The Devil's Arithmetic

Hannah moved toward the front door. She certainly didn't believe that the prophet Elijah would come through the apartment door any more than she believed Darth Vader or Robin Hood would. No one believed those superstitions anymore.

Glancing over her shoulder, Hannah saw her family were all watching her intently. Aaron bounced up and down on his chair.

“Open it, Hannah!” he called out loudly. “Open it for Elijah!”

Flinging the door open wide, she whispered, “Ready or not, here I c . . .”

Outside, where there should have been a long, windowless hall with dark green numbered doors leading into other apartments, there was a greening field and a lowering sky. The moon hung ripely between two heavy gray clouds. And across the field marched a shadowy figure. He had a shapeless cap on his head, a hoe over his shoulder, and he was singing. . . .

“Yolen does a fine job of illustrating the importance of remembering.”

—
School Library Journal
, starred review

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The Devil in Vienna
 
Doris Orgel

Friedrich
 
Hans Peter Richter

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Aranka Siegal

Hide and Seek
 
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I Am a Star
 
Inge Auerbacher

Letters from Rifka
 
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To Life
 
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Epilogue

WHAT IS TRUE ABOUT THIS BOOK

“
I
'
M TIRED OF REMEMBERING
,”
HANNAH SAID TO HER MOTHER
as she climbed into the car. She was flushed with April sun and her mouth felt sticky from jelly beans and Easter candy.

“You know it's Passover,” her mother said, sighing, in a voice deliberately low. She kept smiling so that no one at Rosemary's house would know they were arguing.

“I didn't know.”

“Of course you knew.”

“Then I forgot.” Hannah could hear her voice beginning to rise into a whine she couldn't control.

“How could you forget, Hannah. Especially this year, when Passover falls on the same day as Easter? We've talked and talked about it. First we've got to go home and change. Then we're going to Grandpa Will and Grandma Belle's for the first night's Seder.”

“I'm not hungry. I ate a big dinner at Rosemary's.
And I don't want to go to the Seder. Aaron and I will be the only kids there and everyone will say how much we've grown even though they just saw us last month. And, besides, the punch lines of all the jokes will be in Yiddish.” When her mother didn't answer at once, Hannah slumped down in the seat. Sometimes she wished her mother would yell at her the way Rosemary's mother did, but she knew her mother would only give her one of those slow, low, reasonable lectures that were so annoying.

“Passover isn't about eating, Hannah,” her mother began at last, sighing and pushing her fingers up through her silver-streaked hair.

“You could have fooled me,” Hannah muttered.

“It's about remembering.”

“
All
Jewish holidays are about remembering, Mama. I'm tired of remembering.”

“Tired or not, you're going with us, young lady. Grandpa Will and Grandma Belle are expecting the entire family, and that means you, too. You have to remember how much family means to them. Grandma lost both her parents to the Nazis before she and her brother managed to escape. And Grandpa . . .”

“I remember. I remember . . . ,” Hannah whispered.

“. . . Will lost everyone but your Aunt Eva. A family of eight all but wiped out.” She sighed again but Hannah suspected there was little sympathy in that sigh. It was more like punctuation. Instead of putting periods at the ends of sentences, her mother sighed.

Hannah rolled her eyes up and slipped farther down
in the seat. Her stomach felt heavy, as if the argument lay there like unleavened bread.

It wasn't a particularly long trip from New Rochelle to the Bronx, where her grandparents lived, but the car was overheated as usual and Aaron complained the entire way.

“I'm sick,” he said loudly. Whenever he was unhappy or scared, his voice got louder. If he was really sick, he could hardly be heard. “I'm going to throw up. We have to go back.”

As her mother turned around and glared at them from the front seat, Hannah patted Aaron's hand and whispered, “Don't be such a baby, Ron-ron. The Four Questions aren't that hard.”

“I can't remember all four questions.” Aaron almost shouted the last word.

“You don't have to remember them.” Hannah's patience was wearing thin. “You're supposed to
read
them. From the Haggadah.”

“What if I can't read it right?”

Hannah began to sigh, caught herself, and turned it into a cough. “You've been reading right since you were three, Mr. Smarty.” She cuffed him lightly on the side of the head and he cried out.

“Hannah!” her father called back in warning.

“Look,” she said quickly to Aaron to shut him up, “it doesn't matter if you make a mistake, Ron-ron, but if you do, I'll be right there next to you. I'll whisper it into your ear just like they do in plays when someone forgets a line.”

“Like Mrs. Grahame had to do when you forgot . . .”

“Just like that.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

She gave him a funny look and then pounced on him, tickling him under the arms and over his belly. When he tried to escape by turning his back on her, she got him again from behind. His laughter rose higher and higher until he almost
did
throw up.