C4 antho - Chamber Four

~100~ The Chamber Four Fiction Anthology
believed I was freeing myself, fact by fact, from the narrow
expectations that had confined my parents’ lives. But when I
moved into the light and opened one of the notebooks I
found not my own tidy print but a script so sprawling and
wild it burst beyond the lines on the page.
March 26, 1954. Weltschmerz. Literally, it means
world-pain, but Professor Redl told me it is the distance between
the world as you want it to be and the world as it really
is. Why doesn’t everyone feel this? How can one have a
brain and not feel this gulf?
Professor Redl? On the journal’s inside cover, I found
printed in somewhat neater block letters: The Journals of
Rebecca Zaperstein, November 1953-July 1954. Then one of
my boys called me back, and I had to leave everything under
the stairs.
* * * *
When Eric stopped by to ask if I could watch Vera again
while he taught class, I could have pulled him aside and told
him about the journals. But I did not. I did not want to part
with them yet. I was curious. I was nosy. I was what my
mother used to call a kokhlefele, a meddler. That afternoon,
while Joel and Peter napped, I went back under the stairs
and pulled out one of the notebooks. I read hurriedly,
hunched with the flashlight, poised for the sound of footsteps.
September 14, 1953. Mama was wrong. Barnard is no
different from anywhere else. I have nothing in common
with the other girls. All they care about is finding a husband.
By now I should know better. Very few people care
about books and ideas, which are as essential to me as air
and water.