When We Were Brave

by Karla M Jay

  Abraham moved closer. Izaak studied the man’s thin face. He looked like a bird ready to peck at the ground. Why couldn’t he stand up straight? Maybe this was the reason Mama always told him to mind his posture.

  “I’ve worked here for two years,” Abraham said. “The rumors from the east say conditions here are far better than where you could end up”—he looked Izaak’s way—“especially with a young child. Besides, your husband will be held in a different part of the . . . um . . . work camp.”

  Sometimes being young worked in his favor, but he felt much older than eight after all he’d seen happen in the past few months. He would somehow prove he was more grown up when they got to their new place.

  Mama looked around. “Surely Poland is better than this crowded camp.”

  The old man’s face sagged as if he suddenly wore out. Older people needed to eat early and go to bed when the sun went down, or that’s what Izaak’s neighbors used to do. The sun was dropping fast now, so it was bedtime for the moon-shaped man. Izaak worried about night arriving before they were shown to their room to sleep. But where were the houses? This place looked like a huge campground with dirty streets between rows and rows of long sheds.

  The moon-man looked at Mama and squished his eyebrows. “I pulled you aside because I recognize you, ma’am. You won’t remember, but you helped deliver my son thirteen years ago. A difficult birth.”

  Mama shot him a wide smile. “What a nice surprise. Thank you for remembering me.”

  Izaak pictured a baby boy born with a bent-over back like Abraham’s. That would be difficult.

  “Are you still a maternity nurse?”

  “Yes, until recently.”

  “Good. We have a hospital and maternity ward here. Tell them that when you get to the registration table.” He moved away to talk to another group.

  Izaak didn’t want to be in this overcrowded camp. He tugged Mama’s coat. “Are we staying here?”

  She pulled him close. “Just for a few days. It wouldn’t hurt to make a little money before we travel. Perhaps, we can pay for passage on an earlier train.”

  He trusted her to know what to do. They reached the interview barracks, a long white building that needed new paint. “Wait here, love.” Mama pointed to a bench just inside the entryway. “I’ll be back soon.”

  Mama walked into a huge room full of tables and typewriters. The noisy machines clicked and dinged, making it impossible to hear what she said to the two workers at the table. With nothing to do, he imagined how he would draw this room and the people. If he squinted, he saw a path through the middle of a human forest where people clustered in small groups around picnic tables. But no one was happy with what was offered at the tables because their faces were sad as they turned away.

  Mama walked out and took his hand, and his pretend drawing vanished. It must be freezing inside the barracks because her face looked white and her hands felt cold, even through her gloves.

  They moved to another line, still carrying their suitcases. “We were assigned a place to sleep, love.” She squeezed his hand. “But it’s not going to be nice.”

  “Should we pretend to be Catholic again?” The sun was gone, but a big moon shaped like Abraham showed up on the other side of the sky. He thought of Mr. Fritz being killed last night and their long walk. It seemed so long ago.

  “No, we don’t have to do that. But we have to share a room. There are just so many people here.”

  As they moved along the rows of barracks, he wrinkled his nose. Something smelled bad, like the open-pit toilets at the zoo. Those always scared him. Papa used to hold him on the seat, so he wouldn’t disappear down the stinky hole, but that smell remained in his nose for hours.

  He followed his mama, telling himself he would not complain no matter who else stayed in their assigned room. Then, he repeated Papa’s favorite saying: “A man’s true wealth is the good he does in this world.” With each step, he let the words march through his head, determined to be that kind of person. He repeated the sentence twenty-four times before Mama said, “Here we are.”

  They passed so many long buildings. Surely, they’d left the stinky camp by now. Then he spotted tall wire fences around the outside of the barracks and a high tower with a big treehouse on top. He missed his treehouse in Amsterdam. This one looked like it was stuck on a tall wooden frame. Other children were here, including Zev and Aharon. Maybe they could all play in it tomorrow. It even had a light that moved a big beam back and forth along the ground, especially now that it was darker.

