The Seven Year Dress: A Novel Read online

  The Seven Year Dress

  PAULETTE MAHURIN

  Copyright © 2016 by Paulette Mahurin

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. Exception is given in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  ISBN: 978-0-9888468-7-6

  Published by Early Girl Enterprises, LLC

  Printed in the United States of America

  For my father and mother, their siblings, and all the children

  Other books by Paulette Mahurin

  The Persecution of Mildred Dunlap

  His Name Was Ben

  To Live Out Loud

  Acknowledgment

  To my talented critical readers, Carol and Lee, a heartfelt thank you.

  To my incredibly detail-oriented, brilliant editor, Dr. L. Lee, this book would not be possible without you. And to the publishing house of Early Girl Enterprises, thank you for believing in Helen’s story and helping her voice reach the world.

  To the love of my life, words truly fail me when I say I couldn’t have done this without you, my hubby and my best friend. You were there with your support, kindness, back and foot rubs, prepared meals, millions of read-throughs and feedback, and unconditional love. You are positively the best!

  To all those who endured the unthinkable intolerance and persecution because of your bloodline, you will not be forgotten.

  Finally, to Helen, who graciously rented me a room and, in that small apartment, opened me to an understanding and compassion I never knew possible. You are forever in my heart, my dear friend.

  Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Foreword

  Although this story is a historical fiction, much of what you will read is documented historical fact about the Jewish holocaust in the 20th century. Many of the scenes and the content in the narrative have been taken from historical references. Creative liberties were taken when fact mingled with fiction to create a coherent, fluid narrative that remained true to this compelling moment in time and to those people who were a part of it. Such was the case with the lovemaking scenes in Auschwitz. I felt that it was important to include that human needs and drives, natural to all of us, were not extinguished in some of the prisoners enduring the atrocities. It was with dignity and respect that I endeavored to depict the men, women, and children who suffered the torturous, unthinkable conditions of Hitler’s pogrom.

  The real Helen Stein bestowed upon me a gift of compassion and humility in sharing her story with me. In telling this story, I hope I serve her well.

  Prologue

  Present Day

  I was looking to rent a room. She was looking for family. I needed a place to live. She needed to fill an empty void in her heart. But it would take me a few weeks to realize the role I was to play in her life.

  She appeared old and worn out, years of a hard life etched on her dry, chapped, and pale skin. She had a restrained desperation about her that gave me pause, a niggling feeling that something about her was terribly wrong. Keeping me at her front door for an unusually long time, she asked me a lot of personal questions, like was I working, and could she trust me to pay the rent. Trust me? I thought it odd and wondered if she had mental problems.

  My college classes were starting the next week, and I needed to find an affordable room. I’m a private person and her interrogation made me feel ill at ease. Had I not been under so much pressure, I would have turned around and walked away. Walked away from this strange shriveled person. But I didn’t have time to listen to my gut. Hoping I wouldn’t regret it, I answered her questions and walked through her doorway.

  Her apartment was musty and dark. But it was neat. Pristine. Oddly, it helped me relax to see everything in its proper place, aligned with what looked like well-thought-out spaces between objects, fastidious appearing. Her attention to detail fascinated me, but, because of her manner moments earlier, I became anxious again, wondering if she was an obsessive-compulsive personality. What the hell am I getting myself into?

  “Would you a like a tea?”

  A tea? Not, would you like a cup of tea? “No thank you. I don’t have much time right now. Could I see the room you have for rent?”

  “I need to ask you a few more questions first,” she said.

  It occurred to me we hadn’t spoken our names. I knew hers from an earlier phone conversation, and she knew mine. But so far our interaction involved only questions.

  “Where do you live now?”

  “I’m sharing a room with a girl who is moving to go to graduate school on the East Coast.”

  “I’m assuming you can’t afford to live there alone?”

  “Correct,” I answered.

  “And you don’t want to look for another roommate there?”

  Oh man, what’s with all these questions? “I don’t have time to advertise. It was easier to look for another room to rent.”

  When she nodded her head, indicating she appeared satisfied with my answer, she asked, “Do you have family?”

  Where the hell is this going? “Yes, I—”

  She interrupted me to ask, “Are your parents alive?”

  My skin began to itch and I picked at a fingernail. I had second thoughts. Should I chuck this all in? “Yes.” I squirmed in my seat. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’d really like to know if you’ll rent me the room? I’m up against a time—”

  “Are you Jewish?” she interjected.

  What does this have to do with renting a room? Just as I was about to beg off, I saw tears welling in her eyes. Her sorrowful expression gave me pause. She wants to know if I’m Jewish. Something changed in her when she asked me that. And that something was undeniable.

  Although raised by Jewish parents who were moderately religious, I never observed the religion. I defined myself as an agnostic. Questioning the intangible began when my close friend was brutally murdered at an early age. A robber killed her in her own house. Compounding the shock and terror I felt at losing my friend so suddenly and violently, I was gripped with fear of being in my own home because this horrible crime happened next door. To this day, religion provides me no solace and no answers for why innocent people get killed, especially children.

