Your Sad Eyes and Unforgettable Mouth by Edeet Ravel Page A

innocence. It was nearly unbearable, that innocence, that purity. The story that went with the sweater was as unbearable: when my mother returned home after the war, she found her old apartment empty, not a curtain left, not even a broom, and as she sat on the steps and wept, the man who lived next door showed up with a parcel, left for her by her mother. Inside was the sweater. More likely that he stole it and repented, my mother added with a snort. And who knew what else the neighbours had in their cupboards! Candlesticks, silverware, lace tablecloths that had taken months to sew, hundreds of books—expensive, leather-bound volumes—and, worst of all, her father’s entire collection of photographs. The sweater looked bereft even without this Aladdin’s story of lost fortune, and I often paid it a visit in the dresser drawer. I’d take it out for an airing, lay it on my mother’s white chenille bedspread, press my cheek against the cashmere, then carefully refold it.
    Signalling to Rosie not to make a sound, I led the way to my mother’s bedroom and shut the door behind us. Luckily Mère Levitsky was busy in the kitchen and didn’t see us creeping to her room; it would have ruined everything, had she swept down on us with her account of our solitary family heirloom.
    I lifted the sweater from the drawer, held it against my torso, and told Rosie the story of the kind-hearted, or repentant, neighbour.
    “They weren’t taken away together?” Rosie asked. “Your mother and her mother?”
    I shrugged. “I don’t know. My mother was at a friend’s house or something…”
    “It’s fabulous,” Rosie said.
    “Here, try it on. It’s too small for me, but it would fit you.”
    “Oh, no! I don’t think your mother would want that. Anyhow, I really have to go. I have to help Mummy and Daddy … Pretend I died!” And before I had a chance to ask her what she meant, she fell down to the floor and lay there limp and motionless in the nook formed by the two beds.
    I bent down and whimpered, “Rosie, Rosie, my only friend, how could you leave me like this?”
    She lifted a swan-ballerina’s arm.
    “She’s alive!” I cried. “Call the doctor!”
    “There are no doctors in this place,” she rasped. Then she laughed and stood up. “You understand things,” she said.
    “Not really. But I like you.”
    “I’m sorry I have to go. Will you come over tomorrow?”
    “When’s the earliest I can come?”
    “I usually sleep in until ten or eleven. But don’t worry—even if I’m asleep, Mummy and Daddy are always up early. They’ll be happy to see you.”
    “I’ll walk you to the bus,” I said. “I could ride back with you, to keep you company.”
    “And then I’ll have to come back with you! We could do that all day. Really, I don’t mind. I like buses.”
    “Okay, I’ll just wait with you.”
    We walked to the bus stop and waited together in silence. There was nothing more to say. We both knew that Rosie’s benevolence was an equal match to my desire, and that this would be the basis of our friendship. I would give her my need and in return she would give me as much as she could of herself. And if she was enlisting me for reasons of her own, reasons that had to do with her parents, that was fine with me.
    The bus arrived and took her away from me. I walked home slowly. Alone in my room, tucked in bed, I let the day’s pleasures billow like a sail in warm wind. I had a friend. This was what it was like to have a friend, a friend for life. Rosie’s monastic house, theabandoned school, Rosie on my flowered bedspread: with these things in my life, nothing but their disappearance could ever make me unhappy again.
    Rosie kept her promise. She drew me into her life, introduced me to everyone she knew. “This is Maya, my new friend. She wants to go to Eden next year, so she’s going to learn everything in one summer. She’s really brainy.”
    “I’m not—I practically flunked out,” I said, but no