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speak.
“Those fucking bastards,” Zelda said under her breath.
Smoke came out of Yaakov’s mouth as he said, “ Mein Bruder . . . Max . . .”
“Don’t you worry, he’ll be fine,” Zelda said, though she couldn’t know that then.
Then Yaakov looked at me with his good eye and whispered, “ Mein kleines Wolfmädchen .” He’d called me that once before. It meant “My little wolf girl.”
Then Yaakov died. And I learned what it really means to give up the ghost. I felt his brush by me like a soft, warm wind. It lingered on my face a moment like a lover’s gentle kiss, then it was gone forever, leaving a tingle on my skin. Then that was gone too.
I stalked back up the hill and emptied the machine gun’s drum into the face of the man who’d set Yaakov afire. When the trigger clicked its last and the drum was empty, the guy’s face looked like raw hamburger meat.
And to this day, I love the taste of a half-raw hamburger. Every bite is sweetened by the memory of what I did to that Nazi fucker’s face.
Moses lived. He was never right in the head after that near fatal beating the Nazis gave him. He was prone to temper tantrums where the least little thing could cause a big blowup. And one of his eyes was off-kilter, like it was always looking off in weird directions, looking out for dangerous things nobody else could see. It wasn’t unusual to find him hiding under his bed at night. Other than that, he was the same sweet little Krout he always was, except that his memory had some new holes in it. His armless fiddle player Viola stuck by him and they got married six months later. A big carnie freak show of a wedding.
Moses kept the golem locked safely in its cabinet. He let me visit it whenever I wanted. I had my own key. Sometimes I’d squint my eyes a little and could see flesh-and-blood Yaakov standing there like a statue.
A week after Yaakov died, I did the crazy thing. I was alone with the golem. He was standing there in his cabinet looking at me with statue eyes. I wrote the word on its forehead to make it come alive, just like Moses used to do on stage. The word that meant truth .
Emet.
I waited. And waited. Nothing happened. In my crazy desperation I opened my mouth to say the Yiddish words I’d heard Moses say a hundred times, the magical incantation to bring the golem to life. I had no idea what they actually meant. That didn’t matter. What mattered was the magic.
My tongue flicked out to wet my lips and then I spoke.
I said the magic words.
I closed my eyes and willed the golem to come alive. To come in the name of Yaakov Munk to avenge all the injustice and cruelty in the world. To take up the torch, so to speak, to carry on the work I’d started when I killed Yaakov’s killers. I willed the golem to go on a rampage and destroy anything or anybody that got in his way.
I repeated the incantation. The words vibrated in my skull and chest. Tears ran down my furry cheeks. I looked at the golem through my flood of tears.
I opened my mouth to howl, to make the most mournful yowl the world ever heard.
But I didn’t howl. Instead, I blurted: “Yaakov!”
This ain’t no fairy tale. I never lived a fairy tale life, so I’m not going to treat you like a rube and bullshit you that the golem came alive. It just stood there like the clay statue it was.
But I knew that wherever Yaakov was in the otherworld, he heard me. My voice got through to him, to his ghost or whatever. I knew it because I felt it. My voice plucked strings and the strings made a sound and the sound went where I wanted it to go. Like the golem was a radio playing my voice for Yaakov somewhere on the other side of this life.
I broke down and cried, sobbing so hard it hurt. I fell on my knees and hugged the golem’s stony legs.
I was still Wolf Girl. I would always be a howler at heart. But now I was more.
I’d found my lost voice and it was OK to be human again.
The golem had brought me back to life.
THE
“Those fucking bastards,” Zelda said under her breath.
Smoke came out of Yaakov’s mouth as he said, “ Mein Bruder . . . Max . . .”
“Don’t you worry, he’ll be fine,” Zelda said, though she couldn’t know that then.
Then Yaakov looked at me with his good eye and whispered, “ Mein kleines Wolfmädchen .” He’d called me that once before. It meant “My little wolf girl.”
Then Yaakov died. And I learned what it really means to give up the ghost. I felt his brush by me like a soft, warm wind. It lingered on my face a moment like a lover’s gentle kiss, then it was gone forever, leaving a tingle on my skin. Then that was gone too.
I stalked back up the hill and emptied the machine gun’s drum into the face of the man who’d set Yaakov afire. When the trigger clicked its last and the drum was empty, the guy’s face looked like raw hamburger meat.
And to this day, I love the taste of a half-raw hamburger. Every bite is sweetened by the memory of what I did to that Nazi fucker’s face.
Moses lived. He was never right in the head after that near fatal beating the Nazis gave him. He was prone to temper tantrums where the least little thing could cause a big blowup. And one of his eyes was off-kilter, like it was always looking off in weird directions, looking out for dangerous things nobody else could see. It wasn’t unusual to find him hiding under his bed at night. Other than that, he was the same sweet little Krout he always was, except that his memory had some new holes in it. His armless fiddle player Viola stuck by him and they got married six months later. A big carnie freak show of a wedding.
Moses kept the golem locked safely in its cabinet. He let me visit it whenever I wanted. I had my own key. Sometimes I’d squint my eyes a little and could see flesh-and-blood Yaakov standing there like a statue.
A week after Yaakov died, I did the crazy thing. I was alone with the golem. He was standing there in his cabinet looking at me with statue eyes. I wrote the word on its forehead to make it come alive, just like Moses used to do on stage. The word that meant truth .
Emet.
I waited. And waited. Nothing happened. In my crazy desperation I opened my mouth to say the Yiddish words I’d heard Moses say a hundred times, the magical incantation to bring the golem to life. I had no idea what they actually meant. That didn’t matter. What mattered was the magic.
My tongue flicked out to wet my lips and then I spoke.
I said the magic words.
I closed my eyes and willed the golem to come alive. To come in the name of Yaakov Munk to avenge all the injustice and cruelty in the world. To take up the torch, so to speak, to carry on the work I’d started when I killed Yaakov’s killers. I willed the golem to go on a rampage and destroy anything or anybody that got in his way.
I repeated the incantation. The words vibrated in my skull and chest. Tears ran down my furry cheeks. I looked at the golem through my flood of tears.
I opened my mouth to howl, to make the most mournful yowl the world ever heard.
But I didn’t howl. Instead, I blurted: “Yaakov!”
This ain’t no fairy tale. I never lived a fairy tale life, so I’m not going to treat you like a rube and bullshit you that the golem came alive. It just stood there like the clay statue it was.
But I knew that wherever Yaakov was in the otherworld, he heard me. My voice got through to him, to his ghost or whatever. I knew it because I felt it. My voice plucked strings and the strings made a sound and the sound went where I wanted it to go. Like the golem was a radio playing my voice for Yaakov somewhere on the other side of this life.
I broke down and cried, sobbing so hard it hurt. I fell on my knees and hugged the golem’s stony legs.
I was still Wolf Girl. I would always be a howler at heart. But now I was more.
I’d found my lost voice and it was OK to be human again.
The golem had brought me back to life.
THE
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