The Choice

“If you’re over fourteen and under forty, stay in this line,” another
officer says. “Over forty, move le.” A long line of the elderly and
children and mothers holding babies branches off to the le. My
mother has gray hair, all gray, early gray, but her face is as smooth and
unlined as mine. Magda and I squeeze our mother between us.
It’s our turn now. Dr. Mengele conducts. He points my mother to
the le. I start to follow her. He grabs my shoulder. “You’re going to
see your mother very soon,” he says. “She’s just going to take a
shower.” He pushes Magda and me to the right.
We don’t know the meaning of le versus right. “Where are we
going now?” we ask each other. “What will happen to us?” We’re
marched to a different part of the sparse campus. Only women
surround us, most young. Some look bright, almost giddy, glad to be
breathing fresh air and enjoying the sun on their skin aer the
relentless stench and claustrophobic dark of the train. Others chew
their lips. Fear circulates among us, but curiosity too.
We’re stopped in front of more low buildings. Women in striped
dresses stand around us. We soon learn that they are the inmates
charged with governing the others, but we don’t know yet that we’re
prisoners here. I’ve unbuttoned my coat in the steady sun and one of
the girls in a striped dress eyes my blue silk. She walks toward me,
cocking her head.
“Well, look at you,” she says in Polish. She kicks dust on my low-
heeled shoes. Before I realize what’s happening, she reaches for the
tiny coral earrings set in gold that, in keeping with Hungarian custom,
have been in my ears since birth. She yanks and I feel a sharp sting.
She pockets the earrings.
In spite of the physical hurt, I feel desperate for her to like me. As
ever, I want to belong. Her humiliating sneer hurts more than my
ripped earlobes. “Why did you do that?” I say. “I would have given
you the earrings.”