Ethel's Song Read online

  Text copyright © 2022 by Barbara Krasner

  All rights reserved. Copying or digitizing this book for storage, display, or distribution in any other medium is strictly prohibited.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, please contact [email protected].

  Calkins Creek

  An imprint of Astra Books for Young Readers, a division of Astra Publishing House

  astrapublishinghouse.com

  ISBN: 978-1-63592-625-5 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-1-63592-626-2 (eBook)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Krasner, Barbara, author.

  Title: Ethel’s song : Ethel Rosenberg’s life in poems / Barbara Krasner.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Calkins Creek, an imprint of Astra Books for young readers, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references. |Audience: Ages 13-17 | Audience: Grades 10-12 | Summary: “In 1953, Ethel Rosenberg, a devoted wife and loving mother, faces the electric chair. People say she’s a spy, a Communist, a traitor, a red. How did she get here? In a series of heart-wrenching poems, Ethel tells her story. The child of Jewish immigrants, Ethel Greenglass grows up on New York City’s Lower East Side. She dreams of being an actress and a singer but finds romance and excitement in the arms of the charming Julius Rosenberg. Both are ardent supporters of rights for workers, but are they spies? Who is passing atomic secrets to the Soviets? Why does everyone seem out to get them? This first book for young readers about Ethel Rosenberg is a fascinating portrait of a commonly misunderstood figure from American history, and vividly relates a story that continues to have relevance today.”— Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2022004253 (print) | LCCN 2022004254 (ebook) | ISBN 9781635926255 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781635926262 (epub)

  Subjects: LCSH: Rosenberg, Ethel, 1915-1953--Juvenile poetry.

  Classification: LCC HX84.R578 K73 2022 (print) | LCC HX84.R578 (ebook) |

  DDC 364.1/31092 [B]--dc23/eng/20220321

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022004253

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022004254

  First edition

  Design by Barbara Grzeslo

  The text is set in Sabon.

  The titles are set in Impact.

  Frontispiece:

  Ethel Rosenberg in her apartment the day after husband Julius’s arrest, July 1950

  For my late parents, Milton and Lillian Perlman Krasner

  CONTENTS

  PART I    Sheriff Street

  PART II    Knickerbocker Village

  PART III   Federal Courthouse, Foley Square

  PART IV  Sing Sing Federal Prison, Ossining, New York

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  TIMELINE OF EVENTS

  SOURCE NOTES

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  FOR MORE INFORMATION

  PICTURE CREDITS

  PART I

  SHERIFF STREET

  WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A GIRL

  1925

  Wash out your baby brother’s diapers,

  darn your oldest brother’s socks,

  slip from your middle brother’s wrestling holds.

  Most of all, stay out of Mama’s way.

  Her tongue whacks like a leather belt

  catching on my ten-year-old confidence.

  Some girls may place their ambitions

  in hope chests. But here on Sheriff

  Street, here in the tenements

  of New York City’s Lower East Side,

  we children of immigrants sweep them

  under the beds like dust.

  SWEET DREAMS

  At night, when the apartment is still,

  I pull my dreams from under the bed—

  each one I savor, bend to my will.

  I’m an actress, an audience thrill.

  The world is my stage, my lines well read,

  at night, when the apartment is still.

  A singer am I, soprano trill,

  high octave notes, they dance, well led—

  each one I savor, bend to my will.

  Photographers greet me, frame with skill,

  reporters quote me with pencil lead

  at night, when the apartment is still.

  My clothes are gold, my heavy purse filled

  with money enough to turn my head—

  each buck I savor, bend to my will.

  One day, just see, my dreams will instill

  sweet fortunes, and love will bring me bread

  at night, when the apartment is still—

  each dream I savor, bend to my will.

  NUMBER 64

  In a nondescript tenement

  on a nondescript street,

  we live behind Papa’s sewing machine

  repair shop. He bends over his machine

  as poverty bends over us.

  Machine shops line the street

  like tight stitches in a seam,

  leaning on each other

  to make a single straight pattern of income.

  OUT ON THE STREET

  My mother is a terror

  since she became a bill collector,

  dragging along my brother Bernie

  because he can rough up deadbeats.

  My mother is an embarrassment

  dragging her shopping bag,

  looking for bargains,

  haggling with pushcart vendors

  as if she were still in the shtetl.

  My mother is a thief,

  dragging my stolen dreams

  through the mud, stomping

  on them with her thick, unlaced boots.

