The Truth About Us

by Tia Souders

  Her eyelids drooped as she stumbled back to bed, thinking about the emotional rollercoaster in the days since GG’s death. The aching behind her eyes spoke of unshed tears, but she pushed the emotion aside. Tears wouldn’t bring her back. Nothing would.

  All Abby had now was her memory and this secret—whatever it may be. So, she’d hold on to it. Whatever this game of hide-and-seek for clues was she’d cling to it until the very last second because as long as she had a purpose, she could ignore the pressure in her chest. A purpose gave her a distraction, and anything was better than recognizing how much she missed GG already, how she’d never get a chance to talk with her again, or play another game of cards. Anything was better than feeling.

  THE UPBEAT TUNE OF her ringtone trilled, waking her. Rolling over, Abby snatched it off her nightstand and checked the screen.

  Cammie.

  She should answer it, let her know she’s okay and that she’ll be back at school on Monday. Especially after ushering her friends out the door yesterday at GG’s wake.

  Abby gnawed on her lip, deciding against it. She wasn’t in the mood to tell her she was fine when she wasn’t, and Abby didn’t want to talk about how she really felt. And Cammie would insist she did.

  Pushing the ignore button, she dropped the phone onto her mattress and stared up at the ceiling, shoving aside the voice in her head that told her she was wrong for not answering. But could anyone blame her for not wanting to talk right now? She wasn’t ready to act as though she was okay, and anything else would lead to how she was really doing. No amount of talking about how she was broken inside would make her loss disappear. It was better to shelve her feelings until she could handle them.

  Abby blinked her tired eyes as her thoughts drifted to GG’s letters and the journal, and for a moment, she wondered if she had dreamt it all.

  She swung her legs over the bed and shuffled her way to her closet, where she retrieved her bag and fingered the book inside, confirming its existence. Plunking it back down, she turned and squinted at her alarm clock.

  Ten o’clock. She slept in, an anomaly in her house. Usually by now, her father was banging around in the kitchen, flipping pancakes, and singing. If everyone had yet to wake, his ear-piercing rendition of Sinatra was enough to make you get up and close your door to drown out the noise. But today, nothing—no scent of sweet breakfast cakes and maple syrup, no cheerful song.

  With a feeling of dread, Abby threw on a pair of yoga pants and a t-shirt. As an afterthought, she hurried to the closet and retrieved the messenger bag. She secured it over her head, pulling it across her body. She felt better with it on her instead of it hidden in her room.

  With a fresh wave of determination to uncover the truth, she headed for the stairs. As she descended, she heard voices. Though they whispered, the harsh tone conveyed an argument. Part of her wanted to turn back, to avoid any involvement in their disagreement, but her rumbling stomach dictated the movement of her feet. She’d skate by the argument, have breakfast, and spend the afternoon reading journal entries.

  Her feet hit the landing, and she halted as she came face to face with them. Her mother’s hair stuck out in dark tufts, and while her grandfather was dressed for the day in pants and a t-shirt, her mother still wore her pajamas.

  Her grandfather shook his head, his face flushed, and his German accent thickened with his anger. “I can take care of myself. I can go home. I’m no burden and—”

  “Dad, I want to. Please, don’t argue. I don’t want you going over to that empty house all alone. I hate the thought of you being by yourself. Besides, you’re not even supposed to be driving. Your eyesight is terrible.”

  Her grandfather pointed a bony finger at her mother. “You think I can’t take care of myself without Gloria. I’m not stupid, and I’m not a degenerate.”

  Abby noted the moisture in her mother’s eyes and glanced to the floor. They hadn’t noticed her yet. Hovering at the bottom of the stairwell, she contemplated turning around and sneaking back up the stairs.

  “We do want you here.” She began to turn as her mother continued, “And Abby would love to have you around.”

  At the sound of her name, Abby’s head snapped up. She swiveled back to face them. They both glanced her way, her mother gesturing to her with her arms.

  Too late. She’d been spotted.

  She shuffled on her feet as her mother widened her eyes.

