In My Oma's Hand, and: American Family, and: Sweet Dreams, and: Oma

Abstract

In My Oma's Hand In Gothic script on paper now so brittle, almost sixty years old, it falls apart at the touch. Meine lieben kinder, my beloved children, she writes to the ones who made it to America, and I cannot read any further. I know how it will end. American Family On my mother's dresser is a passport photograph of her cousin, Bertl Katz, at 13 years old. My mother's family tried to get her out of Germany, filled out affidavits, tried to sponsor her, but they didn't make enough money. Cousin Marion had enough money, but didn't want a greenhorn in her home with her two young sons. Bertl escaped to France, my mother told me, and tried to cross the Pyrenees into Spain. [End Page 215] Sweet Dreams Sometimes I dream I'm the one who kills Hitler. It's simple. I walk up to him, shoot him in the face, and watch his head explode into a million glass pieces that clink on the floor like a Saturday morning cartoon character. Except he doesn't get back up. And sometimes I am Yael. I invite him into my tent as he flees from his enemies. He tells me he is thirsty, and I give him milk, and he falls fast asleep. I pick up a tent pin and a hammer. I drive the pin through his temple until it reaches the ground. Other times I'm part of the plot to assassinate him aboard his plane. This time I make sure the bomb explodes. He falls faster and faster, crashing with such force the earth swallows him up, as if he never existed, and I'm sitting on the back porch, the sun is shining, and all my grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles are laughing and telling stories. [End Page 216] OMA On Jaffa Street in Jerusalem, people pack into buses, and I watch mothers try to quiet their babies, tell their older children to behave. At Yad Vashem, I see pictures of people packed into cattle cars and the mothers who tried to quiet their children. I sit on a stone bench outside, try to get some air. I tried to get all my children out, but it was too late. There was nothing more I could do. It's okay, Oma. You did everything you could. It's okay. Don't go, I whisper. But it's too late.