  HALF A SIBLING

  Half a sibling is Sammy.

  Whole is the bitterness of Sammy

  that makes the six years between us

  a gaping hole.

  Just because I’m the only girl

  and Papa adores me.

  MOVING ON UP

  Mama must have haggled a good deal.

  Papa’s business must be doing well.

  Mama rents an upstairs apartment

  so she, Papa, and Sammy

  can spread out

  in the ground-floor flat.

  Bernie, two years younger,

  little Dovey, six years younger,

  and I move up.

  Mama’s tongue lashings

  refuse to climb stairs.

  Mama’s broad swipes

  slip on the stairwell.

  Mama’s heavy footsteps

  remain grounded.

  Up here I have my own room,

  a window looking out onto the street,

  sunlight and air.

  THE DICTIONARY PLAN

  I decide to increase

  my vocabulary

  by learning one new

  word

  a day.

  Today’s

  word:

  Exigency—

  A situation that demands remedy.

  The bare icebox,

  shoes from two years ago that pinch,

  the greengrocer’s constant pleas to pay the bill.

  Now our gnawing needs

  fit within the boundaries

  of just one ever-widening word:

  Exigency.

  DOVEY

  I love to poke my fingers

  through little Dovey’s curls.

  I love to tickle his tummy

  and hear his laughter.

  I love this brother so dearly

  because he obeys me.

  STITCHES

  Implacable—

  Not to be

  pacified.

  Put it in a sentence
:

  I am implacable

  when it comes

  to fights

  with Mama.

  I love Papa,

  but he uses all

  his strength

  in his mechanical repairs.

  There’s none left

  for his words.

  WHEN I SING, WHEN I ACT

  I become anyone I want.

  I go anywhere I please.

  I say anything that comes to me.

  I make words dance.

  When I sing, when I act,

  I am in charge, I make the rules.

  I rise above this ugly Lower East Side,

  the tenement buildings

              that fold into each other,

  The Yiddish babble

              of fish for sale.

  On stage with an opera company,

  I am Barbarina, singing soprano

  in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro.

  After my aria, audiences erupt

  in rambunctious applause.

  On stage with a repertory troupe,

  I am Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

  Audiences detonate in waves of cheers.

  They say, “Boy, can she act? And how!”

  THE WALK TO

  SEWARD PARK HIGH SCHOOL

  1928

  I shuffle to school

  with paper stuck

  inside my shoes

  to hide the holes

  in the soles, to cushion me

  from cracks in concrete sidewalk.

  WHERE THERE’S A WORD

  My English teacher tells me

  I possess a laudable

  vocabulary.

  College, here I come!

  ETHEL’S FOUR QUESTIONS

  As a girl, and because I’m not the youngest,

  I don’t get to ask the Four Questions

  at the Passover Seder. I don’t get to ask:

  Why is this night different from other nights?

  Why do we usually eat leavened bread but tonight we eat matzo?

  Why do we usually eat vegetables but tonight we eat bitter herbs?

  Why do we usually sit up straight but tonight we recline?

  My own questions aren’t specific to Passover:

  Why does a government allow its people to live in such poverty?

  Why can’t we all believe in whatever makes sense to us?

  Why must there be hate in the world?

  Why must there be war?

  THE SEWARD PARK HIGH SCHOOL

  ALMANAC

  1931

  Best Actress:

  Ethel Greenglass

  Class Prophecy:

  By 1950, Ethel Greenglass

  will become a celebrity.

  From the pages of the Seward Park Almanac

  to G-d’s ear.

  The next time Mama covers her ears

  when I sing, I’ll sing even louder.

  Ethel Greenglass graduates from Seward Park High School, 1931.

  NEEDLESS NEEDLES

  For two years now,

  since the stock market crashed

  down on Wall Street,

  we’ve been plunged

  into a great Depression.

  Nobody needs the work

  of our tailors and seamstresses,

  patternmakers and pressers

  in the uptown Garment District.

  Papa says we’ll make do.

  President Hoover lies when he says

  prosperity is just around the corner.

  I can’t stand people who lie.

  SHIM-SHAM SAMMY

  Sammy is only my half-brother,

  the product of Papa’s

  first wife, who died. Sammy married

  and moved out. Mama counted

  on his rent money. Now as the next oldest,

  at sixteen,

  I have to make up the difference.

