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  Praise for How to Make a Life

  “Florence Kraut has written a sensitive and compelling multigenerational novel that begins with tragedy and ends with hope. Each chapter traces a family member who erases the scars of history’s indelible mark with courage, determination, faith, and love. A wonderful read.”

  —Marsha Temlock, author of The Exile and Your Child’s Divorce: What to Expect; What You Can Do

  “How to Make a Life is a novel about family itself—how to exist after unimaginable pain, acts of courage, secrets buried and revealed, that leave their glaring imprint on four generations of a Jewish family against the backdrop of history in the 20th century. Emotionally honest, rich, and deeply empathetic, this is a book for all of us nurtured in the tumult and soil of family.”

  —Marlena Maduro Baraf, author of At the Narrow Waist of the World

  “Florence Reiss Kraut has crafted a literary miracle. She’s taken a century’s worth of familial relationships and allowed the reader to enter into the emotional depths of her characters. Her experience as a family therapist is evident throughout the book, especially in her depiction of Ruby, whose struggles with psychosis and their impact on her family is as close a rendering of this particular challenge as any I have read—brilliant.”

  —Jill Edelman Barberie, MSW, LCSW, author of This Crazy Quilt: Parenting Adult Special Needs One Day at a Time

  “A moving novel of multiple generations of an immigrant family whose characters are so real I cannot forget them.”

  —Tessa Smith McGovern, author of London Road Linked Stories and host/producer of BookGirlTV

  “A compelling and inspirational novel. Details have a way of creating potency, and the beautiful descriptions in Ms. Kraut’s novel brings every character alive. Her images and painterly descriptions inspired me to write about my own family. I could not put this book down.”

  —June Gould, PhD, author of The Writer in All of Us, IWWG Writing Workshop Leader, consultant, and Master writing teacher

  HOW TO MAKE A LIFE

  Copyright © 2020 Florence Reiss Kraut

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

  Published 2020

  Printed in the United States of America

  Print ISBN: 978-1-63152-779-1

  E-ISBN: 978-1-63152-780-7

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2020908047

  For information, address:

  She Writes Press

  1569 Solano Ave #546

  Berkeley, CA 94707

  She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

  All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  In gratitude for my large, boisterous, and loving

  extended family who shared their stories

  and inspired me to create my own.

  And to my husband, Allen,

  who never stopped believing in me.

  Contents

  Prologue: Kotovka, Ukraine, 1905

  1: Ida, 1906–07

  2: Bessie, 1931

  3: Abe, 1932–39

  4: Jenny, 1940–42

  5: Jenny, 1942–45

  6: Morris, 1946

  7: Ruby, 1954

  8: Jenny, 1954

  9: Faye, 1959

  10: Irene, 1964

  11: Sarah, 1969

  12: Joseph, 1973

  13: Morris, 1977

  14: Sarah, 1984

  15: Jenny, 1986–88

  16: Jenny, 1989

  17: Irene, 1996

  18: Ellie, 1996

  19: Morris, 2002

  20: Abby, 2006

  21: Faye, 2008

  22: Jenny, 2012

  “It doesn’t matter what story we’re telling, we’re telling the story of family.”

  —Erica Lorraine Scheidt, Uses for Boys

  “The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other.”

  —Mario Puzo, The Family

  “Family is a life jacket in the stormy sea of life.”

  —J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

  Family Tree

  Prologue

  Kotovka, Ukraine

  1905

  When the screams and crashes, the cacophony of clashing piano chords and splintering wood stopped, an eerie quiet came over the house. Chaya Amdur listened and cowered on the dirt floor of the root cellar clutching three-month-old Feige, who had nursed and fallen asleep. Ten-year-old Beilah crouched beside her and buried her face in her mother’s skirt. In her free hand, Chaya held a shovel. If they came again, she would not go quietly.

  She waited, hearing only her breath, shallow, fast. Listen! No more muffled thuds, no more footsteps on crunching glass. No laughter. Nothing. Silence. Her heart ticked, a clock. She counted seconds, minutes, ten, twenty. Then, trembling, she took in one last breath and crept upstairs toward the stillness. With the top of the shovel she pushed the hatch. It wouldn’t budge. She heaved again and something moved enough so it opened a sliver. Dust motes danced in the light that filtered through. Her eyes wide open, she saw everything. The hatch dropped down. She gagged and cowered in the dark.

  What had she seen?

  Shattered blue-and-white dishes, her mother’s splintered rocking chair, the overturned bookcase with prayer books spattered with blood. Beneath the piano a glimpse of her husband, Moshe, on his back, mouth gaping mid-scream, shirt and chest split, the white linen crusted with dark red.

  She could not be still. Her legs trembled, jumped. Her heart hammered. Her stomach clutched. She crawled to a corner and vomited the little she had eaten before.

  Before.

  She had been nursing the baby. Beilah was rolling bedding into the corner, the others outside doing morning chores. Faint hoofbeats on the dirt road. Moshe raced into the house, shoving her and Feige and Beilah down the stairs into the root cellar. “They’re coming. I’ll get the others.”

  He never came back.

