Annelies

by David R. Gillham

  And as far as what mean things people choose to think about Jews, I’m sorry to say that there’s nothing very new in that. Though I believe you are quite brave to try to do something about it. I can’t tell you if it’s worth getting in trouble with your grandma over it, though. That will have to be your decision.

  Your friend,

  Anne Frank

  P.S.: I am sending you an autographed copy of “The Diary” in the mail. This way you’ll never have to borrow it from the library again. And you can assure your grandpa, or anyone who asks you, that it is true. All of it is true.

  Dear Miss Frank,

  My name is Sally Schneider, and I am in the sixth grade at William Howard Taft Elementary School. (We just call it “Taft.”) I am a very big fan of your diary, but I feel bad sometimes, because my last name is Schneider, which is German. My grandmother came from Germany before World War II, but I still feel sorry for what the Germans did to your Jewish people. My mom says it’s none of our business what happened in Europe and that I should be proud of my German heritage. Which I am. There’s a festival every fall (called Oktoberfest), and I always help my nana make the “Baumkuchen.” She won’t talk about World War II or Germany at all, because she says she is a good American now. Which she is. But I still felt sad reading your book, although I also really liked it. It’s confusing, isn’t it?

  I hope you are happy being an American now too. Maybe one day we can meet if you ever visit Cincinnati (Ohio).

  Yours truly,

  Sally Schneider

  Dear Sally,

  It IS confusing. Yes! But you don’t need to feel bad because you are from German stock. It took me quite a long time, I’ll confess, but I can honestly say I am no longer angry with the Germans simply for being German. And I could never think of blaming you for your ancestry. That is the same thing the Nazis did to the Jews, blamed children for the blood that flowed in their veins.

  I have to disagree with your mom, however, if you don’t mind. What happens in the world is everybody’s business, especially when it comes to attempting to murder an entire people.

  Thank you for sending me your letter, Sally. I hope I have explained how I feel on the subjects you broached. I am happy being an American now, though I often miss being a “Niederlander” in Amsterdam.

  Enjoy your time at “Taft.”

  Anne Frank

  Dear Miss Frank,

  Our teacher gave us the assignment to write to our favorite author, so of course I picked you! All the girls in my class have read your diary, and we all really, really love it!

  My mom got me “The Diary of a Young Girl” for my birthday, and I must have read it ten times already. And every time I finish it, it makes me feel good, even though what happened to you is very, very sorrowful.

  Thank you for letting us read about your life during World War II. My teacher says you must have been very courageous, and I agree!

  Your fan,

  Judy Borstein

  Township Middle School

  Morristown, New Jersey

  Dear Judy,

  Thank you for your lovely letter. It was very kind of you to pick me as your favorite author. I’m very honored and happy that you are a fan of my diary. Is it okay that it makes you a little sad after you finish it? I think it should. I think it should make everyone a little sad.

  Sincerely,

  Anne Frank

  Dear Miss Anne Frank,

  We both have the same name! Though I am Presbyterian, and my last name is “French.” Also, I don’t have an “e” on the end of my first name, which is “Ann.” I am in the seventh grade at Hillbrook Junior High School in Ft. Clarkson, Michigan. My English teacher, Mrs. Parsons, gave me “The Diary of a Young Girl” to read, because she said she thought I could “handle it.” (Though she says I’m still not old enough to read any of your other books yet.) Anyway, I read your diary, and she was correct! I could handle it, though it made me cry sometimes. It was so good and so sad at the same time. But I loved it so much that I have read it over and over again! Though I’m really sorry to hear that your sister and mom died after your diary ended.

  My mom died too. It happened last winter, though my mom died in a car accident coming home from the grocery, which I know is so different than what happened to yours. I still miss her so much, sometimes in the middle of the day, or even when I’m playing volleyball in gym class. It just comes over me for no reason. It’s hard to explain. But somehow your book has made me feel better. Thank you for writing it.

