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After that, everybody settled down

It happened every single night I was in quarantine in Block 8 Last thing every night, some unseen voice would yell into the dark, ‘Vive la France!’ and someone else would answer, ‘God bless Ah My accent would have given me away

But it was brave of the others to do it for ain I burst into tears again But it just kept on ringing and ringing They know I aht that if I didn’t answer it they’d send so, and it would be worse having to open the door to a French bellhop – especially since I still haven’t got dressed – than it would be talking on the phone to the English-speaking switchboard operator So I answered and said ‘Hello’ in my best imitation of Before-Ravensbr&uu ti, ‘Rosie? Rosie?’ as if she were hunting for o woods, and I was so dumbstruck to hear her voice that I didn’t answer at first, which didn’t help Then, believe it or not, I did not burst into tears again I just said, ‘Hello, Mother,’ very calmly, and lied and lied and lied

I’ve been in a prison camp in Ger place and they wouldn’t let er hasin the Paris Ritz!

I talked about the wonderful silk quilt thing and the beautiful bigand the ridiculous gigantic tub and room service

‘Didn’t the Nazis take over the Ritz in Paris?’

‘Yes, that’s why it’s in such beautiful condition! And –’

I could talk about this safely, with real enthusiasm

‘– The Germans didn’t boe of Paris was supposed to pound the city to pieces before he surrendered, and he refused to do it Berlin told him to blow up all the monuments – the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral and the Arc de Trioer to France last summer I flew over the whole of the city and it was just beautiful’

Mother sighed

‘Oh, Rosie It is so good to hear your voice’

She was crying – not ht – we just thought you must have been shot down, of course It seeh – have you heard what they’re finding now? There are some terrible stories Have you heard about these concentration ca up with people who say they’ve been freed from these awful places We don’t believe any of it for a second – those Jeomen who said they’d been –’

I didn’t hear what happened or didn’t happen to the Jeoth until the distant transatlantic twitter of Mother’s voice went anxious and I could tell she was calling ain

I put the phone back to ht I’d lost you’

Every spring, Mother makes us wash the house – actually hose down and scrub the outside of our house She is probably doing it now, getting excited abouthome Our house is brick and about fifty years old There is a wide front porch with coluets up on the porch roof to do the second floor and the bedroo from the front yard I run back and forth to the kitchen delivering buckets of warm soapy water for Daddy; Karl and Kurt play with the hose until it’s time to rinse all the soap off

Afterwards the porch smells of pine soap and the s are so clean they are just reflective slabs of blue sky

How can I ever tell Mother about the filth? It wasn’t plain old dirt Dirt’s easy to get rid of – you can rinse it away It doesn’t hurt you The linoleuets scrubbed with Clorox every teeks Mother would pick up a ball of pie dough off the kitchen linoleu and slap it down on the pastry cloth on the dough tray, and laugh ‘We’re all going to eat a peck of dirt before we die’

I’ about a cru about more than 50,000 women locked inside a cinder and concrete prison half a mile wide and a quarter of a ot there, there were three toilets that still worked in Block 8, although they were pretty horrible There were 400 of us using the by the time they sent me to the Siemens factory three weeks later or whenever it was Most of us used the ditch outside