Girl by Alona Frankel

Author:Alona Frankel
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2016-12-10T16:00:00+00:00

The stranger, the tall, thin woman named Hania Seremet, and I reached the train station. It was no longer night.

The car Hania Seremet and I rode in was filled with soldiers. German soldiers. They’d been there quite a while before we boarded.

They were handsome and clean, and smelled of the wool their uniforms were made of, of boot polish and soap. They were amiable and cheerful. They flirted courteously with Hania Seremet and played with me.

They gave me sugar cubes. They said I was as pretty as a doll.

I remember that.

Hania Seremet wrote proudly to my mother about how I stole the heart of the Wehrmacht with my beauty and charm.

My mother repeated that story endlessly; she told it, told it, and told it.

How I hated all those stories.

I always felt guilty and put off by the fact that my mother thought the German soldiers’ compliments were so important.

The train rode on, not for a long time. It wasn’t raining anymore. It grew light, turned into a beautiful day.

We reached the village, a tiny station. We walked along a dirt road, the stranger carrying my bundle of rags, my forged papers, her shiny black bag, and me.

I didn’t cry.

She didn’t hold my hand.

I continued to not cry.

I must have thought that’s the way it is in the world.

We walked along the dirt road, we arrived.

The name of the village was Marcinkowice. The tall, thin Polish woman, Hania Seremet, and I reached her parents’ house in the village where she was born. Or maybe it was her grandparents’ house, I don’t know. What do I remember? What do I really remember? Maybe I only remember a story I was told? Or a story I made up? Or just dreamed?

The smell I remember is real.

You can’t tell anyone a smell.

THE HOUSE IN THE VILLAGE I LIVED IN HAD A STRAGGLY, gray straw roof with a red brick chimney sticking up from it. Fragrant white smoke rose from it. The stranger, Hania Seremet, left me, my forged papers, and my bundle of rags there, in that house, with Grandpa and Grandma Seremet.

Hania Seremet, the stranger, went away quickly.

I was left with those two people, also strangers. Before leaving, Hania Seremet told me to call them Grandpa and Grandma—dziadzio and babcia. They were shorter than other grown-ups I’d known, and they were old and ugly. They gave off a different smell, heavy but not repulsive. Pleasant, even.

The grandfather was bent in two. He had a sparse beard and long yellowish white hair.

He didn’t have much longer to live.

The grandmother usually sat in the door, on the threshold, on an unplaned wooden bench. The splinters of that wooden bench pricked my hands more than once, and even worse, under my nails.

The grandfather coughed, coughed, and coughed, long, deep, echoing coughs that ended with wheezes, grunts, and spitting. He spit dark red blood and lumps. Maybe pieces of his lungs. The lumps were pink.

Sometimes one of the stupid chickens that ran around the entire yard and

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