man looked up beneath bushy brows. “Who’s sponsoring you?” I shook my head at the unfamiliar word. “You have family here?” he asked more slowly.

“My aunt and uncle. They’re expecting me.” My accent sounded thicker than when I had practiced speaking English with Mamma back home.

“Where are they?” I faltered. “Children have to be collected.” He made me sound like luggage. I bristled at the notion of still being called a child at almost seventeen, then decided not to complain. He gestured toward the guarded side room with the kids. “Otherwise you’ll have to go to the Home until your relatives can collect you.”

“Home?” I repeated, picking out the word I recognized.

“It’s a place for kids who have no one.”

My stomach tightened. “My uncle, he is...sick,” I said, spinning the lie as it came out. “They couldn’t came.”

“Come,” he corrected. “You have a letter?”

“It blew away.” I gestured with my hand, then fought not to blink as he stared at me. “On the boat.”

He took off his cap and scratched his head. “I’d like to help you. But we can’t just let kids go loose in the city.” Now he sounded like a zookeeper. My heart sank as he raised his hand to wave over the policeman who was guarding the children.

Over the edge of the immigration desk, I spotted a grainy family photograph. “You have children?”

The man hesitated, unaccustomed to others asking the questions. Then he lowered his hand. “Four. A girl and three boys.”

“Your daughter is beautiful. How old?”

His face softened a bit. “Mary’s six.”

The officer rubbed his right temple with thick fingers. Behind him, the clock struck five. “Joe, we’re headed to O’Shea’s,” another man called from behind him.

“My aunt and uncle lived close to here,” I said, not stopping to correct my grammar as I sensed a crack in his resolve. “I will bring my aunt back tomorrow to sign for me? Please.”

The man hesitated. “What’s their address?”

“2256 South Fifth,” I replied, making up the numbers and hoping they sounded right.

“I could lose my job for this.”

“You won’t. I’ll come back.” The man stamped my passport. I took it and hurried past him. I scanned the waiting room, but did not see anyone who might have been my aunt and uncle. Not daring to linger in case the immigration officer changed his mind, I scurried through the station and stepped out into the light.

On the far side of the door, I stopped again and scratched at the back of my head, hoping I had not picked up nits. The street in front of the Port of Philadelphia was packed thick with buses and taxis and black sedans, choking the already thick summer air with exhaust. An enormous American flag flapped in the breeze above. At the corner, a hot-dog cart gave off a savory smell. My mouth watered. Food had run out in steerage almost two days before we docked. I had not eaten, except for the scrap of bread an upper deck passenger had carelessly tossed below in waste. I moved closer to the cart, eyeing the soft pretzels stacked high on the edge. I could take one without anyone noticing.

No, I was not going to start my life here by stealing. Better hungry than a thief. I turned from the cart, focusing on the street in front of me. I had made it through immigration, but I still had no idea where I was going.

“Adelia?” a voice called behind me. I froze. They were going to stop me from leaving after all. But this time the voice was female and it had spoken—not barked—my name. I turned. A sturdy woman in a flowered dress and thick brown shoes was walking toward me, a thin, stooped man at her side. My shoulders slumped with relief. So Mamma had been able to send word after all.

A look of something—disapproval perhaps—passed over the woman’s face as she neared. She leaned in to kiss my cheek, flinching at the travel smell I could not help. “I’m your aunt Bess. This is your uncle,” she added, gesturing toward the gray-haired man in horn-rimmed glasses who stood behind her. I tried to stand straighter. I wanted them to like me, to be glad they had taken me in.

“Meyer,” he offered, switching his cigar to his other hand so he could shake mine. I strained to hear his voice, one step above a whisper. There was something familiar around his dark, almond-shaped eyes that made him an older, less handsome version of Papa. Homesickness washed over me.

“I’m so sorry we were late. There was construction on the road and then we had the wrong dock,” Aunt Bess said, sounding harried. I struggled to keep up with her rapid-fire English, catching only a fraction of what she said. “I suppose we have to clear you through customs.” She pointed to the building.

“I already did.” As if on cue, I saw the immigration officer who had let me go walking from the terminal, jacket thrown over his shoulder. He turned, a wave of recognition crossing his face as I gestured toward my aunt and uncle. I had been telling the truth after all. He raised his hand, wishing me good luck with a kind of salute before rounding the corner.

