Margot: A Novel by [email protected]

America, and also to live
07 openly without fear. I have considered before what might hap
08 pen if I were to walk down Ludlow in the summer, wearing a
09 sleeveless dress without my sweater, my Jewishness right
10 there, so obvious, out in the open, for everyone to see. I imag
11 ine the terrible way people might look at me, as if they knew
12 everything.
13 “I have two names,” I realize Bryda is saying now, and I
14 swallow hard, trying to erase the bitter taste in my mouth that
15 comes with fear. “I tell them to you, you write them down.”
16 “Okay,” I say, pulling the yellow legal pad that I took from
17 the supply closet at work out of my satchel.
18 “I do not write anymore,” she says. She holds out her right
19 hand, which I did not notice before is missing the forefinger.
20 I turn away at the sight, not wanting to imagine how she
21 received that horror. “It not what you think,” she says.
22 “Okay,” I say again, because, of course, I am thinking it
23 was the Nazis’ doing, that it happened in the camp. But I
24 don’t ask her what really happened—I don’t want to know,
25 and besides, I am suddenly having trouble speaking. Bile rises
26 in my throat. The air is too warm; it’s suffocating, drowning
27 me under the weight of my second skin, and the sweater. She
28S tells me the names, and I scribble them quickly down.
29N When I look up, she is staring directly at me, squinting
until she reminds me of a hawk, perched at the edge of a cliff, 01
searching for prey. “What?” I finally say to her, and somehow 02
I think I am able to disguise the fear in my voice as annoy 03
ance. 04
“You know what worse than Gestapo?” She pauses, and 05
clucks her tongue. “Snake,” she finally says. 06
07
08
I run down the steps in Bryda’s building, to the street. I run so 09
fast that it is hard to breathe. I run past the bus stop I came 10
from, to the next street over. And it is only here that I slow my 11
pace and attempt to take slow deep breaths. Even now, so many 12
years later, the memory of the camps, of staying hidden, it is a 13
muscle memory, one that neither time nor distance can com 14
pletely erase, and it takes so little for me to slide back into my 15
fear. Over and over again. Bryda, her voice, the smells of her 16
terrible apartment, our shared horror, they are everything about 17
my past that I am running from, all the things I try to avoid in 18
my American life. And now I understand that these terrible 19
things, they are only a bus ride away from the safety of the Jew 20
ish law firm, which in so many ways reminds me of the com 21
forts of my childhood, before the war. This is perhaps the most 22
terrifying thought of all. 23
It takes me a few moments to catch my breath on the 24
street, and when I do, I look around. Here, on this street, the 25
buildings look even worse. One has been ravaged by fire, and 26
the bricks are black and ashy, the glass of the windows blown 27
away. I hear a child crying from somewhere in the near dis S28
tance, and my head begins to ache as I remember a similar N29
01 sound from the camp. It is a particular wail of pain or hunger
02 or desperation. I confuse them now.
03 I hear footsteps behind me. Heavy. The gait of boots. The
04 Green Police or the NSB. I do not turn to face them, but I run
05 again, faster, farther, up the street to where I see a city bus
06 pulling into a different stop. I have no idea where the bus is
07 going, if it will take me anywhere near to the right place, but
08 I do not even care. I run up the steps, hand my coin to the
09 driver, and fling my body into a seat.
10 Even when I am sitting there, against the hard seat, my
11 eyes peering out the dirty window as the bus drives away and
12 the broken buildings fall from my reach, I do not feel even the
13 smallest sense of safety. I have no idea where the bus is
14 headed.
15 This is no escape plan, I think.