Free Unspeakable Things by Kathleen Spivack

how could they express such love and gratitude? Maria watched herself be dead. Her hands and feet felt cold, but she did not move. She sat there, waiting, waiting, until the big oak door opened once again. Her mother emerged, laughing, talking to Felix as she adjusted her coat and scarf.
    “Ah, dear lady, it is I who am grateful,” said Felix as he ushered her out. He put something into her hand. Maria’s mother put her hand quickly into the coat pocket. Maria’s mother took the little, cold, dead hand of the dead Maria and the dead child floated whitely out of the office. Before too long, they were on the street, and the cold air burned against Maria’s face. She was dead; she did not want to feel the air. She did not want to smell the cold, sooty, greasy smell of it as it entered her nostrils. Dead people were cold, Maria knew, and so it was all right to be cold. But not to smell things.
    Felix shut the heavy decorated door after they had left. He was ready once again to make his notes. His next little patient would be coming soon, after Felix had his nice lunch of thick bread and butter and sausage, and after Schatzie had her bowl of dog food.
    “Come, my darling,” said Maria’s mother, walking more quickly, happily. There was a spring in her step, a careless hopefulness. “Now we go home. And I make you a nice lunch. Philip will be waiting for us,” she went on cheerfully, babbling into the unlistening ears of Maria, who tried to shut out her mother’s hateful voice. “Won’t that be lovely, a little soup? And then I must go to work. But soon you will be in your nice bed with your nice books. And you will feel much better.”
    Maria’s body burned, but she shut herself off from herself and floated up into the sooty sky. There, assembled with all the little children in white dresses, she looked down at her mother with pity, as if from a great height. From now on, she would be dead. But she would still sit in judgment on her mother and others. And when God came on Judgment Day to ask her opinion, she would tell God what had really happened. In her mind, however, God and the SS were confused. Maria knew she must never tell anything—ever—to anyone. Or else they would all—her whole family, including even little Philip—be put into the camps. And then they would die in the ovens and become smoke. Black smoke, streaming out of chimneys. She thought of little Philip burning, his small body twisting, shrieking. She could never bear that, not even if she herself were tortured. Maria knew that life was a test, a test of courage and silence. She had always understood that, although her parents had tried to shelter her, perhaps, from this understanding. But she knew something from the whispers around her, the mutterings of the walls, the imprecations of the elevator girl, and the absences of her father. She knew from the furtive fear of her mother, from the huddled penury of their lives, and from the sense of being always in hiding, even here in New York.
    Maria thought only her grandfather could match—in fact, surpass—her in cunning secrecy. She was brave; she would save her family one day by her silence. They were all in her power, Maria knew, her power and God’s. For if she said only one word of what she knew, the Nazis—or God—would find them all instantly, smoke them out like a helpless nest of mice.
    No, Maria would never tell anyone anything, not even God, whatever happened to her. Not even her father. Where was he? It was a secret. Maria resolved to be dead at least until her father came back. Then she would hold his hand ever so tightly. But still, she would never tell. She would practice being dead as long as she could.

Chapter 6
AND THEN HE DID
    F everish, Maria tried to adapt her body to fit around that of the Rat’s in her cot. Anna took up so little room that after the first night, Maria did not notice the lack of space; she fitted her small bones around the curved ones of the Rat. Maria