*********************************************************
“You don’t want to scare her,” advised Thelma as they sat in front of the apartment in the cooling evening.

“You have to find out what she’s interested in.” Rachel added, lighting another cigarette.

In the dark, Zelda could see her friends as they had been, not as they were. The wrinkles and ugly expressions were smoothed. Their profiles and voices distinguished them. There were no children in the building now. Hopefully they could find one of their own to rent Grace’s apartment.

This is how Zelda had come to this little ’shetl’. When the Liebers moved, the possibility the two bedroom flat would be an invitation to a family, had the women frantic. Rachel had asked the Rabbi and he had recommended Zelda.

Why did one old lady need two bedrooms?
She had a job in design and worked from home. She had been welcomed into the building as if a queen. Older women, who lived through depression and war and fear and death and loss wanted quiet and the companionship of others who didn’t need conversations, (be they in English or Yiddish) annotated. Zelda was one of them. In her seventies, married, widowed, remarried, divorced, with no children to visit. They, and other women members of Beth Shalom, had formed a book club and Bridey Murphy had been a popular selection. This was the second time the club was reading it, and they were all alert for signs that they were here before.

Leah, asked for the ‘evidence’ again.

“How many times do I got to say it?” Zelda was not at all annoyed.

With so little in their lives every oddity was talked to death.

“When Sara was three she was singing an Edith Piaf song, one of the early ones. Then, when she was fourteen, Grace asked her to pass the zaltz in French and the girl did it without thinking. Grace said that as long as you don’t make a big deal of it, the spirit inside of Sara will ‘remember’ but when you alert her to it, it’s like the fourteen year old memories overwhelm the ones from a previous life.”

“So what you plan to do?” Leah asks.

“I’m thinking about it.” Zelda replied.

“You could say Grace wanted her to know some of the old things and talk to her about them. Grace had a very interresting life. Not that anyone cares about that now. All they care about is hula hoops.” Thelma supplied.

“Show her the magic table.” Rachel said pointing a finger and nodding her head as if a judge sending someone to the gallows.

The magic table had been brought from the old country by Grace’s Aunt Yetta. Yetta had left everything to Grace when she died in 1921. The table was small and flimsy, if it was left on the street, only garbage men would touch it. Painted black a century ago, it had faded into an ashy greyness, but the top, inlaid with thin squares of mica was shiny. Each square covered a secret compartment in the table, but one had to know the different tiny levers to push to open them. The table had traveled over the ocean full of jewelry, precious papers, strange items that had meanings lost.

Zelda didn’t know all the secrets, she could only open one box where Grace had left her safety deposit key. All the women knew of that table and that single ‘formula’ to open the compartment which housed the key. This meant none of them or all of them could take the key.

They were thinking of the key.

“If she’s a ‘menche’ she gets the key, if she’s one of those stupid girls, better she don’t get it.” Leah decided.

“What Grace have in the deposit box?” Selma asked.

“Maybe money?” Rachel always stated the obvious.

“Sara’ll come tomorrow and I hope she’s a nice girl.” Zelda yawned, signalling it was probably time for them to return to their apartments.

******************************************************

It was clear Sara didn’t want to be in an old lady’s apartment. Zelda had woken at five to start cooking so at twelve, when the girl arrived, there’d be a feast.

“I’m not hungry,” the girl said looking around the room as if it was a prison cell.

Zelda was extremely neat, but had left the Bridey Murphy on the coffee table along with a book about reincarnation. Sara paid no attention to them.

“Would you like a drink?” Zelda asked moving to the kitchen.

“No,” Sara barked.

Zelda had never raised a child but had enough experience to recognise the dog in the manger attitude.

“Here’s the ten dollars,” the girl said jabbing the bill at her as if a knife.

The old woman had no time for games; “Why are you so miserable? Am I taking you away from something? What would you be doing if you weren’t here?”

“I don’t know.” Sara snapped.

“Your dear Aunt wanted me to tell you about her life.” Zelda tried. “I have to fulfill the promise. Whether you like me or not or want to be here or not, for ten weeks, for only two hours every week, I would tell you about her life. She’s your aunt, it’s your history.”

