On our last day together in Israel, my brother and I were called into our grandmother’s room. Our grandparents – whom we call Saba and Savta – have had separate bedrooms since their youngest daughter left home forty-five years ago.
As we walked in, Savta opened the top drawer of her bureau and pulled out a wool winter sock which was knotted up at the top to close both ends. The thick sock had thin strands of fabric hanging off the sides, just as old cotton tends to fray. It was weighed down at the bottom by something hard and lumpy. She struggled to lift the sock by its knot, and I reached quickly to take it from her. I placed one hand underneath the sock and tried to feel whatever was inside. Coins. It was full of coins.
“Savta, what’s—” I started to say.
She raised a finger up to her lips to shush me. “Don’t say anything to your grandfather. Give this to your cousin Menashe,” she whispered in Hebrew, then repeated, “Don’t say anything to your grandfather. And take this, too.” She went into her private bathroom and returned with two bottles of skin cream.
Savta is five feet tall, and her head is nested low between her shoulders. She speaks with a high-pitched voice that sounds as soft as her ancient skin feels. Her voice makes her seem like she never grew out of being a little girl from an upper class Bulgarian family, as though the Nazis and then the Soviets never sent her father to labor camps.
When Savta was a teenager,...
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