Her Sister's Tattoo
more praise for
HER SISTER’S TATTOO
“Her Sister’s Tattoo is an honest and riveting portrait of anti-war activists and the price individuals and families pay for their actions, no matter how just. It is also a portrait of how lies and secrets can eat away again at both individuals and everyone in their families, particularly children. Meeropol evokes both the fear and exhilaration of protest.”
—Marge Piercy, author of Woman on the Edge of Time
“Rarely has the political been more heartrendingly personal than it is in Her Sister’s Tattoo. Within the story of these incandescent sisters, Meeropol contains a lifetime’s worth of devastating choices and the remorse that inescapably follows. At a time when politics are again threatening to rip the American family apart, this might just be the novel we need.”
—Andrew Foster Altschul, author of Lady Lazarus
“When their involvement at a Vietnam War protest escalates an already-violent situation, activist sisters Rosa and Esther must decide what lengths they will go to in support of their political convictions. Blood may be thicker than water, but in this family, politics may be thicker than blood. Her Sister’s Tattoo explores the shades of gray in a world that demands black-and-white perceptions, demonstrating that the lines we draw in the sand between what we are and are not capable of doing are ever-shifting under the weight of our complicated humanity.”
—Emily Crowe, bookseller at An Unlikely Story
“Her Sister’s Tattoo is a story not just of two sisters but of our country, where politics have so often torn apart families, loved ones, and communities. This tenderly told novel brings humanity to all sides of struggle, lifting us with its grace, compassion, and hope for the future. I highly recommend.”
—Rene Denfeld, author of The Child Finder
HER SISTER’S
TATTOO
a novel
Ellen Meeropol
Red Hen Press | Pasadena, CA
Her Sister’s Tattoo
Copyright © 2020 by Ellen Meeropol
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner.
Book design by Mark E. Cull
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Meeropol, Ellen, author.
Title: Her sister’s tattoo : a novel / Ellen Meeropol.
Description: First edition. | Pasadena, CA : Red Hen Press, [2020]
Identifiers: LCCN 2019040075 (print) | LCCN 2019040076 (ebook) | ISBN 9781597098441 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781597098557 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Vietnam War, 1961-1975—Protest movements—Fiction. | GSAFD: Historical fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3613.E375 H47 2020 (print) | LCC PS3613.E375 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019040075
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019040076
The National Endowment for the Arts, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Ahmanson Foundation, the Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, the Max Factor Family Foundation, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Foundation, the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission and the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Audrey & Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, the Kinder Morgan Foundation, the Meta & George Rosenberg Foundation, the Allergan Foundation, the Riordan Foundation, Amazon Literary Partnership, and the Mara W. Breech Foundation partially support Red Hen Press.
First Edition
Published by Red Hen Press
www.redhen.org
This book is dedicated to my Movement sisters,
with enormous love, in honor of those years
Beth, Rayna, Marilyn, Gayle, Karen, Di,
Lydia, Oceana, Dolphin, Dale
CONTENTS
Part One 1968–1980
Chapter 1 Esther
Chapter 2 Rosa
Chapter 3 Esther
Chapter 4 Jake
Chapter 5 Esther
Chapter 6 Rosa
Chapter 7 Esther
Chapter 8 Rosa
Chapter 9 Esther
Chapter 10 Jake
Chapter 11 Allen
Chapter 12 Esther
Chapter 13 Jake
Chapter 14 Esther
Chapter 15 Rosa
Chapter 16 Esther
Chapter 17 Esther
Chapter 18 Allen
Chapter 19 Rosa
Chapter 20 Allen
Chapter 21 Rosa
Chapter 22 Allen
Chapter 23 Esther
Chapter 24 Rosa
Chapter 25 Rosa
Chapter 26 Esther
Chapter 27 Jake
Chapter 28 Rosa
Chapter 29 Esther
Part Two 1980
Chapter 30 Molly
Chapter 31 Molly
Chapter 32 Molly
Chapter 33 Molly
Chapter 34 Molly
Chapter 35 Molly
Chapter 36 Jake
Chapter 37 Molly
Part Three 2003
Chapter 38 Molly
Chapter 39 Rosa
Chapter 40 Esther
Chapter 41 Molly
Chapter 42 Rosa
Chapter 43 Molly
Acknowledgments
Biographical Note
HER SISTER’S TATTOO
PART ONE
1968–1980
CHAPTER 1
Esther
The August air was charged with whiffs of marijuana and patchouli oil, the sulfur stench of asphalt softening in the heat, and the distant admonition of tear gas. Protesters overflowed the broad expanse of Woodward Avenue and spilled onto the sidewalk. Their chants ricocheted off the brick faces of the squat downtown Detroit buildings. And the excitement. Excitement had a peppery smell all of its own.
