#110

Even in the heat of summer, Grandpa always wore long sleeves. I surprised him one morning as he finished shaving, a 6-year-old dinosaur with a surprise in store. “Roar!” I jumped up at him and he caught me in the air, pulling me in for a hug. As he set me back on the floor, I saw a flash of scrawling black numbers on his right arm, before he quickly rolled his sleeves down.
“Grandpa, what was that?” and I pointed. He let out a laugh that wasn’t quite a laugh, and said “nothing” and I questioned him again, so he pulled up his sleeve to show me nothing but smooth skin freckled with age spots and nothing else. He had shown me his left arm.

One morning I found an old crumbling book. It was full of names like Heinrich, Yehuda, Ludovic, Eva. “Grandpa, how do you say these names?” He pronounced each one deliberately, slowly, suddenly with a full accent I’d never heard before.
“That is not a book for a little girl” he said, and he held the morning paper in front of him, though I doubt he could read it through the mist in his eyes.

Grandmother taught me how to play hopscotch, and I knew she was happy that day, though I never heard her laugh. I saw crude black figures on her forearm and they drew me in; I stared and stared. I never asked and she never told.

Their house was always quiet, and simple. And later, I realized, maybe that was enough.