“There are many things we don’t remember, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t inside us”
I
t’s a Chanukah like she remembers. Tatte lighting the brass menorah. The smell of applesauce and latkes wafting in from the kitchen. The single flame — first night — dancing by the window. Tatte’s slightly hoarse voice singing Maoz Tzur.
For a moment, her heart lurches. Maoz Tzur—Ernst’s intricate harmonies as Felix steadily sings the melody. She misses it. But then she looks around and Mama catches her eye and the glow on her mother’s wrinkled face is as bright as the flame flickering in the menorah.
They finished eating and telling stories and laughing and Emmy, suddenly restless, prowls the room. She picks up a small, framed picture. The three little girls. Becca, as a baby, in Hannah’s arms. Hannah, a year before she met Ernst. And Perla, sitting beside them on a stool.
“Who is that, Mama?” She picks up the picture and examines it. She turns. “Bubbe?”
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