Free Letters From Rifka by Karen Hesse

Mama and Papa. They won’t even let me see them. Tovah, I can’t go to America!
    After we landed, I sat on a bench in an enormous room with hundreds of others, waiting to hear my name called.
    I waited a long time. I just wanted to see Mama and Papa. I kept looking around for them, for Mama’s black hair, for Papa’s beard, but they
weren’t there. There were others with thick beards, with dark hair, but they weren’t my mama and papa. Certainly I would know my own mama and papa.
    Finally a man called my name. I couldn’t understand what he said to me. I felt nervous and he spoke English so fast, much faster than the lady from the HIAS. Someone found an interpreter for me. I answered their questions, I read from a book to prove I am not a simpleton, but they kept delaying my approval.
    The doctor examined me. He took off my hat, my beautiful hat. I didn’t like his taking off my hat any more than I liked the Russian guard touching my hair or the Polish doctor examining me at the border, but just as then, I had no choice.
    The first doctor called over another doctor. They spoke fast. They looked at my scalp. They shook their heads. Then they called for a tall man with glasses. The nosepiece was dull with the mark of his thumbprint, so often did he shove the gold rims up on his thin nose.
    “What is it?” I asked, pulling on the doctors’ sleeves, but they didn’t answer. The first doctor put a chalk mark on my shoulder and pointed me in the direction of a cage holding the detainees.
    Detainees are immigrants who are not welcome in America. They remain on the island until the authorities decide what to do with them. People like
criminals and simpletons are detainees. I didn’t belong with them. I could not belong with them.
    “Why are you holding me?” I cried in Yiddish. “Why have you put me with these people? I don’t belong here. I belong in America. I have come to America.”
    A lady from the HIAS came over. She, too, was short, like the HIAS lady in Antwerp and the HIAS lady in Warsaw, but this one had a red bun on the top of her head.
    “Shah,” she said. “Don’t make such a fuss. If you calm down, I will help you.”
    She spoke with the doctor. She spoke with the man who wore the gold-rimmed glasses. I saw her face grow less and less hopeful. When she walked back to me, I could tell it was not good news.
    She explained to me in Yiddish what the doctors had said. “You must be kept in the hospital for contagious diseases. It’s because of the ringworm you suffered from in Europe.”
    “They cured my ringworm!” I cried.
    “Mr. Fargate, the tall man with the glasses, says he must be certain the ringworm is gone before you can enter the country,” the lady from the HIAS said. “Perhaps it will only take a day or two.”
    “A day or two. I must go to Mama and Papa now! My papers say the ringworm is cured!” I cried.
“Why don’t they believe my papers? Why must I wait?”
    “It’s not just the ringworm that concerns them,” said the lady from the HIAS. “It’s your hair.” She stroked my cheek with the back of her hand. She had a brown wart on her chin, with red hairs growing out of it. I pulled back from her.
    “My hair?” I asked. I tugged at the black velvet hat, pulling it down until it nearly covered my ears.
    “The doctors worry about your hair.”
    “Why should they worry over such a thing as my hair?” I asked.
    “To them it is important,” the HIAS lady said. “Even though your ringworm may be gone, if your hair does not grow back, Rifka, the American government will have to view you as a social responsibility.”
    “What does this mean? Social responsibility?” I asked.
    “It means the American government is afraid they will have to support you for the rest of your life,” the lady from the HIAS said. “Your lack of hair makes you an undesirable immigrant. They think without hair you will never find a husband to take care of you and so they will have to take care