48, What They Knew

 

Some things are the same everywhere. Including here. People’re always afraid of what’s not there, or here. And then—guess what?—it happens.

They’re all afraid we’ll leave: the ones who’ve no reason, no wish, to stay—even the ones who have to leave if they want to continue living at all. Yet there’s always a sense of betrayal—nobody wants to know you—in fact, some may even want to kill you—once you’ve left.

So we go. Anyone with any sense—like mother—doesn’t try to bring us back. She may’ve hoped for my return at one time, just maybe, but I think she knew it’d happen. Did she know what I’d done? Somehow I think she must’ve. How could she not’ve? How could anyone, including (especially) that woman whose name I never knew, not know? Somehow I guess Mrs. Littington knew, too. Or at least I expect that if she’d found out, it wouldn’t surprise her. Now would Adam’ve been shocked, I think.

Actually, mother understood that what’d been done to me was enough reason to leave. So would the things I’d witnessed or learned about. Like Adam’s death. If there’s any sort of existence after this one, and whoever’s there can, or wants to, look at this planet again, how could he not understand? After all, I think he wanted to get off this block as much as he wanted anything else, save perhaps for getting away from Bergen-Belsen.

And mother: If the heaven she believed in actually exists, she’s going there. Not because she was any more virtuous than anyone else—well, maybe she was, because for all that she might’ve said to the woman whose name I never knew, I’m sure she kept as many secrets as anyone I’ve ever known. If I know anything about the man who fathered me, or anybody else, it wasn’t because she told me. It’s because she knew.

But really, how could she not’ve known about the murder? Me and the murderer. Other people’ve been killed on this block, but that killing was the one nobody could deny they knew about. Not even mother. And especially not me.

I know this much: that none of the information. save for the date of death, was correct on the crime report, or on the death certificate. Some of the information was more or less accurate, like the time of death. They came upon a figure based on the amount of time it takes someone to bleed to death, or by some such method of computation. But the rest of the information—the name, the date of birth—none of it has anything to do with the person it was supposed to identify.