How these Lipka girls

look into my heart!

I don’t know Elli any better

than I know her older sister, Friedl,

and yet she, too,

cuts close to the bone.

My limits:

I am not so great a student in Hebrew,

a class we must take in our school.

I am not so great in penmanship.

I am not good at piano,

even though I am the daughter of a pianist.

I am a picky eater.

And more to the point:

Yes, Elli, I have a weakness

for sweet talk,

for flattery—

I like them both.

Are they poison?

I know for a fact

it was sweetness and flattery

that got our exit papers

from the Nazis last month.

Father buttered them up

with such sweet talk, plus,

of course,

with a bunch of money and boxes of our pretty

crystal things.

If only the Americans could be sweetened this

way—

If sweet talk and flattery could get us our visas,

then I really wouldn’t care what Elli Lipka

thought about it.