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Show in my father's house/ 193 My mother nodded and stared at the floor. "It makes me sick at heart." "Remember when that little girl was kidnapped and cut up in little pieces?" Aunt Helga asked my mother. That night I couldn't sleep - the first of many sleepless nights throughout my childhood. I stared into the dark closet and imagined the wolves of my dreams hiding there, imagined the big brutal rawboned man next door breaking down the wall between our apartments, imagined he was the man who kidnapped and cut up little girls. What did Aunt Helga say he had used? An axe and a butcher knife, the axe for the bones, the knife for...I sat up stiffly, my heart knocking in my ears. My mother lay beside me, snoring softly. "Mama," I whispered. "Mama, I'm afraid." She didn't stir. I didn't want to wake her. After fixing all the meals, doing the cleaning and laundry, and teaching her piano lessons, she was so tired. But I was so afraid. My father had said that we should fear only the Lord, that any other fear was of the Devil. I wondered what I had done wrong to invite the Devil into my heart. Was it because I was lazy and sloppy, as Aunt Helga said? Was it because I;was greedy, wanting half of everything when I went selling with Danny? I searched ray mind, watching the orange-blue flicker of the furnace. "Hellfire," I whispered, not knowing where I had heard of it. I remembered the Jews of Europe. They were God's chosen, just as we were, so my father taught us. Chosen to do the Lord's work. Chosen to burn in hell-fire. Did the Lord want His people to be burned? I sat up in bed, gasping |