Free Under a Red Sky by Haya Leah Molnar

play in the yard?” he says, turning back to his tin box. “They’re dead. Believe me.” His voice trails off as I skip out of the room. “Dead.”
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    IN THE AFTERNOON I tell my mother about Tata’s postcard and she gets upset. “Why in the world did he ever show you that?” she asks. “Promise me never, ever to ask your father about the war or about what happened to his parents in Auschwitz. It depresses him, and you must respect that.”
    â€œBut why, Mama? Grandpa Yosef and Grandma Iulia talk about the war all the time,” I point out.
    â€œMy parents weren’t deported to a concentration camp in cattle cars like your father’s parents. None of us were murdered, thank God,” she adds, looking at me helplessly. “Promise me you won’t bother Tata about any of this anymore. Promise?”

    â€œOkay, I promise, only if you tell me about Tata and the war.”
    â€œI know almost nothing,” my mother answers, “because he doesn’t like to talk about it, but he did take me to see the house in Cluj, where he used to live before the war.”
    â€œWhat was it like, Mama, was it beautiful?”
    â€œIt was empty,” she says, clearing her throat. “The walls had turned yellow beneath the torn blue wallpaper. Your father pointed to where the dining room table had stood. It was the only polished patch of oak flooring in the room. He showed me where the crystal chandelier had bounced rainbows off the ceiling. A giant hole with a tangle of disconnected electrical wires gaped at us, like a decaying tooth. It was getting dark, but we were too exhausted to move. We dropped to the floor and fell asleep in each other’s arms. When we awoke, the house was pitch black. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. The sound of a clock beckoned through the empty house. Your father rose to his feet and searched for the clock through the thick darkness.” Mama’s voice trails off as she gazes across the room at the clock on our Biedermeier chest. “We never figured out who wound it.”
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    THAT EVENING I ask my parents if I can sleep on the terrace. The wide-open space of the sky above feels so good in contrast to my narrow bed behind the bookcase. There is a slight breeze, and the sky is filled with stars. I fall asleep quickly and dream a dream so clear, it doesn’t feel like a dream at all.
    The night turns to day as my father’s mother, Grandmother Hermina, visits me. I recognize her the moment she appears, even though we’ve never met. She is young, beautiful, and vibrantly alive. I am aware that she died before I was born, but her presence is quite real. Grandmother Hermina knows instantly who I am, just as I know
her. She takes my presence in and murmurs, “Your father is all right.” She repeats this to herself more definitively, “Your father is all right.” Her words penetrate the space between us until they light up my consciousness so deeply that I wake up.
    What does Grandma Hermina mean by “Your father is all right”? Tata is not all right. He’s always worried about something or other. He’s not nice to me, and none of that is all right by me. I try to think through my dream logically, but it doesn’t make sense. Yet in my heart I know that what Grandma Hermina has just told me is as true and as real as the stars that hang in the night sky above me.
    This dream stays with me until a few days later I ask Grandpa Yosef about it, and he thinks for a while before answering.
    â€œDreams always reveal a hidden truth. The problem is not with the dream but with the interpretation.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, the interpretation?”
    â€œJust that—what the dream means.”
    â€œBut, Grandpa, I don’t understand what Tata’s mother meant when she said ‘Your father is all right,’ because I don’t think he is.”
    â€œAha, now I see.”