At the front of the demonstration, Esther let herself be pushed along by the zeal of the march, elbows linked with her sister Rosa on her left and their best friend Maggie on her right. Maggie lowered the bullhorn and handed it to Esther.
“Your turn,” Maggie said. “I’ve got to save my voice. I’m on medic duty soon.”
Shaking her head, Esther passed the bullhorn to Rosa, who raised it to her lips. “Hey, hey, LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?”
Esther joined the chant, her voice hoarse, a good kind of sore. To their left, three eight-foot-tall puppets dressed in military uniforms splashed with red paint swayed to the chants. The puppets bobbled and bowed to the National Guard troops stationed in front of Hudson’s Department Store. Mama used to bring the girls to Hudson’s every year for back-to-school shopping until a store clerk was murdered and Mama swore she’d never again set foot in the store. The neighborhood had become too dangerous.
Beaming, Rosa squeezed Esther’s arm against her ribs. “Isn’t this great?”
Esther squeezed back. She loved it all, her sister’s fireworks smile and the two elderly women shuffling next to them sharing a metal walker and the guy on the sidewalk cheering and waving his Detroit baseball cap, even though she could swear he was chanting, “Go get ‘em, Tigers!” Most of all she loved feeling bonded cell to cell, not only to Rosa and Maggie, but to every single one of the tens of thousands of people in the crowd as they all marched for a single shared cause: ending the Vietnam War.
Rosa pointed the bullhorn toward a couple marching on the edge of the crowd. A sleeping infant snuggled between the woman’s breasts, his white sailor hat shading his red cheeks and his mouth pursed with dreams of nursing.
“See?” Rosa said. “You could’ve brought Molly.”
; Esther shook her head. A demonstration was no place for a five-month-old. “That’s not what Mama said.”
Rosa rolled her eyes. “What’d she say?”
“That I should stay home, because what if I get arrested?” Esther waved at two men watching the march from a second floor window. They looked like father and son, with the same grim expression, the same stiff posture, forearms leaning on the sill. They didn’t wave back. “I tried to explain that I’m protesting for Molly, for her future.” Before their conversation Esther had the same qualms, but the minute Mama started saying those things, Esther pushed her own doubts away. “Mama wouldn’t listen, just made that disgusted sound, that phuff noise, you know?”
“Mama forgets what it’s like.” Rosa paused to let five young men cut ahead of them. They waved pictures of their draft cards ignited with fire-engine-red paint. “She and Pop brought us to rallies and strikes all the time when we were kids. You’ve got to take risks for your beliefs.”
“That’s easy for you to say.” Esther had agonized over bringing Molly. Their collective had been working for weeks with the national office of the Students for a Democratic Society aiming for the biggest anti-war march in Detroit history, building momentum for the protest at the Democratic National Convention coming up in Chicago in ten days. “It just didn’t feel safe to bring Molly. Leaving her with the babysitter until Jake gets home from the hospital is a compromise.” But Rosa didn’t like compromises.
“People have to choose,” Rosa said. “My priority is ending the war.”
