and me the dances that go along with the sound—jitterbug, boogie-
woogie. e men pair up like ballroom dancers. Even the way they
hold their arms is new to me—it’s ballroom style but loose, pliable. It’s
informal but not sloppy. How do they keep themselves so taut with
energy and yet so Ęexible? So ready? eir bodies live out whatever
the music sets in motion. I want to dance like that. I want to let my
muscles remember.
* * *Magda goes to take a bath one morning and returns to the room
shaking. Her hair is wet, her clothes half off. She rocks on the bed with
her eyes closed. I’ve been sleeping on the bed while she bathed—I’m
too big for the crib now—and I don’t know whether or not she knows
I am awake.
It’s been more than a month since liberation. Magda and I have
spent almost every hour of the last forty days together in this room.
We have regained the use of our bodies, we have regained the ability
to talk and to write and even to try to dance. We can talk about Klara,
about our hope that somewhere she is alive and trying to ĕnd us. But
we can’t talk about what we have endured.
Maybe in our silence we are trying to create a sphere that is free
from our trauma. Wels is a limbo life, but presumably a new life
beckons. Maybe we are trying to give each other and ourselves a blank
room in which to build the future. We don’t want to sully the room
with images of violence and loss. We want to be able to see something
besides death. And so we tacitly agree not to talk about anything that
will rupture the bubble of survival.
Now my sister is trembling and hurting. If I tell her I am awake, if I
ask her what is wrong, if I become witness to her breakdown, she
won’t have to be all alone with whatever is making her shake. But if I
pretend I am asleep, I can preserve for her a mirror that doesn’t reĘect