Etan. I know him. We’re friends. He’s doing much better than I am. He’s here with me.
I like to eat and listen to the record player.
That’s good enough for today. I close the journal and place my pencil down. A man in uniform passes by my bed with a little girl by his side, holding his hand. His shoes are loud on the floor, making my ears hurt. I blink and the black uniform becomes green, and the little girl begins to scream as he drags her downthe row of beds. I blink again, and his uniform returns to black and the little girl is calm and walking on her own. Every time I drift into a dark haze, I see something different—something other than what’s in front of me. I try to grasp hold of the image just to understand the meaning, but no matter how hard I try, it fades away.
“Luka…”
I open my eyes, giving up the fight. Etan is standing by my bedside, his hands tucked into his pockets. After nine weeks, I can finally see his face is becoming fuller, less hollow around his cheeks. He looks healthier. I’m not ready to see what I look like. I won’t recognize the reflection.
Etan said we were prisoners together in Auschwitz, performers together, he a violinist, and me a singer. It’s hard to imagine anyone performing in a prison. It’s hard to imagine me as a singer when my voice sounds like I’ve swallowed a bunch of rocks. Most of the time I still whisper, feeling less pain that way.
“Are you doing all right? You look a bit lost today,” he says, pulling up a stool from behind my bed.
“Sure. I wrote in my journal,” I say, gesturing to the closed notebook on my lap. “The nurse says it helps.”
Etan’s lips curl into a half smile. “She’s right. You’re getting better every day. You remember much more now each day than you did weeks ago. It’s progress.”
“I suppose.” I glance at my hands again, flexing my fingers while watching the scars stretch and shrink as if they’ll speak to me in some way, or fill in the missing pieces I can’t find. “There are still so many gaps. There are still so many things that don’t make sense.”
“They will,” Etan says, his head tilting to the side. His empathy is pure, full of optimism. “Give yourself time.”
Time. The word on everyone’s lips here. Time will do this, and time will do that. In time, we’ll all be better. Is it true though?
The man in uniform returns from whoever he was visiting, the little girl still holding his hand. “Come along, Ella, we have one more person to visit before we go,” he says.
Ella… Ella.
I open my journal and flip through the pages until I find the one where I’ve been keeping track of names that come to mind. I find the letter E with a dash following. It could be for Etan.
E could be for—the vision of a long flowing braid with wisps of golden hair flying against a face covered in light freckles. A sweet, gentle laugh. She turns her head and—Etan is waving his hand in front of my face.
“Where did you go?”
“Do I know someone named Ella?” Etan stares at me without answering and I don’t understand why. It’s a yes or no answer. “Well?”
“You tell me,” he says.
“Blonde hair, a braid, a beautiful laugh…” I describe the vision.
Etan shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “No one really had much hair where we were?—”
I repeat her name in my head several more times, trying to call for another vision to appear in my mind. I shut my eyes and say her name once more. A reel of darkness steals my memory again. I reopen my eyes, finding a nurse passing by.
“Did I mention the name to you before?”
“Yeah, yeah you did,” he says but with unease like he doesn’t want to say anything more about this person.
By dinner time each day, I’ve exhausted my mind past the brink of being able to form new thoughts and I easily fall asleep, ready to chase memories through dreams, hoping to capturethem and keep them with me when I wake up. I imagine a long braid, blonde wisps of hair against a face full of freckles. I reach out and sweep the hair off her face, finding a glittering smile with dimples at each end. A nose that turns up just slightly at the end like a doll’s face. And eyes the color of the Mediterranean Sea. She’s beautiful. Her cheeks blush after holding her stare to mine for too many seconds and she looks down, but her smile remains. My heart thunders in my chest and my stomach fills with nerves that make me happy.
The smell of coffee and eggs pushes the image away and I open my eyes to the sun shining in through the window, marking another day here in this bed, in this place where I don’t want to be anymore.
“Good morning,” a nurse says, placing a tray of food down on my lap. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“Fine, thank you,” I say.
“Can you remember what your name is?” she continues.
“Yes. My name is Luka Dulski.”
