44. A Hundred Houses Shall He Have - 1929
The girl who was now Ella had learned to call Manhattan home again.
Though she had been so young when the train had carried her away, certain things were familiar, but not in a way she could explain to anyone who asked.
Instead, it was as if her soul recognized New York: the buzz of its frenetic energy, as alive as the hum of electricity that coursed through the wires that powered the city; the smell of sour pickles and smoke and the unmistakable stench of the Hudson; the rumble of the subway and the flow of the crowds.
It was easy to shrug the skin of the city back on again, the way she shrugged on the fancy fur coat that new-Mama and Daddy gave her.
Esther Darling had packed her pretty blue hat, the one she used to wear to church on Sundays, but new-Mama threw it away, saying she didn’t want any reminders of that terrible time.
The girl who was now Ella was sad to see her hat go, but she said nothing.
Every day, she tried harder to unlock the words that hid inside her.
New-Mama wanted this, and Ella wanted to please her.
To be Real, like the Velveteen Rabbit, so new-Mama would love her.
But as new-Mama fed the hat to the incinerator, Ella’s protests froze in her throat.
If she could burn the pretty hat so easily, just because it made her unhappy, what might she do to Ella?
New-Mama didn’t say so, but Ella suspected she made her unhappy, too.
She tried to please, smiling about the things new-Mama wanted her to: her room, with its cozy seat by the window; her teddy, which new-Mama said had been her favorite toy; the park across the street, where she loved to play.
But it wasn’t enough. New-Mama wanted something else from Ella, something that Ella couldn’t seem to give, no matter how hard she tried.
Ella had heard her crying about this to Daddy, her voice all sharp and jagged, like the pieces of the broken bottle Ella had seen in the gutter the day they’d gone to FAO Schwarz to get Bunny.
She’s so distant from me, new-Mama wept.
So separate. All I want is to hold her, but when she’s in my arms, it feels like she’s humoring me.
As if half of her is here, with me, but the other half is somewhere else.
Someplace I can’t follow. Daddy had tried to soothe her, in his deep calm voice—Give her time.
Don’t expect too much. It’s been a year, Lizzie, and she was barely three when she disappeared—but new-Mama had sobbed and sobbed.
New-Mama worried Ella, with her eyes that were always too shiny and what Daddy called Her Ex-peck-tay-shuns.
He’d cuddled Ella close on the day Mama had cried, saying it wasn’t Ella’s fault; new-Mama just remembered the little girl she’d lost a year ago, not the big girl Ella was now.
She’d missed Ella so much; they both had.
Ella was doing everything right, Daddy told her. He was so happy to have her home again.
Safe in Daddy’s arms, Ella had found the courage to speak. “Not send me away,” she’d said in her creaky, unused voice, clutching the sleeve of Daddy’s shirt. “I’ll try harder.”
Daddy had held her close, pressing his lips to the top of her head. “We’re not sending you anywhere,” he’d promised, stroking her curls. “You’re right where you belong.”
When Ella was with Daddy, she believed this might be true. He felt like home to her, in a way that new-Mama did not.
New-Mama didn’t trust nannies anymore, so she and Daddy took Ella places themselves.
Today, Ella and Daddy stood inside the wrought iron fence of Gramercy Park, as a woman on the sidewalk stared at them and cried.
Ella was puzzled by this. First Esther Darling, then new-Mama, and now this stranger.
Was there something about her that made people sad?
Were their Ex-peck-tay-shuns too big, and Ella always doomed to let them down?
This woman was thin, with straight brown hair, hazel eyes that were too huge for her face, and a coat that didn’t look nearly as cozy as Ella’s. A girl a few years older than Ella stood beside her, pleading with the woman to leave.
“Lily!” the woman wept, gripping the bars of the fence in her fists. “My Lily. Come here to Mama, sheifale.”
Bending, Daddy scooped Ella up into his arms. “I’ve told you, this is a misunderstanding,” he said to the woman, his voice kind but firm. “I’m sorry for the loss of your daughter, Mrs. Dressler. Believe me, I know how that feels. But Ella is mine.”
The woman’s face contorted with rage. “You think I don’t know my own child? Lily, mameleh, come here to me.”
Frightened, Ella wrapped her arms around her father’s neck and held on tight. What if he changed his mind? What if he gave her away again, to the too-thin woman with the not-warm-enough coat?
Inside the park and out on the sidewalk, they were starting to draw a crowd. Over her father’s shoulder, Ella glimpsed a small group of people gathering and pointing. They hissed and whispered like the snake Esther Darling and Daniel had taken her to see at the zoo in Chicago.
“Please, Mama.” The older girl tugged at the woman’s arm. “We shouldn’t be here. Let’s go home.”
The woman tore her arm free and redoubled her grip on the fencing.
“Home? This place is no home of mine. We came here in the hope of freedom, only to suffer. I should have my child stolen from me, and bury my bones here, in the land of these strangers? I wish I’d died in the pogroms, like your Auntie Leah.
Better I should be dead than live to see this. ”
She spat on the ground. The glob of saliva dripped into a crack in the sidewalk, and the woman straightened, eyeing her father with contempt. “He is not worth the ground on which he walks, this paskundyak.”
“Mama!” Horror spread across the girl’s face. Whatever the strange word was, Ella could tell it was bad.
“You don’t want the truth, Suseleh, maybe you should not have followed me. Gey avek.” She made a shooing motion with one thin hand. “Go home and take care of your brothers.”
“I’m not going to leave you here.” The girl folded her arms over her chest.
“Is there a problem, Mr. Carter?” It was Louis, Ella’s favorite doorman, calling from across the street. He always smiled and gave her peppermints, but right now he wasn’t smiling at all. Ella had never imagined she could be frightened of Louis, but his fierce expression made her shiver.
“No, Louis. No problem.” Holding her close, her father shook his head.
“Are you sure? Do you need me to call the police?” Louis turned a suspicious glare on the woman and the girl.
“Please don’t call the police,” the girl said. “We were just going.” She gave her mother’s arm a desperate tug, but the woman didn’t move.
“Hindert hayzer zol er hobn, in yeder hoyz a hindert tsimern, in yeder tsimer tsvonsik betn un kadukhes zol im varfn fin eyn bet in der tsveyter,” she said, her eyes fixed on Ella’s father.
The words were strange. They all blurred together, like how the Ghost People used to sound.
But she could tell they meant something, from the way the older girl gasped.
Her eyes went so wide, Ella could see the whites all around them, like the outside of the over-easy eggs that Cook made on Sundays.
“Mama!” the girl said, sounding shocked.
The woman’s lip curled. “You want to know what this curse means, goyim?” she said to Ella’s father. “A hundred houses shall he have, in every house a hundred rooms and in every room twenty beds, and a delirious fever should drive him from bed to bed.”
The woman’s words filled Ella with terror. She clung to Daddy, who held her close.
With an effort, the girl dragged the woman away, but her eyes never left Daddy’s face, even when she tripped over the cracks in the pavement and the girl had to catch her before she fell. Ella knew then that the woman hated her father, and so she hated her, too.