This is the story of an unusual inheritance and the effect it had on two lives. When Rahla's father left his eccentric sister Leah to her, she came with instructions: take care of her. This legacy was the beginning of an eventful journey as Rahla's and Leah's lives began to intersect more and more. Along the way, they encountered many unexpected situations, some of which could be difficult, some frustrating and some quite funny; life was never dull. As time went on and Leah began to have life altering experiences, they discovered many things about themselves and each other that helped them overcome the many challenges they faced.

My Inheritance: Leah

By Rahla Gold

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 Rahla Gold
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4685-4685-9

Chapter One

LEAH was my inheritance. One day my father, being of sound mind and not so sound body, said, "I'm leaving you my money and my sister. Take care of her." Since his money was being spent on a home care aide, I thought, I'm going to be stuck with Leah. Leah was much younger than my father and was a character. Actually, there was nobody else to take care of her and I would never abandon her.

I was 15 years old the first time I met Leah: in Hoboken, New Jersey when she arrived in this country from England. I didn't know too much about her because my father never talked about her and seldom about the rest of his family in England. I knew that she was the youngest of five children and the only girl. My father and his siblings were all about five years apart. I couldn't imagine what it must have been like to have babies over a span of 25 years. By the time Leah was born, the oldest brother was 20 and was probably no longer at home. That was all I knew about Leah. I knew a little more about my uncles, my father's brothers. My father and his brothers corresponded regularly and sometimes he shared the letters with us. My uncles sent pictures of my aunts and cousins, and they became real to me. I loved to see the airmail envelopes with the English stamps on them. My father and his brothers also sent each other newspapers. They would come rolled up in brown paper with large postmarks on them. But there was little or no mention of Leah. I felt very proud of having an English father and aunts, uncles and cousins in England.

One day a letter came from England. The news it brought caused an uproar in my house. My aunt Leah was coming to the United States and would be staying with us. This was not a visit. She was coming to this country to live. My father spent a lot of time writing letters to his brothers in England, telling them not to send Leah here. All to no avail. She was on the ship and was on her way! My father walked around the house muttering under his breath. I had rarely seen my father angry, and now he was very angry. I didn't know why he was so upset. To me, this was the most exciting thing that had happened. Since Leah was much younger than my father, I pictured a young aunt who would take me places. I would show her around and we would have fun together. She represented freedom for me. We lived in Brooklyn, New York and my mother was very overprotective. I was not allowed to travel into Manhattan by myself or even with friends. My friend Eleanor had a young aunt who took her to shows and movies. I thought that once Leah came we could go out together and go to Times Square or Greenwich Village. A school friend of mine who had returned to England to see her family, had visited my father's family and met Leah. She told me I looked just like her. I could hardly wait to meet this new aunt!

My mother, in the mean time, was trying to calm my father and to figure out where we would put Leah in our small apartment. Then she became very busy moving furniture around. This was not unusual for my mother. She loved to rearrange things and now she had a wonderful excuse to do so. We used to move every year, but since we settled down in this apartment, my mother regularly changed the rooms around. My father worked from late afternoon until midnight. When she moved the furniture she always had to leave him a note to warn him so he would not trip over something unexpected. Now she was having a good time. I realized that she didn't mind Leah's coming at all. Maybe it made life interesting for her, too. I had been sleeping in the living room. She decided that that room would become a bedroom for Leah and me, and her bedroom would become the living room and she and my father would sleep there. The two rooms were next to each other so it really didn't matter which one functioned as the living room. My brother was unaffected by all these changes. He had his own small bedroom down the hall. Not only didn't I mind, but I was thrilled to be sharing a room with my aunt. I couldn't wait to meet her.

