“How do we know you’re not a Nazi?” Linda says.
“Because my grandmother was killed by the Nazis,” I say. I want to go home.
They all get quiet for a moment. They all have grandmothers who are just like their mothers.
Finally, Louise, who is in my European History class and getting a B without cheating, says, “If the Nazis killed her, how can she be your grandmother when she was dead before you were born? I mean, the war ended in, what, 1945?”
“Because my father had a mother, and that’s how you have a grandmother, no matter what,” I say. I’m feeling better. Newman is a remarkable school. All of these girls will go on to college. Though some are going to take a detour through public school.
“Prove it,” Louise says.
And I tell them, “There’s a bundle of letters in my parents’ bottom desk drawer.” I can read every one. In German. Right up to the very end.
Mrs. Prescott has done the math for the mothers, and this six weeks is going to require As from all four of those girls just to get Ds. She’s not sure any of them is what she calls Newman material. Meryl says that Newman material also has a lot to do with donations to the school, and her father is going to give five thousand dollars, and there’s probably a secret formula that mixes grades with parents’ contributions, so she’s not worried. But she must have some kind of dignity problem, because she’s not willing to come out of tenth grade with an F in Geometry, and that means I’m still going to have four friends at least until June. Meryl says we should have a slumber party at my house.
If people are going to come to my party, I want to have it, and I want to have it just the way they would. My mother won’t have Rena spend the night, and when I think about it, I’m relieved but angry anyway. She also won’t buy me shortie pajamas. So I cut the legs and sleeves off my silk pajamas and make very good hems in them, and there’s not a thing my mother can do. There’s also not a thing the other girls can say because the truth is that my pajamas are really better than theirs. At least I hope they are. My mother lets me have Coke. She doesn’t know that Coke and Oreos are right while Pepsi and Hydrox are wrong. Daddy knows, and he’s not telling. He doesn’t think I should have to squirm through life. But there’s no way to tell that to my mother because she likes to see me squirm. At least that’s the way it looks to me.
When my very cute house is quiet, and we’re all sitting around in my very cute living room, Linda R. looks at my parents’ desk and says, “So, is that their desk?” As if it is a peculiar kind of furniture found only in some obscure foreign country. Which to most of them it might be. I haven’t seen desks in most of their houses. Or bookshelves. I tell her yes. “So is that where you found the letters from the lady that got killed by the Nazis?”
I tell her yes.
Linda R. crawls right over to the desk and opens the bottom drawer. It’s the drawer where we keep all our memorabilia. Very neatly. My baby book, my mother’s baby book. A scrapbook of photos and an envelope of more photos. My mother’s diploma and my father’s honorable discharge from the U.S. Army, which he got four years and two months after he left Germany. And the packet of letters, which always lies nestled in the lower right-hand corner at the front. It’s impossible to miss, and Linda doesn’t miss it. She plucks it without the tenderness a person should afford these pages and pages of aerogramme paper, thin as onionskin. “Be careful with that,” is all I can think to say.
She undoes the ribbon, and they cascade to the floor. I leap to take them before they can fall out of order. I have read them, but I’ve read them like a detective who doesn’t want even fingerprints left behind. Linda pulls back, offended, as if I’ve called her a slob. “Hey, I just want you to read us one. Read it in German.”
Of course, the one on the top of the stack is the last one, the most frantic one. My grandmother has seen the light now that it is too late. She is writing to my father in New York, sorry she didn’t listen to him when he said they had to leave. My father has enlisted in the military to survive. I think you know people on Park Avenue, she says. People on Park Avenue have money. I understand you can still buy a way to America. Please ask your friends for help. I don’t know why I don’t hear from you. I read it in German. I translate without playing around.
“God, she didn’t get it, did she?” Meryl says.
“Did your dad really know a lot of rich people?” Louise asks.
I don’t say anything.
“Well, how come your father didn’t just go over and get her?” Louise says. “I mean, just get on a plane or something? That’s what I’d’ve done.”
I tell her it was 1943. That ought to connote more than the fact that commercial air travel didn’t exist, but it probably doesn’t.
Louise says, “So what happened next?” She is far too excited.
“She fucking died in a concentration camp,” I say. I fold the letter back and put it in its envelope and reassemble the packet of letters so it’s impossible to tell they’ve been touched. I put them back in the drawer. I go to sleep hours before they have their fill of Coke and meanness.
Mrs. Prescott comes to take me out of Geometry class, and Mrs. Walter makes her wait until the end of the period; such is her power. I’m not bothered until she tells me she’s taking me home. This is not something Mrs. Prescott would do; it’s too generous. People who work at Newman are not generous because they would be destroyed by the children. She protects herself, saying nothing in the car, and when we approach my house and I see my grandparents’ car and a police car, she doesn’t do anything except say that someone will get me my homework. I have to walk in alone.
This morning, an hour before Geometry class, my father killed himself in his office.
He found a bag made of plastic in the store, put it tight over his head, and waited to die. The policeman has a manila envelope with some evidence in it that he wants me to look at. Everyone in the room is wide-eyed and dry-eyed, and
I’m supposed to be that way too, but I bawl like a baby, and I can’t look at stupid evidence, and I don’t know who they think I am. I see Rena standing by the wall, and her eyes are wet and red. She loves my father. He always jokes with her, tries to use a Southern accent and says he’s from the south of Germany. I go over and hug her because among Mrs. Prescott and my mother and Rena, she’s the only hugging type I’ve seen today, even though she’s tall and skinny. The policeman wants a sample of my handwriting. My mother tries to sound protective. “She doesn’t need to give it to you,” she says. “We’ve got a million samples all over the house.”
Rena whispers to me that they have checked her handwriting too. Rena has very girlish writing. In fact, she writes like a fifth-grade girl. Which, if I think about it, is probably what she was when she quit school. I tell them I’ll write anything they want if they will tell me what this is all about.
In the manila envelope is one of my father’s mother’s letters. It’s the one I read at my party, but that doesn’t mean anything because it was the one on top. Scotch-taped to it is a note. The note says, Hitler didn’t kill your mother. You killed your mother.
I go over to the bottom drawer of the desk. Everyone follows me. I can’t believe no one has looked. My mother knows about the letters. I pull the drawer open. Slowly, while my mother explains rapid-fire that this is where the letter came from, that it was in a packet, that she should have thought of this before. The packet of letters is gone. Well, the letters are gone, but the ribbon is lying on the bottom of the drawer, swirled around. And under it is a scrap of paper. I recognize it. It’s torn from the pad we keep by the telephone in the kitchen. In the same handwriting as on the note attached to the letter, it says, You’re not so smart.