The war was stored in her memory unclearly, all out of order. In 1939, on a Monday, her father fell down the stairs. On Friday he had a nosebleed in a three-piece suit and was dead before month’s end. Nineteen forty-three was the year popular Vera called her shit-breath Isa, and so the rest of the class began to call her shit-breath Isa, too. In 1941 Louis got a little train for his birthday, which had an engine and went around and around and around. Bombs fell on Rotterdam. Trucks rolled over the loose bricks of the Sarphatistraat, where she and her mother got their pickles. She went to
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