by Aric Davis
Mom gave Cynthia another look, one that was supposed to tell her daughter how concerned she was, and then closed the door. Cynthia watched Mom talk to Dad in front of the store. She didn’t want to see any threads, didn’t want to go floating after them, and most of all, didn’t want to see if Linda was connected with Dad even while he talked to Mom. She was thankful that none of that was there. It was just her Mom and her Dad talking.
Finally, Mom walked back to the car, opened the door, and hopped inside. “Looks like the great job hunt is going to wait until tomorrow, Cynth,” said Mom with a smile, but even before Cynthia had seen the strands, she would have known the smile was a fake one. Mom knew she had to be at home in case Cynthia collapsed again, but there was a part of her that resented it, that needed to go find a job, and not just for money. She wants to feel like she’s worth something.
“I could just stay home alone at the apartment,” said Cynthia, a proposition that sounded worlds better than spending time at the store with Linda and her ugly yellow thread.
“No way.” The tone in Mom’s voice suggested she wasn’t even going to think about something like that, especially not after what had happened, and maybe not ever at the apartment.
If you don’t trust the people there, then why did we move? It was a question that would never get the answer it deserved, because Cynthia would never ask it. The truth was that Mom had moved them for the same reason that she needed a job: she wanted to prove she was worth something; so she could show them.
“I’d be fine,” said Cynthia. “There’s no TV, so you wouldn’t have to worry about me watching too much of it, and I could just read until you came back.”
Mom didn’t say anything, and for a moment Cynthia thought that she might really be considering the idea. But then she said, “No, there’s no way. You’re too young, and you just fainted.”
Cynthia smiled at Mom from the backseat, looking into the rearview mirror so that Mom could see her eyes. “Well, I could come along until we figure something else out.”
“That’s not going to work either, Cynth,” said Mom. “Not when I’m applying for work, and especially not after what happened in the store. I can put this off for a day or two if that’s what our family needs, and everything will be just fine.”
Cynthia didn’t say anything to that, just sat quietly in the back of the car as Mom drove them to the apartment building. She wanted to plead, to tell Mom she was fine, that it was her own fault for trying to get Linda’s ugly yellow thread off of Daddy’s confused purple one, but she knew that would raise more questions than she wanted to answer. Especially since most of those questions Cynthia knew there was no way she could answer.
Mom pulled the car into the apartment complex and parked in front of their building. Cynthia looked for Mrs. Martin and her little dogs, Libby and Stanley, but there was no sign of them outside.
“C’mon, Cynthia,” called Mom as she got out of the car. Cynthia followed her mother from the vehicle and then plodded up the steps after her. When they got inside, Mom declared, “Right into the shower. You smell like a darned brewery, girl.”
Cynthia smiled, then began to strip as she ran to the bathroom. She wanted the beer gone but also couldn’t wait to wash the feeling of the threads off of her.
Just like the night before, by the time Cynthia was out of the shower, her memories of what had happened at the store felt more like a dream than reality. That feeling didn’t last, though. Cynthia knew there had been threads coming from the adults, that she had been among them and it had been an ugly place to be. Still, the shower had been calming, a relief from the pressure, and even removed from it she felt better than she had in days.
As she walked into the living room, she saw Mom sitting at the kitchen table, but there was also a guest—Mrs. Martin.
“Go get dressed, and then come back out here,” said Mom, and Cynthia smiled. Mrs. Martin grinned back at her, and though her mouth never opened, Cynthia could hear the older woman’s voice in her head: / Do as your mother says / When she’s gone I will explain everything / These words from Mrs. Martin were soft, not at all like the near barking she’d heard when she was looking into the knot of thoughts between her parents and Linda. These words were as calming as the shower, and Cynthia wanted to know how Mrs. Martin had done it and why the words before had been so poisonous.