“Women can do both.” Esther tried to sound confident, but some days that felt impossible. Like the night before, when Molly woke up at two a.m. and Esther tried to nurse her back to sleep. Molly wanted to play, grabbing at the origami peace crane mobile hanging from the ceiling. “It’s just hard, you know, when Molly is up a lot at night.”
“At five months, she should be sleeping through the night.”
Rosa’s scolding was drowned out by the five-piece military band playing “God Bless America” in front of the Army Recruitment Center. The recruiters and their buddies, several of them in military uniforms, shouted at the marchers: “America! Love it or leave it!”
Esther tugged at Rosa’s corkscrew curl to bring back her attention. “Mama says that at five years you still woke up every night and demanded a glass of milk and a story.”
Rosa stopped to confront the hecklers, her legs planted solidly on the pavement and fists clenched. “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh. The NLF is going to win!”
Esther grabbed the strap of Rosa’s bib overall cut-offs. Rosa let herself be pulled away from the recruiters, but she turned to Esther, her face furious. “Mama likes to dramatize everything, especially raising kids. You’d think it’s the hardest thing in the world.”
“How would you know?” Esther didn’t even try to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. Rosa might be older, taller, smarter, but she didn’t know squat about babies. “When did you become an expert on child-raising?”
“Stop it, both of you.” Maggie rubbed her hand over her blond buzz cut. She turned to Esther. “Ignore her. You know how hyped she gets.”
Esther studied Rosa’s profile, only her nose visible through the mass of red curls. Esther had seen the ache on Allen’s face when he played with Molly, but close as the sisters were, Esther had no idea if Rosa and Allen wanted to have children.
Sometimes she agreed with Rosa that ending the war was the most important thing on earth, for Molly and the little guy in the sailor hat. Other days, she felt herself pulling away from the collective. If she were stronger or braver, maybe she could do everything: be an activist and a mother and an artist. She had tried to paint her enthusiasm for the rallies and demonstrations and protests, but sparks of vermillion pigment on canvas failed to capture the energy, the thrill of it.
The baby in the sailor hat was fussing now, small fists hammering his mother’s chest. His cries made Esther’s milk let down. She untangled her elbows from Rosa and Maggie and pressed the heels of her hands tight against her nipples, hoping she wouldn’t have to march with twin circles darkening her shirt.
As they reached the rally site, double rows of blank-faced National Guard troops lined the wide avenue, sunlight bouncing off their helmets. Rooftop cameras mounted on panel trucks with television station logos swiveled to catch the action. Esther smiled and waved to the soldiers.
“Don’t wave.” Rosa’s lips pinched into a thin line. “They’re the enemy.”
“No, they’re not. They’re Danny.”
Esther wondered if their favorite cousin wore a helmet like that. Twenty months earlier he had stopped by the sisters’ New Year’s Eve party to announce that he’d been drafted. Esther remembered his exact words: “I know you’re disappointed in me. I’m not burning my draft card or moving to Canada. The war is wrong, but I’m going.” Rosa asked how he could be a soldier if he believed that the war was wrong. He stared down at his red basketball sneakers and answered, “I’m no chicken.”
Rosa probably regretted what she said to Danny that night, her voice barely audible above the party chatter. “Fine. Go be a brave soldier. Kill people. Napalm babies.” Danny just stood there looking at Rosa, his hand trying to smooth down the cowlick that tormented him.
“You don’t mean that,” Esther had told Rosa, then turned to Danny and touched his shoulder. “She doesn’t mean it.” Danny started basic training two weeks later.
The crowd spilled onto the sidewalk, around and through the curious onlookers, the parked buses with license plates from Illinois and Indiana and Ohio. Rosa stopped to high-five a skinny guy carrying a hand-painted sign saying POLITICIANS LIE; GI’S DIE. The marchers pushed amoeba-like into Kennedy Square, flowing around the blue islands of police officers standing with arms crossed, batons swinging from their belts. They funneled under the red banner with human-sized block letters reading BRING DOWN THE WAR MACHINE, then fanned out onto the brown August grass.
