The Choice

Latynina’s shoulder brushes Keleti’s as they stand side by side at the
awards ceremony. Keleti grimaces from the pedestal. “Mom, why are
you crying?” Marianne asks me. “I’m not,” I say.
Deny. Deny. Deny. Who am I protecting? My daughter? Or myself?
Marianne grows ever more curious, and is a voracious reader.
When she has read every book in the children’s section of the El Paso
Public Library, she begins scrambling around the bookcases in our
house, reading my philosophy and literature, Béla’s history. In 1957,
when she is ten, she sits Béla and me down on the beige couch in the
den. She stands before us like a little teacher. She opens a book that
she tells us she found hidden behind the other books on one of our
shelves. She points to a picture of naked, skeletal corpses piled up in a
heap. “What is this?” she asks. I am sweating, the room spins. I could
have predicted this moment would come, but it is as surprising to me,
as arresting and terrifying, as if I had walked into the house to discover
that the live alligator pit from San Jacinto Plaza had been installed in
our living room. To face the truth, to face my daughter facing the
truth, is to face a beast. I run from the room. I vomit in the bathroom
sink. I hear Béla telling our daughter about Hitler, about Auschwitz. I
hear him say the dreaded words: Your mother was there. I could crack
the mirror. No! No! No! I want to scream. I wasn’t there! What I mean
is, is isn’t yours to carry! “Your mother is very strong,” I hear Béla
tell Marianne. “But you must understand that you are a survivor’s
daughter, you must always, always protect her.” is could have been
an opportunity. To soothe Marianne. To unburden her from the need
to worry about or pity me. To tell her how much her grandparents
would have loved her. To tell her, It’s all okay, we are safe now. But I
can’t leave the bathroom. I don’t trust myself. If I say a word about the
past, I will stoke the rage and the loss, I will fall into the dark, I will
take her there with me.