  She took a deep breath, got up, pushed the hatch hard again. The table that had been lying on it fell over with a crash that stopped her heart. Still clutching the baby, she crawled out. Her mother, Channah, lay on her side holding a kitchen knife, benign in her hand. Her shaitel, askew on her forehead, showed short gray hair pressed in a puddle of blood. With first one step, then another, Chaya moved through the room. The feathers from her ripped comforter lifted into the air like red-and-white snow. She smelled smoke.

  “Stay here, mamaleh,” she whispered to Beilah. “Hold Feige.”

  “No.” Beilah clutched her skirt, closed her eyes tight, shook her head back and forth.

  “All right. Shush. Come.”

  Ignoring the roaring in her ears and her shallow, rapid breath, she forced herself to peek around the doorjamb into the yard and saw smoke rising in the distance. The doors to her barn were open, the horses gone. One of her black-and-white cats lay in a pool of its own blood.

  In the yard was the body of twelve-year-old Rifka, her blouse ripped open, a gash down her chest. The bottom half of her body was nake
d, legs splayed, thighs streaked with blood. She leaned over and pulled Rifka’s skirt down over her legs. Yetta and Yosef, ages six and four, lay on their backs near the barn, their chests red, a basket of broken eggs strewn nearby. Yetta’s eyes stared sightlessly at the brilliant blue October sky. Yosef’s eyes were closed as if asleep. They held hands.

  Behind her Beilah was screaming, filling the air with her shrieks of terror. Beilah gagged, then vomited and screamed again. Chaya’s legs gave way, and she sat on the ground. She opened her mouth, but no sound came, and she keened silently, rocking back and forth for a long time. She could not think clearly. There was a ringing in her ears. She was shivering, and she knew she could not stay in the yard, even though the road was quiet.

  The road was quiet. Where had they gone, those men? Who were they? Would they come back? Terror gripped her throat again. Beilah lay sprawled on the dirt, her hands clutching fistfuls of it, her eyes closed. Her sobs had turned to soft hiccoughs. The baby began to cry. Chaya covered Feige’s mouth with her filthy hand. “Beilah, come,” she whispered. She grabbed Beilah’s hand and pulled her to the door.

  Inside she averted her eyes and with quick steps went to the cellar again. The comfort of the dark covered them. At the bottom of the stairs, she collapsed. Rocking Feige in her arms to stop her crying, she leaned against the cool dirt wall and closed her eyes, legs outstretched in front of her like a rag doll. The baby nosed her breast, and Chaya opened her blouse to let her nurse. Beilah crouched beside her, face against Chaya’s shoulder. They sat like that, the silence a protective shield, broken only by soft skittering sounds of mice and Beilah’s sniffles.

  How long did they stay? Chaya’s mind was a bottomless, black hole. Sometimes a picture flashed before her and she squeezed her eyes shut until it faded. The baby slept warm on her breast. Chaya handed the baby to Beilah and lay down on the floor, pillowing her head on her hands. They slept. She awoke to Beilah pushing at her shoulder.

  “Mama, wake up. I have to pee. Where should I go?”

  Chaya half sat up, stared at her daughter, and fell back down again.

  Beilah shook her. “Mama, I have to pee.” Chaya looked straight ahead with blank eyes. “Should I go outside?” Beilah waited for an answer. “Should I go? Where should I go?” She was wailing.

  Chaya sat up as if coming from deep underwater. Her voice was thick. “In the corner. Go in the corner.” She was about to lie back down, but Beilah thrust the baby at her and went to squat behind a barrel. The baby was soaking wet. She had nothing to change her with now. She put the baby down beside her, and Feige started to whimper.

  “Mama, you have to take care of Feige.” Beilah had picked up the baby and was holding her out. “Feige needs you. She’s hungry.”

  Chaya looked at her daughter’s grimy hands gripping the baby. She looked at Beilah’s face, tear streaked, smudged with soot. She took a shaky breath and forced herself to her knees and then upright. “Give her here.” She opened her dress and Feige latched on. She felt dry, realized she had not drunk all day. “Get me cider from the barrel.” She drank, gave some to Beilah, shared a carrot, drank some more. She wondered how much time had elapsed.

  Leaving the baby and Beilah in the dark of the cellar, Chaya crept up the stairs and pushed at the hatch. It was still daylight, late afternoon. She forced herself to look, but now she knew what she would see. She covered the bodies of her husband and her mother with a blanket and a Sabbath cloth stained rusty with dried blood. Taking bedcovers, she went outside. Beilah followed her mother and stood holding the baby, watching from the doorway.

  She knelt weeping by her children. What should she say? Not Kaddish, the prayer for the dead—for that you needed a minyan, a congregation. The Sabbath blessing that was also a prayer? It was not the right prayer, but it would do because she could not think of anything else:

  May God bless you and watch over you

  May God shine His face on you and show you favor

  May God show you kindness and may He grant you peace.

  She kissed their foreheads before she spread the blankets over them.

  Beilah was crying. “Mama. Come inside. They might come back.”

  Chaya looked around. The air was still. Nothing was stirring on the road. She went back into the house, cleaned the baby, washed her face and hands, and went to the cellar again. She was shivering. She had no blankets. She’d used them all to cover the dead. She drank cider, chewed a carrot, and stared at the barrels and baskets that stored food for the winter.

