Read Online All the Light There Was by Nancy Kricorian - Free Book Online Page A

stairs. When the men retired to the front room to talk politics and the women repaired to the kitchen, I fantasized that Zaven and I headed to the park, where the roses were just starting to bloom. He used his penknife to cut a rose from a bush and presented it to me with a flourish. But, of course, I was actually in the crowded kitchen with a damp dishtowel in my hand. Much later, I realized that all he was waiting for was a small gesture from me—going a few steps out of my way to cross his path or slipping a note into his jacket pocket—but for me at that age, even a small act seemed impossibly bold.
     
    The next morning when I met Denise on the corner of the rue de Belleville on the way to school, she was wearing a yellow fabric star sewn to her jacket. The law had gone into effect a few days before, and it was the first I had seen of this new insult.
    Denise avoided my eyes. “Did you see Z.K. this weekend?”
    I followed her lead, slipping into conversation without comment about the ignominious star. “We had Sunday dinner with his family yesterday.”
    “Did you get to talk with him alone?”
    “Nothing. Not even an elbow next to mine on the table.”
    “At this rate, you could be eighteen before he says anything,” Denise said.
    “Maybe he never will. Maybe he’s not interested in me.”
    “You know that’s not true.”
    Just then, a mother and a little blond boy of about five years old walked by. The boy pointed at the star on Denise’s jacket and said, “Mama, look, a Jew.” The mother leaned down and whispered something into his ear as she hurried him past.
    Denise flushed. “I was pretending there was nothing different today. But this is our life now. So one might as well get used to it. The first morning will be the most difficult.”
    “It’s like something out of the Middle Ages. How can this be happening in the twentieth century?”
    Denise shrugged. “The irony, if you can call anything about it ironic, is that we’re required by law to wear them but we have to pay for the fabric with our ration tickets.”
    “What would happen if you didn’t wear them?”
    “They would put us in jail, I suppose, if they caught us.”
    As we continued down the hill, we saw others wearing yellow stars, and Denise exchanged empathetic glances with them. It was as though they were acknowledging their membership in a no-longer-secret society. We walked in glum silence toward the lycée. When we were a few blocks from our destination, a young man we crossed paths with noticed Denise’s star and with a smile pointed to his own. In the center, instead of
Jew,
he had written
Buddhist
in black letters.
    “Do you think he’s really a Buddhist?” I asked.
    “Well, he’s not a Jew. My brother says we’re crazy to do what they tell us. We registered as Jews, and Henri says they have our address any time they want to come find us. Now my mother has sewn these stars on our clothes. Henri ripped his off this morning, threw it on the floor, and ground it under his heel. My mother was weeping, he was yelling at her, and my father started shouting at Henri. Henri’s angry they didn’t listen to him two years ago when he wanted us to go to America. We have cousins in Baltimore. But my parents trusted in the French Republic. They are French citizens, or at least they were until recently. What about your parents?”
    “They have Nansen passports, the ones for stateless people. That’s what most Armenians have.”
    “My parents’ citizenship was revoked. They have no country now either.”
    I thought of an Armenian maxim my father used in his darker moods: If they send two baskets of shit to our city, one will come to our house. The Occupation was baskets of shit, that was sure, and the largest one had been delivered to the Jews.
    When Denise and I reached the school, I noticed other classmates wearing yellow stars on their jackets. One girl had let her long hair hang down so it obscured most of the yellow, and