The Choice

him to come with me, but I shake my head. is last piece of the
journey I must travel alone.
I leave Béla at the entrance gate and I am back in the past. Music
plays through the loudspeakers, festive sounds that contradict the
bleak surroundings. You see, my father says, it can’t be a terrible place
We’ll only work a little, till the war’s over. It is temporary. We can
survive this. He joins his line and waves to me. Do I wave back to him?
O memory, tell me that I waved to my father before he died.
My mother links her arm in mine. We walk side by side. “Button
your coat,” she says. “Stand tall.” I am back inside the image that has
occupied my inward gaze for most of my life: three hungry women in
wool coats, arms linked, in a barren yard. My mother. My sister. Me.
I am wearing the coat that I put on that April dawn, I am slim and
Ęat-chested, my hair tucked back under a scarf. My mother scolds me
again to stand tall. “You’re a woman, not a child,” she says. ere is a
purpose to her nagging. She wants me to look every day of my sixteen
years and more. My survival depends on it.
And yet, I won’t for the life of me let go of my mother’s hand. e
guards point and shove. We inch forward in our line. I see Mengele’s
heavy eyes ahead, the gapped teeth when he grins. He is conducting.
He is an eager host. “Is anyone sick?” he asks, solicitous. “Over forty?
Under fourteen? Go left, go left.”
is is our last chance. To share words, to share silence. To
embrace. is time I know it is the end. And still I come up short. I
just want my mother to look at me. To reassure me. To look at me and
never look away. What is this need I hand to her again and again, this
impossible thing I want?
It’s our turn now. Dr. Mengele lis his ĕnger. “Is she your mother
or your sister?” he asks.
I cling to my mother’s hand, Magda hugs her other side. Although
none of us knows the meaning of being sent le, of being sent right,