Looking back over her shoulder at Mrs. Martin and her mother, the two of them already conversing and ignoring the departing nine-year-old, she couldn’t help but notice that there were just the faintest threads coming from them. Mrs. Martin’s were lustrous, amber and almost gold, while Mom’s were a fading red that was swirling with the amber and making a cold blue aura in the space between them.
Cynthia had known enough not to respond to Mrs. Martin’s words, but leaving the words hanging between them was still pretty weird. So Cynthia tried sending her own words to Mrs. Martin.
/ Can you hear me? /
There was a moment where nothing happened at all, and then Mrs. Martin’s words came through as clearly as if they’d been standing next to one another: “Of course, dear. Now get dressed like your mother asked. We’re not in any rush.”
Cynthia nodded, as though somehow Mrs. Martin could see the gesture—though Cynthia wasn’t willing to concede that Mrs. Martin couldn’t have seen the gesture—and then quickly dressed. She gave her hair a quick dry that she knew her mother wouldn’t approve of and then headed back out to the living room.
The threads between her mother and Mrs. Martin were all amber and cool blue now, and the two older women smiled at Cynthia as she walked back into the room.
Mom is smiling.
Mom was smiling—for-real smiling. It was hard to even believe.
“I have wonderful news,” said Mom. “Mrs. Martin has volunteered to watch you while I go running around today. She used to be a nurse before she retired, so she’ll be able to take even better care of you than I can if you get dizzy again. Does that sound all right?”
“Yes, of course,” said Cynthia, trying to keep the joy from her voice, though she had a feeling that it wouldn’t much matter. Mrs. Martin was using those strings to make Mom feel good, just like her parents’ bad feelings had made that ugly knot build up in the liquor store, and that was just fine with Cynthia. “Can I see your dogs again, Mrs. Martin?”
“Absolutely, my dear,” said Mrs. Martin, before turning to Mom to ask, “It is all right if we go down to my apartment, isn’t it? We’ll be just downstairs, and that way we can check on my mutts. They get along well enough with supervision, but without, they can be a dickens.”
Mom looked like she was considering things for a second, and Cynthia watched as Mrs. Martin smiled at her, making Mom smile back.
“Yes, of course. That will be fine. You’ll be right downstairs, after all.”
“Perfect,” said Mrs. Martin. “Cynthia, why don’t you give your mother a hug and wish her luck, and we’ll go see what those naughty little pups have gotten into?”
Cynthia nodded, then ran to Mom and hugged her. Mom squeezed her back, and then Cynthia slithered from her arms and headed to the door with Mrs. Martin.
“Are you sure you’ll be fine, Cynth?” Mom asked as Cynthia made the door, and Cynthia turned back to her and smiled.
“I’ll be fine, Mom. Good luck.”
Cynthia followed Mrs. Martin down the steps to the lower floor of the building, watching the strands from her elderly neighbor’s head trail behind her. They were the color of honey, the prettiest thing that Cynthia had ever seen.
When Mrs. Martin opened the door to her apartment and waved Cynthia inside, Libby and Stanley ran to greet her, and Cynthia knelt to meet them and dispense rubs and accept kisses. The apartment smelled like baked goods and Mrs. Martin’s funny cigarettes and was filled with old furniture and framed photographs of smiling people.
“I’ll ge
t us some milk and cookies. We can talk at the table,” said Mrs. Martin as she passed by Cynthia, but Cynthia was too busy petting to respond to the words. The dogs were wonderful, the living opposite of that awful knot or waking up covered in beer in the back of the store. Cynthia was happy, truly happy, and milk and cookies sounded just perfect.
With a wagging dog under each arm and Kelly-green strands stretching from her scalp to the tops of the dogs’ heads, Cynthia walked into the kitchen and took a seat at Mrs. Martin’s table.