  Why hadn’t they left earlier? They’d talked and talked, saved money, pushed the date of departure further away. Never thinking. Chaya hit her head with the palm of her hand. Dumb. Stupid. The Tzar’s October Manifesto had come, and then pogroms all over, but too late they planned to leave. Too late. Beilah was sobbing again. Chaya clenched her teeth.

  Under the apple barrel Moshe had dug a hole to store a box. She stood and shoved the barrel, scattering apples all around. She began to dig with her hands. The dirt on the cellar floor was hard. She took a deep breath, her throat constricted. “Get me the spade,” she whispered to Beilah.

  Beilah brought it over. With raging anger, panting from the effort, she dug. Nothing. Leaning against a wall she wiped her sweaty face and stared at the hole she had made. She covered her eyes with dirt-encrusted hands. Deeper? She dug more. She scraped and shoveled. Then the dirt became softer, crumbly, and the spade stopped. She pushed harder and there was a sound. She had found the box and inside was a burlap bag.

  Sitting against the wall she opened the bag, counted the rubles, took out the gold necklace that Moshe had given her and her mother’s pearls and gold earrings. She fingered the jewelry, warming it in her hand. Memories of her mother, Moshe, her children, threatened to crowd her brain. She would not cry. She shoved the money and jewelry back into the bag and breathed slowly, stilling her heartbeat. After a few minutes, she punched holes in the top of the burlap sack and tied it around her waist with a rope under her skirt.

  Beilah sat like a statue, her eyes glass, her face stone. Chaya bent, kissed her filthy cheek, and took her hand. Carrying Feige, she went back upstairs and out to the road. She looked both ways and began walking.

  A policeman rode by on a horse in the opposite direction. As he passed, he nodded. She stared at his back her mouth open. Ah, she thought. It’s over.

  All along the road was destruction. She saw a neighbor moving through the landscape, his eyes so blank he looked like he was no longer in this world. She saw that the synagogue was still standing, and as she got closer, she heard voices.

  Inside, pews were overturned, and prayer books littered the floor. The room was full of people moaning, crying, praying. A neighbor clutched her shoulder, weeping. “My son is dead,” he said. “I am a stem without my flower.”

  The rabbi stood by the Ark. He tried to talk. He whispered something, stopped. He put his hand to his mouth. He shook his head. His shoulders heaved, and he began to cry.

  The smell of the blood had barely faded from her nostrils when she and her neighbors buried the dead from the catastrophe. The scourge had skipped houses and whole towns. Her in-laws had survived. Her sister’s family was safe in the next town. She found her cousin Perel alive, a redheaded fury, known in the village as a tayvl, a crazy one. Perel had stood outside her door and screamed like one possessed. The murderers would not go near her, afraid of her demons. Cousin Perel’s house was untouched, as if a wall had encircled it and made it invisible. In Perel’s house, where they stayed for two months while they made plans to leave for America, Chaya could almost imagine the world was sane.

  Her sister begged her to stay, but how could she? Each time she walked into the house, another shard would splinter off her broken heart until she would die. She had to close the door to Kotovka and never think of it again.

  It was 1905. In early December, with her sister and in-laws saying, “Stay, stay,” she left Kotovka for good. Chaya left behind her, buried
in the Jewish cemetery, her husband, Moshe, her daughters Rifka and Yetta, her son, Yosef, and her mother, Channah. She left behind a prosperous life. Moshe had owned two horses and had a thriving business delivering milk and farm products to all the stores in the town. She left behind her own small business baking pies and bread to sell in Kotovka’s market. She sold her house and land for half its worth to a gentile neighbor—maybe the one who had murdered her family—and traveled by train to Hamburg where she bought three tickets for the SS Bergensfjord to America. She put on the gold necklace under her dress and vowed she would never take it off. She embarked with her daughters, her mother’s jewelry, and a sack of money tied to her waist under her skirt.

  When the ship docked in New York harbor, they, along with the other people in steerage, were put on a barge and taken to Ellis Island. In Kotovka she had been Chaya Amdur, but when the clerk asked her name she said, “Ida. Ida Amdur.” She changed her daughter’s names as well, Beilah to Bessie and Feige to Fanny. They would be Americans now.

  1

  Ida

  1906–1907

  Ida spoke Russian, Ukrainian, and Yiddish but had only five words of English when she landed in New York: hello, goodbye, thank you, and please. She had a piece of paper with the name and address of her cousin, Hannah Cohen, written in Yiddish and English. Hannah had left Kotovka ten years before and ran a boarding house on Mulberry Street. Ida had used her name as her sponsor, but she didn’t know if Hannah had received the letter she sent. She might be a big surprise to her cousin.

  It was January, cold and gray. The wind blew up the street from the ferry terminal where they landed and waited on endless lines to be pronounced healthy and fit to enter New York. Ida, shivering in her woolen shawl, carried Fanny in one arm and a suitcase in the other. Bessie trailed next to her, hauling a large bundle with their bedding, some clothes, and her mother’s candlesticks.