by Suzanne Baran

     People ask, "Do you have siblings?" I hear the question constantly. I'm asked in bars, on dates, in transit, in new office settings, and at various poetry readings. Sometimes I forget my brother Jeff is dead. I get lost in thought of the three Barans who made it through the rural, white trash land in New Jersey and migrated to the Big City--Manhattan--without asking for help. We were free from our Succasunna, N.J. shackles, but the name of our town and the memories formed therein would follow us wherever we decided to call home.

     Carrying that name was almost as unbearable as living in the place itself. After I tell people Jeff is dead, they ask, "How did he die?" "Hey, that’s beyond morbid, but you want to hear it anyway"—is what I should respond, but lack the motivation. Then my head usually searches for some kind of diversion or something upbeat and positive to retort to an otherwise natural query. When they ask for his cause of death, why don't I say, "Succasunna. Not suicide?" I died there myself a few times. I discovered that physical and verbal abuse is abnormal, and it shattered my world.

     Communication in my house was extinct. Laughter was shunned. Freedom was expelled. Religion was King and we its subjects. Protect the King! In chess, pawns are powerful, small, sometimes cunning pieces--they can reach the opponent's side of the board and become whatever powerful piece was lifted earlier in the game. We weren't even pawns to the King; we were rarely pawns to the King's King. Protecting the King meant switching schools every two to four years, suffering antagonism while surrounding ourselves with closed minds and hearts.

     Protect the King and always have heart when others' stopped beating, was our mantra. The King threw its subjects into an opulent lion’s den with a host of spoiled beasts—Jewish kids who disdained our flat feet and the shoes we wore to correct the problem. We didn’t live near our school, so we had to leave at six in the morning to get there on time, and the King was satisfied. But not for long.

     The throne wasn't threatened and the kingdom flourished even though the monarchy was fooled into thinking so. Its powers were practically endless until we, the pawns, matured and attacked the Queen, my father, who was usually strategically placed and marked "unavailable." He knew all the right moves to keep us at bay. The Queen only captured pawns if she had to—usually that meant they were in her way, making noise levels rise to unparalleled heights. If the peace was disturbed, beware of the Queen.

     We used the King to get the Queen out of hiding. We tried to defy the King in our own small ways by having our own individuality, a crime punishable by beatings. I can recall being locked up in the house on a Saturday, the day of rest. We were not allowed to watch TV, turn lights on or off, or even write. My mother saw us as extensions of herself; individuality was shunned. We framed our existence with silent defiance. We hid things from her. For me, it was making surreptitious phone calls to my boyfriend who lived in Rockland County. He would drive to my Jersey hellhole, we'd see each other for an hour, and then he'd head home.

     When I was eight, I peered in on my father's TV habits. He was watching "Reckless" with Tom Cruise. An "inappropriate" scene flashed on the screen, I shifted my foot because it was falling asleep. My father heard the rumble and up the stairs. I clutched my teddy bear and heard his familiar angry footsteps approach. He wrangled the stuffed animal from my arms, threw it on the floor, and beat me. He said, "You will go to school, come home, and go to school again, and that’s it." My brother was asleep in the next room, but if he were awake, my father would have the outrage of a protective four-year-old on his hands.

     My father had a hellish childhood himself. So I often think the Nazis had more to do with my upbringing than my parents. The Nazis thought they vanquished the King years ago. The Queen was a victim of the holocaust, second-hand, that is. My father's parents escaped Auschwitz and my grandmother's arm bore proof—a small numeric tattoo on her arm.

     Each blue-inked number in her arm stood for "Hell, "Sufferer," "Walking Wounded," "Survivor," and "Jew." I never knew her personal account of the War on the Jews. She hid her pain as she did her sickness at the end of her 66 years. I always wondered why she died so young, why she could survive hell but not cancer, even though her life became cancerous when she turned 13, and she was taken from her home.

     In my house, we were all taught to obey our elders, and to never question them. My parents raised us and we suffered health problems, mental stress, and panic late in life. I still battle these ailments, and continue to reprogram myself though my parents are different people today.

     There was a raging South African apartheid in my house and we weren’t even black. We were taught to avoid non-Jews, that they would turn us into non-believers, and that their lifestyles would negatively affect us. Preserve the King! These boundaries were set so we would not fraternize with our neighbors, and were forced to play amongst ourselves. My siblings became my first and best friends.

     Intermarriage, my mother and our teacher preached, is the silent killer of the Semitic race. Separate yourself from kids who weren't of the faith, from entertainment and even clothing which was suggestive of Them. Don’t allow yourself to be tainted by Them. But through it all, what can we show for all my mother's separation of church and state?

     We were not allowed to see my father's parents as much as we wanted because they allowed intermarriage to kill their two children who married non-Jews. They sanctioned what their survival couldn't kill. These martyrs who were my grandparents and my brother, who all died young in some way. And they defied the King in their time and it transformed them. Now their sacrifice is transforming me.

Suzanne Baran is a financial journalist pursuing other creative opportunities in Los Angeles, CA. She writes poetry, personal essays and articles when she's not testing financial technology products.