What She Lost

by Melissa W Hunter

  “What is it?” she demanded when she saw my expression. I shook my head, staring at my father’s listless body. “What’s the matter with Papa?” I asked, leaning against the door.

  “He’s feverish,” my mother said, turning back to him. “He’ll be all right. He just needs to sleep.” I saw how her shoulders stooped forward in exhaustion. Her words carried no conviction. I didn’t want to tell her what I’d seen, but she read the terror on my face. “Something’s happened. Tell me, Sarah.”

  The words came spilling out of my mouth.

  “You can’t go anymore,” she stated simply when I was done.

  “Mama,” I began, but she interrupted me before I could say more. She fixed me with a look and said, “No, Sarah. It is getting too dangerous. We can’t risk it. Remember what I said.”

  I thought of Fryderyk and his grandmother being visited by the Nazis. I thought of the roundup on the street I had just witnessed. I knew she was right.

  “We’ll find another way to make do,” she said, but I knew the truth. There was no other way. And I wouldn’t see Fryderyk again.

  Twenty

  “Where are we going?” Gutcha asked, panting, trying to keep up with me. I didn’t answer. It had been a few days since the Nazis had evacuated a section of the ghetto. Everyone was on edge, whispering about what it meant. For me, those days had been one long nightmare.

  Helena’s family was one of many that had been taken away on the trucks. When Jacob found out, he raced to their small flat, screaming her name. Sam followed on his heels. A short time later they returned home. My brother’s face was red, his eyes swollen from tears. “Is it true?” my mother asked, putting her arm around him and guiding him to a chair. When Jacob didn’t speak, Sam nodded. “They’re gone,” he said. “There’s no one left on that street.” I noticed something clenched in Jacob’s fist. It was a bit of ribbon, yellow like the one Helena always wore in her hair. “Helena,” he whispered, bringing it to his lips, rocking back and forth.

  “She’ll be all right, Jacob,” my mother said, kneeling beside him. But he shook his head and pushed away, walking to his violin. We watched as he contemplated the case, unopened in his hands. Carefully, he placed it back in its corner. My heart sank at this gesture. The music had left him.

  Despite my brother’s overwhelming sorrow, all I could think about was Fryderyk. After a week had passed, I was frantic to see him again. I begged my mother to let me return to their farm just once more, but my words fell on deaf ears. He’d said it was fate that we met, that he was meant to help me. Now it was meant to be over. But I wouldn’t be able to rest unless I saw him, to explain, to tell him good-bye. I only hoped that, as I ran through the street with Gutcha at my heels, he’d be working in the fields. Would he be relieved when I told him? Would I be hurt if I saw relief in his eyes?

  Gutcha didn’t know about my trips outside the ghetto. Only the ten of us who lived in our small home knew my secret. As we ran onto the road that skirted the field, Gutcha paused and called out, “Sarah, stop! Are you crazy? We’re not supposed to be this far away!”

  My eyes scanned the expanse of farmland, frantically searching for Fryderyk. A crow lifted into the air, silhouetted against the gray clouds as it circled and gave a mournful caw. Gutcha grabbed my hand and started pulling me away. “What’s wrong with you, Sarah?” she demanded, but still I didn’t answer. I allowed myself to be pulled along, dejected. The fields were empty.

  We turned a corner and were almost home when we heard a commotion. I stopped to look over my shoulder. Two large army vehicles had pulled onto the road behind us. From the lorries, a number of SS jumped out and started grabbing at the young men who were laying bricks in the street, forcing them from the work line and onto the truck beds, guns trained at their backs. I heard the shouting and confusion as some struggled, some tried to run. I heard gunshots and saw a young boy fall face-first into the road as he ran toward us. It was happening again, right before my eyes. My heart plummeted when I realized my brothers were in that work crew. “Jacob!” I yelled, turning to run toward the mob. “Sam! Isaac!”

