Page 16 - Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen

Hannah sighed. "He's starting again," she whispered
to Aaron.
Aaron shrugged.
Hannah could scarcely remember when Grandpa Will
didn't have these strange fits, showing off the tattoo on
his left arm and screaming in both English and Yiddish.
When she'd been younger, the five-digit number on his
arm had fascinated her. It was a dark blue, very much
like a stain. The skin around it had gotten old, but the
number had not. Right after Aaron's birth, at his bris
party, when all the relatives had been making fools of
themselves over him, Hannah had taken a ballpoint pen
and written a string of numbers on the inside of her
own left arm, hard enough to almost break the skin.
She had thought that it might please Grandpa Will as
much as the new baby had. For a moment, he'd stared
at her uncomprehendingly. Then suddenly he'd grabbed
at her, screaming in Yiddish Malach ha-mavis over and
over, his face gray and horrible. Everyone at the party
had watched them. It had taken her father and Aunt
Eva a long, long time to calm him down.
Even though they tried to explain to he» what had
upset Grandpa Will so, Hannah had never quite for-
given him. It took two days of hard scrubbing before
the pen marks were gone. She still occasionally dreamed
of his distorted face and the guttural screams. Strangely,
though she'd never dared ask what the words meant,
in her dreams she seemed to know. No one had ever
volunteered to tell her. It was as if they'd ail forgotten
the incident, but Hannah had not.
"Mama," Hannah said when the TV was turned off

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