  “Um, yeah. Of course, I do,” Abby said.

  “See!” Her mother pointed. “Why is that so hard to believe? The four of us, it’s all we have. Bill’s parents passed a long time ago. There is no one else,” she said, gesturing toward Abby’s father who appeared from down the hall.

  He moved to her mother’s side and placed a supportive hand on the small of her back, a calming presence in the storm of her mother’s frustration.

  “We can discuss what you want to do permanently later, but for a couple weeks, you should stay with us,” she said.

  “I agree.” Her dad chimed in. “We want you here and not because we think you need taken care of.”

  “I can drive just fine,” her grandfather said. “You know, I’ve lived through—”

  Her mother held a hand up to stop him. “I know. You’ve lived through worse things. You don’t have to allude to the war any time you feel the need to defend yourself, especially when you never actually talk about your past. It’s probably the one and only time you ever bring it up, which isn’t fair.”

  Abby’s ears perked, her discomfort at the conflict around her dissipated with her curiosity as she watched on.

  Her grandfather’s gray brows lifted like caterpillars. “You know nothing about my past.”

  “And whose fault is that, Dad? You never talked about it. Not with me or Mom. How are we supposed to know how you feel about it all? All we have to gauge your feelings about anything meaningful is your silence.”

  Her grandfather’s mouth tightened, the wrinkles compressing like cinched plastic. He harrumphed, saying nothing.

  “See? Even now, nothing. You let your anger show for a whole second, and you’ve already reigned it back in. I suppose you won’t let us see your loss this time around either. Doesn’t matter if you spent sixty years with mom or one hundred—”

  “Mom!” Abby blurted. Her gaze darted to her grandfather, then back to her mother as her stomach clenched.

  “I’m sorry. I just...” her mother trailed off, her voice thick. “You won’t be a prisoner here. In fact, I’ll give you Abigail’s key until I have another one made. And you don’t have to go the fundraiser today. Everyone will understand.”

  Abby’s father squeezed her mother’s shoulder—a sign of solidarity and support—before stepping forward.

  “Why don’t I drive you to your place, Yoel? We’ll go pick up some more clothes from the house. Get some fresh air. Maybe grab some lunch?” he asked her grandfather, gesturing toward the door.

  “Fine. I’ll stay a while longer. But you can stay in the car while I gather up my things.” Her grandfather’s glare might as well have shot daggers at her father. “I’m not helpless.”

  “Deal.”

  Abby’s mother sighed in relief. A minute later, her dad and grandfather left. In the absence of their presence, her mother turned and wandered into the sunroom off the foyer.

  Abby remained at the bottom of the stairs, motionless and unsure of what to do with herself. The hunger in her belly dissipated as she followed her mother. Already seated in the rattan love seat, her mother stared a hole through the huge glass windows, her gaze focused on nothing at all.

  Abby drew closer, pausing outside the French doors, which were propped open. She surveyed the room, remembering when they put on the addition how GG had helped her mother pick out all the plants, mixing blooms with shiny green leaves and foliage for a year-round display of color behind the glass. The spacious yard, with their luscious grass and the aqua waters of the swimming pool, served as a tranquil backdrop. Now, in the
midst of spring, GG’s green thumb was evident, more than ever, in their home. She had often joked her mother couldn’t keep a weed alive. What would become of their gardens now? Without GG, they’d probably be reduced to nothing but weeds.

  She pushed the thoughts away before they formed hooks on her heart and cleared her throat to make her presence known. “No brunch today?” she asked, though the answer was obvious.

  “No.” Her mother shook her head. She reached toward the coffee table and picked up a large mug. Steam curled and rose into the space in front of her as she gripped it in her hands. “At least my coffee’s still hot,” she murmured.

  Her mother’s tired eyes took Abby in, swollen from the amount of time spent crying since GG passed.

  Abby swallowed. “Things are going to be different now, aren’t they?”

  “Many times, I’ve thought your GG was the glue that held this family together. Without her...” her mother trailed off as her voice cracked. She shrugged, like she had no clue what would happen to their family now.

