After Auschwitz: A Love Story by Brenda Webster

won’t wake up,” I screamed, my body hot and cold in turn. My heart was thumping like a giant frog. My knees shook so hard I could barely stand and waves of shudders passed from my head to my feet. Luisa was calling
pronto soccorso.
    When the men came with the stretcher, they took one look at her and the empty pill bottles next to her bed, scooped them up without even a word to me, and took her away.
    â€œSomeone stop them,” I cried out. “They’re taking my mama away.”
    My memory is playing tricks on me. The true horror of that scene was that I felt nothing except a mild wish not to be disturbed, a feeling that someone else should take care of this, that I was too young, too completely unready. It was wrong. It ought to be erased. But I remember no other feeling. I don’t think my heart thumped anymore. No, I was preternaturally calm. A sort of blankness fell over me like a cape.
    I moved and spoke but I didn’t feel, not at all. I stood fascinated by her purple eyelids, but felt no curiosity—nothing but a pale cloud-like vacancy where feelings should have been. Isn’t that strange? My brother was away on camping trips for prospective leaders on the Left, and before he came home I stood in front of a mirror and practiced my expressions. Horror: mouth open and distorted, eyes wide. For grief, I remembered how I felt when my dog died. Then my motions had been perfectly natural. I sobbed and tossed my head. I begged to dig his grave myself and carried him to it, wrapped in a blanket. Now I screwed up my face and tried to force tearsfrom my eyes, but they stayed dry. I felt nothing at all.
    I was afraid that my brother would notice—that I would somehow be excommunicated. He would point out my heartlessness. In fact, if my friends had called and invited me to a party, I would have gone. Laughed and joked, eaten until my stomach hurt. But Mario was wrapped up in his own feelings, unless like me he was numb. I never asked him, and we never spoke of it.
    Last night I wandered for hours in different landscapes. One was a ruined city. You could tell it had once been beautiful from the arches still standing, entrances now to nowhere. One arch had signs of fire along the top. The stones were blackened. I stood at the entrance wondering if I should walk through it. There were so many arched entrances I was afraid I’d get lost. Perhaps if I counted. I’d go in the third. I turned around and tried to memorize the arch I was going through but it was just like all the others. I’d have to remember it was the third from where I was standing. I had no pencil or paper the way I do now to write down the things I know I’ll forget. I have pads, I have different color pens—they are scattered everywhere in our apartment. This morning I found one behind the classical statue of an athlete near our bed. Another in our little kitchen alcove next to the salad twirler. But in my dream I had nothing to help me. Nothing and no one. Still, something propelled me. It turned out there was a whole city alive in the ruins—scavengers and homeless men lying in their tattered blankets against the walls, worn boots on their feet or under their heads.
    I remember how Hannah had told me about the importance of boots in the camps. If someone’s boots were stolen they’d probably die. They made every effort to hold them together—with bits of string, or if they had holes they’d stuff them with paper. In our brutal world today, people more than ever need their boots.
    Hannah told me that during the long march through Germany at the end of the war, her boots fell apart and she walked barefoot, her feet infected and full of pus. And no one in the villages threw them bread. She tried hard not to return their hate but couldn’t accustom herself even to the sound of German. It made her sick.
    In my dream I was suddenly afraid someone would rob me. Still, I counted to three and