I’m five years old.
 
We’ve just been buzzed into Aunt Miriam’s house.

Uncle Ben’s office is to the right, off the hall.

Before walking upstairs to the second floor,

I look to the right and see dark.

Mother holds my hand while I peak in:
 
Equipment. The kind the Nazis used?

No, for taking x-rays.
Overheard: Once, he gave me medicine

to abort my baby but it didn’t work

and the baby was born with an extra thumb.
I’m thirteen years old now.

Uncle Ben’s been dead eight years.

Daddy says the only good German is a dead German.

That was 1946 and Uncle Ben can’t practice medicine

at Johns Hopkins hospital. No Jews allowed.

Is that why he doesn’t smile?
I don’t know how to like him.

He doesn’t look at me.

He has a Doberman Pinscher named Prince.

When women come to the house,

Prince looks under their dresses.
 
Men laugh. Women are embarrassed.
In the basement of Aunt Miriam’s house,

a ping pong table and knotty pine walls.

Once when I was nine

a cousin played ping pong with me.

He was sixteen. Now I’m sixteen

and I read about a man the Nazis put in a freezer.

to see how much cold a human being can withstand.

When the man’s testicles turned blue, he collapsed

and guards dragged him out. A doctor records

how much time it took for the man to die,

but I don’t remember what the number said.

    Esther Altshul Helfgott is our Poet in Residence for September.