And the Rat Laughed - By Nava Semel Page 0,22

with her parents, when I don’t even know what their names were, and now they’ve been lost forever.

And I was sorry I’d brought it up, because you can’t replace an old memory with a newer, smarter one, with more gigabytes, the latest fad.

Still, she answered.

She said it was a language that people don’t use any more, like those ancient languages, Sumerian and Accadian for example, that have completely disappeared, and that she’d gotten used to not being able to remember the words. Darkness was what she could feel.

Darkness even had a taste, my grandma said. And when the sunlight disappears for good, maybe I’ll teach you to feel it.

Maybe.

Her fingers stretched and moved, as if she was feeling something. It seemed to me that she was holding something that I couldn’t see but she could.

kept quiet.

To feel darkness.

I’m not so sure I’d like that.

So what did they tell you when they sent you away?

Be a good girl.

I thought she was imagining things, because parents couldn’t possibly say that to their daughter just before they sent her far away. It’s much more likely that they hugged her tight and soaked her with their tears, and maybe that’s why she prefers laughing. To tell you the truth, Miri, I’ve never seen my grandmother cry. Not even at my grandfather’s funeral. She stood tall and looked right into his grave, even when my mother completely went to pieces and really embarrassed me with her screaming and my uncle Nachum had to keep her from falling. To tell you the truth, just between you and me, sometimes I think Mother loved Grandpa more than she loves Grandma, because she never stops grumbling that Grandma doesn’t care about anyone but herself, as if she’s the only person in the world. And I’ve told my mother that maybe it’s because she was in the Holocaust, and Mother said: What did she go through, compared to the others? And it made me feel awful. I don’t like it when people say “compared to”, because when it comes to suffering, some people suffer more and some suffer less, but there’s no way you can measure it. And it reminds me how people tell me I’m a fortunate kid because I’ve got a computer and CDs and a neat stereo set and unlimited internet access, when there are kids in the world who work from morning to night in some stinking sweatshop, just to glue the soles onto my Nikes.

And my dad came to the funeral too, even though he and Mom got divorced when I was six, because he really liked Grandpa. He flew in all the way from Palo Alto, where his hi-tech company is located. His new wife didn’t come, though. And when he saw Grandma standing so close to the grave, he simply pulled her away from there, but gently.

I told her: Don’t you trust me? I’m a big girl, and I can take anything. We’re a different generation. We see it all, we know all about things. We’re the kids with TVs and computers, and nothing’s hidden any more. You can see the worst atrocities live on TV, even on the family channel. Planes crashing and people cutting each others’ heads off or doing drugs, and buses exploding. What could she possibly tell me that I don’t already know?

Sure, she had it rough. I’m not stupid. They stuck her in some strange village, with people she’d never met, and it must have been difficult to learn how to get along with them. I guess the farmer’s wife was a little hard on her, to make sure she got used to the place as soon as possible, so she could play the role of their orphan-relative. And I guess she got used to those farmers, whether she liked it or not, because what choice did she have? And it’s just as well that she was so little, because I think little kids adapt to new places quickly and figure out how to do what people tell them to do, till they wind up feeling it’s the most natural place for them. Take me, for instance. Didn’t I get used to my parents being divorced?

And my dad didn’t even come to my bat-mitzvah...

So she was really lucky not to have to see her father and her mother being killed. It freaks me out just to think what she might have had to go through if she’d stayed with them. Her parents simply sent her away “till