  “Sarah, come back!” Gutcha called after me, but I ignored her. I pushed my way into the crowd, searching desperately for my brothers. I was jostled, knocked to the ground. Something hard hit my head. My face was suddenly in the mud. I crawled for a moment to the gutter, where dirty water ran in small rivulets, then pulled myself up on shaky feet. That’s when I saw Sam a few feet away, his back turned to me, hands raised, being pushed onto a lorry. “Sam!” I screamed, trying to run to him, but a hand caught my own. I turned, hoping to see Jacob or Isaac, hoping by some miracle I was mistaken and Sam was actually behind me, safe and sound, holding my hand. But it was Gutcha.

  “Sarah, don’t go after him!” she whispered, her eyes wide, pulling me in the opposite direction.

  “He’s my brother!” I cried, straining against her hold. “I’ve got to get him away!”

  “Please!” she begged. Then another hand fell on my shoulder, pushing me through the doorway of an empty building. I looked up and saw, to my relief, Jacob and Isaac, doubled over, panting beside us. “They’ve taken Sam!” I wept, falling into Jacob’s arms.

  “I know,” he whispered, holding me tightly. “I know, Sarah.”

  “We have to go after him!” I cried.

  Jacob shook his head. “We have to get home quickly now,” he said. “Isaac and I need to get off the streets.”

  “But Sam,” I choked.

  “We can’t help him now, Sarah,” Jacob said. “It’s out of our control.”

  I had lost both Sam and Fryderyk. I felt myself grow numb, immune to more sorrow. My mother sobbed, frantic over Sam’s whereabouts, but I felt nothing. I sat with my legs drawn to my chest against the wall. The twins came to sit next to me, asking in their tiny voices what was wrong, but I had lost my ability to speak.

  “Where did they take him? Where has he gone?” my mother asked no one in particular, pacing the floor of our flat for hours. Her voice felt like arrows piercing my ears. I put my hands to my head, blocking out the sound, rocking myself to sleep.

  Time no longer mattered. Days passed, slowly turning to weeks. Now that I no longer visited Fryderyk, our food supply was pitifully small. Without Sam to accompany him, Jacob no longer ventured out to trade what he could; there was nothing left for us to trade anyway. The twins grew so thin and sickly that I hardly recognized them. They barely moved, their cheeks hollow, the skin stretched over their bones like thin parchment. My father spent his days sleeping.

  I had only ever witnessed a miracle once in my life, the day Jacob returned home from the army. I prayed for another miracle, for some word of my brother’s whereabouts. To my amazement, my prayers were answered.

  One afternoon we heard a sound at the door and turned, fearful it was the SS. To our astonishment, Sam stood in the doorway, leaning on a pair of crutches, blinking into the dim shadows.

  “Sam!” Jacob cried, running to his side. My mother gasped and fell back against the wall. “It can’t be,” she whispered into her hands. “It can’t be.”

  “I’m home, Mama,” Sam said. His voice was dull. His eyes appeared sunken, exhausted, surrounded by dark circles. It looked like he hadn’t slept in ages.

  “Where have you been? What happened to you?” Jacob asked. I stared at the crutches and his leg wrapped in a soiled bandage. He attempted to move into the room but collapsed on the threshold.

  “Samuel!” my mother cried as Jacob bent to lift him up.

  “My leg,” Sam whispered, his face pale. “Careful with my leg.”

  Jacob carried Sam to the mattress where my father slept and laid him down gently.

  “I think it’s broken,” Sam whispered. A sheen of sweat stood out on his forehead.

  “How did this happen?” Jacob asked, while my mother knelt beside them, staring at Sam in disbelief.<
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  But Sam just shook his head, his eyes closing.

  “Let him rest,” my mother said, taking his head onto her lap. “We’ll know more when he wakes.”

  Sam slept for hours. When my father woke and found Sam asleep beside him, he rolled toward my brother, grabbed Sam’s hand, and pressed it to his lips, his tears falling on Sam’s fingers. “He’s home, Leibish,” my mother said, still sitting with Sam’s head in her lap. “God has heard our prayers.”

  We watched and waited until Sam began to stir. When his eyes finally opened, he was confused and agitated. He looked at us as though we were strangers.

  “Sam?” my father spoke tentatively.

  “Where am I?”

  “You’re home,” my mother said.