Finally we went to the pier at Hoboken to meet Leah. It was a misty spring morning and the air was heavy with rain. We were all dressed up. My father, a tall good-looking man, wore his gray suit. My mother, a nice looking woman of medium height, wore her grey spring coat and a hat and gloves. I wore my navy blue spring coat. My brother, a skinny sickly looking boy wore his best pants and a blazer. We took two trains to get there and finally we were a big building, open on one side. I was disappointed. I thought we would be on an open pier with a big ship looming over us, just like in the movies. Instead we were in this cavernous building. The ship was on the open side, but you couldn't see it. All you could see were the gangways, and the people leaving the ship. The pier was crowded with people waiting to meet the passengers. We all had to stand behind a low railing. On the other side of the railing, people were standing near piles of luggage; stevedores and customs officials were milling about. Everyone on our side of the railing was straining to find the people they had come to meet. We managed to get a place near the railing but it didn't make too much difference to my mother, my brother and me. Only my father knew what Leah looked like and he hadn't seen her in 17 years. I kept looking at all the people wondering which one was my aunt. Suddenly we heard a shrill voice shrieking, "Ephraim, Ephraim Here I am!" There she was, pointing and jabbing her finger in the air. I saw my father shudder when he heard her call out. He said something under his breath about her childishness. It was obvious she embarrassed him. Apparently there were things about Leah he hadn't told us. I took one look at Leah and felt very upset. I was close to tears. I saw a short dowdy woman in a tweed suit. She had her hair pulled back and had beady brown eyes. Her front teeth were big, and seemed to protrude from her mouth. This wasn't the aunt I pictured. I don't look like that, I thought, I don't. I knew I wasn't pretty, but I didn't think I looked like that. Oh, and I'm going to share my room with her! Leah pushed her way through the crowd of people and came over to the railing to meet us. She was smiling broadly and was waving to us. She spoke quickly and had a thick English accent. Then she ran back to her luggage and waited until the customs man had checked everything and she was free to go.

When Leah joined us, I watched as my mother kissed her and asked about her trip. My father was all business. "All right then, let's go." he said as he took her two suitcases. We all followed him as he started to walk towards the exit. To exit the building, we had to walk down a long hallway lined with different types of stands. All of a sudden, Leah stopped short in front of a fruit stand. She just stared. Finally she said, "Banahnas, banahnas, are they really banahnas?" "Yes they are." my father said impatiently. "Would you like one?" my mother asked. "No" said Leah, "I just haven't seen so much fruit in a long time." On the way home, my mother explained to us that since Leah had been in England during the war, she hadn't had any fruit and even now, a few years later, there was still a shortage of fruit and other foods.

I had further proof of the effect of Leah's wartime experiences that night. We had gotten into bed and I was barely asleep when an ambulance went by, its sirens blaring. Suddenly, Leah jumped up and was about to get under the bed, when I told her it was just an ambulance siren. "The air raid sirens had sounded just like that." she said, "I got scared." She said that ambulances in England sounded very different.

That wasn't the only impact the war had on Leah. Although we had plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, Leah refused to eat them. She said she couldn't eat them because the family in England didn't have any. This exasperated my father. He kept telling her that whether or not she ate the food here, had no effect on the people in England. It took quite a while for Leah to relax and to stop feeling guilty about enjoying the benefits of being in the United States.

It must have been difficult for Leah to adjust to living with us. She had had her own flat in England and now she was sharing a small apartment with our family. Leah was nervous and scurried from room to room with her head down. It was as if she were trying to keep out of everyone's way. In the morning, she would rush out of the bedroom and into the bathroom carrying her clothes. When she came out of the bathroom, she was fully dressed, as if she didn't want to be seen in her robe. That is why, one morning, I was surprised to see her come into the kitchen in her robe or her dressing gown as she called it.

"I don't feel well." she said. "Do you have any busyball?"

My father happened to be in the kitchen and said, "What? What are you talking about? What is busyball?"

"I have indigestion and I need some busyball. Do you have any?"

"She means Bisodol" my mother said.

Bisodol was a medicine used for indigestion; it was like alka-seltzer.

"Oh for God's sake," my father said in a disgusted voice. "You're always mispronouncing words. The word is Bisodol!"

"Leave her alone," my mother said. "Here Leah, here is the Bisodol."

My father left the room muttering "ridiculous" under his breath.

"Would you like some tea?" my mother asked.

"Thank you." said Leah "I don't know why but I always get the names mixed up."

"Don't worry, everyone makes mistakes."

The truth was that Leah was always mispronouncing words or using the wrong word. It almost seemed as if she wasn't paying attention when she heard a word and then once she used the wrong one, she remembered that one. There was a television program in which one character was named Sapphire. Leah called her Crystal and no matter how many times she watched that program and heard everyone call the woman Sapphire, she continued to call her Crystal.

Leah was different from anyone I had ever met. She kept making funny mistakes without meaning to. I think she was so nervous that she really didn't hear what was said. It didn't help that every time she made a mistake and my father was around, he would correct her.

