My House
by Deanie Hochman
My house was always dark, musty, as if we were afraid that something that smelled or reeked of light might peek around the corner. God forbid light should come into this house. Mystery. It was the mystery that made the air in my lungs want to be something different. I felt like I was in a coffin with all the nails in but one. I could peek out with half an eye. You know it was almost as if a blindfold was even on the dishes. And the silverware tiptoed around the table aware of a mystery that needed to be dissected, its red underbelly exposed. The mystery terrified me. I felt I was already in a tunnel of my own. My eyes looking at my hands, touching, touching myself, looking for relief from a world I didn't understand.
Auschwitz.
What a big word. It must have a million letters stretching across the galaxy, wrapping around Hannah and Eli, so beaten, so beaten, not survivors. They thought that adopting me would bring back lives that were taken, the aunts, the uncles, Grandmas, shopkeepers, lovers. They were all there like rats in the holes of every room looking for sustenance, a crumb, a morsel, a gentle hand. No light. Coffins, all the nails down, screaming to a God who was hanging out on the porch smoking and chattin' with awfulness, playing ball with evil. It was a red ball, exposing his true position, his red underbelly so to speak.
Auschwitz.
It rings. The word reverberates loud yelling as the gray days of my life march forward, soldier-like, all my Jews desperately trying to find home. Hannah and Eli. Good, not good. I touch myself. I didn't die. I am alive. I shout, I Am. Yes. No more collecting cans of tuna, no more huge piles of money stuck under a comforter that had lost any sort of comfort, any sort of warmth. I lay in the bed with that money under the mattress. Cold, so cold. I touch myself. The darkness, not so much darkness as an absence of light. Rolls of toilet paper stockpiled in corners. Boxes of Ramen, the noodles that only need one cup of water to put nourishment into a starving body. Dry beans, pasta, tins of herring, sardines piled up in high places. Even crusts of stale bread as if the memory of those tiny crusts, tiny morsels was needed to remind us over, over, and over again The coffin feels so tight, cold. I touch myself. My beingness, my essence inside of me buried outside. I am chained. Auschwitz surrounds our days. I am in a bed that not only has money stuffed under the mattress, but so many documents; different passports, different names, offering promises of freedom when God decides again to hang out on the porch smoking, playing with that red ball. That ball hurts my eyes, exploding with a brilliant darkness that makes me want to burrow deep, looking for my hands. And then I touch myself. Touch myself again and say, I am.
©2014 Deanie Hochman