Chapter 3 The Orphanage
Placement in the orphanage typically was triggered by a family conflict. I was nine years old at the time. We had spent only a single day together as a family when all hell broke loose. After our return from a two-and-one-half-year sojourn in Israel, my father had arranged a welcome-home party for us in a spanking new apartment in Bethune that featured attractive, if inexpensive, furniture. His mother Helga Mazarin joined us as the mistress of ceremonies. She was a jolly, rotund frau, whose perennially sunny disposition was not in the least diminished by her wooden leg. I remember her fondly for her repeated, enthusiastic rendition of the old literary chestnut Hansel and Gretel. Whenever there was a lull in the conversation, I could always engage her impishly with, "Grandma, could you tell us the story of Hansel and Gretel?" She told the story with a different wrinkle each time. I liked her so much that I listened with rapt wonderment. Seated next to her at the kitchen table was a nondescript, rather mute blonde, young lady, amply bosomed, with a sallow complexion and a vapid look. In my childish naivet at the time I thought the hushed expression murmured about the table in reference to her-"mistress"-was her actual name. My father was not beyond a sexual dalliance. Since Mother had arbitrarily relegated him from the marital bed to the bathtub after the birth of my youngest brother Etienne, he felt no conjugal obligations whatever. There were undoubtedly many mistresses over the years. Nevertheless, when we returned from Israel, he immediately became suspicious of mother's inordinate weight gain and girth. She had always prided herself on her hourglass figure. In earlier years he had delighted in fondling it. As a Catholic (despised by Jews at the time), he had been forced to return to France after only a few months abroad. The discrimination directed at him in Israel was not pejorative language, but the absence of work. The realization that Mother had become impregnated by another man during the family separation hit him gradually and viscerally. "You filthy whore, how could you do this to me? You won't come near me, you kick me out of the bedroom, and you screw complete strangers. I've had it with you" Defending her son vigorously, the perennially ebullient Helga inexplicably turned vicious: "How could you disgrace your husband and your children, you dirty Jew?" In ever-deepening rage, father flung Mother across the room like a rag-doll and proceeded to beat her violently as she shrieked and screamed in pain, "Leave me alone, you animal." "I'm going to beat you to a pulp." He kicked her in the stomach with all the force he could muster. Tables and chairs were overturned and scattered as we crouched in fear amidst the rubble and din. In the pandemonium we tried unsuccessfully to pry him off her, but he was much too strong. Finally Celine had the presence of mind to call the police. I can still hear her plaintive, childish voice, "Daddy is beating my mommy. Please help us." Mother ended up in the hospital, destined to lose the baby, although she didn't realize it at that time. Father was taken to jail in handcuffs, theoretically for a night's cooling off. Essentially, he left our lives forever. I never saw him again. Vacating houses was to be a continuing way of life for our family-thirty-three occasions in all. Mother, now destitute and without the assistance of her errant husband, next sought accommodation with her cousin Miriam Stern in Metz. Penniless, she gave the ticket agent a gold bracelet to pay for the tickets. Miriam's offer of hospitality was less than enthusiastic, somewhat like the Griswold's welcome to Eddie and his brood in the various "vacation" movies. Her one-bedroom apartment was barely adequate for her husband and twelve-year old son, both retarded. We stayed the night, packed like sardines in one tiny room. Nevertheless, Miriam greeted us in the morning with hearty, unbridled optimism, "Rebecca, I know just the place for the kids, where they'll be well housed and fed." Like a pied piper she led us the five blocks to L'Orphanage de Saint Jeanne. Mother too thought it was a good idea. "While you kids are in the orphanage, I can try to find work." The "nuns" who ran the establishment seemed happy to have us. I thought that perhaps the government reimbursed them according to the number of children they had. Mother inadvertently signed away custodial rights to us but didn't realize it at the time because she was functionally illiterate. Meanwhile her work efforts landed her a job cleaning train windows between stops at the local train station. Given her limited education and skills, this was the best she could do. Unfortunately, during the first week of her employment she badly injured her back when her ladder slipped as the train lurched. She fell contortedly into the crevice between the train and the station. She tried to continue her work for the next week, but, weakened by the accident and by tuberculosis, contracted mainly by nights spent on park benches to save money, she ended up fainting. A good samaritan called an ambulance. She had to spend a month in the hospital for rehabilitation. In addition to her health problems, doctors discovered that she had been carrying a dead baby in her stomach, the result of my father's assault. Her uterus had to be removed, revealing the rotting flesh that had severely damaged her colon and liver. The single positive outcome of her predicament was that she was given a small disability which afforded her a decent place to live. The Catholic orphanage in which we were placed was a curious, incongruous setting for a family raised as Sephardic Jews. Mother had left us with the admonition "to study hard and don't give the nuns any trouble or you'll regret it."
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