The Choice

name—lis me out of the crib and holds my hands and coaxes me a
step at a time around the room. e pain in my upper back feels like a
burning coal when I try to move. I concentrate on shiing my weight
from one foot to the other, trying to feel the exact moment when the
weight transfers. My hands reach overhead, holding on to his ĕngers. I
pretend he is my father, my father who wished I’d been a boy and
then loved me anyway. You’ll be the best-dressed girl in town, he told
me over and over again. When I think of my father, the heat pulls out
of my back and glows in my chest. ere is pain and there is love. A
baby knows these two shades of the world, and I am relearning them
too.
Magda is physically better off than I am, and she tries to put our
lives in order. One day when the German family is out of the house,
Magda opens closets until she ĕnds dresses for us to wear. She sends
letters—to Klara, to our mother’s brother in Budapest, to our mother’s
sister in Miskolc, letters that won’t ever be read—to discover who
might still be living, to discover where to build a life when it’s time to
leave Wels. I can’t remember how to write my own name. Much less
an address. A sentence. Are you there?
One day the GI brings paper and pencils. We start with the
alphabet. He writes a capital A. A lowercase a. Capital B. Lowercase b.
He gives me the pencil and nods. Can I make any letters? He wants
me to try. He wants to see how far I’ve regressed, how much I
remember. I can write C and c. D and d. I remember! He encourages
me. He cheers me on. E and e. F and f. But then I falter. I know that G
comes next, but I can’t picture it, can’t think how to form it on the
page.
One day he brings a radio. He plays the happiest music I have ever
heard. It’s buoyant. It propels you. I hear horns. ey insist that you
move. eir shimmer isn’t seduction—it’s deeper than that, it’s
invitation, impossible to refuse. e GI and his friends show Magda