Total Recall

My last private conversation with Claire was when she urged me to apply for an obstetrics fellowship in the States, to make a fresh start. She even saw that I got the right recommendations when I was applying. After that, the only times I saw her were at professional meetings.

I looked briefly at Victoria, sitting on the ground beside me in her jeans, watching me with a frowning intensity that made me want to lash out: I would not have pity.

If you’ve been to see Claire, then you must know who Sofie Radbuka was.

She was cautious, knowing I might bite her, and said hesitantly she thought it was me.

So you’re not the perfect detective. It wasn’t me, it was my mother.

That flustered her, and I took a bitter pleasure in her embarrassment. Always so forthright, making co

My need to talk was too great, though; after a minute I said, It was me. It was my mother. It was me. It was my mother’s name. I wanted her. Not only then, but every day, every night I wanted her, only then most especially. I think I thought I could become her. Or if I took her name she would be with me. I don’t know now what I was thinking.

When I was born, my parents weren’t married. My mother, Sofie, the darling of my grandparents, dancing through life as if it were one brightly lit ballroom; she was a light and airy creature from the day of her birth. They named her Sofie but they called her the Butterfly. Schmetterling in German, which quickly became Lingerl or Ling-Ling. Even Mi

Then the butterfly became a teenager and went dancing off with Vie

She was seventeen when she became pregnant with me. He would have married her, I learned from the family whispers, but she wouldn’t-not a Gypsy from the Matzoinsel. So then everyone in the family thought she should go to a sanatorium, have the child, give it up discreetly. Everyone except my Oma and Opa, who adored her and said to bring the baby to them.

Sofie loved Martin in her way, and he adored her the way everyone in my world did, or at least the way I imagine they did. Don’t tell me otherwise, don’t feed me the words of Cousin Mi

Four years after me came Hugo. And four years after him came the Nazis. And we all moved into the Insel. I suppose you saw it, if you’ve been tracking me, the remains of those cramped apartments on the Leopoldsgasse?

My mother became thin and lost her sparkle. Who could keep it at such a time, anyway? But to me as a child-I thought at first living with her all the time would mean she would pay attention to me. I couldn’t understand why it was so different, why she wouldn’t sing or dance anymore. She stopped being Ling-Ling and became Sofie.

Then she was pregnant again, pregnant, sick when I left for England, too sick to get out of bed. But she decided to marry my father. All those years she loved being Lingerl Herschel, coming to stay with her parents when she wanted her old life on the Re

In my child years on the Re

But they thought his parents were an embarrassment. When they had to give up their ten-room flat on the Re

But don’t you see, it made me treat my other grandmother rudely. If I showed my Bobe, my Gra

I choked down the sobs that started to rise up in me. Victoria handed me a bottle of water without saying anything. If she had touched me I would have hit her, but I took her water and drank it.

So ten years later, when I found myself pregnant, found myself carrying Carl’s child that hot summer, it all grew dark in my head. My mother. My Oma-my Grandmother Herschel. My Bobe-my Grandmother Radbuka. I thought I could make amends to my Bobe. I thought she would forgive me if I used her name. Only I didn’t know her first name. I didn’t know my own gra

I wouldn’t have an abortion. That was Claire’s first suggestion. By 1944, when I was tagging around after Claire trying to learn enough science so that I could be like her, be a doctor, all my family was already dead. Right here in front of us they shaved my Oma’s silver hair. I can see it falling on the floor around her like a waterfall, she was so proud of it, she never cut it. My Bobe. She was already bald under her Orthodox wig. The cousins I shared a bed with, whom I resented because I didn’t have my own canopied bed anymore, they were dead by then. I had been saved, for no reason except the love of my Opa, who found the money to buy a passage to freedom for Hugo and me.

All of them, my mother, too, who sang and danced with me on Sunday afternoons, they were here, here in this ground, burned to the ashes that are blowing in your eyes. Maybe their ashes are gone, as well, maybe strangers took them away, bathing their eyes, washing my mother down the sink.

I couldn’t have an abortion. I couldn’t add one more death to all those dead. But I had no feelings left with which to raise a child. It was only the thought that my mother would come back that kept me going during the war when I lived with Mi

It’s true that by 1944 we were already hearing reports in the immigrant world about what was happening-here in this place and in all the other places like it. But how many were dying, nobody knew, and so each of us kept hoping that our own people would be spared. But in the wave of a hand, they were gone. Max looked for them. He went to Europe, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t bear it, I haven’t been to central Europe since I left in 1939-until now-but he looked, and he said, They are dead.