What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank: Stories by Nathan Englander Page A

came for the space. They came for the vistas and the fresh air, and because the tomatoes—growing backward, and also without ever seeing sun—still tasted better than anything they’d had in their fancy Orna & Ella salads back on Sheinkin Street.
     
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    Though Aheret was a pious girl who wore a skirt to the floor and a shirt that reached to her wrists, she had a worldly allure that belied the choices she’d made. She’d studied at the girls’ school on the hill, and done her national service helping the elderly of their town. When the eldest of her younger sisters went off to board in Jerusalem, and when her father was sent by the settler movement to travel across the United States for long stretches to do outreach (his calling) and send home money (a necessity), she’d stayed in the house to help her mother with the littlest of her eight siblings and run their home, a strange maze of additions and tacked-on rooms, that, on the holidays, when all were together, still burst at the seams. These humble choices found Aheret unmarried at twenty-seven, which, in their community, left her seen as an old maid.
    When Aheret stepped into the house with a laundry basketfull of clean clothes still stiff from the lines, she saw someone darting around in the back rooms of the house. She at first assumed they were being robbed, until her eyes adjusted to the inside and she made out a silhouette that fit every older woman of their town. “ Gveret !” she called, not wholly impolitely. “Missus, can I help you? What are you doing in our house?” At that, the woman’s ears perked up, and all her nervous energy flooded out toward Aheret, with the woman, riding it like a wave, right behind.
    “Your mother,” the woman called. “Where’s your mother?” she said.
    “Hanging what’s wet,” Aheret said, and pointed through the wall to the lines.
    “Come, come,” the woman said, grabbing Aheret’s arm, sometimes leading, sometimes following, as they both rushed around the house.
    With a clothespin in her mouth and a wet sock in her hand, Yehudit looked at the pair hurrying toward her and tilted her head to the side.
    “Is this the one I bought?” Rena yelled, pulling Aheret. “Is this the one that’s mine?”
    And Aheret, who had never been told the story of her near death, was more surprised by her mother’s answer than by the question of the lady who pulled her. For Yehudit dropped the sock into the basket and pulled the clothespin from her lips and said, “Yes, yes. This is the one that’s yours.”
     
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    Despite the fact that the hilltops were forever facing, the difference between the two families’ lives and the two families’ fates had put far more distance than the geography in between. To anyone who still knew she was up there, Rena was simplythe old woman in the olive grove, while Yehudit, with her brood, took advantage of the settlement’s great blooming and lived a vibrant life.
    Yehudit had not forgotten her sister founder, who, despite her great sacrifice, had been dealt a harsh life. She’d gone over every few months to check on Rena, and Yehudit always acted surprised to discover that she carried with her a cake or a cooked chicken in the bag in her hand. As loyal as she was to Rena, she could tell that all her troubles had turned the woman hard. And though Yehudit took her children to visit other lonely souls, it had been a very long time since she’d taken any of them up to visit Rena in the grove. Because of this, Rena hadn’t set eyes on Yehudit’s daughter in years, and the same went for Aheret in relation to the woman she knew from her mother as Mrs. Barak.
    Rena had let go of Aheret’s arm to pull a little Nokia phone from the pocket of her skirt. It was a phone no different from the other million phones the supermarkets had given away when the cell towers went up. She held this out to Yehudit and her daughter, as if looking at it alone would let them read the calls