Long Road to Justice (eBook)

Eliana’s Dream

(Historical Fiction)

Fifteen-year-old Eliana Goldberg was a lonely girl and an only child with a shy and retiring nature. As a Jewish girl attending middle school in the early 1960’s in a predominantly Christian community, she was ostracized by her teenage peers. Her painfully shy nature, diminutive size, and skinny build made her an easy target for bullies. She often bore the brunt of cruel anti-Semitic harassment by classmates. On one occasion, a yellow star of David was painted on her desk. Another time, a cut out photo of a rat was pasted onto the front of her locker. On yet another occasion, a sketch of Eliana with an elongated nose was left on top of her desk.

Eliana did her best to stay clear of her tormentors. While she was diminutive of size, she was speedy of foot, and she had the ability to change directions quickly. On many occasions, she simply fled and outran those with ill-intentions.

She pushed the bounds of her own shy ways in an effort to reach out toward others; But due to peer pressure, or perhaps due to latent anti-Semitic prejudice of their own, other students failed to intercede on her behalf. Eliana was unable to develop any real friends in whom she could confide or count on to have her back.

Eliana’s dad had died of cancer when she was but a little girl of five. While her mom, Ellen Goldberg, was loving and supportive, she was forced to work two jobs to make ends meet. Very often, she did not get home until 8:00 at night. As a result, the isolation Eliana experienced at school extended into a lonely latchkey kid type of existence at home. Despite her loneliness, Eliana deeply loved and respected her mom, and she bore no resentment toward her; And because she sensed how hard her mom worked to support the two of them, she did not want her mom to worry about her. She chose not to burden her with her own troubles at school.

She coped with her isolation and loneliness by immersing herself in a world of books. She had a quick, bright, and curious mind, and she devoured books in the areas of history and biography. She also kept up with the news and world events. The book that affected her more deeply than any other, the book that spoke to her on so many levels, was “The Diary of Anne Frank.” She developed a deep feeling of kinship with Anne and her family and friends. She read about the danger, fear, and isolation that they endured day after day for 25 months hiding from the Nazis within the suffocating atmosphere of The Secret Annex. She found herself hanging on Anne’s every word, including the following words: “I get frightened myself when I think of close friends who are now at the mercy of the cruelest monsters ever to stalk the earth; And all because they’re Jews.” In light of the torment she endured in school, Eliana identified with Anne’s words. She felt as if Anne was speaking to her personally and directly. She also identified with Anne’s teenage angst, her feelings of isolation and loneliness. She was inspired by Anne’s courage, hope, and love of nature. As she read the Afterward to the Diary, Eliana was heartbroken to learn that all the members of The Secret Annex were betrayed and eventually murdered by the SS in Nazi Concentration Camps, save for Anne’s Father, Otto Frank, the lone survivor.

For all her admiration for Anne, Eliana felt that she lacked Anne’s strength of personality and courage. Whereas Anne had been an outgoing extrovert in school, and often the center of attention, Eliana viewed herself as introverted, quiet, and shy. Temperamentally, Eliana found herself identifying more with Anne’s older sister, Margot, who was murdered by the Nazis at the age of 19. Anne described Margot in her diary as an excellent student, hard-working, kind and considerate to a fault, reserved, and quiet. Eliana yearned to know more about Margot, and how she coped with anti-Semitism, danger, and fear. Perhaps, she thought, understanding Margot better would help her in her own life, in coping with the threats and harassment at school. She wished that Anne had written a lot more about her sister than she did.

As the bullying and threats continued incessantly at school, Eliana’s fear, panic, and depression grew dangerously close to a breaking point. She tried to think of new ways to make friends, and to create for herself a zone of safety. She developed an interest in tennis upon reading the autobiography of Hall of Fame tennis player, Helen Jacobs. She learned that Ms. Jacobs, who was Jewish, had not been stopped by anti-Semitism from rising to the top of the tennis world, or from becoming a commander in the U.S. Naval Intelligence Agency during WWII. Eliana learned that Ms. Jacobs had authored a number of books, including a book entitled, “Gallery of Champions, a Collection of Biographies of Female Tennis Pros.” Eliana thought that she too would like someday to become a writer, just as Anne Frank had aspired to become a journalist and a writer. Reading about Ms. Jacobs also led Eliana to begin thinking about trying out for the middle school tennis team.

