The clerk examined Grandfather's papers for a long time, looked him up and down, from his hair to his boots, and said: Is she yours?
My daughter's daughter, he said.
She's surprisingly tal , you know.
I heard a creak of leather and noticed Grandfather had stretched up on his toes.
She took me into an office, closed the door on my grandfather, turned my face back and forth in her fingers. Your left eye's lazy, she said. She pul ed my head down and checked in my hair for lice and then asked where the bruise came from. What bruise? I said. My hair had begun to grow and my grandfather had sewn a single coin at the fringe, where it bumped against my forehead. She pul ed back the coin, pressed her finger against my forehead. It's ridiculous to have money in your hair, she said. Why do you people insist on such things?
I watched the bob of silver at her neck. She put the cold round metal of it against my chest and listened through tubes.
She shone the flashlight into my throat, put me up against a wal , and mumbled something. She gazed at me and said I was very tal for my age. I was indeed tal , even for seven, but now I had to be five once more.
The clerk said: Five, my holy eye.
She measured my nose and the distance between my eyes, even the length of my hands and wrote it al down careful y. She took my thumb and rol ed it back and forth on a soft pad of black ink and pushed my other fingers down hard onto the page. I liked the little patterns my fingers made, like bootprints down by a river. She asked me lots of questions, where I was born, what was my real name, if I went to school, where were my parents and why weren't they with me. I told her they had fal en beneath the ice but said nothing about the Hlinka guards. She said: What about your brothers and sisters? I said, Them too. She raised her eyebrows, looked at me sternly, and then I blurted: My brother, Anton, tried to break away.
Break away where? she asked. I looked at my fingers. Break away where, young lady? From the lake by the forest. Who in the forest? she asked.
The wolves, I said. Lord above, she said. And what did these wolves look like? I didn't say another word but she said, Oh, you poor thing, and then she touched me on the side of the face with a gentle stroke of her finger.
She took me out to where my grandfather was waiting. She looked around quickly, then leaned in close and whispered something. Grandfather stepped back and swal owed hard. The clerk looked over her shoulder again.
Do you want to make a complaint? she said.
About what?
I'l make sure it gets to the right people.
I don't know what you're talking about, said Grandfather.
The little girl told me, she whispered.
Told you what?
You don't have to worry, she said.
Grandfather nicked a quick look at me, then started talking a long line of gibberish about a pack of wolves and men who were hungry and wheels that leave a mark in the forest and birds flying above the trees. It made no sense at al , not even to him.
The clerk stared at him: I'l ask one last time. Do you want to make a complaint or not?
Grandfather went off on another long kite line of gibberish.
The clerk sighed and her voice became stern and loud again. I've had enough of you people, she said. One day you want help, the next you just
spout nonsense.
She slapped her hand down on a desk bel . Another official came out from a back office. He wore black elastic bands on his sleeves. He raised his eyes to heaven when he saw us. Christ, he muttered. He shoved the papers across the wooden counter without even looking at them.
Al right, she must come in and register every three months.
What about the other children? asked Grandfather.
Al the Gypsy children have to do it.
And the other children?
Oh, them? he said. No, why?
Grandfather made a rattling sound in his throat and signed the papers with an XXX. On the way out I asked him why he didn't write using the letters he ‘d taught me, but he turned and pinned me with a look. Halfway down the steps he caught me by the ear and said: Never tel them that story, never. Do you hear me?
He almost lifted me in the air by my ear.
They'l make it twice as bad, he said. And then they'l just shove us under again. D'you understand me, child? Never.
The pain shot through me. We walked down the last of the steps. I looked at my hands. They were black with fingerprint ink. I sucked at my fingers, but he slapped my hand.
A respectful girl keeps her insides clean, he said. Don't bring that ink down into your bel y.
