Serendipity's Footsteps

by Suzanne Nelson

  Her mother sighed, and her face smoothed, a peace spreading over it that Dalya hadn’t seen since they’d left their shop a lifetime ago. Dalya nestled beside her in the bunk, tucking her head under her mother’s chin to listen to her faint heart. The metronome of her mother’s life beat on, and soon Dalya was soothed to sleep as she gave in to her own fever, letting it swathe her in heaviness and hazy dreams. Sometime in the night, the metronome stilled, and silence became the loneliest sound of Dalya’s life.

  —

  Time turned watery, slipping by her in ripples of sadness and delirium, and the night hours passed in a fog. The hope that lay sealed inside her heart shriveled and bruised, but it didn’t die.

  When the guards found her the next morning, Dalya lay unmoving, her arms clasped around her mother. Somewhere, in the murkiness of her mind, she was vaguely aware of them standing over her, of the hum of their voices. Her body, though, seemed to be made of stone; not even her eyelids could flutter. But she was still breathing. In and out, in and out. That was what she had become. All breath. That was the only thing she could think about. If she stopped thinking about the breathing, the breathing would stop.

  For all the effort she put into it, though, the guards didn’t see. They couldn’t have. She felt herself being carried, then tossed through the air, along with her mother, landing in a pile of bodies. Others were thrown on top of her, burying her, and then they began to bump along the ground. She guessed that she was in a wheelbarrow, like the ones she’d seen ferrying the others over the past few weeks. She forced her eyes open and reached through the forest of skin on bone to find her mother, to touch her one last time.

  Suddenly, a firm, warm hand gripped hers, and Aaron’s stunned face appeared.

  “Dalya!” he breathed, his eyes wide. “How did you…?” He scanned the exercise yard, making sure no one was watching. “Don’t move,” he whispered. “They think you’re dead. The dead are the only ones who ever leave, so this is your chance.”

  She struggled to make sense of what he was saying. It didn’t seem possible he could be here right now. But then she remembered that the guards had put him to work moving the dead. He was still stronger than most others, even thin as he was, and she’d watched him coming and going with the wheelbarrows, wondering how he could stand it.

  He leaned closer, holding his arm over his nose, as if to ward off the smell. “The guards think I’m simple. They think I don’t understand, so they talk while I work.” He pushed the wheelbarrow faster. “I heard them say they’re building a crematorium here. But for now, the bodies get taken to one in Berlin, the Krematorium Berlin-Baumschulenweg….” Hope lit his eyes. “Do you understand? Don’t make a sound. Let them take you with the rest. And when you get to Berlin, find a way out.”

  Dalya tried to shake her head, tried to tell him no, but it was impossible. Her body refused to give her away, refused to accept defeat.

  The wheelbarrow stopped, and Aaron lifted bodies off her one by one, tossing them into the truck waiting by the entrance gates. Soon, she was at the top of the pile. He lifted her gently, and she felt the bony sharpness of his forearms under her waist. He brought his cheek to hers for the briefest second.

  “Remember what I told you,” he whispered. “If I can, I’ll find you.”

  He laid her with the others, making sure she was partially covered, then stepped back as the truck’s engine rumbled to life. There were no guards in the back of the truck, and the tarp draped over it gave her decent coverage. She kept her eyes open as the truck pulled away, watching Aaron’s resolute face grow smaller in the distance. It became etched in her memory, along with her mother’s sunken cheeks and eyes, her father’s pounding feet on the track, her sister’s final gurgling cough.

  But he was not the last memory she took with her.

  That was of the mountain she passed on the way out of camp.

  The mountain of crumpled shoes waiting for owners who would never return. Those shoes, she knew, had memories, too. They would not forget what had happened here. They might always be waiting for the people they belonged to. There was the imprint left behind by a child’s toes on the insole of a boot. A bulge on a loafer where a bunion had once pushed against the leather. The wearers of the shoes were gone. And the shoes lay huddled, abandoned and sorrowful, collecting rainwater and mud.