“But how did you manage that? Oh, never mind,” Aunt Bess added before I could share my tale. She took me by the arm. “Oy, you’re all bones.” The comment stung. Before I’d left Trieste I’d been developing, with new curves that made my clothes fit differently. But all that seemed to melt away during the days of hunger on the ship and now my elbows and knees stuck out like a scarecrow’s.

“You must be hungry,” Uncle Meyer offered more kindly.

“A little,” I lied, nearly swooning at the mention of food. My eyes traveled once more toward the stack of pretzels on the hot-dog cart.

But Aunt Bess opened her purse and fished out a bagel wrapped in tissue. She dusted off a bit of lint that had stuck to the corner and handed it to me. “Thank you,” I managed, trying to mask my disappointment as I bit into the stale, crusty bread. I gulped the first mouthful, then forced myself to slow down as my stomach roiled.

“You don’t have bags?” I shook my head. “We’ll have to get you some things,” Aunt Bess said, as though it had only just occurred to her. I followed them to a black car at the corner. “We’re headed to the shore. That is, the beach. Atlantic City. We take a place there in the summer. It’s nothing fancy, just a few rooms in a boardinghouse. But we thought the sea air might do you good.” Aunt Bess spoke quickly, using too many English words that I did not know. “Do you understand?”

She must have noticed my confusion. I tended to wear my emotions on my face—a habit I’d been trying to break. “Si. I mean yes.”

“You’ll like that, nu?” Uncle Meyer asked, his whisper kind. I did not answer. How could I explain that, even though I’d been raised in coastal Trieste, the ocean was in fact the one thing I hated most?

A tear escaped from my right eye then and trickled down my cheek. “Oh, dear,” Aunt Bess said, mistaking my sadness for gratitude and hugging me awkwardly. I let myself be folded into her stiff, unfamiliar arms and took a step into the life that was waiting for me.

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Hearing the screen door slam behind me, I shielded my eyes and peered up at the slope-roofed beach duplex where we occupied the second floor. Aunt Bess labored down the rickety wood steps, straw purse tucked under her arm. Though it was not yet midmorning, the sticky July heat had already caused damp spots to form at the armpits of her dress. “I’m headed to Margie’s.” Aunt Bess’s routine was always the same, the only question if it was canasta at Margie’s or mah-jongg at Flo’s. “Do you want to come?”

I considered saying yes, just to see her reaction. “No, thank you.” Aunt Bess’s shoulders dropped slightly with relief. She hesitated in that way she always did, not quite sure what to do with a teenage girl whom she’d only just inherited less than a month earlier. Things were especially awkward during the week. Uncle Meyer traveled in the Buick, selling pots and pans and other household items to the housewives of Elkins Park and Cheltenham and other neighborhoods northeast of Center City. Until he returned Friday afternoons, it was just Aunt Bess and me. “There are some leftover prakas—I mean cabbage rolls—in the icebox for lunch.” Aunt Bess’s family had come from Pinsk some thirty years earlier, fleeing the pogroms. She regarded herself as American, but little bits of the old country seeped through, like a white slip peeking out beneath the hem of her dress. Sometimes I felt as if I were an embarrassment to her, the immigrant niece a reminder of the world from which she’d tried so hard to distance herself. “There’s cheese for sandwiches and some potato salad,” she continued, as if rattling off a grocery list. She was forever trying to feed me. “I’ll be back this afternoon.”

I watched as Aunt Bess padded, dingy white sandals scraping, down to the corner of Monmouth Avenue. She was not an unkind woman; she simply did not know how to do this, like a muscle stiff from lack of use. I did not dare to ask if she ever wanted kids of her own.

I was supposed to be grateful, I knew, from the looks and not-too-low whispers of Aunt Bess’s friends. Grateful to her and Uncle Meyer for the clothes that were new, but not quite the right size, and for the secondhand books that were a few years too young for me. Grateful that they had taken me in, even though they really hadn’t had a choice. And I was grateful, but I wished they might just once ask me what I wanted, or even let me choose for myself.

When Aunt Bess had disappeared from sight, I climbed the steps of the duplex and went inside for some calamine lotion. We had two rooms, if you counted the screened sundeck with the daybed that made me an easy target for the mosquitos as I slept, plus kitchen privileges down below. I rubbed the lotion into my legs, avoiding the scrape on my left knee. Then I straightened, licking the salt from my lips and peering out across the horizon where greenish bay water met overcast gray sky.