PROLOGUE –
It started the moment the land vanished. The ocean was calm but Sarah’s stomach heaved worse than it had with her three pregnancies, worse than the first time when she lost the baby, when she was too young to be having children. Sarah wanted to be an actress and a lady, not a mother and a wife like she was now. Applause from the audience at the Yiddish Theater in Stockholm still buzzed dizzily in her ears as she sat, doubled over, on the wood floor in the steerage area allocated to the women. She clutched her stomach and moaned.
Many men told her, many times, that her voice was that of an angel. No one would say that now. She rocked back and forth hoarsely cursing her husband. The dank bunkroom smelled like mice and turnips, tainted with vomit and menstrual blood. Her husband, Yakov, was to blame for this, all of it, she thought. She would never let him forget how he dragged her around the world.
“Against my will,” she would say over and over in the years to come. “To me he did this. This county I need like a hole in my head.” English was hard for her to learn. She resented the ease with which it came to Yakov. The eighteen months they spent in Liverpool, waiting for money and the right ship to depart, hadn’t helped her. She longed to speak German, the civilized language, the one she had been taught in primer school in Latvia, before moving to Sweden. German separated her from the lowly Slavic Jews on board, even though she was one of them. They babbled away in Polish, Russian or Yiddish. Unrefined, she thought. She could speak those languages too, when needed, good enough.
Her father, a merchant, understood this caste system when he changed their name from Powlenky to Steinhaus. And her name from Tzeitel to Sarah, telling her that Sarah was still a good Jewish name. She had to give up Steinhaus and its pretense when she married this crazy Russian, Yakov Aronsky, at her father’s insistence. Sarah hadn’t understood his urgency to have her out of his home and married to this Russian after she miscarried the baby. I have no choice, she had cried.
He scolded her simply, “Don’t play around with God. First, it’s not allowed and second, He won’t let you. Remember always that no choice is a choice!”
She loved her father with all her heart and would have stayed with him forever. It was only during those last years that he forbade her to sleep in his bed. He’d been lonely with only the two of them living in Stockholm and the rest of the family, her mother, sister and two brothers, back in Riga. She still imagined her father’s hands stroking her chestnut hair every night as she fell asleep. It was fortunate that she had lost that baby. Six years later, traveling with Yakov, she was still waiting for a home, a place in some country to settle down.
The darkness in the bunkroom pressed on her. Steerage. Her father would be ashamed if he found out they were crossing this way. She felt along the seams of her skirt into which she’d sewn the last of her jewelry, her emerald ring, a ruby brooch, a silver filigree necklace with a tiny diamond and a pair of diamond earrings, wedding gifts from her father. Yakov didn’t know she had valuables left unsold. They were her private insurance. Sarah rubbed the seams, trying to calm herself. The ship rolled slightly, enough to make her head spin.
She decided that fresh air would settle her stomach. She climbed the steep ladder, her legs shaking, to the steerage deck which was crowded with people all hoping for a good life in the new world. She wanted to be infused with that dream but it wasn’t happening. The black coffee and bread she’d eaten for breakfast wrestled in her stomach, refusing to settle. A stringent bile taste rose in her mouth.
The first blast of air on the deck revived her momentarily. She pressed her way forward to reach the railing in case she needed to vomit. Hanging her head over the rail, she spotted Yakov at the far end of the boat. He was with a tiny woman who came barely to his shoulder. She wore a kerchief and odd clothing. Her dress, made from blocky black and white fabric, was very large, too large for her bony frame. Her skin was brown, a foreigner among the foreigners. The woman grasped her husband’s palm and studied it. Sarah forgot her nausea as she pushed her way along the railing passed an assortment of sickly looking pale-faced passengers leaning their heads overboard.
The woman spoke in a loud voice, slowly in a language she didn’t recognize. Her husband listened intently, nodding his head. When he saw Sarah approach, he pulled back his hand. He took some coins from his pocket and gave them to the woman, placing them into her palm and folding her hand closed. The woman made a sign of the cross and backed away, bowing as she did.
“So, nu? You give away our money. What will we have to eat with in this new country? Even if the streets are paved with gold, that won’t feed you or me or the boys. And where are the boys? Running wild, mixing with the goyim I suppose. Like you? I wasn’t born yesterday. I know what’s what.” She shook her finger at him as she spoke. Her thick braids, wound tight around her head, made it ache. She wasn’t giving an inch to this man who thought he knew it all.
“Ai, shaynela. It’s not what you think. The poor woman was a Mustalainen, a Blackster from Finland.” He saw her confused face. “You know, a Roma, a gypsy like in Sweden. Not many on this boat understand when she speaks. She mixes Romany with the Finnish. I learned a little in Finland, running from the Russki’s army. I understand what she means, if not all of the words. She looked at my palm and told me what it is the lines say.” He looked back over his shoulder to see if the woman was still in sight. She was not. “Lots of children, she said. Music. Probably she knew from looking at my fingers, that I was a musician. Then something about moving, many times more than we’d like. Who knows? Maybe she’s wrong on that one. Or maybe all the already moves count. ”
Sarah’s father Benjamin had pointed out gypsies to her, pushing their bright colored carts through the Stockholm streets. “They are like us, outsiders,” he said. “Alike, but not so alike. Alike because they are not like Swedes. They too are half citizens in this kingdom. But they are trayf, unkosher. Look away if they stare at you, or they might carry you off. Even their dogs they train to steal.” It was the first time she had seen dark-skinned people and she stared anyway. America, she was told, would have people with skin much darker than the Roma’s chocolate coloring. Some would be as black as ebony. They spoke a cacophony of languages in the new world. It made her head whirl to think of it. This boat felt like an introduction to that world, in spite of the predominance of Eastern Europeans.
Later that night Sarah and Yakov leaned against the railing, shoulders touching for warmth. The little boys, Paulie and Joe, sat on the deck next to them, playing with a deck of cards they picked up from someone. The night sky was clear, filled with stars that fell into the ocean and rolled around on the waves. Yakov told her the rest of the fortuneteller’s predictions. The woman had said he would die young. But how then would he have lots of children? A contradiction. Maybe it wasn’t so young she meant. Maybe only before he was ready, before he was a really old man, a long time from now. He patted her hand reassuringly. “I will sew clothing for the King, for the President, for all the important men. Mend and sew. I will be a famous tailor and you will be a rich lady.” He hummed a tune and sang softly to her, a Yiddish lullaby.