  Best wishes,

  Ann French

  Dear Ann (without an “e”)

  Thank you for sending your kind words. I’m very touched by them. I’m so very sorry to hear your mother passed away. You are correct; mine did, too, when I was fifteen. She died in a concentration camp the Nazis ran in Poland. That was a long time ago, but I still miss her. I’m sure I will always miss her. Things do, however, become easier, even if the pain of missing her never goes away, which I doubt it ever will. At least it has not yet for me.

  I hope you like the autographed copy of “The Diary” that I am sending you. I wrote you a note on the title page.

  All my best and heartfelt wishes,

  Anne (with an “e”)

  Dear Miss Frank,

  Even though I am a teenager now (my birthday was last week), I still loved reading your “Diary of a Young Girl,” even if my sister (who is fifteen) teased me. She says she’s reading “ADULT” books now, not “SEVENTH-GRADE STUFF.” But if you ask me, I would rather read your book a hundred times, instead of “Lord of the Flies” once.

  I did get into an argument with my brother, though, about your book. (He’s seventeen, and keeps telling our mom that he’s going to join the Army instead of going to college, which makes Mom crazy!) But he says that the Jews should have fought back when the Nazis came for them. He says HE would have fought back, why didn’t the Jews? I told him that they were probably afraid. He said, “You mean they were CHICKEN?” I said no, not like “CHICKEN” afraid. But the Nazis had guns, including machineguns, and the Jews didn’t. I hope I gave him the right answer.

  Anyway, I still love your “Diary” and will keep it forever, so that I can give it to MY daughters to read (once I get married.)

  Sincerely,

  Diane McElroy

  11 June 1961

  Dear Diane,

  I am so very pleased that you have enjoyed my work so much, and you should tell your sister that Anne Frank says her diary is not simply “seventh-grade stuff.” Though “Lord of the Flies” is pretty good, too.

  Also, you may tell your brother that many Jews DID fight back. It is very hard to explain to you, though, the reason why many more did not. You’re quite right, that it was not because of cowardice. My father and mother offered no resistance when the Germans arrested us, not because they were afraid for themselves but because they feared for their children. They thought that the best way to protect my sister and me was to obey orders. Who could have conceived what was really in store for us all? That’s a poor answer perhaps, but it’s the best I can do.

  Thank you for writing. I hope your children, daughters or sons, will read what I have written someday. And maybe their children, too. One can only hope.

  Yours,

  Anne F.

  * * *

  She’s late, but when is she not? Standing in a white Vanity Fair rayon slip, she sorts madly through the mess of cosmetics on her dresser top. You can pick up Ideal brand Summer Poppy for fifty cents at Rexall, but she’d splurged for Revlon’s Super Lustrous Fifth Avenue Red at a dollar ten, even though UNICEF assures her that there are still plenty of hungry children in Europe and Asia. At the mirror she uncaps the bullet of lipstick in her hand and inhales the lush, rosy, waxy aroma. But when she puckers her lips, she is captured by her own reflection. It’s definitely Jewish, thi
s mirror, unlike the flattering mirrors in the department stores, paid to please. It refuses to soften her face and shows her every angle. The sharpness of her jaw. The dusky light in her eyes that thickens into shadows. She follows the shape of her mouth, Lustrous Fifth Avenue Red flowing as bright as blood.

  A meow. Her Majesty Wilhelmina. Her orange tabby winding around her ankle, begging for attention.

  “I’m late,” she says. “I don’t have time for you.” But she’s not actually speaking to Ihre Majestät Mina. She’s speaking to Margot, who has appeared as a face in the background of the mirror, wearing her rotting blue-white Lager stripes and yellow six-pointed star fixed to the pullover.

  You don’t need lipstick, her sister tells her.

  Bending forward, she pops her lips to smooth the color and then lightly mouths a Kleenex to blot the excess, leaving behind a perfect kiss. “I do. My lips have no color.”

  You’re beautiful without cosmetics.

  “No. You were the beautiful one,” Anne insists, lacing her lashes with a touch of mascara. “I’m thirty-two. In America thirty-two means cosmetics.” Grabbing up her brush, she attacks the cascade of her hair stridently. The shelves of the medicine cabinet are crowded, and she has to rearrange everything to find the tin of Johnson & Johnson Band-Aid Plastic Strips. Look . . . Feel . . . Flex Like a Second Skin.