  “Grandpa seems quiet about it all.” An image of him sitting in the funeral home, stone-faced and silent in the face of his grief flashed through her mind.

  “Yeah, well, that’s Dad. He hides everything he feels inside. Always has. If it weren’t for Mom growing up, I’d probably be a robot. She encouraged me to talk about my feelings too much. I’ve always wondered if that was out of frustration. The one person she wanted to share with her never did.” Shaking her head, she glanced at Abby. “Anyway...” Her mother sighed on the word, then lifted her mug to her lips. She took a sip.

  “You’re worried about him, aren’t you?”

  “I suppose I am. Your grandma always sheltered him, almost like a child, protecting him from the blows of life. And now that she’s gone...I don’t know. How do I know he’s coping, or that he’s okay, if I can’t see it for myself?”

  Abby shifted on her feet, then took a seat across from her mother and played with the hem of her shirt. Was it wrong she didn’t want to talk about how anyone felt? Of course, she couldn’t tell her mother that. Here she was worried about her grandfather because he couldn’t verbalize his grief, and Abby wanted to shirk away at the mere mention of her own.

  She picked a piece of lint off her pants, mulling over her mother’s question with herself in mind. “I guess you have to trust that if he needs you, he’ll tell you.”

  “Abby, you’re okay, right?”

  Her mother’s gaze latched onto hers—unblinking and too smart for her own good—because she knew Abby was just like him. Whether genetic or learned, she had a way of burying emotions and avoiding conflict.

  “Sure I am,” Abby said, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  Her thoughts drifted to the journal, and she wondered how to segue into what she really wanted to know.

  “I know you’re worried about grandpa, but he’s kinda been through this before, hasn’t he? I mean, with his family? He’s familiar with loss, even if he never talks about it,” Abby said.

  Her mother stared at her over the rim of her coffee cup. “Yeah. I’m not sure that makes it any easier though.”

  “Maybe not, but why doesn’t anyone ever talk about what happened to him in the war?”

  Her mother shrugged, letting out a shaky laugh. “Like I said, he avoids any sort of conversation about the past, his life, his family. He always has.”

  “When that all happened to him, he was young, right?”

  “A teenager—sixteen, seventeen, maybe.” Her mother nodded in confirmation.

  “Do you know anything about grandpa and the camps? When he went? What it was like?”

  “What’s gotten you so curious?”

  “Grandma’s gone. He’s all I have left of our family, other than you and Dad. I wish now I had gotten to know her more. You know, like who she was before as a person, not as my grandmother. Isn’t where we came from kind of important? Our family history? I’ll never have a chance to talk to her about it now, to see how she felt about things and what made her who she was before meeting him.”

  Tears filled her mother’s eyes, but she blinked them away and cleared her throat. Setting her mug on the table, she said, “Yeah. That makes sense, but keep in mind, you’re only eighteen. You’re supposed to be engrossed in being a teenager and all that comes along with it. You’re not expected to be interested in your grandparents as people. Or your parents, for that matter. You should see us as ancient, old-fashioned, and unrelatable. That’s totally normal. You don’t start appreciating the adults in your life until you’re off on your own. I hope you’re not beating yourself up about this.”

  Her mother reached out, placing a hand on Abigail’s knee and giving it a quick squeeze. She gave her a half-hearted smile, like the energy it took to curl her lips was too great.

  “I’m not. But I’m not really normal, am I? Not like most of my classmates. I don’t go to parties, and I’m not particularly involved in school or extracurriculars. My weekends have mostly been spent here, with us, with GG and grandpa. Only occasionally do I go out with Cammie, so...I don’t know.” Abby shrugged. “I feel kinda selfish, like this whole time I never bothered to truly get to know the people I spend most my time with. I don’t want to miss out on another opportunity with Grandpa, especially with such significance in his past. Not everyone has that.”

  Plus, she had a secret to solve, a journal to read.

