Chapter 12 Children Hear You #2
Two months after Jimmy Winslow’s tenth birthday in 1951, the State of Israel was just three years old.
Yet concerning the Mossad, it didn’t take long for there to be grumblings of discontent.
The negative comments would one day include calling the governance of Israel a secretive state with unauthorized powers operating independently of the country’s legislators.
These criticisms were driven by the belief that Mossad operated as a kind of shadow government.
It was Ben-Gurion’s intention that Mossad should be accountable only to the prime minister—not to the Knesset, the legislators of Israel.
Some American Jews, the Rosenthals included, would occasionally complain about Mossad’s tactics.
By the time the Mossad was operating beyond Israel’s borders, Isaac and Bluma Drucker had moved to The Meadow.
It was all due to a kitchen mishap: a potholder had burst into flames on the stove, setting Bluma’s hair on fire.
Isaac just happened to have a full glass of orange juice in his hand; he doused Bluma’s head with it.
The episode spelled the end of their self-confidence.
The Druckers were a welcome and likable addition to The Last Faculty Meeting, but they could be volatile—especially old Isaac.
In his Zionist way, he was a passionate advocate for Israel.
Isaac would not countenance any criticism of the Mossad.
“I don’t care about Mossad’s tactics! It doesn’t matter where you catch the Nazis, or how you kill them!
” Isaac would tell his clueless colleagues at The Meadow, where the Winslows were frequent visitors, along with the Rosenthals.
If Esther’s ever-changing addresses told a story, Esther wasn’t saying.
For a while, in 1951, Esther’s address was on HaYarkon Street in Tel Aviv—Mossad’s office was originally there.
“That could be a coincidence,” was all Isaac Drucker said.
Mossad’s headquarters later moved to the Foreign Ministry offices in Sarona, which Esther called the Kirya; it could have been a coincidence that Esther also had an address there.
Kirya in Hebrew is a female name meaning “town” or “settlement,” but in her letters Esther referred to the Kirya interchangeably as “the camp” or “the compound,” as if the name (or the purpose) of the place didn’t concern her.
Honor noted: “It’s as if nursing doesn’t matter to Esther anymore—she never mentions it.”
Of the Haganah, the Palmach, and the Israeli Defense Forces, Constance remembered saying, “I suppose they all need nurses, Tommy.”
“The military probably has a use for nurses,” the Winslows remembered Isaac Drucker saying, in his vague way. Not now—not anymore. Once, when the Winslows were visiting the Druckers at The Meadow, Isaac even said: “The Mossad doesn’t have much use for nurses, Tommy.”
“If our Esther’s working for the Mossad, she’s not nursing, Connie,” Bluma added. For the Druckers, they were being dramatically more specific than usual.
Constance found Esther’s obdurate lack of specificity annoying. When the senior Winslows were alone, she even said: “There’s more than a certain vagueness in Esther. She has embraced being vague, Tommy.”
“Esther’s Jewish business is her business—not ours, Connie,” Thomas reminded her.
But as the years went by, it was Honor who reminded both her parents: “When it comes to looking after me, there’s nothing vague about Esther.” Maybe Honor had embraced being vague, Constance thought.
Despite the Winslows’ best intentions, when Jimmy Winslow had just turned six, the story of the boy’s “other mother” slipped out during a playdate. Before then, of course, James Winslow had asked about his father. Who was he? Why wasn’t he around?
Naturally, Honor had thought about what she would say; she knew Jimmy was going to ask questions. “Your father lives far away, in another part of the world. We’ll never see him, Jimmy,” Honor said.
“Does he think about me?” James Winslow asked his mom.
“I don’t know—he has another life now, he has other children,” Honor told him. She’d rehearsed what she would say with her sisters.
“It doesn’t matter what you say, Honor. Jimmy will keep asking you,” Constance said.
“He’ll want to know what his father looks like,” Thomas told them.
“You’re the one who wants to know what he looks like, Daddy.
You never stop looking at those old photos,” Honor reminded him.
This was true. Thomas Winslow would search for signs of Moshe Kleinberg in his dear James.
In the photos Esther sent, most of the wrestlers had overdeveloped upper bodies in comparison to their legs.
In Little Mountain’s case, his muscular torso was longer than his stumpy legs.
Thomas could only hope the singlet exaggerated the length of Moshe’s torso and the shortness of his legs.
“Do I look like him?” James Winslow would ask his mother.
