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26
Gisela
AUGUST 1946
“May I help you?” I asked a second time. The pretty young woman who stood on the other side of the counter looked shaken. The color had drained from her face. She swayed a little as if she might faint and quickly leaned against the counter. “Miss? Are you all right?” My instinct was to rush around to the other side and help her to a chair, but before I could move, she spoke my name, barely above a whisper.
“Gisela. It’s really you, isn’t it?”
“Do I know you? Have we met?” I tried to place her but couldn’t. She reached into her bag with shaking hands and pulled out a photograph. My photograph. The one my friend’s father had taken of me on graduation day. The one I had wanted to give to Sam.
“Where did you get that?” I breathed. I was sure I had never met this woman before.
“I-I’m a friend of Jimmy Barnett. This photograph was in his backpack.”
When she spoke Jim’s name, the strength drained from my legs. I remembered his kind face, his gentle concern for me. And I remembered my confusion and fear for him when he’d vanished from my life. He had abandoned Ruthie and me and simply disappeared. Maybe this stranger could tell me why. “Where is Jim? Has something happened to him?”
“Can we...? Is there someplace we can sit down and talk?”
I nodded. My head felt like it was spinning and it looked as though hers was, too. “Come this way,” I said. She followed me through the back rooms of the bakery to Uncle Aaron’s apartment behind the store. My aunt was in the kitchen, and I asked her to take over in the bakery for me. “I’ll explain later,” I said, handing her my apron. Ruthie had been helping my aunt peel potatoes, and I asked her to bring us some water. The stranger and I sat down at the kitchen table across from each other.
“I’m so sorry,” the woman said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. My name is Peggy Serrano. I’ve known Jimmy all of my life, and... and is it really true that he married you? Are you really his wife?”
“In a way. He helped me get to America as his war bride, but... where is he? What happened to him? I’ve been waiting to hear from him all this time. I thought he must have abandoned us.”
“Jimmy had a breakdown. He came home from the war so depressed that he tried to kill himself.”
“No!” I groped for words. “I-I knew he was heartsick after everything he’d seen, but I never imagined... I thought... I thought that once he returned home, he’d be happy and...” I stopped, recalling what he’d said about not wanting to live in a world with so much evil, not wanting to spread the shadow of his darkness over his parents. Maybe I should have done more to help him, but I lived beneath the same suffocating cloud. Finding a home for Ruthie and waiting to hear for certain about Sam were the only things that kept me going most days.
“Jimmy has been in the veterans’ hospital since the end of May,” Peggy continued. “None of the treatments they’ve done have helped. We’ve been trying to find out what happened to make him so depressed, and it seems like it was a whole bunch of grief that just kept piling up on him—the terrible war and losing his friends and then working in Buchenwald. When his commanding officer told us that Jimmy had gotten married, we couldn’t believe it. We assumed she might be the woman in the photograph, but Jimmy came home alone. He never said anything about being married. I found this address in his Bible, so I took a chance and came here. Please, if you can tell me anything else—we need to help Jimmy.”
My head was swimming. I took a gulp of water and set the glass on the table as I searched for a place to begin. “Jim saved my life. Twice. The first time was when he nursed me back to health in Buchenwald. I’m Jewish, and I was a prisoner there for nearly a year. The second time was when he helped my sister, Ruthie, and me come to America. It was going to take three years to immigrate the usual way. That meant three long years in the displaced persons camp. Jim said that if he and I got married, I could come here as his war bride. We took out a license but the marriage was only on paper. We care for each other, but Jim knows I’m in love with someone else. He’s been helping me search for Sam.”
“So you came over on a bride ship? Without Jimmy?”
“Yes. Jim had to travel home on a troop ship and then go to Fort Bragg to be discharged. Ruthie and I were supposed to stay with Jim’s family, but just before we left Germany, the Jewish agency found out that my uncle Aaron was living here in Brooklyn. We’d been searching for him. I sent my uncle a telegram, and he said to come here, that he would be waiting for Ruthie and me when our ship docked in New York. Jim was happy that we had found our uncle. He told us to go to Brooklyn and wait for him.” I looked down at the table, unable to stop my tears. “He said he would come for us but he never did. He left us without a word of explanation.”
The kitchen was quiet for a moment. Then Ruthie spoke behind me, her voice soft and hesitant. “Jim didn’t leave us, Gisela. He came here.”
I whirled around to face her. “What? When?”
She backed up a step to lean against the sink. “Jim came here just like he promised, but you weren’t here. Uncle Aaron sent him away.”
“What are you talking about? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Ruthie wouldn’t meet my gaze. “I wanted to tell you, but Uncle Aaron made me promise I wouldn’t. He said there was no point in upsetting you.”
“Why would it upset me? I’ve been waiting for him to come.”
Uncle Aaron came in through the back door just then, and I scrambled to my feet to confront him. “Is it true that my friend Jim came to see me here? And you sent him away?”
“Of course I sent him away. I told him you had only used him to get to America, and now that you’re here, you didn’t need his help anymore. You’re Jewish and you belong here, with your family, with other Jews.”
We had been talking rapidly in German, and I could see that Peggy was confused. I quickly explained what my uncle had said, then turned back to my sister. “You heard all of this? And you never told me?”
She looked frightened. “I-I thought it was true and that you really did feel that way. I thought you told Uncle Aaron to say those things. Besides, I know you love Sam and you’re still hoping he’s alive. And... and I didn’t want to move again. We have a home here.”
“What did Jim say? How did he react?”
