The History of History - By Ida Hattemer-Higgins Page 0,147

crossed another image—a ghost image in her mind. In that moment, a gentle minor chord sounded. Two negatives were projected onto the same piece of silver nitrate. The two images crossed, matched, glowed, sang.

“I don’t want it,” Margaret began. “I don’t want to see anything.” But her eyes misted over as if to become one with her misted inner eye and her clouded mind. She could hear the hawk-woman’s voice, but fading now—“Then don’t read it, little ninny, you needn’t read anything you don’t want,” she was saying, but her voice was growing fainter and fainter. The woman’s hands were dancing still in Margaret’s mind, losing all but their lacings of emerald veins. Skeletons they were, skeletons made of arterial vessels carrying blood back to the heart.

And so they carried blood back to the heart of Margaret. They reminded her—a memory floated toward her as though a ship doubling in size astonishingly on the far horizon, growing into a nocturnal glacier before her eyes—they reminded her of a letter from her mother. She had read a letter two years ago, when she, Margaret, was enormous, ready to give birth. She had been so staggered by the thing, she had linked it with the undesired child. She had never wanted to see anyone in her family again after that letter, including, even including, the child—her nearest kin. The letter from her mother—Margaret’s head swam. She remembered, as though it had always been burnt on her retina, the letter of August 2002, when she had been told that she had not always been Margaret Taub.

An envelope, postmarked New York City:

Dear Margaret,

I haven’t heard from you in a long time. I know you’re hurt. I’ve done my best. I’ve really done everything. But you have hurt me too, you know. You can’t imagine what it does to me, that you insist on living in that city.

I found the enclosed letter in his things. I’m sorry I only found it now—perhaps it would have been a consolation to you to have it earlier, but after the funeral I couldn’t bear to go through his papers for a long time, and before that, well you know how he was when he came home from the hospital. Actually, I don’t think I ever told you the worst of it.

Please get in touch. It’s horrible for me that you won’t get in touch.

Love,

Mother

Another sheet of paper, folded into a small, tight triangle at the bottom of the envelope, was recognizable by Margaret’s father’s usual habit. Across the triangle, MAGGIE was written in block script.

Hi there, Girl!

Summer’s winding up. How’s camp been treating you? Your mom says you like it there.

Gas prices are sky-high. I happen to be very familiar with the topic of rising gas prices. Your mother took me on a vacation. Two weeks outside the hospital! Back now from 1½ weeks in Vermont. Great trip. Alphonse is reputedly dead (he was an old dog), not there with us in the flesh, but regardless of that arguable supposition, we routinely get Alphi’s point of view on most everything during the trip. He slept a lot less than usual (as we hear from him at the hospital as well). Some say I shouldn’t tell anyone. But we really experience Alphi with us daily everywhere we are, because he’s really there. But then, you are family, and so I’m sure you understand. Alphi doesn’t really care that gas prices are so high just so long as we get up and go someplace “good.” “Good” he defines as where there’s swimming. He likes to play in the shallows.

Anyway, there I go running off at the mouth, forgetting the subject at hand. Unpardonable given the gravity. I want to tell you about my old dad … your Opa. I found the paperwork.… They had him on trial during the war. They let him go free. But here’s what they wrote about him before they did. This is what the Nazis wrote up about him, just so you know.… Even the Nazis knew what he was … and this is just a sample … although my bad translation.

In Riga the SS-Sturmmann Wüstholz ordered the Jews to beat each other to death, at which time it was promised that the survivors would not be shot. The Jews did knock each other down, but not to death. The defendant [my old dad] got in the fray and beat the Jews and also hit Jewish women in the face with a whip. When a