Selected Piece - Essay

by - Ariel Nyvall, New York

When I first heard her story, it didn’t quite settle into my brain. Looking back I try to be fair with myself, because what did I know except for dolls and Disney princesses? Go easy on the little girl with all of seven years of space in her head. It’s occupied. She can’t comprehend what the Holocaust is. She knows, but she doesn't know. Here’s a better phrase: When I first heard her story, the words seeped slowly into my mind before growing heavy to remain a dormant lead block for all of nine more years.

I sat, chin resting in hand, fingers drumming on chin. My eyes darted to the clock, where time seemed to be dragging an anchor close behind each second. AP seminar had been going on for hours. That was a gross exaggeration—it had been fifteen minutes. The white noise in my head spun with algebraic formulas and calculus terms to be recalled in thirty seven more minutes, when my jumping heart would finally slow and my pre-calc exam would be underway. In an instant the white noise was paused, as I was pulled from the reverie of my mathematical fantasies by the voice of my teacher. Her voice I was familiar with, and had gotten quite good at tuning out—but the words—

“Have any of you ever met a Holocaust survivor?” Met? My heart drummed loudly, my hand finding its way into the air, my mind cycling the nickname of the person I hadn’t seen in years: Baba.

Call it a catalyst, or a switch, or anything else that sets gears in motion, because from that moment on I remembered little pieces of her story in everything I did.

I flopped onto my stomach in bed, feet flailing up behind me. It was hot beyond my window, and sweat matted hair to the back of my neck as I scrolled mindlessly through my phone. I should have been doing work, handing myself off to the academic guilt which I could not escape. In the midst of my scholastic crime, a pop up from the photos app promising a heartwarming journey across time sprawled the top of my screen. I clicked it, eager to see what order of my life in snapshots they’d concocted.

There she was again, staring at me with a leathery smile stretching her face riddled with wrinkles. Skin coated the bones I always felt I could see. Baba. I counted the wrinkles.

One.

She was on the line.

Two.

She’d fought with her father about something. About what?

Three.

About bringing her bag. What was in the bag?

Four.

I’ll never know. It broke, the bag broke.

Five.

Someone took her off the line. Who? She was adamant it was an angel.

Six.

I almost wasn’t here.

I could feel the carpet in the photo…feel my feet sinking into the fibers like quicksand, the soft roughness of it all coming back. I could smell the apartment, still can. Like crusted lipstick and rusted air conditioner.

At seven she was an old lady, just like my mom was…well, mom-aged. My mind told me everyone was eternally the degree of young they were in the moment I saw them, and it never thought what they might have been before. I never thought about the days my mom spent with Baba when she was my age, fighting with her like the two were little kids when really only one was. Never did I mull over why that might be. I never thought that once she was young, once she was able to smile without the years of pain taking the truth from it. Maybe she was even able to hold a conversation without leaving us and stepping into the 1940s.

“The Nazis…”

Why did I not for a single moment wonder? Because to me she was the crazy old lady that I could never remember which great of a grandmother she was. Whose harsh kisses left stains of red on my cheek that I always rushed to wipe away before my sensitive skin became angry. And the people in her photographs who weren’t so lucky as she when the Nazis came? Well—those were just people.

I sat at my mirror, forming lyrics to a song with my lips and applying a wash of pink to my pale cheeks. Sunlight glistened through my window, highlighting the gold swimming in my green eyes. Those people, I thought. They weren’t just people…they were family so riddled with time and distance that I didn’t know a single one of their names. Nine years ago they were just people hidden behind the barrier of black and white. If I reached out I was still centuries away from touching them. Now I wonder who they were—what foods did they enjoy? Would they have liked to meet me? Was anyone smart like me, and who was the funniest? Most reckless? Most responsible? As I applied mascara to the curves of my lashes I wondered: did any of them share the green eyes swimming with gold? I stared at my reflection, wondering which I looked most like and wishing I had the pictures.

Eating my grapes, a deep crisp purple, I remembered the little glass grapes that used to sit on her coffee table. And then it hit me like a racehorse: something she said once as I was admiring those glass grapes. She always said she wanted to die. I never understood it, turning over in my mind why someone would ever want to die. Seven year olds are not supposed to know why someone would want to die. “Ohhh…” She would wail, flailing her fragile arms in front of her face. Lanky fingers wobbled, looking like they were attached incorrectly to her hand. She babbled a lot, and part of that babbling was her story, though I do think she had no clue she was telling it. This is because I don’t think she was telling it. I think she was there. A moment of silence not filled with mindless chatter left open the opportunity for the faucet to run. “Everything….they take everything. Take me now, I want to die.” She moaned in a blanketing accent, and as I sat stiffly shoulder to shoulder with my mother I had no clue of what she meant. No clue of what they took, and no clue of why on Earth this would make her want to die. All I knew was that I needed someone to find a stupid question to shove in the faucet and stop the words from dripping.

If the bag hadn’t snapped, I wouldn’t be here.

Now I understand somewhat why she wanted to die.

There I was, back at the desk in room 250: AP Seminar. It was our first day of watching the movie I was dreading. Schindler’s List was playing, and I was reciting the Shabbat blessing—over the wine—as the intro rolled. Part of me was saving breath at the top of my lungs, holding it there to exhale once class was over. This movie was anything but just a movie…it put me there. Put me into a time that someone whose blood I have in me survived. If I wasn’t frozen and if my lungs had released the air then I would have cried.

Now I understand somewhat why she wanted to die.

When she did die, she thought the Nazis were back. One parting whisper for me to be utterly afraid of. It haunts me that she died that way, believing the evil incarnates of the world had come back for her, when she should have been finally at peace. She should have been able to turn off the faucet, to see through eyes that saw in color, to smile without the pain. She should have found peace, and I hope she did. All of my life I could never decide how to act around her. “We’re going to visit Baba,” My mom would announce, my heart leaping to my throat simultaneously as my stomach dropped to the floor. Roll the dice and see how alert she would be this time, how uncomfortable this visit would be. I enjoyed the car rides, though. I enjoyed the car rides.

It’s taken me almost a decade to grasp even the edge of understanding my great grandmother. Baba. Regina. She seemed so foreign for longer than I care to remember, the divide of time and knowledge keeping her as someone I was afraid of. Tons of bricks she shouldn’t have been carrying weighed on her each day and made me write her off as crazy. The story of her tragic life hovers over me everywhere now, pieces of the puzzle missing that I will never find. She and I were decades, colors, worlds away, but still—I don’t remember much as clearly from being seven, eight, or nine as I do sitting cross legged in her apartment. The swirls on the ceiling, the glass grapes on the table, the colorless, nameless faces on her dresser. I’d walk by, pausing to look at them for a moment, and then move on with my day. Now I think I could stare at them for hours.

I will never completely understand her. I will never hear her voice saying something I can fathom, because I will never hear it with my grateful ears.

I will never completely understand her—but I’m starting too. Because her story is everywhere I go; in everything I do.