In her professional life as a sociologist, Gail Benick wrote analytical accounts about migrants and diasporic people based on statistical and historical data. However, several years ago a story came to her that she had to tell differently.
Initially it surfaced as images and feelings. Then it started to evolve, fuelled by her deeply felt question, “How do people who have experienced horrific trauma clear the decks and have the wherewithal to get up the next morning and start over in a new country that they know nothing about?”
Benick’s imagination and memories began to weave a tale. The story drew on aspects of her family history but was fictional, not a memoir.
Set in the 1950s and early 1960s in St. Louis, Mo., the narrative that ultimately developed into The Girl Who Was Born That Way focused on the Berk family. Mama, Papa and the two eldest daughters were survivors of the Lodz Ghetto. The two younger daughters were born in the United States.
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Benick says she chose to divide the four sisters into two groups because she thought this structure advanced the story. The two older girls were people caught in transition, while the younger ones were full-fledged Americans. Nevertheless, all the sisters struggle with difference.
Benick asserts the Berks are nothing like her own family. Her relatives came to the United States well before World War II. They were not Holocaust survivors. She has one brother but no sisters. She grew up within a large, close-knit, extended family. She concedes that some of her cousins were almost like sisters to her. One cousin had Turner’s syndrome, a chromosomal disorder that stunts growth and development, among other things. She also developed anorexia as a teenager.
Furthermore, Benick says, after her relatives read the pre-publication draft of her novella, they “vehemently told me that’s not what it was like. That’s your version. The Berks are not the Benicks.”
She replied, “They’re not meant to be.”
Benick says her writing journey began with the emergence of characters. She describes the Berk family as closed off, protective and inhibited by shame. Mama and Papa are not sure if they will ever belong in this new culture, “especially because they have a daughter who does not fit.” Mama, Papa and the two older girls refuse to talk about Lodz and how they miraculously managed to stay alive.
In response to the pain and uncertainty that permeates their home, each of the four girls constructs an identity that will transport her to more solid ground.
Hetty, the eldest seeks to be part of the Jewish establishment. She cares a great deal about fashion and looking good. Her fiancé, Lenny, is an orthodontist in training and is from a wealthy family.
Tilya, the second daughter is just the opposite. “She is a rebel and an intellectual. Her boyfriend, Robbie, is a crazy guy whose mother is a geneticist,” Benick says,
“The Terry Sue character is what I remember of my cousin. It’s my version and my memory of her.”
Benick confesses that she identifies with Linda Sue, the youngest child. “She sprang to life carrying a camera and taking photos to try to save Terry Sue’s life. She is curious, spunky and constantly seeking evidence. She’s sensitive enough about what is happening to Terry Sue and to the family’s emotional baggage to be able to tell the story.”
Once the characters began to form, the story began to take shape, Benick says. “The actual writing of the novella took about a year, but switching from an academic approach to writing to writing fiction took about seven or eight years.”
Somewhere in the early 2000s, Benick taught a digital storytelling course at the University of Toronto, Mississauga campus. She worked with a technical instructor who taught the students how to turn their stories into movies.
“Honestly, the things these students, many of whom were immigrants, produced were overwhelming,” Benick says. Realizing how powerful narrative can be motivated her to attempt fiction.
“I allowed myself to engage with the material in an emotional way. I took writing courses, formed a writers group and had a community of writers to work with.
“There must have been some readiness there for me to say, ‘You’re going to try something a little different. You’re going to get out of your comfort zone. You’re going to look at something that needs looking at.’
“And whenever I sat down to write, I seemed to write about grief. And then it came to me. Gail, of course you are writing about grief – you are grieving.”
Benick describes the eating disorder her cousin developed as very much part of her family’s experience. They watched her starve herself as they went from hospital to hospital and doctor to doctor. “There was no explanation for it. Anorexia in the late 1950s and early 1960s was just beginning to be understood.”
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The situation with Turner’s syndrome was similar. Benick thinks her cousin’s case was one of the earliest identified. “Doctors were interested in the condition but not demonstrating interest in the person in front of them. Her mom and dad were so overwhelmed they could not really hear what the medical people were saying to them. The rest of the family was never clear about what was going on.
“I wanted to give the character Terry Sue a voice because one thing I felt very strongly was that when she [Benick’s cousin]was alive she didn’t have a voice.
“That’s partly why I wrote the book”, Benick says. “The lack of communication on the part of the medical community, our not understanding. No way to rescue her. It was sorrowful.”
Ultimately, in the 117 pages of The Girl Who Was Born That Way, Benick has compactly shown the complexities of migrating to a foreign land with few belongings and resources and many differences. She tells the story honestly, sensitively and with lots of heart.