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dead and will never come back. I’d better go to school now so I won’t be late.”
    My mother stood at the sink, gazing at me, her eyes dark and troubled.
    I walked quickly to school in the early morning sunlight, the world sharp and clear through my new glasses, the magic glasses of Ilana Davita Chandal.
    In class I raised my hand. The teacher had been talking about different kinds of relatives and asked if anyone had an aunt or an uncle. “My Aunt Sarah is in Ethiopia,” I said. “Ethiopia is a country in Africa.”
    I sat in the third row on the side of the room near the wall of tall windows. Heads turned toward me.
    The teacher, a heavyset, middle-aged woman who wore her graying hair in a bun, smiled patiently and said, “What does your Aunt Sarah do?”
    “She’s a nurse.”
    “Your Aunt Sarah is a nurse in Ethiopia? Does she work in a hospital?”
    “Sometimes she works in a hospital. Mostly she works in villages. She helps the Ethiopians who are hurt by the Italian Fascists in the war.”
    The class was quiet.
    “The Italians invaded Ethiopia last year and are bombing villages. They kill women and children. And Fascists are going to start a war in Spain. They’re going to rebel against the government and try to take over the country.”
    The class was very still.
    “Well,” the teacher said with a thin smile, “we certainly know a great deal about politics, don’t we. Do we know who Mr. Adolf Hitler is?”
    “Adolf Hitler is the Fascist leader of Germany. He’s an evil person.”
    “And Benito Mussolini?”
    “He’s the Fascist leader of Italy.”
    “And Stalin? Do we know about Stalin?”
    “Stalin is the leader of Russia.”
    “Is Stalin a Fascist?”
    “Stalin is a Communist. He is not afraid to use his power for good purposes.”
    The teacher stood behind her desk, looking at me. Her round face seemed a pale floating disc above the darkness of her dress, which began just beneath her chin and reached to well below her knees.
    “Where are you hearing all these things, young lady?”
    “From my father and mother and their friends.”
    “I see. Well. All right. Let us leave the subject of politics. We were talking about aunts and uncles. Would anyone else like to tell us about his or her aunt or uncle? Robert? Yes. Go ahead.”
    I stopped listening and sat bored, gazing out the window at the cement expanse of the school yard and thinking about Aunt Sarah.
    During the recess a boy came over to me in the yard as I played alone on the bars. He was short and heavy, with olive skin and lusterless eyes. He sat two rows behind me in class.
    He said, “Hey, listen, kid. Watch out what you say about Italians.”
    I swung myself into a sitting position on one of the bars and looked at him.
    The boy said, “My father says Mussolini is a great man. You watch your mouth.”
    Another boy came over, lanky and flaxen-haired, with cold blue eyes and a sharp chin. I had never seen him before.
    He looked up at me sitting on one of the bars. “Hey, you, four eyes.”
    I looked around. The yard was crowded and noisy. Along the far side near the chain-link fence a group of teachers stood talking to one another.
    “You little bitch,” the flaxen-haired boy said. “My kid brother told me what you said about Adolf Hitler. You better watch it.”
    “That’s what I told her,” the first boy said.
    “My father says Adolf Hitler is the best thing that ever happened to Germany. He’s gonna get rid of all the Commies and Jews. You better keep your mouth shut or you won’t make it back home one day.”
    I climbed down from the bars. The flaxen-haired boy stepped in front of me.
    “Are you Jewish?” he asked, bending toward me, his eyes bright with hate. The other boy stood by, watching.
    My legs trembled. “My father isn’t Jewish. My mother is Jewish.”
    He seemed not to know what to make of that.
    “Watch your mouth,” he said, after a moment.
    “Yeah,” the other one said. “Watch what you