  —

  Once the truck passed through the gates of the camp, an ember smoldered inside her, forcing her mind into alertness. Her fever racked her with tremors, but she fought to stay focused on the truck’s movements. Peering through gaps in the tarp as houses and streets rumbled past, she looked for familiar landmarks. There were none. Since she’d left it on that night so long ago, Berlin had become blanketed in black.

  The truck made more turns, then slowed to a stop, and Dalya held her breath. Her heart pounded an alarm, and it seemed impossible that the guards chatting on the other side of the tarp couldn’t hear it. But they went about their business, greeting a man that she guessed worked at the crematorium.

  “Here’s another load,” one of the guards said.

  The tarp was whipped off the truck, and Dalya clenched her eyes shut, making herself as still as possible.

  A man clucked his tongue. “So many,” he mumbled. “It will take days.”

  “It better not,” another growled. “We’ll have more by then. Be quick about getting them off the truck.”

  Bodies shifted around her as two men unloaded them into a wheelbarrow to be taken inside. Closer and closer their hands came, and Dalya willed herself to be invisible, willed her lungs to wait for breath.

  A hand gripped her calf and forearm, sliding her forward in the truck bed.

  “This one must be fresh.” The man tossed her into the wheelbarrow. “Still a bit warm.”

  Wheels rolled underneath her, and soon she was out of the damp night and inside a warmer building. The wheelbarrow turned down what seemed like some hallways. Then it tipped forward suddenly, and Dalya tumbled out onto the base of a pile of bodies. Her forehead slammed into another person’s head, making lights burst before her eyes, but she didn’t flinch. The men’s footsteps died away. Minutes of silence passed before Dalya dared open her eyes.

  She was in a stark room with a large brick oven a few feet in front of her. An awful, bitter scent hung in the air, and Dalya nearly gagged, but she wouldn’t allow herself. She worried another load was coming, and sure enough, minutes later the men returned to add to the pile.

  After the fifth trip, the wheelbarrow didn’t come back. But one man did, a small, weary-looking man with spectacles, a man who surveyed the piles and gave a heavy, heartbroken sigh. It was that sigh that made Dalya form the words she could barely speak through her fear, that made her take a chance.

  “Please,” she whispered hoarsely, “can you help me?”

  The man gasped, staggering back. She twisted her limbs until she’d unburied herself, but she didn’t have the strength to stand. The man’s face was white with horror, his mouth open wide.

  “No,” Dalya said firmly. “If you scream, you kill me.”

  She waited for the man to make his choice. If he screamed, guards would come running. They’d shoot her on the spot. If he didn’t scream, then maybe…

  He scrambled toward her, scooping her up more swiftly than seemed possible for his size.

  “What can I do with you?” he whispered. “How can I help you?”

  “Take me to Leonard Goodman at the International Quaker Center.” She rattled off the address her mother had made her memorize. “He’ll know what to do.”

  The man weighed the options gravely, then nodded. “You must not move a muscle,” he said. “To everyone here, you’re dead, understand?”

  Dalya nodded. He hurried her to a coffin on a gurney and laid her inside. “I’ll prop the lid open when I’m able, but take shallow breaths or you’ll run out of air. I’ll go as quickly as I can.”

  Dalya saw his frantic eyes one last time before
he closed the lid, leaving her in darkness. The heat from her breath warmed the small space, and she felt the sudden panic of the world pressing down on her. She wanted to scream and beat against the lid, only inches from her face. But instead, she clenched her eyes shut and listened to the squealing wheels of the gurney as it began to move.

  Minutes passed, and at one point the gurney stopped and she heard the man explain to someone, “I have a pickup to make. It won’t take long.”

  The coffin was jostled, and then, just as the air inside grew stagnant, the lid creaked open an inch, and Dalya saw she was riding in the back of a hearse.

  She didn’t know how long the silent ride took, and it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that with each passing minute she moved farther away from that oven and its unbearable stench. She drifted between sleep and wakefulness as the coffin swayed through the night. Then, suddenly, the lid swung open, a blinding light flooded the coffin, and Dalya squinted into a pair of eyes full of compassion.

  “It’s all right, child,” a voice said. “You’ve found sanctuary.”