  She was waiting for an answer about my beliefs and I didn’t want to answer. Shit! I couldn’t lie and say I’m Jewish. I didn’t know a thing about the religion. Plus, my workaholic parents were never around to teach me much of anything. What I learned, I learned from life’s experiences, relationships, and formal education. She sat there, patiently waiting for my answer. Finally, I responded, “My parents are Jewish.”

  She nodded approval. “And you?”

  “Helen,” finally breaking the ice and referring to her by name, I said, “Please tell me why is this important? I’m not comfortable talking about my beliefs, and I don’t want to offend anyone by disagreeing with theirs.”

  “That is a fair and honest answer.” She smiled. The first smile in the forty minutes since we met. “So tell me, Myra, you are a student? Where do you go to school?”

  She surprised and relaxed me with her response and the in-kind mention of my name. “UCLA. I’m in the nursing program.”

  A dark shadow moved over her face as her eyes lost focus. She had m
oved into some thought that dropped a grim veil over her, a heavy energy into what had just lightened. She shook her head as if to snap out of some nightmare and said, “You see a lot of suffering.” She moved her hand to scratch her neck.

  “In some of the hospital rotations, yes, I do,” I responded.

  As her fingers moved along dehydrated ridges on the surface of her parched skin, the sleeve of the sweater she was wearing crept up her arm, and I saw it. A number! My heart sank. I felt ashamed of my I-don’t-care-about-you-let’s-get-this-over-with attitude. This woman had been in a concentration camp. What horrors had she experienced? No wonder she seemed unusual. Feeling the heaviness she must have lived through, the oddity about this woman started to fall into place when I realized she had been in a concentration camp. And like the moon moves into the night illuminating the darkness, my discomfort drifted away. I wondered what her story was.

  With my eyes still on those numbers, I noticed she flushed and quickly pulled her sweater back down to cover the markings. The branding into her flesh at the hands of the vilest evil was done to rob her of her identity, her existence. Now, having seen those numbers, I looked into her eyes and saw a thousand tons of sorrow, an agony I could never imagine with any semblance of veracity. I hadn’t understood the glimpse of her apprehension earlier when she asked me if I was Jewish. Now it made sense.

  She clutched her hands together and spoke, “Suffering is not just in hospitals.” Just when she looked like she wanted to say more, her eyes filled with tears again. And all she said was, “Let me show you the room.”

  Two days later, with a suitcase, my book bag filled with textbooks, and a few canned goods that I could keep in my room, I moved in. The relatively large room, with a wall-to-wall closet for clothes and storage, had a couch in it that turned into a pull-out bed. Across from the bed was a window that looked down on the street a story below. From that view, I could see Melrose Avenue a few buildings to the north. It was the heart of the Fairfax district in Los Angeles, a Jewish area that was a gentrified, up-beat neighborhood with off-Broadway theaters, antique shops, and many great eateries. Close by was Canter’s Deli. Compared to the brightness and colors of outside, mine was a stark room with light beige walls devoid of paintings or ornaments; it had a musty, unlived-in smell.

  I opened the window to air out the room, unpacked my clothes, took out my books and placed my canned goods on the desk by the window. Kitchen privileges weren’t included in the reduced-rent deal I made with Helen, but I could use the stove to boil water to make instant coffee or tea. I’d eat out of cans or grab take-out. In the hallway adjacent to my room was my bathroom, which faced Helen’s bedroom with an en suite bathroom. I was relieved with this privacy. Beside the tiny kitchen, with an adjacent place for a table that sat four, was a small living room: the entire apartment space totaled 900 square feet. Again, like my room, the living room was painted a muted beige and sparsely furnished. Aside from the kitchenette furniture, the living room had two brown, comfy chairs and a small table facing and separating them from a three-seat, faded green couch with rips around the edges of the back pillows. Next to the couch was a tiny end table with a lamp and a couple of indiscernible objects on it that I didn’t give much notice to.

  During my first night there, I had trouble sleeping. The lumpy bed with visible springs creaked when I moved and dug into my back. A blanket folded under me didn’t help. Nor did my restless mind. I couldn’t get my attention off of Helen, just a few feet away. What was it like to sleep in a concentration camp?

  The ticking of the clock held my attention as images of cachectic bodies flashed in my head. Finally after a futile attempt at sleep, at close to three in the morning, sweat drenched, I got up to shake loose the haunting impressions. I walked around her living room looking at her things. My attention went to an aged, brownish-edged doily on the small table that reminded me of my grandma who used to crochet. An aroma of something like onions and chicken, from what she must have prepared for her dinner, lingered in the kitchen. I glanced in there and noticed half-filled jars of raisins, dates, prunes, and dried apples on the kitchen counter, and I thought it odd that they all had the same amount of fruit in them. The exacting neatness gave me a chill. The sparseness of personal items was unsettling, no photos of family members, not one hidden album, and, aside from one store-bought, mass-produced photograph of flowers, her walls were bare. There was nothing that told me about Helen or her past, with one exception, but I had no idea what it meant. It was a faded piece of material in a glass-covered frame that sat on the end table. The tattered swatch of dimly colored blue cotton had a floral print. Little swirls of lighter shades outlined the design of the stained material. My eyes went to a plaque attached to the bottom of the frame that read, Nothing Lasts. I couldn’t help wondering, What is this old fabric? And what caused the rust-colored stains splattered on it that look like blood?

