Don’t let what we’ve seen hurt you. Don’t make it worse. Don’t ask us
what happened. Don’t vanish into thin air.
Klara rocks me and rocks me. “is is my little one!” she calls to a
passing stranger. From this moment on she becomes my mother. She
has already seen in our faces that the position is empty and must be
filled.
It has been at least a year and a half since we have seen her. She is
on her way to the radio station to give a concert. We are desperate not
to have her out of sight, out of touch. “Stay, stay,” we beg. But she is
already late. “If I don’t play, we don’t eat,” she says. “Hurry, follow me
inside.” Maybe it is a blessing that there is no time to talk now. We
wouldn’t know how to begin. ough it must shock Klara to see us so
physically ravaged, maybe that is a blessing too. ere is something
concrete Klara can do to express her love and relief, to point us in the
direction of healing. It will take more than rest. Perhaps we will never
recover. But there is something she can do right now. She brings us
inside and strips off our dirty clothes. She helps us stretch out on the
white sheets in the bed where our parents used to sleep. She rubs
calamine lotion into the rash that covers our bodies. e rash that
makes us itch and itch, that passes instantly from our bodies to hers so
she can barely play her concert for the burning all over her skin. Our
reunion is physical.
* * *Magda and I spend at least a week in bed, naked, bodies doused in
calamine. Klara doesn’t ask us questions. She doesn’t ask us where our
mother and father are. She talks so that we don’t have to. She talks so
that she doesn’t have to hear. Everything she tells us is phrased like a
miracle. And it is miraculous. Here we are together. We are the lucky
ones. ere are few reunions like ours. Our aunt and uncle—our
mother’s siblings—were thrown off a bridge and drowned in the