wool from her lap. She put down her knitting needles, took Ruby by the wrist, and marched her up to her room. âI donât
want
to
be a
Juden,
I heard her call as she stomped her feet up the stairs beside my mother. âDonât
you
treat me like a
Juden!â
My mother came back down a few minutes later. She didnât say anything. She looked at her brother. I could see she was furious. My father put his hands on his knees, about to step between them, his wife and his brother-in-law. Monika was ready to speak. Then I saw something in her eyes that told me this was between brothers and sisters. Not husbands and wives. Not Israelis and Germans and Palestinians. This was about the salt that had pervaded their lives and drained the life from their father, kept the scent of death from the door that June in 1944. This was about cattle cars and blizzards. This was about the heart of my family. Monika was not blood. She would have her turn at him upstairs, alone. Somewhere else, but not here. I watched my mother. I saw her thinking, her fists clasped. I wondered if she could hit someone. Then I saw tears come up in her eyes and she turned and left the room and went back upstairs. Monika got up and walked out onto the porch. My father turned off the TV and told me to get to bed. I closed my bedroom door behind me and sat on the edge of my bed and imagined Ruby across the hall drawing the word
hostage
in the air with a finger.
Sometime around midnight I got up to pee. I stood over the sound of spilling water, still half asleep, and thought about what my uncle was leaving behind for usâa full pool, a wound in the earth shining in the moonlight. I knew this is how weâd have to leave things. The vacation was over. They were leaving tomorrow.
I went downstairs, through the kitchen and into the dark sunroom that opened onto the backyard, and found Günter in the pool. From the doorway I watched him swim, his long arms powering him through the water, back and forth like a man pacing the length of a small room. I walked out onto the damp grass and crouched in the shadows by the rock garden. For an hour and more I waited like that, expecting him to go under. I pulled a piece of crabgrass from the lawn and sucked the stalk while I watched his darkened figure move through the water. Then I felt the first drop of rain to fall in eight weeks, a light sprinkle, and then the sky swirled and it began to pour. The pool jumped alive and bubbled. I stabbed my tongue into the warm rain, savouring the end of our drought, and formed a cup with my hands. Günter stopped in the middle of the pool and called something out to me then. But I didnât answer. What if heâd passed something on to me? I thought. I couldnât move. What if, at the lake, my life had passed into his hands when he pulled me from the water? I heard him call out my name again in a way Iâd never heard my name spoken before, a weak fearing voice that carried the secrets Iâd never know. I waited like that and listened, the rain on my skin and face beading as the voice called for me again and again through the dark, and finally I raised my cupped hands to my lips and drank.
III
Willy tapped a cane over the cement floor, his eyes rolling in their sockets like heavy wet stones. A roar of applause groaned down through the walls from the open cup of stadium above his head. The torch was being carried through the main gate, he imagined. Behind his glistening stone eyes he imagined a white cloud of doves rising to the sky. As he considered this, the larger of two boys leaning up against the groaning wall kicked the cane out from under the hobbling man and laughed when he fell. âJews and cripples not allowed,â the boy yelled. He gently nudged the man with his boot.
âVerstehst Du?â
Golem
Next summer as we drive down through the foothills of Bavaria, receding blue mountain to left and right, my mother tells us about the
want
to
be a
Juden,
I heard her call as she stomped her feet up the stairs beside my mother. âDonât
you
treat me like a
Juden!â
My mother came back down a few minutes later. She didnât say anything. She looked at her brother. I could see she was furious. My father put his hands on his knees, about to step between them, his wife and his brother-in-law. Monika was ready to speak. Then I saw something in her eyes that told me this was between brothers and sisters. Not husbands and wives. Not Israelis and Germans and Palestinians. This was about the salt that had pervaded their lives and drained the life from their father, kept the scent of death from the door that June in 1944. This was about cattle cars and blizzards. This was about the heart of my family. Monika was not blood. She would have her turn at him upstairs, alone. Somewhere else, but not here. I watched my mother. I saw her thinking, her fists clasped. I wondered if she could hit someone. Then I saw tears come up in her eyes and she turned and left the room and went back upstairs. Monika got up and walked out onto the porch. My father turned off the TV and told me to get to bed. I closed my bedroom door behind me and sat on the edge of my bed and imagined Ruby across the hall drawing the word
hostage
in the air with a finger.
Sometime around midnight I got up to pee. I stood over the sound of spilling water, still half asleep, and thought about what my uncle was leaving behind for usâa full pool, a wound in the earth shining in the moonlight. I knew this is how weâd have to leave things. The vacation was over. They were leaving tomorrow.
I went downstairs, through the kitchen and into the dark sunroom that opened onto the backyard, and found Günter in the pool. From the doorway I watched him swim, his long arms powering him through the water, back and forth like a man pacing the length of a small room. I walked out onto the damp grass and crouched in the shadows by the rock garden. For an hour and more I waited like that, expecting him to go under. I pulled a piece of crabgrass from the lawn and sucked the stalk while I watched his darkened figure move through the water. Then I felt the first drop of rain to fall in eight weeks, a light sprinkle, and then the sky swirled and it began to pour. The pool jumped alive and bubbled. I stabbed my tongue into the warm rain, savouring the end of our drought, and formed a cup with my hands. Günter stopped in the middle of the pool and called something out to me then. But I didnât answer. What if heâd passed something on to me? I thought. I couldnât move. What if, at the lake, my life had passed into his hands when he pulled me from the water? I heard him call out my name again in a way Iâd never heard my name spoken before, a weak fearing voice that carried the secrets Iâd never know. I waited like that and listened, the rain on my skin and face beading as the voice called for me again and again through the dark, and finally I raised my cupped hands to my lips and drank.
III
Willy tapped a cane over the cement floor, his eyes rolling in their sockets like heavy wet stones. A roar of applause groaned down through the walls from the open cup of stadium above his head. The torch was being carried through the main gate, he imagined. Behind his glistening stone eyes he imagined a white cloud of doves rising to the sky. As he considered this, the larger of two boys leaning up against the groaning wall kicked the cane out from under the hobbling man and laughed when he fell. âJews and cripples not allowed,â the boy yelled. He gently nudged the man with his boot.
âVerstehst Du?â
Golem
Next summer as we drive down through the foothills of Bavaria, receding blue mountain to left and right, my mother tells us about the
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