Best wishes,
Ann French
Dear Ann (without an “e”)
Thank you for sending your kind words. I’m very touched by them. I’m so very sorry to hear your mother passed away. You are correct; mine did, too, when I was fifteen. She died in a concentration camp the Nazis ran in Poland. That was a long time ago, but I still miss her. I’m sure I will always miss her. Things do, however, become easier, even if the pain of missing her never goes away, which I doubt it ever will. At least it has not yet for me.
I hope you like the autographed copy of “The Diary” that I am sending you. I wrote you a note on the title page.
All my best and heartfelt wishes,
Anne (with an “e”)
Dear Miss Frank,
Even though I am a teenager now (my birthday was last week), I still loved reading your “Diary of a Young Girl,” even if my sister (who is fifteen) teased me. She says she’s reading “ADULT” books now, not “SEVENTH-GRADE STUFF.” But if you ask me, I would rather read your book a hundred times, instead of “Lord of the Flies” once.
I did get into an argument with my brother, though, about your book. (He’s seventeen, and keeps telling our mom that he’s going to join the Army instead of going to college, which makes Mom crazy!) But he says that the Jews should have fought back when the Nazis came for them. He says HE would have fought back, why didn’t the Jews? I told him that they were probably afraid. He said, “You mean they were CHICKEN?” I said no, not like “CHICKEN” afraid. But the Nazis had guns, including machineguns, and the Jews didn’t. I hope I gave him the right answer.
Anyway, I still love your “Diary” and will keep it forever, so that I can give it to MY daughters to read (once I get married.)
Sincerely,
Diane McElroy
11 June 1961
Dear Diane,
I am so very pleased that you have enjoyed my work so much, and you should tell your sister that Anne Frank says her diary is not simply “seventh-grade stuff.” Though “Lord of the Flies” is pretty good, too.
Also, you may tell your brother that many Jews DID fight back. It is very hard to explain to you, though, the reason why many more did not. You’re quite right, that it was not because of cowardice. My father and mother offered no resistance when the Germans arrested us, not because they were afraid for themselves but because they feared for their children. They thought that the best way to protect my sister and me was to obey orders. Who could have conceived what was really in store for us all? That’s a poor answer perhaps, but it’s the best I can do.
Thank you for writing. I hope your children, daughters or sons, will read what I have written someday. And maybe their children, too. One can only hope.
Yours,
Anne F.
She’s late, but when is she not? Standing in a white Vanity Fair rayon slip, she sorts madly through the mess of cosmetics on her dresser top. You can pick up Ideal brand Summer Poppy for fifty cents at Rexall, but she’d splurged for Revlon’s Super Lustrous Fifth Avenue Red at a dollar ten, even though UNICEF assures her that there are still plenty of hungry children in Europe and Asia. At the mirror she uncaps the bullet of lipstick in her hand and inhales the lush, rosy, waxy aroma. But when she puckers her lips, she is captured by her own reflection. It’s definitely Jewish, this mirror, unlike the flattering mirrors in the department stores, paid to please. It refuses to soften her face and shows her every angle. The sharpness of her jaw. The dusky light in her eyes that thickens into shadows. She follows the shape of her mouth, Lustrous Fifth Avenue Red flowing as bright as blood.
A meow. Her Majesty Wilhelmina. Her orange tabby winding around her ankle, begging for attention.
“I’m late,” she says. “I don’t have time for you.” But she’s not actually speaking to Ihre Majestät Mina. She’s speaking to Margot, who has appeared as a face in the background of the mirror, wearing her rotting blue-white Lager stripes and yellow six-pointed star fixed to the pullover.
You don’t need lipstick, her sister tells her.
Bending forward, she pops her lips to smooth the color and then lightly mouths a Kleenex to blot the excess, leaving behind a perfect kiss. “I do. My lips have no color.”
You’re beautiful without cosmetics.
“No. You were the beautiful one,” Anne insists, lacing her lashes with a touch of mascara. “I’m thirty-two. In America thirty-two means cosmetics.” Grabbing up her brush, she attacks the cascade of her hair stridently. The shelves of the medicine cabinet are crowded, and she has to rearrange everything to find the tin of Johnson & Johnson Band-Aid Plastic Strips. Look . . . Feel . . . Flex Like a Second Skin.
What’s that for?
A glance. “You know what it’s for,” she insists, popping the tin open. She tears away the paper sleeve from one of the strips, peels off the backing, and positions it over the blue scrawl of tattoo ink on her forearm. A-25063.
You’re still ashamed of it? Margot wants to know.
“No, I’m not ashamed. How many times do we have to have this discussion?”
It’s just a question.
A huff. “I’m not ashamed of the number, Margot. I’m ashamed by the pity it provokes. Besides, I don’t want to scare the girls.” She opens the mirror to replace the tin, and when she closes it again, Margot has vanished from the glass.
Riding the IRT
June is hot this year. The subway is humid with body heat. Electric fans rage impotently, their hornet buzz drowned out by the steel of the tracks. Advertising placards line the car above the heads of passengers. ARE YOU SMOKING MORE NOW BUT ENJOYING IT LESS? HAVE A REAL CIGARETTE—CAMEL! YOU’LL ENJOY THE FASCINATING FLAVOR OF JUICY FRUIT GUM. IT’S DIFFERENT, DELICIOUS—AND FUN TO CHEW! ALERT TODAY—ALIVE TOMORROW! ENROLL IN CIVIL DEFENSE.
An obese fellow with a crew cut fills one of the pink fiberglass seats in the opposite row. He frowns over his paper, sweating. A MONSTER! the headline of the Daily News bellows. EICHMANN STANDS TRIAL IN JERUSALEM! She stares blankly at the photo of the little man with the horn-rimmed glasses, seated in a glass box. He has no face, she thinks. He has no face.
East Twelfth Street and University Place
Greenwich Village
The Fourteenth Street station is a mess of people as she leaves the train. But at least she can breathe again when she hikes up the dirty steps into the open air. She starts running as fast as she can in heels on East Twelfth, but the world seems to be packing the sidewalks to slow her down, and by the time she reaches the synagogue, she is sticky with sweat. The building displays an anonymous façade across from the Police Athletic League. The only clue to its identity is the discreet line of Hebraic lettering over the door. This is a new kind of synagogue. A postwar synagogue. A post-Auschwitz synagogue. Gone is the rich Jewish Deco. At street level it is less of a temple and more of a bunker.
“Ann,” she hears her agent, Ruth, call as she steps in through the door. In America everyone calls her Ann. On the opposite side of the Atlantic, the e at the end of her name had afforded her the small nod of a vowel, an echo of the biblical Hannah. But here the pronunciation has long ago been mashed into a single syllable. Ann. She is permitted to keep the e only if she agrees to silence it. Or she is permitted to keep the vowel note only if she replaces the e with an a. So there is her choice: misspell her name or mispronounce it. She has chosen to mispronounce it, laying the short breath of the vowel to rest while privately depositing it into the deep vault where all her silenced elements are stored.