Emigre Who Served Tsar Tea Pours Heart Out for America, Feb. 1, 1942

Near Aleksandriya, which is a day and a night by droshki out of Odessa, Eta Sucheman toiled in her father's scanty vineyard. Eta was tiny and spirited, for even a child of 12 years.

The courtly stranger appeared as a man hunting. His son, with him, was Eta's age.

"But you have the samovar?" There was deference in the questioner. "We should enjoy tea. May we enter and rest under the shade tree?"

Eta did not know, what manner of Russian gentleman would enter the despised parcel of a Jew? But while she lighted the charcoal and steeped the liquor, the man and the boy rested. She served the tea and lemon under the shade tree.

"It is the Tsar's money," her father told her later, when he examined the curious piece. "Yes, his signet is here. None but the Tsar can give it."

"And I did not recognize!" said Eta, eyes alight with the one spark of happiness they knew in Russia. "Else I had been nicer."

Near Oklahoma City, which is 31 years and thousands of kilometers from Csarist Odessa, is a spotless cottage in a stubblefield cut by tortuous ruts. The ruts are The King's highway seven blocks to Northwest Thirty-ninth street and Altadena avenue on U.S. highway 66, the Main Street of America, God's county.

There is no vineyard to beckon. The wayfarer knocks and there is a cheery "Come in!" and while the door is swinging, an unworried afterthought, "and I do not know who are you."

The little woman could stand under the visitor's arm. "Oooh, so fat, so dirty for visitors." All the eye could see in the tidy, cozy room belied the words. "If you my coffee man I chase you 'way."

Eta Sucheman, now 43 years old, has a story to tell in writing for the first time "Bout my America." But how? "I never go to Amerca school. See?" And there is a paper tablet with its studied words: "Dear Son: I resive your letter . . . ." And an envelope, self-addressed, airmail stamped, in fine artistic lettering:

Eta was the old Russian pronunciation, but Emma McClain cast more than a name behind and discovered many times over the worth of the csar's roubles when she left bloody Odessa in December of 1913.

Ellis Island took her beautiful samovar, the tea urn beloved by Cossack and peasant; took her heavy silver service; promised her only, she began to fear, the vermin she saw on her straw-and-concrete detention bed. It was a scared little Russian Jew girl in starchy satins who braved bewildering New York.

Was that all God's country had? "In God's country all would be Christians, I think. Oh, I did not know much." Hers was not a despairing shake of the head, and what was that shining in her eyes? A spark? A light flashing now, and unafraid.

"Please not to talk about Russia. We talk 'bout my America. Some people are not wanting to salute the flag. Some people say, 'I need my son, please not to take him.' Some people they grumble to my Uncle Sam, and I say:

The little parlor suddenly was warm and cool, not full and not empty, not rich and not poor, and the enlarged likeness of Jesus looked down upon both it and the distant lights of Jerusalem.

Only Flora Jean, 12 years old, was at home. But the other children -- Bernie, 25, the gun commander and an expert furrier; Johnny, 24, the jockey who has ridden winners, yes, winners for Bing Crosby; Bill, 21, whose accident prevents him from enlisting at once in California, and Josephine, 19, and newly-married -- were there, too, in a filial spirit not explained by smiling, tinted pictures.

And so was Bernie, senior, the former Catholic who married a Jew, the World War I soldier who married an alien, the boy called "Texas" who loved the girl of the Ukraine. Bernie was working, while the work lasts, in an automobile warehouse.

There once were sights in Odessa, and in Kiev, and in Dnepropetrovak, and in Aleksandriya that the Almighty never meant for a 12-year old's eyes, or did He?

Why the dread pogroms? How were the lingual stocks, the faiths, the casts and the believers in nothing driven to slay each other? Where was the peace and when?

Tiny Eta in a borrowed peasant's dress was spared or unseen in the bitter blood-taking of hatreds. But she wondered . . .

"A terrible place is Odessa. In Odessa they decide to kill every man child of the Jew. From the tall buildings come babies to fall on the street. The bodies they are like a pile of dogs. The sun goes down, and men come with pitchforks and they throw them in the carts to burn . . ."

"In Aleksandriya are beautiful cathedrals. To see them I slip inside and kneal like the rest. I see a baby in the arms of his mother, and his eyes are rubies. They pierce you. I ask my friends, 'Who is that?' and they say, 'Jesus Christ.'

"'Eta,' she says, 'Where have you been? He is illegitimate.' My father punish me cruelly. In our small wine closet, I had to kneel a long time and the salt stings on my knees and I pray, God, if there is a God, Jesus, if there is a Jesus, show me where is the country I can worship You.'

"It is a miracle. My uncle who we have not heard from in long years writes my father and asks if Eta would like to live in New York with him. But first in Aleksandriya there is a pogrom. We bolt ourselves in the market place, and through the cracks I see the beautiful cathedral burn and men with swords carry off the rubies and gold.

That is Eta Sucheman's memoir. At Ellis Island, a porter was the first Negro 15-year-old Emma Schuschsmann ever saw, and he asked, looking at her little bundle, "Just one?" In Russian, the equivalent of "parshawun" means, "Get out!" and Emma's timid legs could not take her fast enough.

Somebody wanted her in America. Emma was a nursemaid at Fort H. G. Wright, in the New York City harbor and the soldier called "Texas" was her ice man. For two weeks he said nice things she could not translate but she could understand. The other maids said soldiers had wives in every fort.

"'Rushky,' I would marry you today if I had the license fee," the soldier said. Catholic and Jew were married the next day. Emma had two dollars. Ah! The csar's 10 rubles were only $5.

"Twenty-six years, and he never pay me back!" This was Emma McClain, wife of a soldier, mother of a soldier, complaining -- but it was Eta Sucheman standing there with the spark in her eyes.

"'My Texas' is discharge from the army. We have two babies. He is called back when war declares. I can stop him, me and my two babies, but I say it is duty.

"We are in Philadelphia, where he has worked in the shipyards. Philadelphia -- it is Quaker and Jew, living together, hating. My allotment does not come, and it is Thanksgiving.

"I ask a Jew store to give me bread for my babies, and they say to ask my Gentile friends. A feast is in the flat below. For to feed my babies the scraps, I would do anything, but it is like Odessa almost and I am afraid.

"One last quarter I have and put in gas meter. I put my babies in bed and I hug them to keep them warm. Bernie is so hungry. He gets up. He puts the water, the crumbs and the sugar in the milk can and he stirs and he says:

("Texas" had shined shoes and done menial jobs for other soldiers for the $18 that arrived by money order the next day.)

It was 1925 and the McClains, with four children, were new in Oklahoma City. Since their conversions from their original faiths by a Salvation Army drum and cymbals revival corps, Mrs. McClain has preached her broken English often on street corners and in the church she attends, Faith Tabernacle.

"'People." I say, 'of one kind we are even if we believe different. People, should feasting we be when people starve? People, I say, 'It is not the flag we worship, but it is the flag we love and grateful should we be.'

To my boy Bernie I write, 'Son, stay put. Your daddy kept the home fires burning while you were little. Son, you keep the home fires burning while your daddy works.'