skill I most want her to have, the ability to be at home anywhere. And
now it is exactly her lack of understanding of the codes that separate
people that makes me want to slip under the Ęoorboards and
disappear. is embarrassment, this feeling of exile, even in my own
community, didn’t come from without. It came from within. It was the
self-imprisoning part of me that believed I didn’t deserve to have
survived, that I would never be worthy enough to belong.
* * *Marianne thrived in America, but Béla and I struggled. I still suffered
with my own fear—the nightmarish memories, the panic that brewed
just below the surface. And I feared Béla’s resentment. He didn’t
struggle to learn English as I did. He had attended a boarding school
in London for a time when he was a boy, and he spoke English as
Ęuently as he spoke Czech, Slovak, Polish, German, and numerous
other languages—but his stutter grew more pronounced in America, a
signal to me that he was pained by the choice I had forced upon him.
His ĕrst job was in a warehouse, where he lied heavy boxes, an
exertion we knew was dangerous for someone with TB. But George
and his wife, Duci, who was a social worker and had helped us ĕnd
our jobs, convinced us we were lucky to have work. e pay was
terrible, the labor demanding and demeaning, but it was the
immigrant reality. Immigrants weren’t doctors or lawyers or mayors,
no matter their training and expertise (except for my remarkable sister
Klara, who secured a position as a violinist in the Sydney Symphony
Orchestra soon aer she and Csicsi immigrated). Immigrants drove
taxis. Immigrants did piecework in factories. Immigrants stocked
grocery store shelves. I internalized the feeling of unworthiness. Béla
fought against it. He became short-tempered and volatile.
During our ĕrst winter in Baltimore, Duci comes home with a
snowsuit she has bought for Marianne. It has a long zipper. Marianne