  “Get a job,”

  Mama says. “But I was going

  to act! I was going to sing! I

  was going to go to college!” I say.

  “Get your head out of the clouds,

  girl. The whole country’s in a depression,

  and you’re selfish, thinking only of yourself.”

  Is it wrong, am I offending G-d

  by disliking my mother so much?

  SO MUCH FOR COLLEGE

  1932

  Wanted!

  Unskilled workers

  at the

  National New York Packaging and Shipping Company.

  Wanted!

  A queue of people wants

  the same job, my job.

  Wanted!

  The crowd gets unruly,

  people shove and shout.

  The police force them

  under control with a hose.

  Wanted!

  Not me.

  I sign up

  for a six-month secretarial course.

  I earn my certificate in typing,

  bookkeeping, stenography.

  Wanted!

  Me!

  I’m the new clerk

  at the

  National New York Packaging and Shipping Company

  uptown in the Garment District.

  Wanted!

  People like me—

  young, fast, eager.

  Yet who am I at sixteen, when so many thousands

  are out of work, to find work so quickly?

  Am I in the right place

  at the right time?

  Or am I just willing to work

  for such low wages?

  BEYOND THE LOWER EAST SIDE

  I nudge

  my way onto the M train

  to Herald Square. As we worm

  through Manhattan’s underbelly,

  soot and silt

  and impossibilities

  fall away.

  On the job, I meet Jews

  from the Bronx and New Jersey. I

  meet Italians and other Catholics.

  “How ya doin’?”

  “Buon giorno!”

  Nobody asks where I’m from.

  Nobody asks about my family.

  Nobody asks about high school.

  Just “How fast can you type?”

  I sharpen my pencils.

  I roll a piece of paper

  into the typewriter.

  “120 words a minute,” I say,

  “without looking.”

  IF I HAD A MAP

  I’d have to increase the size of Japan

  to include Manchuria,

  pardon me, Manchukuo,

  Japan’s new economy builder.

  I’d have to increase the sphere

  of Japan to include Shanghai

  and let’s not forget Korea,

  under Japanese influence for decades.

  If I had a map,

  I’d see Japan as a

  country gobbler.

  MY DEEP, DARK SECRET

  I know I should buy

  at Woolworth’s five-and-dime, but

  they don’t have the right lipstick shade.

  So I scan the newspaper ads

  until I find a sale

  at Lord & Taylor.

  I have my choices:

  Light Rose, Raspberry,

  Pomegranate, Orange,

  but I choose Bright Red

  and follow the natural lines

  of my own lips.

  ONE DAY, ALL DAYS AT NATIONAL

  Timecard in

  Punch the clock

  Position the fingers

  Index fingers on F and J

  Middle fingers on D and K

  Ring fingers on S and L

  Pinkies on A and semicolon

  Thumbs ready to hit space

  Type

  Type

  Type

  Bell rings

  Timecard in

  Punch.

  FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT
/>
  1933

  Hoover out

  Roosevelt in

  Republicans out

  Democrats in

  Lies out

  Hope in

  Roosevelt’s New Deal promises jobs

  to build roads and parks, plant trees.

  Those jobs are for men,

  those jobs take them far from home.

  We need jobs right here

  in New York. All of us.

  Who can help us

  on the Lower East Side?

  LET’S GET DOWN TO WORK

  The Communist Party says

  we all need to get down to work.

  Protest unemployment!

  Demand relief if you don’t

  have a job!

  Strike!

  To get what you need!

  Strike!

  To get what you deserve!

  Madison Square Garden

  fills with those of us

  who are tired

  of rich politicians

  telling us things will be better.

  Even the Jewish Daily Forward,

  Papa’s favorite paper,

  is always on the side of the worker.

  A NEW CIRCLE

  My friends and I

  gather round the piano

  in someone’s apartment.

  I’m eager to sing.

  I want to sing.

  I demand to sing.

  My notes swirl around the room,

  twirl around my vocal chords.

  We’re not looking for revolution

  at these Young Communist League

  clubs. We’re looking

  to entertain,

  bring the arts to the people.

  We are a fraternity

  of musicians

  artists

  singers

  circulating through New York City,

  dropping ringlets of culture

  to anyone who wants them.

  A NEW WORD FOR MY DICTIONARY

  Everyone’s talking

  of a word I’ve not heard

  before:

  Fascism.

  A government with a dictator

  A government that takes total control

  A government with troops in brown shirts