Sara made one of those nauseaus faces teenagers are so adept at. Zelda decided not to talk to her or respond, simply to tell Grace’s story. Plunge in, and hope there was a brain inside that teased rat’s nest of hair.

“Although your people come from Poland and Norway, Grace was born in France.”

The curiosity on the girl’s face meant her parents, like so many assimilationists, pretended they came over on the Mayflower. Realizing despite herself, Sara was interested, Zelda slowed her story and continued. She didn’t remember everything Grace had told her. Grace had never narrated her life, she shared when it was appropriate, bits here, incidents there. If Zelda had made a plan she would have been able to tell the story with more precision. However, she had launched herself and would continue. What she didn’t know she invented, stealing from other lives she had touched, memories and the basic knowledge of what Europe was like before the First World War.

Sara’s disinterest and aloofness evaporated. The girl was listening, drinking in a time and place gone forever with intensity. Zelda was almost frightened by it. The two hours ended quickly. Sara didn’t want to leave, but Zelda knew that to get her back, to keep her focus, she must behave as if there was no urgency.

When the girl had gone from the apartment, in flocked Rachel and Leah and Thelma. They ate the food and drank the coffee, more than certain that Sara wasn’t hearing a story but the old soul within her was grabbing at identity.

“The pictures! The pictures!” harped Leah, “get the pictures, see if she recognizes the pictures!”

Grace had hundreds of photographs, they set about sorting them. Leah suggested they put them in an album.

“Listen, my niece has old pictures, I’ll borrow them, and see if we can use some of them.” Rachel supplied.

“France–who comes from France?” Thelma asked the walls, then, “Sophie! Her family came from where? Nice? Near Nice?”

“Yes! We have to get old photos of France–!” They exclaimed, and the four, with more energy then they had exhibited for the past thirty years, set about running down every person they knew who might have such pictures or memorabilia.

On Saturday Night, instead of sitting out side, they examined Zelda’s apartment.

“You don’t want it look like a museum.” Selma indicated.

“Move the photos into your workroom so it looks like you have them for a purpose,” sagely intoned Leah. Zelda was so nervous on Sunday morning it was as if she had a date. She cooked, not as much as before, and cleaned what was already clean, and waited for Sara.

*********************************************************

When the girl entered, there was an ambiguity. In one way, Zelda could see that she had enjoyed the stories, but in another, it was as if she didn’t want to be caught enjoying them. Zelda, who had tried to chase her anxiety with a cigarette, quickly stubbed it out.

“Mind if I smoke?” asked fourteen year old Sara.

Zelda knew the ‘right’ answer. She was supposed to ask if her parents knew she smoked, if she had permission to smoke, all the awful little laws which apply to children.

“Here, use this ashtray. It was Grace’s.” Sara beamed, almost infatuated. How eagerly she took a cigarette from her pack of Kools. To maintain the budding conspiracy Zelda imparted;

“I thought you were dying for a cigarette the last time, but didn’t mention it.”

“Thanks.” Sara smiled, hungrily sucking on the cork.

“You want coffee?” Zelda offered.

“Yes, thanks.” Sara relaxed onto the sofa, and began to ask questions about what Zelda had told her last week. Did the questions betray greater knowledge?
Were there topics and items not mentioned that Sara’s old soul was supplying?
Zelda didn’t know. Her memory wasn’t what it used to be, so she couldn’t be sure if she had told Sara about the pickle vendor or not.

After the coffee and cigarette, Zelda led her into the work room where they could go over the photographs. Sara picked up each of the black and white images and studied them. Was she simply amusing herself, or was she seeing/remembering?

Teenage girls with teased rat’s nest heads don’t sit and look at photographs of their grandmother’s world with such quietude. Zelda, afraid her nervousness would ruin the moment, moved into the other room, poured more coffee for herself, looked out of the window. She didn’t want to leave Sara too long, so pretended she had only gone to get the photos borrowed; the one’s she promised never to let out of her sight.

When Zelda entered the workroom, Sara turned to her, pointing at a photo;

“She looks familiar.” Quickly Zelda approached and observed the image of a woman who peered from behind a shop window.

“I think that’s your grandmother.” She replied. Sara stared at the photo. The resemblance was striking. Anna’s nose was bigger and she had been older when it was taken, but it could be looking into mirror.

