"Mary's family," the voice drifted down into our outer provinces, "God Bless them, are sweet people…" No words: I don't know, maybe it's because Hebrew has no vowels that Jews are so good at saying so much without using words. An eyebrow, a tilt of the head or a lifting of one hand says plenty for those who can read.
Even I, who was almost illiterate in that strange language of gestures and silences, could read something about cousin Mary's family that wasn't what it should be. I craned my neck to try and see these cousins who weren’t cousins - who might not be all they should be.
They were sitting near the very top of the table, almost in the place of honour where my grandfather was ensconced. If not for two chairs that contained his eldest niece and her husband, they would have been seated beside him. From where I sat they didn't look much different than those folk across from them except they weren't nearly so fleshy. Aside from my grandmother who had something wrong with her thyroid, they were the only two who didn't have the sleek look of the well fed.
If forced to guess I would have said that maybe they would have been a few years older them my mom, but I couldn't be sure; something about their faces could have taken it either way. They looked both like young children and aged, wizened elders. There was a quality about them that made you feel protective and wanting to keep them from harm. Just like any other orphans.
While I was looking up the table something was making it's way down; its passage was marked by a head turning to one side to present a good ear to the mouth beside it, a lifting of shoulders and splaying of hands, or even the slightest of nods. You just knew everyone was watching, waiting their turn to be passed whatever morsel was making the rounds so they too could chew it over and add it to the hoard of information they could hand out over the coming year.
When the words "the camps" finally made it down to me, and obviously in reference to the two who weren't anyone's family really, I didn't know what to do with it. The only thing the word “camp” meant to me was the place I was subjected to for two to four weeks each summer.
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