  What’s that for?

  A glance. “You know what it’s for,” she insists, popping the tin open. She tears away the paper sleeve from one of the strips, peels off the backing, and positions it over the blue scrawl of tattoo ink on her forearm. A-25063.

  You’re still ashamed of it? Margot wants to know.

  “No, I’m not ashamed. How many times do we have to have this discussion?”

  It’s just a question.

  A huff. “I’m not ashamed of the number, Margot. I’m ashamed by the pity it provokes. Besides, I don’t want to scare the girls.” She opens the mirror to replace the tin, and when she closes it again, Margot has vanished from the glass.

  * * *

  Riding the IRT

  June is hot this year. The subway is humid with body heat. Electric fans rage impotently, their hornet buzz drowned out by the steel of the tracks. Advertising placards line the car above the heads of passengers. ARE YOU SMOKING MORE NOW BUT ENJOYING IT LESS? HAVE A REAL CIGARETTE—CAMEL! YOU’LL ENJOY THE FASCINATING FLAVOR OF JUICY FRUIT GUM. IT’S DIFFERENT, DELICIOUS—AND FUN TO CHEW! ALERT TODAY—ALIVE TOMORROW! ENROLL IN CIVIL DEFENSE.

  An obese fellow with a crew cut fills one of the pink fiberglass seats in the opposite row. He frowns over his paper, sweating. A MONSTER! the headline of the Daily News bellows. EICHMANN STANDS TRIAL IN JERUSALEM! She stares blankly at the photo of the little man with the horn-rimmed glasses, seated in a glass box. He has no face, she thinks. He has no face.

  * * *

  East Twelfth Street and University Place

  Greenwich Village

  The Fourteenth Street station is a mess of people as she leaves the train. But at least she can breathe again when she hikes up the dirty steps into the open air. She starts running as fast as she can in heels on East Twelfth, but the world seems to be packing the sidewalks to slow her down, and by the time she reaches the synagogue, she is sticky with sweat. The building displays an anonymous façade across from the Police Athletic League. The only clue to its identity is the discreet line of Hebraic lettering over the door. This is a new kind of synagogue. A postwar synagogue. A post-Auschwitz synagogue. Gone is the rich Jewish Deco. At street level it is less of a temple and more of a bunker.

  “Ann,” she hears her agent, Ruth, call as she steps in through the door. In America everyone calls her Ann. On the opposite side of the Atlantic, the e at the end of her name had afforded her the small nod of a vowel, an echo of the biblical Hannah. But here the pronunciation has long ago been mashed into a single syllable. Ann. She is permitted to keep the e only if she agrees to silence it. Or she is permitted to keep the vowel note only if she replaces the e with an a. So there is her choice: misspell her name or mispronounce it. She has chosen to mispronounce it, laying the short breath of the vowel to rest while privately depositing it into the deep vault where all her silenced elements are stored.

  “I’m sorry,” she breathes.

  “It’s okay,” Ruth tells her.

  “I just couldn’t get out of the apartment.”

  “It’s okay. Just relax. Cool off. Sit down, have a drink of water.”

  As meticulously dressed as always, sporting white gloves, a mauve-colored blouse, and a stylish chapeau, Ruth smiles with authority at the mothers and daughters filling the synagogue’s basement hall. She is a person who likes to take things in hand, and Anne is happy to allow her to do just that. Dear Ruth. Her father was Zalman Schwartz, who first published Anzia Yezierska in Yiddish and whose uncles, aunts, and a raft of unknown cousins perished in the gas chambers of Treblinka and Chelmno. So, Ruth explains with a sort of blighted enthusiasm, she has made a career out of representing Jewish refugees for the same reason that she’s such an eggbeater for so many Jewish charities. “Guilt. What else?” Ruth confesses. “After all that came to pass in Europe? The millions?” A shrug. “What else could it be?” she asks Anne with only the tiniest spark of hope that Anne might have a different answer in mind. But Anne has no answer at all. Not for Ruth. Not for the millions.

