Free Under a Red Sky by Haya Leah Molnar Page A

Grandpa smiles. “Try looking at it from your Grandmother Hermina’s point of view.”
    â€œHow can I? It’s my dream!”
    â€œOf course it’s your dream, but since your grandmother visited you and spoke to you, she obviously has her own mind, so why not consider what she’s saying?”
    â€œI don’t understand what you’re talking about, Grandpa.”
    â€œTry to see it through her eyes, if only for a moment. Before she died, did she think that her son was all right? If you were a mother, Eva, and now I know I’m asking you to really use your imagination
because you are far too young even to think about being a mother, but let’s just suppose you are much older and you have a son who is somewhere in a concentration camp where millions of people are dying.” Grandpa stops abruptly and looks at me before continuing. “And you don’t know if your son is still alive. What would your dying wish be?”
    My words spill out. “I’d want him to live!”
    â€œPrecisely.” Grandpa takes in a deep breath.
    â€œGrandpa, I know what Grandma Hermina was trying to tell me. She saw me sleeping and she realized that Tata is alive, that he’s all right!”
    Grandpa Yosef nods. “Your grandma Hermina probably never rested until she visited you.”
    â€œBut, Grandpa, why didn’t she just visit Tata?”
    Suddenly, the creases around Grandpa’s eyes are deeper than I’ve ever noticed. “God is merciful and wise. He gave your grandmother Hermina a gift that would not tear her apart. She had suffered enough while she was alive.”
    â€œIt was only a dream, Grandpa.”
    â€œDreams are as real as life, Eva, because they contain seeds of the truth. Just like you can’t see the seeds from a plant because they’re buried in the ground, you can’t always see the meaning of dreams right away. But just as surely as a plant grows, the truth of dreams eventually emerges. Most dreams are hidden in plain sight, waiting for us until we are ready to discover their meaning and heed their message.”
    While Grandpa tries to explain these things to me, I wonder—how could a dead person come and visit her sleeping granddaugh ter ?
I agonize over this, but I do not question Grandpa Yosef further, since he clearly believes in miracles. And even I know that miracles are events you do not question.
    Â 
    I PROMISED MY MOTHER not to bring up Tata’s parents to him again, but I can look at our clock ticking away on top of the chest to my heart’s content. Grandpa Emile’s thin pencil markings keeping track of the dates on which he wound the clock can still be found etched on its back panel. How could things survive yet people, who are irreplaceable, perish?
    The clock is the first thing my father looks at when he gets home from a film shoot. He goes through the ritual of winding it every thirteen days. He begins by opening the back panel and slipping his hand into the small space that houses the mechanism and the brass pendulum. It is only during these moments, when Tata is barely aware of my presence, that I feel him connect to a past that has included a family other than my mother and me. His fingers search for the metal key stored in the clock’s base. He inserts the key in place and starts to wind, holding his breath and counting each turn of his wrist in his head. One … two … three … four … five. Exhale. He is careful not to overwind. When he is finished, Tata secures the clock’s crown, making sure that none of the brass fittings on the ebony surface are loose. Finally, he shuts the door to the inner mechanism as if he has just left another realm; then he dusts the clock before returning it to its central place on top of our chest. For a moment, he listens to the back-and-forth movement of the pendulum while gazing at the three brass cherubs playing a lyre on the clock’s