Despite her trepidation due to the threats and racist tropes she’d endured, and despite her retiring nature, she mustered up the courage to show up for the first day of practice. She wound up having a good time at practice. An outgoing girl named Hope asked her to be her practice partner. They spent the entire period hitting together. Given her quickness which had been honed running away from bullies, Eliana found that her footwork was coming easy to her. Hope told her that she had natural talent for the game. She asked Eliana to be her practice partner the next day. Eliana readily agreed. Hope gave her a quick hug, and then hurried off, telling her that she needed to get home to babysit her little brother.

For the first time since the school year began, Eliana’s heart was light, and she was filled with happiness and hope. She walked over to the general area where the kids had left their tennis bags and racquet covers. As she gathered up her tennis bag, she noticed that her racquet cover was missing. She looked everywhere but couldn’t find it. She thought maybe another girl had picked it up by mistake. As she walked over toward her bicycle to ride home, she was pleased to spot at a distance that her racquet cover was wrapped around the handle bar. As she took hold of it, she saw pasted onto the front of the cover, a Nazi Swastika! Eliana dropped the cover, dropped her tennis bag, dropped to her knees, and screamed! After a few moments, she looked up upon hearing a group of students laughing, cursing, and making fun of her from a nearby school sidewalk; And then, she was wounded by the “unkindest cut of all.” Among those laughing at her, she gazed upon the figure of Hope.

In the days that followed, Eliana sank deeper into depression and despair. Not long thereafter, her mom, while at work, received a call from the school advising her that Eliana had not shown up for school for almost a week. Upon arriving home on a Thursday evening, Ms. Goldberg found Eliana in bed, groggy and half asleep. She confronted her daughter about missing school. “What’s going on, Eliana? Why are you skipping school? Talk to me.” While Eliana intended no disrespect to her mom, in that moment she was unable to break through the shell of her interior isolation so as to utter a single word. Try as she might, Ms. Goldberg could not get her daughter to open up to her. Finally, Eliana told her mom that she wished to go to sleep. Her mom made her promise to return to school in the morning, and to sit down with her after school and tell her what was going on. Upon Eliana agreeing to do so, her mom hugged and kissed her and left the room.

Contrary to what Eliana had told her mom, she spent a sleepless night. Earlier in the week while skipping school, she had spent endless hours alone in her room. She had also taken long walks, wondering around aimlessly in “quiet desperation” and hopeless depression. Her mind was saturated with the bullying, the threats, the fear, the racist tropes, and Hope’s betrayal. In her despair, she came to the conclusion that she could no longer go on living in this life. Because she had no friends with whom to share social activities, she had accumulated most of her monthly allowances since the beginning of the school year. Earlier that Thursday, she had made her way to a sordid part of town where drug trafficking was the order of the day. While there, she purchased a deadly cocktail of illegal drugs.

In recent weeks, Eliana had discovered a trail which extended deep into some nearby woods, and led to a partially hidden hollow. She had begun visiting this beautiful and peaceful hollow as a place of refuge and escape from her misery at school. She considered it her Secret Hiding Place. It was there that she intended in the morning to take the lethal cocktail to escape her pain. She had grown at peace with her decision; But after her mom left her room that Thursday evening, Eliana’s mind began racing with indecision. Her hesitation was attributable to her deep love for her mom. She didn’t wish to hurt her, and she deeply regretted the pain and heartbreak she would cause. All through the night, Eliana wrestled with her decision without getting a wink of sleep. Near sun-up, exhausted and sick at heart, she sat down and wrote her mom the following note: “Dear Mom, I have tried so hard, so very hard, to cope and go on living in this world; But the constant barrage of threats, bullying, anti-Semitic hatred, fear, and social isolation I have endured at school, is more than I can continue to bear. I cannot go on. You have been as kind, loving, and caring a mom as a daughter could ever hope to have. I love you...