Page 79 - Devil's Arithmetic by Jane Yolen
P. 79

last,  even Fayge  and her father began to sing.
                                         Hannah listened to the growing chorus in wonder, as
                                       the song leaped from truck to truck down the long road.
                                       Didn't they know? Didn't they guess? Didn't they care?
                                       She kept remembering more and more, bits and pieces
                                       of her classroom discussions about the Holocaust. About
                                       the death camps and the crematoria.  About the brutal
                                       Nazis and the six million dead Jews.  Was knowing—or
                                       not  knowing—more   frightening?  She  couldn't  decide.
                                       A  strange  awful  taste  rose  in  her  mouth,  more  bitter
                                       even  than the Seder's bitter herbs.  And they  were  for
                                       remembering.   She  fought  the  taste  down.  She  would
                                       not,  she  could  not  be  sick.  Not  here.  Not  now.  She
                                       opened  her  mouth  to  catch  a breath  of air,  and  found
                                       herself  singing.  The  sound  of her  own  voice  drowned
                                       out the steady drone of the tires on the endless, twisting
                                       road.



























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