Family Secrets Read Online Free PDF

Then she washed out her mouth and washed her face, drying it with the awful towels they gave you. She tried to wipe off as much of the dust and dirt and blood from her dress as she could. She smoothed her hair and then hurried downstairs and out of the building. She went home alone now, because she knew the way and Mama was busy with the other children.
    She was relieved that no one she saw along the way paid her the slightest attention. They all seemed used to the sight of a little girl in a terrible mess and assumed she had been playing.
    In the front of the apartment building where they lived there was a small yard—not much, just enough for some grass and a few flowers which the ladies like Mama planted to make the place look nice. There was Grandma, the old witch, in her black dress and her black wig which was always crooked, revealing some wisps of white hair, and her black kerchief tied over it, kneeling down in the front yard mumbling angrily to herself and burying something.
    “Vas machst du, Grandma?” Lavinia called.
    “Tref,” the old woman snarled, “Tref, tref.”
    She was burying the silverware in the front yard, in front of the whole world to see!
    “Grandma, why are you putting the silverware in the ground?” Lavinia asked her in Yiddish.
    “The milk forks she used for meat, I saw her, and the spoons too. All of it, poisoned.”
    “Mama?” Lavinia said, surprised.
    “No, the girl, stupid. They have a girl now, to help, a Polish, a goy. She tried to poison us all.”
    “But if you bury them we won’t have anything to eat from.”
    “I’ll take them out tomorrow, stupid. Then they’ll be clean again.”
    “How can they be clean from being in the dirt?”
    The old woman looked at her for the first time. “Dirt? You talk about shmutz, you, queen of shmutz, shmutz-face? How did you get so dirty? Your poor mama doesn’t have enough to do without washing your dirty dresses too, and you’re not even her daughter?”
    “I am so her daughter, you old witch,” Lavinia said, being careful to say ‘old witch’ in English so the old witch wouldn’t understand her.
    “You’re not her daughter. You’re an orphan. Orphan. Orphan.”
    “Oh, you’re crazy,” Lavinia said in English.
    “Speak Yiddish!” the old witch said, furious at missing something.
    “Why do you call me an orphan?” Lavinia said in Yiddish.
    “Because your real mother is dead and your Mama is not your mama, she is only the mama of your sisters. You have no mama. I know , because I am the mother of both of them!” she finished triumphantly.
    Lavinia felt a terrible fear. She couldn’t remember, but somehow she knew that what the old witch said was true. She remembered the dreams she sometimes had at night of a woman without a face, tall, in a dark cloak, running away from her, and of herself running after this faceless woman, not knowing who she was but somehow feeling herself choking with pain and knowing that she needed this stranger. The woman in her dream must have been her dead mother, but she could not remember her and she knew only her own Mama, whom she adored, and who loved her. If her Mama wasn’t her mama, why did she act as if she was? Maybe she didn’t know either. Maybe only the old woman knew. If Lavinia didn’t tell her then she would never know. Did Papa know? She was tired from her horrible day and it was all too much to figure out. She went into the house.
    By the time anyone noticed her she had put the soiled dress and stockings and bloomers into the wash hamper for the new girl to launder and had washed her face and hands very well with good soap and dried them with her own clean towel. She brushed the top of her hair—luckily not much could happen to braids—and put on clean bloomers and stockings and her play dress. Mama was in her room, lying on the bed.
    “So, mein kind? How did it go today?”
    “Good, Mama.”
    “Did you learn well?”
    “Yes, Mama.” She could not bear to wait another