Free Too Jewish by Patty Friedmann Page B

camp? I asked. They most certainly did, she said. She was proud, efficient, almost Teutonic, but I remembered I was in England.
    I waited only about twenty minutes, and the same woman called my number. Suddenly she wasn't so brusque. "We've looked at the DP list," she said. I frowned, not knowing what that meant. "Displaced persons," she said. "I'm afraid Mrs. Kuper was not on that list. Is this your wife?" "My mother," I said. "Oh, my" she said, and she became even softer. "Well, I checked, and I see no other records. There were fairly accurate death records, despite how massive the losses were there." I thought I understood her, but I had to make sure. "Are you saying she didn't survive, but she also didn't die?"
    "I suppose I'm saying we have no record of her," the woman said. "I'm afraid my best guess would be that she was transported elsewhere, but I have no way of knowing without going through every record. And even that might yield nothing."
    I couldn't take in any more air than would fill the very top of my lungs. I couldn't see anything outside the narrow circle of light that took in the woman's face. My mother was gone. Lost. Surely dead. But maybe, just maybe, traded for a German soldier. Maybe sent to Palestine. A one in thousands chance. I had no way of knowing what happened to her. I'd thought I didn't want to know.
    "I thought I didn't want to know," I whispered to the woman.
    She spoke so softly I almost couldn't hear her in the din around us. "It might wind up being better for you in the long run," she said. "I'm so sorry."
    I was several blocks away, more filled with thoughts than I realized, when I turned around and went back. This time I didn't wait my turn. I flagged the attention of the woman who had helped me. "What if she needs to find me?" I said. Even if the woman already had forgotten me, the question was enough. She directed me to another part of the building. When I registered, I realized I was a man with an APO address and nothing more. I expected to live past the APO, I needed permanency past the APO. The world needed more than the Red Cross and names floating in alphabetical order, some spelled wrong. My mother would never look for Bernie Cooper. I wrote down Bernard Kuper, care of Axel's business address in Washington Heights. I would be part of something she always could find. I would give her thirty years. She could live to a hundred before I would give up.
    * * *
    When I was shipped back to the States three months after Germany surrendered, I asked to disembark at New Orleans. I wired Axel that I was taking a short detour. He wired me back that he would wait and see. "You are my permanent address," I wired back. It cost money, but it was important.
    It seemed to me that I never would be in New Orleans at any time that wasn't unbearably hot. It was August, and I wanted to look my freshest best when I walked up to Letty's house. I last had seen her when I knew nothing of the world. I had left my home and learned another country and the peculiarities of its people when I met her, but I hadn't picked apart in my mind why anything happened. Literature had tried to give me hints, but I'd had no instructor to tell me to look. I knew a lot more why's now, and I knew I was sophisticated. I was imagining I even might be able to speak to Letty's parents using nothing more than fine instincts. Letty was another story. It was possible that Letty had been reading books with the help of teachers, and she was sophisticated now, too. I figured I might need more than instinct. Though I wasn't sure what I would want from her. I would wait to see. That was why I chose to go to New Orleans.
    Letty wasn't doing as much thinking as I was. The moment she saw me on the front steps, she threw her arms around my neck and began kissing me all over my face. She was wearing a dark pink lipstick, and she didn't care where she left the marks. I didn't care, either.
    She had both arms around my waist. There we were out