“The social worker and I believe she wouldn’t understand, and in so far as she’s able to understand, we feel it wouldn’t be in her best interests to be told. It would just upset her.”
And that would be difficult for you, thought Rebecca.
“I’d like to see her,” she said.
The blonde glanced at her briefly, only in acknowledgement, no challenge. Rebecca knew her own authority, but suspected that the woman had reservations about Rebecca’s role: was she going to tell Chana and set her off for good? Rebecca could leave after this visit and not come back. The staff had to deal with the patient afterwards. None of this was voiced but Rebecca sensed it in the stiff resentful walk of the chubby woman in front of her, rather brisk considering the heels and tight white skirt. As it happened Rebecca hadn’t yet decided what she would tell Chana. She despised the power professionals reserved for themselves in making decisions for their charges, though she knew that it was sometimes necessary in cases of patient incompetence.
They stopped in front of room 201. Down the hall a thin craggy-faced man leaned on a cane and watched them. Rebecca hated these places. Waiting for death. The blonde knocked on the door. There was no answer from inside the room, nor did the blonde expect any for she opened the door several seconds later. A tiny bird of a woman sat in a wooden upholstered chair facing the window. She turned her head in anticipation, her face somewhat animated. When she saw Rebecca, her eyes went blank, her cheeks slackened, and she turned back to the window. It was disappointment, Rebecca realized with a chill, that she wasn’t Goldie.
“You have a visitor, dear,” said the blonde in a raised voice. “Dr. Temple has come to see you.”
No response. “Mrs. Feldberg....” The blonde raised her voice another notch.
“It’s all right,” Rebecca broke in. “We’ll be fine.”
Rebecca stepped into the room; the woman clicked the door closed.
On the wall to her right stood a desk with a portable sewing machine in the corner. Small stacks of colourful fabric stretched across the back of the desk. It all looked too neat, as if it were never touched. Rebecca imagined Goldie bringing her sister material to tempt her into activity.
Rebecca brought the only other chair close to the old woman and sat down. Chana’s unwashed grey hair lay thin and flat against her tiny head. Her skin was nearly transparent, the skull beneath poking through. She had once been beautiful, Rebecca knew from her photos. Now her eyes sunk amid features that mingled with bone. She stared out the window but appeared to see nothing. Rebecca followed her eyes toward Bathurst Street and beyond. Across the road, extending as far as she could see, were cemeteries, both Jewish and Christian. Some joke, she thought. The universe was filled with jokes like these. That Rebecca was here at all was a joke. What could this ghost of a woman possibly tell her? Especially since Rebecca couldn’t speak Yiddish.
“I’m Dr. Temple,” she said. “Your sister’s doctor.” She wondered if Chana had regressed beyond the ken of English or whether she was just more comfortable using Yiddish.
Though Rebecca had spoken quietly, the woman was startled, her hands beginning to tremble. That was when Rebecca noticed the doll in Chana’s lap. An uncomfortable pang of recognition went through her. The doll was a match to the one in Goldie’s bedroom, made of coarse grey cotton and striped clothes.
“What an unusual doll. May I see it?” Rebecca asked, holding out her palm.
Without expression, Chana grabbed the doll tightly, and pressed it close to her breast, bringing the other hand up as a shield.
“Then again,” Rebecca said. “I can see it from here.”
“You know, your sister Goldie has one of these dolls in her bedroom.” No reaction from Chana.
“Your sister tells me she comes to visit you. When was the last time she was here?”
Chana stared out the window, her expression unchanged. Rebecca had gotten a basic response from her before. Maybe the woman was capable of more.
“When your sister was here, did she talk about a man? A man who frightened her? Did she say anything about him? What he looked like? This is important, Mrs. Feldberg.”
The woman’s eyes remained fixed but they suddenly shifted from the window to the bed. That was progress, thought Rebecca. Now the woman was avoiding her. Rebecca followed her gaze to the bed. Perhaps Chana was communicating. On the flowered comforter near the pillow, a dozen more misshapen cloth figures in the same prison stripes lay camouflaged amid the vibrant colours of the bedclothes that, Rebecca imagined, Goldie had picked for her sister.
“Could I see one of those?” Rebecca asked softly.
When there was no response, Rebecca stood up and stepped across the floor. She glanced back at Chana hoping for permission. The old eyes were empty. Rebecca bent over slowly, giving Chana time to voice any objections. None were forthcoming and Rebecca picked up a doll.
“Kinder,” a dry voice croaked.
When Rebecca looked up, Chana’s small eyes watched her. Good, thought Rebecca, at least a response. Kinder. Children.
“Kinder,” Rebecca repeated, hoping for more. But Chana seemed all talked out.
Rebecca turned the doll in her hand, marvelling at the primitive simpleness of the thing, very much like a grey sock with arms and legs sewn around. Some brown yarn tacked on for hair, a few stitches for eyes and mouth. Not much uniformity. The object must’ve been to crank out a population of inmates but she hadn’t stuck to a pattern. Each one seemed a new beginning, each an individual. The doll in Rebecca’s hand wore rough trousers, but a number of figures on the bed wore skirts, all of the same striped fabric. Chana must’ve sewn each of them along a bitter journey backwards into some depth of memory. Her sewing table appeared abandoned. Perhaps she’d sewn these in the early stages of her illness. Rebecca knew that the trauma suffered by victims in concentration camps was a wound that never healed. These figures were clearly images from that period. Had the regression halted there, in that time of nightmare?
Rebecca glanced at Chana, whose bony face could have been one of the pitiful multitude staring out from behind barbed wire in the photos she’d seen of camp survivors. Rebecca’s eye was drawn to the doll whose head poked out above Chana’s hand. Something was different about it. Beneath the yarn hair, the head was tightly covered with red gauze, the eyes and mouth stitched over it. Rebecca peeked back at the bed. She focused on each doll till she found two more with redcovered heads.
“Kinder” Chana said.
“Kinder” Rebecca repeated. She wanted a closer look. “May I?” she said, as a formality.
But as soon as she picked up the two red dolls, Chana began to moan. Rebecca glanced at her, surprised.
“Nisht kinder!” she wailed “Nisht kinder!”
“All right,” Rebecca said. “I’m sorry.” She put them down but near the edge of the bed where she could examine them. One doll was a match to the one Chana held, only male to her female, both heads covered with red gauze. The other doll was definitely different. Its trousers were not striped like the other males, but black, worn with a black jacket and cap. This was a uniform. She screwed up her eyes to try to decipher the irregular object sewn onto the end of its arm. A greyish form, probably a gun. What was the significance of these dolls, especially the three with their sanguine, forbidden heads?
Goldie used to describe to Rebecca the elegant clothes Chana sewed for her. It was hard to fathom that the same hand that had created Goldie’s wardrobe had fashioned these crude representations. Yet what was the point of fathoming? Chana was lost somewhere within herself, unable to give Rebecca directions. Whatever Goldie had told Chana was lost with her, the words rattling around somewhere amid forty-year-old memories.
chapter fifteen