  The long house chosen for them had the number 97 on the front. Once inside the door, they walked into the sleeping area—a stuffy, overcrowded room.

  The building was made of wood, but the doors and windows didn’t look as if they fit right. Someone built it too fast when they were making these big bedrooms. Papa would never allow this sloppy work when he had his company.

  Izaak’s heart beat faster. They weren’t sharing a room with just a few people, but hundreds were crammed inside the building. And he didn’t like bunk beds, but that’s all they had along the walls, stacked three levels high. Once, he slept at Derek Van der Mullen’s house before Derek couldn’t play with him anymore, and Izaak was on the bottom bunk. He worried all night about being smashed into a people pancake if Derek’s bed broke. He tugged his mama’s arm. “We have to be on top.”

  They walked along the endless rows, looking for an opening on an upper bunk. The best they could find was on the middle level. Mama pushed their suitcases up into the space first and then motioned for him to climb the ladder. At the bed opening, he crawled onto a thin straw sack. Mama crawled in after. He held his breath because it smelled like someone had peed on this bed, maybe more than once. They had no closet, cupboard, or any other place to hang up their clothes, so they kept everything on the bed.

  Izaak sat cross-legged and looked out from their shelf. Many of the other people looked back at them like the caged monkeys at the Artis Royal Zoo. Except, the zoo monkeys had an open space to live in, with lots of trees and houses. The people here were crowded onto the bunks, their eyes big, holding each other. His stomach hurt at the thought they had to stay here. He wanted to go back to hiding, back to the little pantry off the kitchen where he and Mama shared a mattress.

  Mama unrolled a cloth, and they ate the last of the bread and shriveled carrots from the train station. She whispered, “There’ll be breakfast in the morning. They have cooks and kitchens here. For now, we should just go to sleep.”

  He studied the other chimpanzees on the shelves, who were talking in quiet voices. “How many people are here, Mama?”

  She didn’t say anything at first, so she must have been counting them. But then she said, “More than enough.”

  Then she rubbed his back. “Close your eyes. It’s been a long day.”

  The thin prickly mattress scratched his legs through his pants, and the pee smell made his eyes water. He’d never be able to sleep, but he lay down and curled up next to his mama, and she covered them with her long coat.

  Mama asked him to be brave, and he could do that. She fell asleep as the people talked around them. His mind immediately turned to thoughts of Papa. He reached for his suitcase, and eased open the latch, and brought out the folded, pencil drawing of his family at the windmills he had shown Mr. Fritz. He turned it toward the dim light hanging in the center of the room. Then he ran his fingers over the pencil marks, tracing his papa’s face. This was one of his best drawings yet. In this picture, Papa had a mustache, but often he shaved it off and then looked so different. Would Izaak recognize him when they met again? He put the drawing back in the suitcase and snuggled close to Mama. Before drifting off, he decided that no matter what his papa looked like, he would know him when he spoke his name. Papa had the best voice in the world.

  At the end of their giant bedroom, one long trough ran down the middle of
the white tiled area with lots of separate faucets, so people could wash and not bump each other. Izaak stood on a wooden stool to reach one of the sinks and scrubbed his face clean.

  An awful thing about the camp was the one toilet for all of them. Because it was always too busy, he and Mama walked to the building called a latrine. And his first thoughts about the camp were correct: It was very smelly like the zoo toilet, but built even worse, with just a long board over an open ditch he hung his bottom over. And no privacy. He and Mama held up her coat for cover when they took turns.

  The guard, who said they’d be here five days, was way off. For three weeks, they lived crowded together, still crammed onto the middle bunk. Every night, he dreamed of being crushed. No one mentioned when they would be allowed to leave, and it seemed Mama stopped asking the moon-man because he said it was too dangerous. Izaak’s stomach felt sour inside every time he thought about Papa living in danger.