  “Well, I’m not sure I’ll be of much help. What I know about his time in Auschwitz is what your grandma told me, what he confided in her when they met, plus a few things here and there we gleaned over the years. As I said, he didn’t volunteer much. It’s not in his nature, and I’ve come to accept that, for the most part.”

  “Has he ever, maybe...I don’t know...” Abby picked at a cuticle. “Written about it?” she asked, peeking up at her mother from beneath her lashes.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Like in a journal?”

  “I think I’d know about it if he had.” Her mother laughed. “You know your grandmother. If she had access to something like that, she’d have shared it with the world.”

  Which begged the question why she hadn’t?

  “Would he get upset if I asked him about it?”

  Her mother picked her mug back up, running her finger over the rim while she spoke. “I remember doing a project once in history class. I’ve never seen someone shut down so fast—like a steel shutter closing. He hates talking about it. What I know is that he grew up in Krakow, and when they began to liquidate the ghetto, they rounded everyone up, thousands of thousands of Jews and sent them to the camps. Your grandfather left with his mother, father, and two sisters, I believe,” she said, her voice uncertain. “They killed his whole family immediately. He somehow managed to stay alive almost two years before they were liberated. When he left there, he was beyond despair. He had no one left. Nothing.”

  “How’d he come here?”

  “Following the war, the government slowly tried to recoup stolen Jewish properties and possessions that had been pillaged. Your grandfather was one of the lucky ones. His father had owned a business, but he wanted none of it. He sold everything and immigrated, leaving it all behind. He couldn’t stand being there, alone. I imagine it was too painful, nothing but reminders and ghosts of a life once lived. Of course, I’m partly assuming how he felt.”

  Abby gazed out the window, filing this information away as a cardinal floated onto the birdfeeder perched above the azaleas. She watched it bend over, flap its wings, and feast off seed before turning and staring straight at her. Its tiny black eyes blinked below a tuft of red. The bird cocked its head, as if in recognition, and Abby’s heart fluttered in response.

  Hadn’t she once heard that dead loved ones often returned to you in comfort as a brightly colored bird?

  Something her mother said came to mind as she stared. “You said something about a fundraiser today? That grandpa didn’t have to go?” she asked, unable to take
her eyes off the bird. It leaped onto another branch, even closer to the window.

  “Yeah. He got worked-up when he found out your grandmother had some fundraising event planned for today, and I insisted we go. It’s for the museum. I think it’s what got him all riled up about staying here. So, it looks like it’ll just be me.” Her mother sighed, then stood. “In fact, I should probably get ready.”

  “I can go with you if you want,” Abby offered, though she wanted to do anything but.

  Please say no. Please say no.

  “That’s okay. Maybe you should get out of the house.”

  Abby’s eyes widened, her surprise fighting for precedence against her relief at the rejection of her offer. Before GG died, her mother would’ve insisted she go. Family first. Abby had grown up with this constant reminder of where their priorities lay. Any time one of them had any sort of plans, even if it was simply to take a dip in the pool, Abby had been expected to be there. No questions asked. Her friends could wait. High school football games could be attended the following week. Movies with Cammie could be seen any time, and sleepovers could be postponed.

  “Actually, wait a minute. I almost forgot.” A small smile formed on her mother’s lips as she rummaged in the pocket of her robe. A jingling sound came from her hand as she pulled a set of keys from her pocket, then stepped forward and placed it in the palm of Abby’s hand.

  “I was actually thinking about it this morning before anyone else woke, then I got distracted with your grandfather. I wasn’t going to give this to you for another week or so, but I suppose there’s no point in waiting. GG’s car is yours. She wanted you to have it. Maybe you can take it for a spin? Pick up Cammie? Go somewhere?”

  The color drained from Abby’s face as she stared down at the key. GG had loved her little yellow bug.

  “But... Couldn’t grandpa sell it?”

  “You know as well as I do, your grandfather doesn’t need the money. And neither do we.”

  Her mother curled Abby’s fingers over her palm, trapping the keys inside her hand until she felt the metal dig into her skin.