  Sam immediately broke into sobs. My mother tried to lift him in her arms, but he winced in pain. “My poor boy.” She was desperate to comfort him. She smoothed back his hair, rocking him as though he were a toddler. Sam didn’t protest.

  “What happened to you?” Jacob asked, kneeling beside the mattress. “Where were you this whole time?”

  Sam swallowed, regarding each of us before speaking. Finally, his eyes rested on my mother’s, and he said, “It’s no good, Mama. We have to get away. Now.”

  “Get away?” my father asked weakly. “It’s impossible. There’s nowhere to go.”

  “We have to try, Papa,” Sam insisted. “We’ll hide in the woods. We’ll move at night when it’s dark. If we stay here, we’re doomed. Things are happening. Very bad things.”

  “What’s happening?” my father asked. “What things?”

  “I saw it all.” Sam swallowed, shaking his head. “We were taken to a prison of some sort. We worked so hard, harder than here, harder than I’ve ever worked. We were treated like slaves, Papa. People were beaten if they weren’t able to keep up with the work. We had to sleep on top of each other. People were sick. Some even died. We can’t let that happen to us.” His eyes fell on the twins and he began to sob again. I grasped Isaac’s hand tightly.

  “I heard conversations among the guards of more places like this being built all over the country. Anything is better than that fate, Papa. We can run tonight! We have to try!”

  Then he turned to my mother. “Please listen to me, Mama,” he begged.

  “But your leg,” my mother said. “We can’t do anything until your leg heals, Samuel. What happened to it?”

  “I was part of a group laying railroad tracks. We carried the weight of the tracks any way we could. If we dropped them, we were punished.” Sam’s face changed; a memory appeared to surface in his mind. His eyes became distant, angry, even scared. After a moment, he blinked and looked back at my mother. “A track fell on my leg, Mama. That’s all you need to know.”

  “What do you mean?” Jacob asked. “How did it fall?”

  “Don’t ask me questions you don’t want the answers to, Jacob,” Sam said quietly. “The guards were allowed to do whatever they wanted to us. You really don’t want to know how it happened,” Sam stressed.

  I wondered at what went unspoken, what Sam’s words insinuated. I imagined the abuse he must have received and felt my entire body tremble. My mother’s face turned pale. “Oh, Sam,” she sighed, reaching for him again. My aunt and uncle hovered in the doorway to the small room. My uncle and father looked at each other.

  “Sam,” Jacob said finally, “I don’t understand. How did you escape? How did you get home?”

  “I don’t understand it either,” Sam admitted, turning to my brother. “I guess I was of no more use to them. Those of us in the infirmary were loaded onto trucks and sent home.”

  His head fell back on his pillow and his eyes began to close once more. We looked at each other silently. I saw reflected in my family’s faces the fear I felt myself. I wondered if Sam was right, if there was something even worse looming on the horizon. If that was true, then perhaps it was hopeless. Perhaps we were all doomed.

  Twenty-One

  My mother watched over Sam vigilantly. With the help of my aunt, they tended to his leg, wrapping his knee tightly in clean bandages so his movement would be restricted. After a few weeks he attempted to stand and put pressure on it. Jacob helped him move about the small flat. To our relief, he continued to improve, walking farther distances unassisted until he was finally able to walk on his own. But he worried more than I’d ever seen him worry. The fight and righteous spirit that used to run through his blood had gone out of him, replaced by a jittery, nervous energy.

  We witnessed more and more of our neighbors gathered up and sent off to the unknown, just like Sam had predicted. Each day when the trucks rolled into our streets, we hid inside, peering out cautiously from behind our closed curtains. We heard crying, yelling, angry shouts, and orders barked in crisp German almost daily. Occasionally we’d hear a gunshot. I would cry out, the twins would whimper from their spot in the corner, and my brothers would jump. We all held our breath. It felt like we were always holding our breath.

  We became accustomed to silence, to moving about stealthily, to speaking in whispers if we spoke at all. Waiting. Waiting. We didn’t even know what we were waiting for.

  It was hardest on Jacob. He wondered daily where Helena had gone, and he once more longed to play his violin. Now that we never left our home, it was the only thing that gave him comfort. But we worried that the sound would carry and bring us unwanted attention. So he carried it with him wherever he went, cradling it in his lap, or closing his eyes and holding it to his chin, swaying to music only he heard.