  As the weeks passed, I hardly saw Helen. I spent most of my time on campus, in the library or class. On some of the occasions when I did see her, we shared a cup of tea and pleasantries. She was careful not to divulge anything about herself. The more she held back, the more I wanted to help her open up about what had happened to her. I wanted her to trust and confide in me. I wanted to be that safe place she could land if she needed a friend. The part of me that was studying to become a nurse had a need to comfort her. I couldn’t help the strong desire I felt to want to go deeper with her. I also couldn’t help my curiosity about wanting to know what she had experienced in the concentration camp.

  It was long in coming, but finally, one night I came home depressed that a patient I was taking care of had died. Rare as it was for Helen to comment about my feelings, she said, “You don’t look too happy.”

  Knowing she must have experienced unimaginable trauma to have those numbers on her arm, and considering that she never spoke of any family nor had photos, I hesitated to bring up death. “I’m okay,” I lied.

  She smiled warmly. “Would you like to talk?”

  There was something different about this enigmatic woman I’d been living with for the past several months. She had softened. Here I was all these past weeks trying to help her, and it was she who moved our relationship to the deeper personal place I longed for. Surprised and grateful, I responded in kind by opening to her. “It was my first night in the emergency room.” Out of respect for Helen’s still undisclosed experiences, I refrained from discussing the gruesome details. The fatal gunshot wound to my patient’s head was worse than I expected to encounter. “I didn’t think it would be so violent.”

  The unspoken appeared clear to Helen. “Oh, I see.” She averted her eyes from mine. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. We both looked down to her hands; they shook as she fidgeted with her dress. Had I ever seen her in anything but a dress…with soft floral designs? No.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you, Helen.”

  She snapped back up straight and glared at me. “You think that upset me?” Her eyes filled with moisture. “Oh my dear girl, no…”

  The proverbial door was open. I could no longer resist. This felt like the right, no, the only, moment. “Perhaps you are the one who needs to talk?” I reached my hand for hers and let her cry. And with those tears, when words failed us, came camaraderie.

  “Yes,” she wiped the streams of wetness from her cheeks, “I think I do.” She reached to the end table with the framed swatch and took it in her hands. “Perhaps a fresh pot of tea, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  While I was in the kitchen heating the water, I heard her moan and weep, “Papa…”

  When I returned, she was holding the framed fabric to her breast. While I poured the tea, she looked at me with bloodshot eyes and said, “My Papa told me life is precious. I had to die many times to truly understand this.”

  Chapter One

  Early 1920s

  Who could have possibly imagined that in three years a decorated veteran of World War I would become the leader of the National S
ocialist German Workers’ Party, and years later become Chancellor of Germany and annihilate millions of Jews? Certainly not me, Helen Stein. While Hitler was gaining popularity in the German Workers’ Party in 1919, I was born to a Jewish family in Berlin. My father, Irving Stein, at thirty-one-years old, was a government lawyer who adored his wife—my mother, Rose—a few years younger than he. Altogether, there were six of us. I was the youngest of the four siblings: Lawrence was seven years older, Shana was five years older, and Ben was four years older than me.

  My mother lost a child to a stillbirth before I was born, which made her overly protective of me. When I was old enough to understand, she told me she worried more about me, the baby in the family, because of that loss. I also learned about the impact it had on my father when I overheard him praying one night. Down on his knees I heard him ask God to “watch over all my children. Please, no more losses like our baby Jacob.” They named the baby they lost Jacob. To my parents every life was precious, and although they hardly ever spoke of it openly, this was not a loss that easily moved from their consciousness with time. In conversations, in prayer, behind closed doors, the loss of Jacob—and the preciousness of life itself—was something my father and mother reflected on from time to time. I had a bad habit of eavesdropping, which is how I overheard a lot of what went on in privacy.

  I came into the world in a time of great turmoil, civil unrest, and economic upheaval in the aftermath of The Great War that took the lives of more than nine million people. Ending the year before I was born, the war sent ripples throughout the countries that were affected, causing massive political, cultural, and social changes. Especially impacted was Germany, where a socialist revolution led to the formulation of a number of communist parties. The Treaty of Versailles (written by the victors, of course) placed blame for the entire war on Germany and levied a fine of 132 billion marks—more than 31 billion dollars—to keep the German economy from flourishing. To honor the restitution, the German Republic printed large amounts money. The economic effect was devastating. Hyperinflation made the German mark near valueless, and Germany fell into default. As a result, German territories were transferred to other countries. Because many Germans never accepted the treaty as legal and viewed the taking of their territories as hostile, the German Workers’ Party, later renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSGWP, referred to in English as the Nazi Party), emerged. Created as a means to draw workers away from communist uprisings, the Party’s initial strategy was anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalism, although these features were later downplayed to get support from industrial organizations. Harboring anti-Semitism from its founding, in the 1930s its focus would change to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist ideas. I remember my parents talking about those earlier events through the years, but I never understood the foreboding tone in their voices until much later, in late 1938, when all hell broke loose.