  Those were the last words she heard before the exhaustion and fever she’d fought for hours claimed her, sweeping her away into blessed forgetfulness.

  ROBBIE

  Robbie Turner was filling a wheelbarrow with rubble when he saw the shoes. He’d been watching a dozen other men from his unit playing a makeshift game of baseball amid mountains of debris. Using a broken pipe for a bat and hunks of brick and stone for balls, Tom, Bill, and the others were making a go of it. Their laughter echoed through the sunken streets, sounding misplaced and foreign. Tom had tried to pull Robbie into the game, razzing him for being such a wet blanket. But he hadn’t had the stomach for it. Not here, in this place where the world had come to an end. Not when widowed women were spending their days breaking their backs cleaning up debris from the streets.

  The Allied bombs had cratered everything. Nothing was left of most buildings but charred shells. It would take years, decades even, for Germany to rebuild Berlin and all the other cities gutted by the air raids.

  He knew he should be relieved the war here in Europe was over. Hitler was dead, and although fighting in the Pacific raged on, Robbie would be going back to the States soon. But it was hard to feel relief when he stared into the faces of the homeless and heartbroken every day.

  His unit was clearing rubble to set up a refugee camp for the concentration-camp survivors who were slowly finding their way to Berlin, wrecked by what had happened to them. Some were looking for lost family members and friends; some were trying to find the homes they’d left years ago, not realizing many were nothing but dust. Robbie was so weary of the suffering.

  Evelyn kept writing letters from back home, telling him about the beautiful springtime in Ohio and the funny things her first-grade students did every day. Beyond the graveyard that was Europe, life was moving on.

  He tossed an armful of crumbling bricks into the debris truck, smiling as he thought of Evie.

  Before he’d gotten drafted, he’d been tentative about marriage. He was young, and he wasn’t sure he was ready. But the war had made him tired, and he felt older than his years. He loved Evie; it was purely his own obstinacy standing in the way of a proposal. That was done with now. He wanted to bring some new life into this world after seeing so much of it destroyed.

  He was just setting his mind on a proposal when he saw something pale pink and shiny peeking out from under a mound of rubble. He dug through the pile and unearthed a tin box, cracked open on one side. Inside was a pair of shoes with tiny flowers embroidered along the toes. Except for a small black smudge on the back of one heel, amazingly, the shoes were untouched. They looked like they could have been someone’s wedding shoes.

  Robbie glanced around, wondering if there was any way he could track down who the shoes belonged to. He’d overheard his captain say that this was a Jewish neighborhood. Before his unit had come to Berlin, Robbie had seen the nightmare of what had happened to the Jews. They’d passed through Bergen-Belsen; they’d seen the death, and the suffering of those who’d survived. News had been trickling in from other units of similar horrors all over Germany and Poland.

  If anyone from this neighborhood was still alive, would they come back? Even if they did, by then Robbie and his unit would be long gone, and so would any opportunity to find the shoes’ owner. No, the shoes had obviously been lovingly made, and if he left them here, they’d be destroyed and lost forever. He’d come too late to rescue so many, but these shoes could be rescued, and treasured, as they deserved to be. He tucked the shoes, so dainty and delicate, carefully into his satchel, and as his fingers trailed across their heels, he was struck with the strangest notion. That the shoes longed to be worn, that it was their destiny (if shoes could have such a thing) to make someone feel extraordinary.

  It was crazy, he knew, but somehow, he was confident that Evie would believe him when he told her the story. That she, with all the tenderness and reverence a person should feel in the presence of magic, would give the shoes a life worthy of their rarity. He’d make sure that every day he took a breath, Evie would be surrounded by beauty. Better than that, he’d make sure their love together was beautiful so he could forget the ugliness of this goddamned war forever.

  PINNY

  Chopine stood at the window, watching Ray run until she was a gray smudge on the glass. She couldn’t figure her out. Tonight, she’d thrown away the prettiest pair of pale pink shoes Pinny had ever seen! It was the worst kind of wasteful. Good thing Pinny had fished them out of the Dumpster after Ray tossed them and ran. Ray never quit looking over her shoulder, like she was afraid her shadow was out to get her. Pinny herself liked her own shadow, ’cause wherever she went, it was there, keeping her company. A shadow was a fine way to fight a case of the Lonelies. When she saw Ray next, she was gonna make sure to tell her that. But right now, she needed to hurry.