Maggie approached a man wearing a red armband and distributing flyers. “Where’s first aid?” she asked. The marshal pointed beyond the stage to a white canvas tent, its roof visible above the heads of milling protesters. He handed Esther a flyer and she glanced at the list of rally speakers and supporting organizations. The ink, tacky in the humid air, left fragments of print on her fingers.
Maggie tightened the red and white fabric band around her arm and checked her watch. “I’m on duty soon.”
Esther wished Jake had also volunteered for first aid, but a pediatric residency didn’t leave time for anything else. Their friends didn’t understand and made fun of him. “Jake is a regular Albert Schweitzer of toddlerland,” Rosa once sneered, “fighting the epidemic of ear infections.” Maggie still had a year of RN training to go, but she had taken a street medic course and here she was in the trenches, ready to treat victims of police violence.
“We’ll walk you over,” Rosa said.
Onstage, members of the tech collective draped extension cords between the mammoth speakers and the microphones. The squawk of feedback added to the almost unbearable weight of the air, thick with moisture and crackle and heat.
The sisters followed Maggie into the first aid tent, where the harsh sunlight filtered into soft shade. “How’s it going?” Maggie asked the medic on duty.
“Not bad. A couple of minor burns from hairspray flamethrowers. Beth is on her way in with a scalp laceration—some frisky cops on Grand River.” He unclipped the walkie-talkie from his waist and handed it to Maggie. “I’m going to listen to the speeches, but I’ll be around if you need me.”
“Thanks. Beth and I will be fine.” Maggie attached the walkie-talkie to her belt, then placed a liter bottle of sterile saline and a thick pack of gauze pads on the table. She waved at Esther and Rosa. “We’ll talk this evening.”
The sisters wandered past the stage and found seats along the fountain. Rosa rubbed at the blue ink on her hand. “Guess I won’t need the Legal Aid number. Sounds like all
the action was on Grand River.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“A little.”
Esther gathered her hair into one hand and lifted it off of her neck. Sometimes Rosa was too much. “Well, I’m not disappointed. The march was fantastic and I can’t wait to see the six o’clock news, but I’m really glad there was no trouble.” Esther grinned. “Didn’t you love that old woman’s sign, ANOTHER GRANDMOTHER FOR PEACE? I hope we’ll still be activists when we’re that old, and our kids and grandkids will march with us.”
“And how about that chant from the Bloomington contingent, for the student who couldn’t come because his mother threatened to have a heart attack?”
“Five, four, three two one, Mrs. Goldberg, free your son,” they sang together.
“I’m dying of thirst.” Rosa kicked off her leather sandals. “Any juice left?”
Esther rummaged through the contents of the daypack: crumpled wax paper from their cheese sandwiches. Plastic bags with bandanas soaked in vinegar in case of tear gas attack. Legal Aid telephone number on a folded piece of lined yellow paper, the same number as the one scrawled on their hands. Torn strips of bed sheet and a can of red spray paint, ready for a last-minute banner. Six empty cans of apple juice. A brown paper bag? Where did that come from? Inside were four small apples, green and rock hard.
“No juice,” Esther said. “What’s with the apples?”
Rosa smiled. “In case things get heavy, like if we need to break some windows. If we’re busted, we can always say, ‘Why, officer, that’s just a snack.’”
Break windows? Rosa wasn’t serious, was she? Esther didn’t have the energy to disagree. Rosa would puff up and play the more-radical-than-thou game and Esther would lose the argument, as usual.
Esther peeled her damp shirt from her chest and looked down at the silk-screened image. A Vietnamese woman, with a baby in a cloth sling over one shoulder and a rifle over the other, splashing through a rice paddy away from a landing helicopter. When the art collective chose her design for the rally image, Esther had been so proud, but when Rosa saw the design, she’d raised one eyebrow in disapproval.