CHAPTER 15
1945
The special selections stopped after the third barracks was interviewed by Fräulein Kaufman, and they remained stopped for over a week. The weather then was some of the worst I have ever seen, and though at first the guards joked about how much the Americans and Russians must have been enjoying the cold, those boasts turned bitter soon enough. A pair of oafish guards named Reinhold and Kahler died when an oil lamp fell and set their cabin alight. The two of them were dead by smoke inhalation long before the blaze was extinguished—and don’t think there weren’t smiling faces that day. After all, we were usually the ones leaving the earth amidst fire, but that day it was the Germans.
The fire was only the start of it, however. The winds blew so hard that the old and young still left were dying nightly, even while inside their barracks. Lucia Lowenstein and Felicia Gruber died in my barracks within hours of one another. We did what we had to, moved the bodies outside, and then divided up what they had left in this world. That may seem callous, but if a scrap of bread or piece of fabric was enough to keep one of us alive a little longer, then so be it. The dead have no need for such things in any case, at least if what the rabbi says is true. I doubt his teachings myself. If there were a God, none of this would be happening. In any event, I think that in times like this it’s fine to borrow from the dead, at least as long as you remember not to mind when people borrow from you!
On the eighth morning since the storm came, I woke to the sound of songbirds. Sure that I must be dreaming, I sat up and hopped out of bed. The floor gave away the secret before I could sneak outside to feel the wind on my cheek. Spring had come a couple of weeks early. I felt like singing and dancing, but I did neither. Most of the women were still slumbering or pretending to be sleeping around me, and the last thing I needed was anyone complaining about me to the guards or the Fräulein. Instead of dancing, I hugged myself and then sat on the floor by the door. My happiness only lasted a few minutes, however, as I realized that my reprieve from facing the Fräulein was likely at an end, and I felt freshly ill by the prospect of being forced to help the Nazis.
Not that fear was the only emotion this prospect elicited in me. There was a part of me—a part I thought was long dead, that wonders at the unknown instead of the constant and bleak acceptance of death—that was curious about meeting this odd woman of power in the middle of this war between men. Fräulein Kaufman, regardless of her possibly ignorant views regarding my ethnicity, must have been a powerful woman to make her place amongst all these soldiers and needless deaths. That she could command my own extermination made me no less interested in meeting her, as that order would at least let me know what she was sent here to do. If all she wanted was more dead Jews, then she was just another monster. But what if she was like me? I had no illusions about being alone in my abilities, minor as they must seem when compared to my disability. To encounter, in this of all places, someone like me—it might sound mad, but I honestly think I would have traded my life for a shared minute or two with such a person.
As we lined up in the warmth of the sun for the selection outside of the office, it was hard not to smile. Snow still littered the ground here and there, but compared to the week of waiting we’d endured, a little leftover snow was no problem. The line moved slowly, but that was all right, simply because of the weather. I was at the back of it, not because of my name, Rabban, but because of the number tattooed into my skin, another Nazi indignity that I think God will forgive us for.
My name in this world is 226160, and in the line of women I was stuck in, that meant I would be waiting for almost all of them to talk to the Fräulein before me. I did not speak while I waited. Instead, I absorbed information. That is another gift of being blind amongst these strangers. Few if any of them have lived around a blind person before, and they think my handicap makes me weak or stupid. It doesn’t, but for once, that others would think so was a good thing. I might not have been able to see the line—and I was scared to use my second sight, in case the Fräulein was looking for that—but I still knew everything that was happening ahead of me.
“No one is being taken”—that was repeated over and over again in a hopeful voice by the woman ahead of me, a grouchy lady of former wealth named Edna Greenberg who still believes she will be returned to her deserved station someday. I like that she has this dream, despite her attitude toward others. Some of us must hope for the best. Otherwise, we will all wallow in the truth. I know that her stolen money has been long spent and that despite the Allies’ impending victory, those she cares about are likely dead, and there’s a fair chance she will be soon, too. What good would it do tell her? None. I would upset her for no reason, and I would let a small and ever-growing circle of people know that I am cruel and perhaps not as stupid as they assume.
