make her happy. I am thinking of Aunt Maja and her wedding-night advice. But Aunt Maja isn’t here to give me advice anymore; nobody is.
I reach down toward the button of Josef’s pants, but before I can unfasten it, he grabs my hand.
“Don’t,” he says. “There’s something else.” Josef’s voice is low and husky.
“That’s enough maladies.”
“Not something that’s wrong. Something else about me. I haven’t been able to think of a way to—”
“Please stop talking,” I instruct him. And he does. He sits on the edge of the bed and puts his hands on my waist while I finish unbuttoning the rest of the buttons on my new purple dress and let it slip to the floor. I take his hands, and I put them on my flattened chest. From his sharp intake of breath, I can tell I am not too flat for him.
He puts his lips on my stomach, and I run my hands through his hair. I kiss the top of his head, and we remember that we are alive.
HERE’S A PIECE OF MY MEMORY, OF MY DEAD-GHOST-MEMORY, come floating back to me. It seems like I should have a happier one, like doing something happy should also trigger happy memories. But that’s not how this puzzle works, it seems. The pieces don’t come in order. Each piece floats around the waste of my mind until it attaches itself to something random, obscure.
They didn’t send my father to the left when we got to Birkenau. My father was already dead. My father was dead because, when he saw the German soldiers kick the old pharmacist, he went to help him, and so they shot him. First, one soldier viciously jammed his hand against my father’s throat, knocking out his wind, and then they shot him. Casually, like their guns were flyswatters. He fell to the ground. His arm bent ragdoll-like behind him; I remember thinking his shoulder would be dislocated.
He wasn’t the only person to die that day on the soccer field in the rain. The soldiers shot others who disobeyed orders. People who tried to sneak from one line to the other. A woman began screaming that her son was at work, that he had a dispensation; if she’d known she wasn’t going to be allowed back to her house, she would have said goodbye to him. She tried to leave; they shot her.
There was so much death and blood that day, happening all at once. The rest of my family, I lost when we got to Birkenau, and maybe it was easier for me to believe I had lost my father that way, too: to the left, all at once. Remembering that I had lost him a few days before then would mean that I had to have two battering rams of pain instead of just one.
Does it really matter, in the end? He’s just as dead either way.
WHEN I WAKE UP NEXT, JOSEF IS STILL SLEEPING, ON HIS stomach, his hair tousled like beach grass. This is the position he fell asleep in, too, the position both of us did. Side by side on our stomachs, hands curled neatly near our chins, suddenly aware of each other’s personal space and how it would be rude to impose on it. Before sleeping, my last memory is me asking him whether his shoulder hurt, him asking me whether I was too cold, me saying that I wasn’t cold, but I was nearly naked, so I was going to keep my arms where they were, protecting my nakedness. Him laughing.
I meant to close my eyes for just a minute and then go back to Abek. But it’s clear I fell asleep for longer. It’s still dark outside, but the sky is a dark bruise instead of an inky black. Closer to sunrise than midnight. I fumble for the lamp by the side of Josef’s bed and turn it on; it’s just bright enough to see around the room and get my bearings. I’m half-dressed. Earlier, Josef wrapped a blanket around his waist while he searched in the dark for our underthings, passing mine to me before turning away to pull on his own—belated modesty that amused me. He must have gotten up again while I was still sleeping: A chair leans underneath the doorknob, safeguarding against anyone walking in. And when I went to sleep, my dress was in a pool on the floor. Now it’s folded on his nightstand, with my shoes tucked underneath. Easy for