  It shouldn’t have come as a surprise when we heard a loud knock on our door one day. We all froze. I looked to my mother and father in fear. It was palpable, the fear. It restricted my breath, sent the blood rushing to my feet so my head began to swim. My body went numb. I felt tears close to the surface. I had hoped we would be forgotten. We rarely opened our door anymore to the outside. If we forgot about the outside world, wouldn’t they forget about us?

  The fist banged relentlessly. “Open the door!” a voice shouted.

  My father tried to stand, but he was weak and fell against the chair. My brothers ran to him.

  “Papa,” Jacob said, “you need to hide.”

  “No,” my father whispered, shaking his head. I felt panic rise with bile in my throat. I remembered, not so long ago, a similar morning when a loud voice shouted for my father and brothers. I trembled at the memory, worrying that this time, if they were taken away, they wouldn’t return. My father was no longer the man he once was. All his strength was gone. He had been replaced by an old man. His hands shook as he looked at my mother.

  “Leibish,” my mother said, running to him and grabbing his hands. “The boys are right. You must hide. What if they take you? I won’t know what to do without you!”

  Sam was pulling my father to his feet as the sound of something hard was thrust against the door. I jumped at the sudden, angry noise. The twins buried their faces in my skirt.

  “Hurry!” Sam whispered. He and Jacob helped my father to kneel beside the table, pushing him down so he could crawl underneath. It was a feeble hiding spot.

  It was Jacob who moved to open the door, his movements stiff, as though he were fighting gravity itself. Two soldiers stood there. They wore matching uniforms with tall black boots, long overcoats, rounded helmets, metal buttons, swastikas on their arms, and guns slung over their shoulders. One held a sheet of paper in his hands. They eyed Jacob silently, then glanced at the rest of us.

  “We have orders for deportation,” the soldier holding the paper snapped. He examined the list in his hand and then said, “Jacob Waldman. Gather what you need on your person and come with us.”

  I didn’t hear anything else. A loud ringing had filled my ears. I felt like I was falling. No no no no no no no no—the word echoed in my head—no no no no no.

  Then I became aware of
screaming.

  My mother had flung herself at the feet of the two Nazis. She was prostrate, her arms held out beseechingly. She was crying, lamenting. When she could utter words, she pleaded, “Not my Jacob. No! Not my Jacob! You don’t need him. Not him! No! Take me!”

  “Get up!” the other soldier barked. He kicked out at her, but she turned to him and began clawing at his boots.

  “My son!” she cried. “Please don’t take my son!”

  “Jewish slut!” the man yelled, reaching down and shoving her away from him. He pulled the gun from behind his back and trained it on her where she lay, collapsed on the floor.

  I couldn’t breathe. When was the last time I had drawn breath? I couldn’t think. I was paralyzed with fear.

  “Brocha!” Tova cried out. Berish pulled her closer to him. I gripped Isaac’s hand, squeezing until both our knuckles turned white. The twins whimpered behind me.

  My father rushed from his hiding spot, crawling on his hands and knees to collect my mother in his arms. He stared up at the soldiers in horrified silence. Jacob blinked and turned to my parents. His face was completely white, but he swallowed and bent down so he could look them in the eye. “Mama,” he whispered, putting his hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right. I’ll be fine.”

  She threw her arms around him. “Don’t go, Jacob,” she sobbed. “I can’t lose you again!”

  “Mama,” he whispered again, “don’t talk like that. You’ll see, I’ll come home again. I’m going to be working, like Samuel. Nothing more than that.” His eyes met Sam’s across the room. Sam’s face was pale, his lips set in a tight line.

  She didn’t argue, but her tears fell silently onto his crown of curls.

  A rough hand reached down and grasped Jacob’s shoulder. “Get up,” the first soldier said. “Up!” He pulled against the fabric of Jacob’s shirt, bringing him to his feet.

  Jacob moved through the room like a man condemned to death, throwing some clothes and shoes into a satchel. We watched in silence as he took up his violin case. “I’m ready,” he said as he turned to the room at large.