“It’s too soon to know exactly, Jimmy, but you’re going to be handsome—that’s all I can say,” Honor answered her child. She promised to tell him more about his father. “When you’re older, Jimmy,” Honor kept telling him.
Jimmy’s all-important playdate was with Arnaud Beaudette.
Chantal Beaudette was Josephine’s youngest daughter—her last child.
Chantal was a precocious eight, but she often played with Jimmy and Arnaud.
It was already funny that Arnaud was only a few years younger than Chantal, who was his aunt—not to mention that Chantal was smaller than Arnaud.
(It was not lost on Josephine or Honor that Chantal Beaudette was the same small size as Jimmy Winslow.)
Because Honor and Josephine were talking in the Beaudettes’ kitchen, they didn’t hear what Arnaud asked Jimmy. Chantal clearly heard her nephew ask if what happened to the Jews made Jimmy sad. (No doubt Chantal could tell that Jimmy didn’t understand the question.)
“Arnaud means if killing the Jews makes you sad because of your other mother,” Chantal explained to Jimmy.
James Winslow wasn’t the only six-year-old who didn’t know what had happened to the Jews, but he might have been a minority in Pennacook because he didn’t know he had two moms. “What other mother?” Jimmy asked Arnaud’s aunt Chantal.
“Your other mother—the Jewish one!” Chantal had cried.
This was what Honor and Josephine overheard; they both knew Chantal and Arnaud loved Jimmy, and Jimmy loved them.
As Honor and Josephine also knew, there were always adults talking in the Beaudettes’ kitchen.
(In the Beaudette household, there were always children listening, too.)
At the moment, all Honor and Josephine could do was hug each other, but they surely understood what had to happen next.
From now on, there would be no holding back—it all had to come out.
This was when James Winslow had to hear the whole story, when he’d just turned six—when parts of his story would be hard for him to grasp.
“For a six-year-old, Esther’s story can be confusing,” Constance cautioned Honor.
“As a three-year old, Esther’s story was already confusing, Connie. Just ask Dr. Larch!” Thomas cried.
Those Winslow girls were a well-rehearsed chorus; when they told Jimmy his birth mom’s story, those daughters didn’t shirk from the details. “Esther was the mom who got pregnant, Jimmy—your mom didn’t do the pregnant part,” Faith said first. (The pregnant part would take some explaining.)
“Esther was the mom who carried you inside her, Jimmy,” Hope told the boy, holding her stomach in a way that suggested the inside her part.
“Esther gave birth to you, Jimmy,” Prudence said. (Thomas couldn’t watch how Prudence enacted the giving birth part, but James Winslow never took his eyes off her.)
“Esther gave you to me, Jimmy. You were her gift to me, because Esther knew how much I wanted you,” Honor told her child. If James Winslow thought about being a present to the only mother he knew, the boy didn’t say.
All the explaining could be confusing. All the roads led Jimmy back to his father. The boy seemed to accept Esther’s story, even the part about her not wanting to be a mother to him. But James Winslow kept asking why his father didn’t even want to see him, not even photos.
“He doesn’t even know what I look like, Grandpa!” the indignant boy told Thomas. (Jimmy told his mother how he wished Grandpa Tommy were his father.)
“We should show our dear James the photos of his father. Little Mountain might inspire the boy to be a wrestler,” Thomas told his family. (Those photos of Moshe Kleinberg and his fellow wrestlers in their singlets made Thomas imagine his grandson as a future wrestler.)
The Winslow women were appalled at the very idea of their darling Jimmy as a wrestler. “Honestly, Tommy, we should show the dear boy photos of his birth mother. Jimmy’s going to have Esther’s hands,” was all Constance could say.
This was why six-year-old James Winslow saw the photos of his biological father and mother, while Honor and her sisters did their best to guide the boy through the biological parts of being a father and a mother.
Naturally, all the Winslows did their best to ease the burden of too much information on the boy—though sparing Jimmy the impregnation parts of the reproductive process could later be confusing.
Constance, in her resolve not to talk about sexual reproduction, hurried what she wanted to say about Esther’s hands.
(In the photos Esther sent, you could see the long fingers on her big hands.)
“You have Esther’s hands, Jimmy,” Constance said, pointing to one of Esther’s photos. (Constance shouldn’t have hurried; she should have said Jimmy was going to have hands like Esther’s.)
The six-year-old looked horrified. “Does Esther have no hands now, Grandma?” Jimmy asked, staring at his hands.