*********************************************************

“So that’s your evidence, huh?” Said Rifka Goldberg, exhaling cigarette smoke into the air as they sat outside on their chairs. Rifka was a ’semi-regular’. Her daughter, who lived a few blocks away, was her usual contact. Rifka often left her apartment in the mornings, spent the day with her daughter, returned home in the evenings, too tired to socialize.

Although she’d heard the Sara story before Zelda’s incursion, and though she’d given no opinion, this Sunday night, the night after Sara’s identification with the photograph, she felt impelled to speak.

“Look, you girls need something to do. Why don’t you volunteer to roll bandages or read to the sick or make rag dolls? Hmmm? Look at your folly. A baby is singing. I’ve raised lots of babies, my daughter is on her fourth. They sing. It can sound like French, it can sound like Russian, but what it is, is gibberish. So scratch that off. Now asking for the salt in French isn’t so far from English as to be impossible to understand, and further, it’s salt. If I point in the general direction, you’ll pass me the salt. We all use salt. And the photograph? It’s her grandmother, it looks just like her. She saw her face. What is the super natural reincarnation heebie jeebie about that?”

The women were silent, looking everywhere but at Rifka.

“So I’m a spoilsport. So?” Rifka stabbed, stubbing out her cigarette. “I have to go in now. Goodnight.” And she closed her chair and carried it inside.

The women were embarrassed. The darkness hid blushes. The silence went on. Rachel broke it;

“So did you see the price that goniff Silverberg is charging for his necterines? He should rot in prison.”

“Excuse me.” said Zelda, folding up and going in.

She knew they would talk about her behind her back, pretending they weren’t as convinced as she was that Sara was the reincar- nated spirit of some one else. When she reached into her apartment she couldn’t do more than sit on the rocker and cry. She felt so foolish, so old. When there was a knock at the door she knew it would be one of them, but didn’t want to answer. As she hadn’t locked the door, she didn’t have to. It was Rachel.

“I come for a good cup of tea,” she said, moving to the stove, chattering about good tea and the price of necterines, and that she was thinking of getting a television set but wasn’t sure, giving Zelda the time she needed to dry her tears and gain composure.

“So I use your good china. Live a little. What are you saving it for? To give to people who like melmac?” As Rachel fit her bulk onto the Queen Anne chair, (taken from Grace’s apartment as were a number of nice pieces, for who among her family would appreciate quality?) “Zeldalah, every week you have a nice young girl who is interesting in the old days come and visit. She doesn’t come for you to baby sit her brats, she doesn’t come to borrow money, she doesn’t come to sell you anything, she comes. She comes and she listens, and she looks at old pictures, and when she grows up and gets married and has children, knock wood, she will know she came from somewhere.”

Zelda sipped the tea through a sugar cube and felt better.

“Anyway, before the others come to bother you, I’ll go over to Thelma and watch her television.”

Rachel was right. Zelda decided not to share Sara with anyone. Not to talk about her anymore. There was rain that week so there was no reason to sit in front of the building, and as she decided to clean her house, no reason for anyone to sit in her apartment.

When one is old, cleaning takes a very long time. Everything has to be removed from a cabinet, parked just so, then the cabinet has to be carefully moved from the wall, and sweeping and mopping, and then the day is over, so the next day, it’s cleaning the shelves, and that day is over. Then it’s carefully dusting and wiping down the treasures, and the next day is over. Then it’s putting everything back.

And by that time it’s Friday and the need to shop and cook and get ready for Shabbos, and go to Synagogue and schmooze, and come home. Then it’s Saturday, Synagogue, then home and sleep, so to get up on Sunday and start to cook and clean and wait for Sara.

* * *

When Sara entered on Sunday, her eyes fell on the Magic Table. It was usually kept on the otherside of the cabinet, but it had been moved to the middle of the room and not replaced. Sara went to it as if a magnet and she iron.

Zelda watched her.

Sara touched it here and there, and suddenly a compartment opened, not the one with the key. Zelda was about to say something, but didn’t, quietly sliding into her rocker. This is how it is, she thinks. This is how it would be. Tiny memories, rising like bubbles to the surface. Distracted memories, forbidden memories. Zelda smiled; this is my secret.