An Afterlife. Frances Bartkowski

soon. Children who should never know what we all went through. Those replies to her prayers were so real they shoved the nightmares away, shut them up.

      She noticed that when she and Fanya got together with a few of the women these days everybody had agreed to tell only new tales.

      “No more old stories,” they needled each other. It was as if they could scare themselves to death now—when it was slipping from memory. More than when they could hardly talk at all. Ruby, too, preferred to discuss the men, the office, the new shoes, coats, dresses they were sharing and accumulating with each passing season. She couldn’t help noticing that the more they got the less they shared.

      Every mitzvah usually brought out the best. For her wedding to Ilya, she’d watched and listened to stories of what they still called “organizing,” like in the Lager when you organized to get an extra bowl of soup, or someone would find a German willing to trade two candles for shabbos, and nobody even dared to ask what he got in return. Now they were organizing to get, or buy, or trade on the black market for new cloth, table linens, a set of sheets for gifts, and then trading favors with the women in town. The few who weren’t afraid to talk to the Germans made connections to these women. These were carefully calculated connections. There was something they were finding they could do for each other. There were the German women with furs—they had seen them in town last Easter. Women with shopkeeper and banker husbands who had found for their wives fur jackets, shawls, collars, and even a coat here and there. The German women willing to barter with the Jews seemed almost thrilled to be asked such shocking favors by the women bold enough to ask. To do a favor for the Jews from the DP camp, up the hill. The Jewish women, among themselves, thought it was the least they could do, the Germans. Who would have imagined such deals? Just a few seasons back it was an extra crust of bread you got if you were smart and not scared. Now Hildy reported that her German, Sophie, had agreed to loan her a beautiful silk scarf to wear to Ruby and Ilya’s ceremony in exchange for enough chocolates to last a few weeks.