  Draining her water glass, Anne fills it again, concentrating on the quiet burble of liquid traveling from the pitcher to her glass. Find one beautiful thing, their mother told them. Giant bulletin boards festooned with year-end notices and handicrafts from Hebrew school dominate a wall. A dozen colorful Stars of David, cut from felt and held together with library paste. “Form a line, if you please,” Ruth is instructing as Anne sits down at a trestle table draped with a clean linen cloth. Anne breathes in, drinks from her glass, leaving a bright ghost of lipstick on the glass’s rim as Ruth dispenses directions with firm charm. “For those of you just arriving,” Ruth announces, “please see the lady with the cashbox, Mrs. Goldblatt, to purchase your copies before having them signed. And remember, one dollar from every sale will be donated to support the International Jewish Orphans Fund.”

  Books are purchased. Mrs. Goldblatt makes change from the cashbox, squinting through her thick glasses and often mistaking quarters for nickels. But a line is formed, and Jewish orphans are properly supported. This is Ruth’s congregation. Her husband, Gus, was chair of the Building Fund. She maintains a certain pride in her contributions to the community’s success, if pride in one’s accomplishments can be accepted as a forgivable transgression against halakhah.

  There’s a hardcover on a small wooden easel facing out. Neat stacks are arranged beside Mrs. Goldblatt. It’s been out in paperback for more than a decade now, Anne’s diary, and that’s where the royalties come from, but these are specifically from the small inventory of hardbacks kept in print to satisfy the demands of Hanukkah and the blossoming bat mitzvah craze across Morningside Heights and the Upper East Side. She has written four books in ten years. Answer the Night was even nominated for the National Book Award, but this is the book she knows she will be remembered for, no matter what else she might produce. This is the book that will eternally define her.

  Her publisher had balked over her title. The House Behind? Behind what? The verdict was that it was just too confusing for the young American girls who were most certainly going to be the book’s market. So instead they devised something simple, a title to which they were sure any twelve- or thirteen-year-old could relate.

  The Diary of a Young Girl.

  And who could argue with that?

  A photo that she had tucked away in her diary features Anne, the schoolgirl, on the dust jacket. A child’s eyes staring up at her. The thick wave of hair. The full, girlish lips. The gaze resting in shadow. So many years after publication, she should be accustomed t
o it by now, but the sight of herself in all her innocence can still poke her in the heart. That girl with hooded eyes, gazing out from the past. Sometimes Anne searches the mirror for her, but she has yet to find her there.

  Ruth drops a few copies off at the table, one for a Mrs. Fishkin’s daughter, Elizabeth, who’s in California but a big, big fan; one for the rabbi’s daughter, Sarah with an h; and one for the rabbi’s niece, Zoë, living on a kibbutz in the west of Israel. Anne uncaps her fountain pen and puts it to work. A Conway Stewart Blue Herringbone, with a fourteen-karat, chisel-edge nib. A nice thick nib. She likes her nib thick. It centers her.

  A grinning adolescent girl is first in line, with two copies for Anne to sign. Susan Mirish is her name, and she’s an incredible fan. She hopes Anne will sign one copy for her and one for her dearest, dearest cousin, Isabelle, who’s also, as it happens, an incredible fan. Anne obliges, looping the dedications across the frontispieces of the books and swooshing through her signature twice. Next in the line, Adele Spooner is more circumspect. She read Anne’s diary in seventh grade and wants to know just exactly what Anne was getting at when she wrote that she still believed that people were good at heart. But fortunately, Adele’s mother is impatient. “Adele, enough. You think you’re the only one on line? The lady’s signed your book—let’s go.”

  “To Deborah,” says a tall, skinny woman with a floral hat who speaks with a nasal Flatbush accent. “My daughter,” she explains. “She was so depressed that she couldn’t come today, ’cause she’s so crazy for your book it’s ridiculous. But of course she breaks her leg, the nudnik. Honestly, what are girls doing these days, can you tell me? I never climbed a tree in my life.”