  He and the other children were bored most of the time, but some days they explored the sections of the camp where they were allowed. It was set up like a small town. Although men and women couldn’t be together at night, they saw each other every morning. In his nightly prayers, he asked that Papa be transferred to Westerbork. He didn’t understand how the Germans made these decisions, but hoped God had some idea. Every morning, he rushed to the meeting place, his heart thumping, imagining Papa’s face when he spotted him. But so far, Papa wasn’t one of the arrivals.

  And why the adults said going to another camp could be worse than this one, he didn’t understand. They usually stopped talking when he was nearby. Many things were rotten about this camp, like the soup and bread they ate at every meal. The only good distraction was the camp tried to put together a school for ages one to nine, but even that wasn’t enough to keep his mind off Papa.

  The school was in the back section of a barracks and opened onto a playground. It had a sandbox, swing, and one seesaw. With so many children in the schoolroom, the teachers scheduled how many could be outside at one time. His favorite part of the day was to run around with boys his age, searching for sticks for sword fights and talking about the toys they would get when they arrived in their new towns. Those moments were more fun than he had for months. He asked his new friends if they’d ever met Guus, but no one had. With so many camps—he heard Abraham, the moon-shaped man, say there were over forty—it was hard to know where his friend was now.

  Today, Mama was dressed in a blue smock. She worked with the babies at the camp hospital. Every day she walked him to school before heading to work.

  Outside his school barrack, she kissed his head and smiled. “Let’s go be valuable and useful, Izaak.” The camp bosses were grumpy and made sure everyone had a job. Looking helpful and valuable was whispered about at night in their long bedroom, and everyone tried to follow this important instruction. People who broke the rules were sent to the other side of the camp. The part no one was allowed to visit.

  The camp boss, Commandant Gemmeker, always looked cross. He hardly ever walked past the large locking gate into their side of the camp, but when he did, he carried a tiny dog that barked as if he hated all people.

  Minutes after Izaak entered the school, rain started banging hard on the wooden roof. The teacher, Miss Ruby, hurried around to close the windows. She was pretty with a quick smile and warm hands that made Izaak melt when she rubbed his back. Before coming here, she worked in a school in Amsterdam for one year. Miss Ruby tried to create new things for them to do each day. One of his favorite activities so far was to roll small stones in a little paint to make colorful gifts for new arrivals.

  This morning, Miss Ruby pushed her dark curly hair off her forehead and tightened the matching belt on her blue flowered dress. “Children, find a place to sit.”

  Izaak sat on the floor by Zev and Aharon and the older children. It wasn’t that he didn’t like babies because he often helped Miss Ruby rock them to sleep, but they couldn’t listen well and often cried when important instructions were given.

  She held her hands behind her back and smiled. “I found a nice surprise.” She quickly pulled her hands around to show them what she held. “Look! Books! And since the weather won’t let us go out today, we will have a long story time.”

  Izaak felt his face stretch into a wide grin. He missed books. Mama always read him a story before bed when he was younger, and when he started to read, they alternated reading a page each. Stories were like art. They took him to places he never saw and let him imagine dragons, magic treasure, and secret caves.

  The children quieted down, and Miss Ruby opened the cover on the first book. It had big colorful pictures with a story about animals playing tricks on each other in the forest. The book was for younger children, but he soaked in how the artist had drawn the pictures.

  The next book was about a boy who told a lie to help his opa get medicine for the sick oma. And the last book was about a snowstorm that trapped a family in a cabin in the mountains. Izaak and his mama were like the family in the story, working together to stay alive.

  Some babies fell asleep. Miss Ruby let them stay on the floor and motioned the others to an area with a stack of paper and crayons. She whispered they should draw whatever was in their heads. Izaak’s hand shook a little as he reached for a lovely new crayon. He’d been stuck with his stubby pencil for so long, he’d forgotten how beautiful color could be as he dragged the waxy tip across the page. Testing it out, leaving an impressive red streak in a long diagonal across the top of the page.

