Page 110 - Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen

quite touch it. It slipped away from her. Something
about smoke. About fire. About ovens. "Oven," she
whispered.
"Well," Gitl said, "at least we know something."
Hannah looked up at her, the slip of memory gone.
"What?"
"That we will be fed."
"When?"
"God only knows. And let us hope that He tells the
Germans!"
They turned back to stare around them, straining into
the darkness of the barracks. Hannah saw that almost
all the sleeping shelves were filled. The women and
children lay as still as corpses.
"Look, not even the thought of food tempts them,"
Gitl said.
Hannah could not keep herself from rubbing her eyes.
The thought of sleep, horizontal sleep, suddenly over-
whelmed her.
"What am I thinking of?" Gitl said, the heel of her
palm striking her forehead. "You are only a child. You
need sleep as well as food." She put her hand qut to
touch Hannah on the head and then, as if thinking
better of it, patted her instead on the shoulder. "Go to
sleep, Chaya."
"Go to sleep .." Hannah glanced down at her wrist.
.
"Go to sleep, J197241, you mean."
"You are a name, not a number. Never forget that
name, whatever they tell you here. You will always be
Chaya—life—to me. You are my brother's child. You
are my blood."

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