Marching to Zion (21 page)

Magnus Bailey never surfaced. If his Minnie left him somewhere near Tulips End, maybe the best thing was for him to rest there, near his people who departed the world in ’27 that they might all unwilling save the lives of their neighbors ’cross river who’d got their hands on dynamite.

As it happened, when Aurora Mae Stanton arrived to the old family farm, she found Mags very ill, just starting up with the lung disease that would kill her within a few years. Her household was in chaos. Her boys ran wild. Her husband, Joe, neglected his fields from the taking care of her. Sara Kate was newly married to a St. Louis man and lived there with him, struggling to make ends meet. Each of them held down more than one menial job. Sara Kate was not able to come home and help out, even on the weekends. The bank where Mags kept her savings had failed with the others in ’29. There wasn’t much to eat except what Joe could catch and no money at all for medicines.

Aurora Mae took one look at all the trouble around Cousin Mags and rolled up her sleeves to take care. After several months, the Dunlap household was again in order, the boys tamed, and Joe back in his fields. Mags was strong enough that Aurora Mae thought to go home for a spell. When she got there, she found a locked store, a torn-up parlor floor, a nearly empty strongbox with just a few coins scattered on its bottom, and a letter from Sister Pearl. The letter said: Now that redheaded whore is dead, Magnus Bailey and I have fallen in love and run off. You will never see us again, and I’m willin’ to guess you might not think that such a bad thing.

She was thrown into a state of confusion, anger, and grief and went to the Miracle Church of God’s People to save her soul from darkness. Dr. Willie, she was told, had left town around the same time Sister Pearl took off, some said out of a broken heart, and no one’d heard from him since. Thomas DeGrace and a handful of others kept the place going. They showed Aurora Mae much sympathy, offering to pray with her. They would pray she’d find her way toward forgiving those who had harmed her, but instead she renounced religion after that. When she got home, she cut her hair off, buried it in the backyard, and turned her back on men once and for all.

Fishbein had mourned the loss of his daughter’s virtue for so long, the loss of her life felt like one more knot in the string of his miseries, something he’d always expected to experience before his own soul escaped the curse of Adam’s flesh. In other words, her death was a sorrow but not a surprise. He discovered that when a man thinks he has cried all of his tears, he has not, and wept more for Magnus Bailey, who was surely also dead. He had no delusions there. If it were not for Golde, he might have expired of grief. Just as her mother had rescued him from the ultimate despair when he was a young man, her child gave him cause to put one foot in front of the other in his ripe age. He kept her with him, seven days a week. The neighbors considered her his help, a girl he used for cleaning and such. When he went out for his shopping and to the minyan, he took her with him, leaning on her shoulder with one hand as his most recent sadness had made him ever more stooped. The neighbors saw this and gave her a new name, which was Golde Cane. At the synagogue, she left his side and prayed with the women in their section. Her Hebrew was accomplished, her sentiments sincere, and the ladies of Baron Hirsch Synagogue petted and cosseted her for the charming novelty of the dark-skinned serving girl who could pray.

He put off the sale of his home until after the mourning year. A month before her first
yarhzeit
,
he put a marker on Minerva’s grave. He had it engraved with her name, in English script and in Hebrew, and below that the date he’d guessed years before might be that of her birth followed by a date he made up for her death. He wanted some words, an epigraph of some kind. After much deliberation, he instructed the engraver to carve into the stone the words
Beloved Daughter and Mother
and below that
Nothing Is Certain Under the Sun
.

Around the time Germany readied for its Jew-free Olympics, he was on board a boat, a simple Greek fisherman’s vessel. He stood at the prow with one arm around the slender shoulders of Golde Cane, whose slight frame and saddened looks mirrored his own. With his other arm outstretched, he gestured across the glittering blue bay to the massive stone walls of Jaffa, its ancient spires, and red clay roofs. Look,
mine meydl,
he said, look! Eretz Israel!

For the first time since her mother went missing, the girl cried out in pure, unbridled joy.

She raised her arms and lifted her palms toward the sky in a gesture familiar to every Baptist in the land of her birth.

Hallelujah! she said. Praise the Lord!

Fishbein looked from her to the coastline and back. Despite his promises to Magnus Bailey, he saw that Golde would be an odd duck wherever she went, even here.

Oh
, mine meydl,
what a dear, strange bird you will seem to the good Jews of Eretz
Israel, he thought. Maybe me, too, after all these years. How can I tell? America puts the stamp on you without your knowing.

He searched for a term that everyone talked about in America these days, one he considered particularly apt for his musings. He found it.

Technicolor. Yes, America puts the stamp on you in Technicolor.

He studied again his Golde, her bright new smile, her green eyes set in a brown face that looked so much like Minerva’s it stabbed his heart. He studied the azure sea, the cobalt sky, the red roofs, the sparkling stone that grabbed the sun and clasped it to itself like a garment. The stamp of Eretz Israel looked to be Technicolor too. He shrugged. It’s alright, he thought, it’s alright. Then he laughed and raised his palms upward like Kohanim about to give the priestly blessing.

Hallelujah! he said. The Hebrew felt good in his mouth. Hallelujah! We are home!

There was a point
quite early on in the writing of
Marching to Zion
when I’d written a particularly dramatic scene and had no idea where to go next. I thought maybe what I had was a very long short story and that the novel I’d intended to write was stillborn. I nearly stopped working on it altogether. Enter my dear husband, Stephen K. Glickman, always my hero. He said, “Why don’t you take your own advice? Aren’t you the one who’s always saying, ‘Follow the voice, the voice never lies’?” So I did. And along the way, I discovered the plot and characters of
Marching to Zion
. Yet another reason to be eternally grateful to the sage I married.

Speaking of gratitude, I must grant my agent, Peter Riva, his due, which is mammoth. Peter is a brilliant man, as good as the game, and I am proud to be under his wing. Diane Reverand, my editor, must also take her bow, especially for her stamina in the face of my stubbornness.

Once again, for their expertise in shepherding my novels across all media, I am deeply indebted to the undeniable genius of Jane Friedman, Jeff Sharp, and Luke Parker Bowles; the shining wisdom of Tina Pohlman; the knife-sharp shrewdness of Rachel Chou; and the sundry and glittering talents of Danny Monico, Galen Glaze, Nicole Passage, Rachelle Mandik, Jason Gabbert, and of course, my own darling Laura De Silva. Thank you all. Your energy and commitment astound. Bravo.

Born on the south
shore of Boston
, Mary Glickman studied at the Université de Lyon and Boston University. While she was raised in a strict Irish-Polish Catholic family, from an early age Glickman felt an affinity toward Judaism and converted to the faith when she married. After living in Boston for twenty years, she and her husband traveled to South Carolina and discovered a love for all things Southern. Glickman now lives in Seabrook Island, South Carolina, with her husband, cat, and until recently, her beloved horse, King of Harts, of blessed memory. Her first novel,
Home in the Morning
, has been optioned for film by Jim Kohlberg, director of
The Music Never Stopped
(Sundance 2011).