End of 83 - volume 1

their beds, my grandmother answered for her, “You’re too old to still be playing with dolls. We gave them to Surala.”

Surala was eight years old and had recently arrived from Europe with her parents. Her father was my grandmother’s cousin and her only relative to survive the war. With Louis footing the bill—heartless, money-grubbing murderer that he was, it took years after the war ended to bring them to this country. Surala did not speak English. Truth be told, she did not speak at all. She just clung to her parents, her face hidden. This was okay with me. Fruitlessly, my mother and grandmother attempted to explain all of Surala’s past travails in Austria.

I didn’t buy it. The father I adored, and who adored me, had died. My indulgent older brothers were seldom present to spoil me and make me laugh at their jokes. My mother, a cheerful woman, who often used to perform her household chores as we sang along to the kitchen radio, was now this wraith, a sad ghost of herself.

The frequent gatherings in Bella and Louis’ backyard, when my handsome uncle, in his dapper Tyrolean hat, played the mandolin with his golden hands, while our entire happy family—aunts, uncles, countless cousins—sang along, had grown fewer and more far between.

I was ten years old, coping with death, loss, my grandmother’s crazed sorrow, and witnessing helplessly my beloved aunt and uncles’grief and guilt over the murders of Louis’ ex-wife and daughters. My plate was full. There just was no space left for Surala, her parents, their three sets of huge, dark, haunted eyes and the stark blue numbers tattooed on the pale skin of their left arms.

One day when they visited us, Surala’s father got down on his knees before me and declared, “You’re such a kind little girl. You don’t even know what a wonderful thing you’ve done by giving my Surala your dolls. You’ve given her back a life!”

“I don’t care about Surala’s life,” I nearly yelled at him. “I want my dolls back!” But, of course, such disrespectful behavior would just about have done in my grandmother.

About thirty years later, my mother asked me to drive her and Bella to the unveiling of Surala’s father’s tombstone. After the ceremony, an 19