Leah was driving my father crazy. He couldn't stand the way she spoke. There was a bit of cockney in her speech and he visibly cringed when he heard it. No one else in the family spoke like that. Her speech and her mispronunciations embarrassed him. The result was most of the time he wasn't around. He hadn't spent too much time with us in the first place. His main job was on the New York City subways. He was a motorman and drove a subway train. He always worked from four o'clock to midnight and he usually worked weekends. That left him little time to spend at home with the family. I knew that the motormen could choose their hours based on seniority. The more seniority one had, the more choice one had. It took me years to realize that my father purposely chose those hours, no matter how senior he became. Sometimes, he would choose assignments where he had weekends off. When he wasn't working on his primary job, my father worked in his shop. His hobby was fixing radios and televisions. He was self taught and had set up a workroom in the attic. Wherever we lived, we had to have an extra room for my father's workshop. This time we were lucky; the apartment had an attic and so we didn't have to sacrifice a room. My father spent a lot of time in his workroom fixing televisions for everyone. He charged very little but it was enough to supply him with some extra money he needed. Sometimes, during the day, when he wasn't in his workshop, he would go to Manhattan to buy parts for the televisions he was repairing. We hardly saw him. After Leah came, he would spend even more time in his workshop so he wouldn't have to deal with her. That had always been his retreat. He and my mother hardly argued because if they had a disagreement, he would leave. He either went for a walk or retreated to his shop. Now, however, when he was around, his presence was felt more than it had been before. He corrected Leah whenever she made a mistake, which was often; otherwise he muttered under his breath about her.

Leah's effect on my mother was very different. My mother was a woman of medium height with prematurely gray hair. She seemed unhappy and depressed. She never wore makeup or did anything to enhance her appearance. She spent most of her time taking care of my brother and socializing with her sisters and friends. My brother had asthma and he had frequent asthmatic attacks. During these attacks, he had trouble breathing. He not only had to have medication but he also needed a vaporizer to help him breathe. As a result my mother hardly went anyplace because she had to stay home with Arnold whenever he was sick. It was not so bad when he was sick during the week and couldn't go to school, but when he got sick on a weekend, any plans we had had to be cancelled. My mother had to stay home. If the plans involved any of my aunts and uncles, they usually took me along with them. My father couldn't stay with Arnold because he usually worked weekends. Hardest for her was the worry over my brother who didn't seem to be getting any better. Now she had a diversion and a cause: Leah. She was going to help Leah adjust to the United States. My mother loved helping Leah; Leah listened to her and depended on her and she felt useful and needed. She convinced Leah to have her teeth fixed and took her to our family dentist. Next, she took Leah shopping for clothes. Leah's clothes were out of style and dreary looking. Material had been hard to get and Leah had to make do with whatever she could buy or make for herself. The clothes she had made looked homemade. I went along with them one day. It wasn't easy shopping with Leah. When she didn't like something she made a face, shuddered and said "Ugh, No." in a loud voice. People looked at us and I felt embarrassed. I told her that all she had to do is say "no" or "I don't like that." She had trouble deciding on anything, so my mother and I helped her. If we found a skirt we thought would be nice, and asked her if she liked it, She would say "Yes" very quickly. We didn't know if she really liked something or just said yes, because she thought we liked the skirt. We began to realize that Leah knew what she didn't like, but couldn't make a decision about anything that she might like. Once again, it seemed to me that she was so nervous that she didn't allow herself the time to really look at the clothing and decide if she liked it. I don't think she felt pressured, because we had plenty of time and told her if she didn't see anything here, we could go to another store. We also told her she didn't have to buy anything that day; we could come back another time. The same thing would happen whenever she went shopping.

Next, my mother threw her energy into getting Leah a job. This was not easy since Leah had few skills. She knew how to sew and had worked in a factory in England. My mother had a friend whose husband worked in the garment industry and he helped Leah get a job in a factory sewing blouses. She was able to do that but worked very slowly. Since the workers got paid by the piece, at first she didn't make much money, but that wasn't important to her. Getting a job and going to work every day gave Leah a sense of purpose. It also helped that she was at work in the mornings when my father was home. It eased the tension between them. My father was very glad that my mother was helping Leah. It relieved him of some of the responsibility he felt for her. He could continue his routines as before, while my mother became involved with Leah. Leah's presence made my mother's life more meaningful as she became Leah's mentor. Leah's mistakes didn't bother her and she didn't correct her all the time.

As far as I was concerned, not only had Leah made my life more interesting, but I began to feel more important. Before Leah came, I rarely offered an opinion during family discussions because I was either told, "Mind your own business." or "What do you know?" Now someone listened to me and even asked me questions. I was rather shy and now I had interesting experiences to talk about with my friends. I regaled them with all Leah's malapropisms and mispronounced words. Although my friends and I laughed at Leah, I was not allowed to laugh at her at home. My mother, who was usually insensitive to anyone's feelings, would not allow anyone to laugh or to make fun of Leah.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from My Inheritance: Leahby Rahla Gold Copyright © 2012 by Rahla Gold. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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