The line moved slowly, but still one truth remained: no one was being taken by the Fräulein. I knew that this was no confirmation that the first rumor was true, but rather that it was unlikely. It was still possible that the rumored four were taken, but why did no one know a name for any of these mysterious girls? We don’t all know each other in the camp, but collectively we work like the roots of a tree—you’re never separated from another person by more than a few names. If there really were four girls selected, I would know about them. What was happening before me, in the ever-present void of my eyes, was exactly what I suspected: the selection had netted no one of worth to the Führer—at least not yet.
Finally, the ground under my feet changed from frozen earth to wood, and I reached out a hand to lean on the wall of the office for a moment. Any other day and I would have made sure that I wasn’t watched before committing an easily punished offense like not standing to attention, but today felt different, and besides, I didn’t want to give myself away. Today I was just poor little Ora, the blind girl whose family is dead, and if that got me killed, then so be it.
I could hear the door ahead of me opening and shutting, opening and shutting. Every time the door snapped closed, we shuffled forward a few meager steps, that much closer to the Fräulein and our fate. Is she taking notes? Is it like a play—will there be callbacks for the prisoners she likes best? Most important of all, How far away are the Americans? That last thought faded as the door closed again and I shuffled forward. Reaching my hand out, I could feel the door before me, and my heart began to race in my chest. I was next. For better or for worse, soon I would know what the Fräulein wanted with us—or at least with me. A few minutes passed, the door opened, and I walked inside, feeling along the wood and shuffling slowly so that I did not fall and make a fool of myself.
The squeak of a chair got my attention and I looked up, an instinct even for the blind. I heard heels on the wooden floor—the sound of Fräulein Kaufman coming to heave me from this building for being useless, no doubt—but then I felt a hand cup my elbow.
“Come sit, come sit,” said Fräulein Kaufman as she slowly guided me to a chair and helped me settle into it.
Her hand left me—a hand that was small; she is no beer-hall wench—and then I heard her heels again crossing the room, the sound of metal against metal, and then more heels. Fräulein Kaufman was shoving something into my hands—a cup that was impossibly warm; the warmest thing I’d felt in forever.
“It’s coffee,” said Fräulein Kaufman, and I didn’t need eyes to tell that she was smiling.
It could be a trick, I reminded myself, but it was like she
was in my head.
“If I wanted to kill you, girl, I’d just do it. I don’t need to trick you. The only things in there are coffee, sugar, and cream. You probably would have enjoyed it more a few days ago, but it should still warm your belly.” She paused, and I sipped coffee. It was warm and wonderful, the most flavorful thing I’d had to eat or drink in years. “Now then, what is your name?”
“Two-two-six-one-six-zero,” I said, doing my best not to drink the coffee too quickly or do anything else that would make me look like an animal to her.
“Your name, child,” said Fräulein Kaufman. “What is your name?”
“Ora Rabban,” I said quickly. This, I worried, was a trap. We were told that names are dead, that numbers are all we are now, and I told her as much. “I’m used to the number, though. That’s what everyone calls me.”
“I like Ora better, don’t you?”
“I guess so, but the number is all right.”
“You need to speak your mind, child. I need the truth,” said Fräulein Kaufman, and I nodded.
“Yes, Fräulein, I’ll do better.”
“Katarina, child, Katarina.”
“Katarina,” I said, waiting for the back of her hand to strike me, for the chair to be ripped from underneath me, for the showers, for the ovens, all for the cost of a name.
“Much better,” said Katarina, and again I knew she was smiling. “So now you know my name and I know yours. We both have cups of the best coffee available to us at this point in this war that Germany is losing, and we are out of the cold. Things could be worse, right?”
“Things can always be worse,” I said, and then I knew I’d gone too far. Katarina Kaufman may have been treating me well, but I had to remind myself that she is still working in a death camp, and I am one of the soon-to-be-dead. She had disarmed me, made me feel even younger and stupider than I am, and I felt as if I had no control over what I was saying.