  But what to draw? So many ideas flew through his mind as the girl beside him went right to work. She drew with a brown color, running her hand around in scribbly circles over and over, her face bunched together. “What are you drawing?”

  She stopped and looked at it. “Don’t know.” Then she picked up a black crayon and went back to coloring over the brown lines.

  Mama needed to smile again, so his decision was made. He chose a flesh color and carefully drew the lines from memory. He changed colors a few times but added tan and shades of brown, and then black for the hair. He gave the face a smile. When he studied the eyes, they looked a little surprised, but that seemed right. Mama would like it that way. Then he folded the paper several times until it fit in his pants pocket. He couldn’t wait for tonight to show it to her.

  The rain stopped by the time school ended, but he couldn’t play in the streets because they were too muddy. What could he do while waiting for Mama? She wasn’t finished working until sunset, and right now, it was still high above the treehouse towers.

  “Want to explore?” It was Zev.

  “Sure.” Zev’s twelve-year-old ideas were always interesting. “Where do you want to go?”

  “I heard prisoners are locked away in factories over there,” Zev whispered. He pointed to the side where no one was allowed.

  Prisoners! That would be something to see. “Do you think they have chains on them?”

  “Maybe,” Zev said. “Or maybe ropes, and their feet are tied close together and they hop or walk like this.” He demonstrated walking with tiny steps as if his ankles were stuck together.

  They gave up trying to imagine what a prisoner could look like and decided to go find out for themselves. They snuck around buildings, staying close to the walls until they passed four treehouses with guards. Izaak was disappointed when he learned he couldn’t play in any of the seven perches. The men with the guns up there made him nervous, until one day he waved to the guards and they waved back.

  Izaak and Zev arrived on the other side of the camp, far away from their long barracks.

  The buildings were bigger here and didn’t have metal bars on them as he imagined. This spying was exciting, although he worried about what Mama would think if he got caught. He and Zev snuck around to the back of the building and found cracks between the wooden wallboards. They cupped their hands and peeked inside. Men and women talk
ed to each other while they chopped open batteries with hammers and a sharp tool. They threw some of the parts from inside the batteries into one basket and the outer casing into another. The workers’ faces were dirty, and they were dressed alike in wooden shoes and baggy grey clothes. Even the women wore pants. A strong smell leaked from the room, and Izaak stepped back and coughed. How could the people stand to be in there?

  Loud clanging sounds came from the next long building. He and Zev scampered to it and peered in a low window. Men stood at long tables, flattening big metal pipes with hammers. The men weren’t talking to each other, and he wondered if their heads hurt. The vibrations moved through his body with each blow of a hammer, dozens running up and down him every few seconds. He covered his ears and saw Zev do it, too.

  Suddenly, they were grabbed from behind and nearly lifted off their feet as a man shouted at them in words he didn’t understand. His heart pounded like a puppy running loose inside his chest, and he swallowed hard. The man pushed them to the ground and yelled again. Izaak ducked his head, hoping not to be hurt any further, and when he wasn’t hit, he stood and straightened his shoulders. Zev scurried closer to him until their arms touched.

  The man was dressed in a dark uniform decorated with metals and iron crosses. It was Commandant Gemmeker, the camp boss. His little dog wasn’t with him, and his face was red and bunched together. His boots were shiny even though it was muddy outside, and he wore an armband with a red spider cross in the center. Izaak squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to cry. People who got in trouble were sent away. He might never see Mama again or might be stuck here on the bad side of camp hammering pipes.

  The commandant studied them for a long time and then pointed to their side of the camp. He followed them as they walked through the mud this time. Izaak owned only one pair of shoes and ruining them would be another reason Mama would be angry. He knew better than to break a rule, and he shouldn’t have listened to Zev.

  At the gate, the commandant opened it and motioned them inside. Izaak was glad to see Abraham, the bent-over moon-man, hurry toward them. He was one of the nicest men in camp and someone Izaak trusted.