After the Train by Gloria Whelan

Author:Gloria Whelan
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780061975776
Publisher: HarperCollins

NINE

I WALK INTO OUR HOUSE, but I don’t. The boy who walks in isn’t me. It wouldn’t surprise me to find that the house and everything in it has vanished. The boy who isn’t me looks around at all the familiar things, but they look as if they have come from some story that isn’t real, right out of a book or a movie. In spite of what Father says about not knowing who my mother is or where she might be, I wonder if I shouldn’t be there with her instead of here.

Father says, “Peter, please go upstairs and wash up for supper. I’ll call when it’s time to come down.” The words come out sounding like Father is announcing the end of the world.

Mother has a puzzled expression and, underneath it, fear. “What is it, Bernhard? Why are you speaking in that tone of voice? Has something happened?”

Father shoots me a sharp look that sends me clambering up the stairway. I don’t belong in my room, for the room belongs to the boy I was. My books, records, magazines, even my clothes have nothing to do with me. In all the familiar, I am a stranger. How can it be that they don’t know where my real mother is? What does it mean for mothers to get lost? What if Mother and Father don’t want to find my mother for fear she will take me away? What I can’t decide is whether I want to find my real mother. What if I don’t want to be her son? What if I have to move away from school and all my friends and from St. Mary’s?

It doesn’t seen fair to have to give up something just to have what was mine. Why should I have to choose between two lives, especially between a life that I know and a life I know nothing about? I want to stay right where I am, where everything is familiar. Yet the other life is something that belongs to me as well, something I have coming, something I must have. I know my mother and father love me, but what about the woman who is my leibliche Mutter, my birth mother—my wirkliche Mutter, my real mother? If she’s alive, wouldn’t she want her son with her? What if she needs me to take care of her? Maybe I can be with Mother and Father half the year and with her the other half—but then with two lives, I would be two boys. Wouldn’t that be confusing? And if I turned out to be Jewish, what would that second life be like? And worst of all, Father has said he didn’t know who my mother was. How is that possible? Where have I come from?

On my desk are my notes from Herr Schmidt’s class. I remember how bored I was in that class and how I resented hearing about the fate of the Jews. That might have been my fate. I hear Mother, her voice always so low and calm, give a shrill cry.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.