Letters From Rifka Read Online Free PDF

“I told you not to drink that tea this morning.”
    “I’m bored, Mama,” I said.
    I was afraid to tell her the truth, Tovah. To tell her I wanted only to find a quiet corner, where I could open our Pushkin. She did not like your teaching me Pushkin in Berdichev. If Mama had her way, I would know how to cook, and sew, and keep the Sabbath. That is all.
    “You are bored?” Mama said. “So I’ll hire you a band. You are not getting off this train, Rifka.
What if it left without you? You want we should get separated? You want to spend the rest of your life in Poland? No, Rifka, you stay right where you are. Here I can keep an eye on you. Here you are safe.”
    So I kept my thoughts in my head until this moment. Mama and Saul snore softly at the end of the bench. Papa and Nathan have gone off to stretch their long legs.
    As I write, I am thinking that sometimes I don’t like growing up, Tovah. Sometimes I wish I could run back to Berdichev, into Bubbe Ruth’s arms, and lose myself inside her warmth. She protected me from everything around me and inside me.
    But then at other times I am so glad to be who I am. Rifka Nebrot. Only daughter and youngest child of Ethel and Beryl Nebrot. Baby sister of Isaac and Asher and Reuben and Nathan and Saul. Traveling forward—to America.
    When I think of myself that way, even though we are homeless and our lives are in danger even now, still I believe everything will turn out well.

    Shalom, my cousin,
    Rifka

… Goal, there can be none before me,
Empty-hearted, idle-willed.
Life’s monotony rolls o’er me,
Tired with longings unfulfilled.
    — Pushkin
     
     
    November 30, 1919
Warsaw, Poland
     
     
    Dear Tovah,
    What should I do? I hold the worst news in my heart. Whatever shall I do?
    As soon as we finished our business at the bank in Warsaw, we followed directions to the steamship office. How rich we felt with all the money my brothers had sent us from America. How eager we were to start our journey across the ocean.
    Before they sell you your ticket, though, Tovah, you must have an examination by a doctor.
    I think doctors are the cruelest men upon this earth. This doctor, who worked for the steamship
company, took me and Mama into a room. He examined us for deformities and disease.
    He examined our bodies and our eyes.
    “Take off your kerchiefs,” he said. “I will check your scalps.”
    My head had been itching terribly for the past day. I gladly removed my kerchief and gave my head a good scratching.
    The doctor washed his hands after he examined me.
    “Mrs. Nebrot,” he told my mother, “you have passed your examination. You may go now to buy your ticket.”
    “Come along, Rifka,” Mama said, gathering her belongings.
    “No,” the doctor said. “I am sorry. Your daughter cannot join you. Our company will not sell her passage to America.”
    Mama said, “You don’t understand. She must go to America.”
    “She can’t,” the doctor answered. “She has a skin disease, ringworm. You see these sores on her scalp?” I thought of the Polish girl on the train, the girl with the baby. She had sores on her scalp.
    Mama’s dark eyes widened. “Rifka, Rifka,” she murmured. Her hands shook. “How do we get rid of this—this ringworm?”

    “There is a treatment,” the doctor said. “But it takes many months.”
    All of me went numb. Only my heart beat thickly in my chest.
    Before he showed us out of his room, the doctor wrote something on a piece of paper. He handed it to Mama and told her to give the paper to the man at the steamship office window.
    Papa tried bribing the steamship officials. It is a trick he learned in Berdichev from your father, a trick where money put in the right pocket can get you almost anything.
    “Here,” Papa said to the man in the steamship office, pushing our precious money into his hand. “Please, take this to make my daughter Rifka a ticket.”
    The man looked at Papa’s money. He looked at the five of us standing before