  She heaved the stubborn window up until there was space, then punched through the screen. She sucked in her bottom lip, shaking her head at the tear she’d made. Her backpack got stuck on the first try, but she finally squeezed through the hole, landing smack-dab on Mrs. Danvers’s favorite magnolia bush.

  “Sorry,” she whispered, trying to lift its snapped branches back into place. They fell down again. She glared at the branches. “Well, I can’t help you much if you don’t make some effort.” That was what Ms. Terp, her crabby special-ed teacher, always said to her, and she figured the bush might need to hear it, too. For encouragement. Course, the words had never worked much for her, and they didn’t for the bush either.

  She left it flattened under the window, then checked her backpack to make sure everything inside was all right. Sure enough, Mama’s story, the pocket watch, the newspaper clipping, and the pretty pale pink shoes were just peachy. So were her camera and her stack of photos. So were her jelly beans. She popped a few into her mouth, sucking their sugar coating off while she walked toward the woods. Once they were smooth and slippery on her tongue, she bit into their gummy insides. She tried to enjoy them, but it was tough when she was worrying over Mrs. Danvers and her magnolia bush.

  Oh, Mrs. Danvers’s face would radish up when she saw it in the morning! And when she found out Pinny was gone…oooh boy! She was likely to mumble that word that Pinny could never quite make out but sounded a little like “fudge.” Pinny was already sorry for it. She didn’t want Mrs. Danvers sore at her, or at Ray, for what they’d done. Course, Mrs. Danvers might understand if she knew why. It wasn’t only about Mama’s shoes. The itch in her head had been stuck there longer than a while. Since the fall, since Careena and dance-team tryouts. It got way itchier every time she had her Life Plan meetings. In the meetings, everyone else talked. Mrs. Danvers, Ms. Terp, Mr. Sands. But not her. When she tried, Mr. Sands said, “What? What? What?” Like he couldn’t hear a word. Funny. He never said “What?” to Mrs. Danvers or Ms. Terp. Mrs. Danvers was nice, though. Maybe, someday, Pinny would be able to
tell her about the itch. But not now. Not when she had someplace to be.

  She walked faster, glad for the moon lighting her way, and while she walked, her red Mary Janes slapped against her chest. She smiled at the sound, like a heartbeat on the outside of her body, and stroked the cool, glossy toes of the shoes. Touching them made her remember the day she got them. She was eight years old, and the very first day she wore them was the very last day she saw her mama.

  It was on that day her mama got lost at Grand Central Station while Pinny was wearing her new pair of shoes.

  —

  “Pick whichever ones you want,” her mama said when they walked into the Payless on Thirty-Ninth and Second Avenue. “Every girl needs at least one pair of shoes that makes her feel like a princess. So go to it, girl.”

  Pinny smiled, pushed her glasses, which were forever sliding down her nose, up higher, and walked down the aisle of children’s shoes. There were shoes in every color of the rainbow. Some had funny holes for her toes to peek through. Others had shiny buckles and sparkly bows. Some even had heels.

  “None of them are as pretty as yours, Mama,” she said, sitting down in the aisle to run her hand along the shiny straps of her mama’s stilettos. Audition days like today were Pinny’s favorites because that’s when Mama wore her silver shoes.

  “Thanks, sweetness.” She kissed Pinny’s forehead. “But I can’t part with my lucky shoes. I need their magic. Remember the story?”

  “I remember. They used to belong to the invisible princess. Then you found them.” She loved the story because Mama liked to tell it when she was Sunny-Side Up. Like those eggs she served at the diner. When Mama was Sunny-Side Up, her smile never quit, and she had lightbulb laughs that lit her face from the inside out. Even when Pinny’s brain muddied trying to figure out other things, she never forgot Mama’s story.

  “Exactly,” Mama said. “I found them, so these are my signature shoes.” She bent forward and whispered, “If I ever lost them, you know what would happen.”