“We both have one and we want you to have one too. In case you are trapped.”
Róża blinks between Miri and Chana, sisters taking her into their fold. “Thank you,” she says. She shoves the pill into her pant pocket near the sewn-in card with the convent address—her only fragment of waking hope that Shira can be found safe; that she is growing, eating, playing, still with music in her head.
Chapter 26
In the convent, food rations shrink. Mealtimes grow somber as the soup thins and the bread packs dust. By nightfall, Zosia is weak with hunger, but her bird won’t settle; he hops past the cup of her hands, unable to find a comfortable nest. His wondrous eighteen-note call has changed. It is now a frantic wavering beween two notes, a tremolo, as if to erase all distance, bring her mother near to her, barely a pitch away.
Zosia’s sleep comes troubled. She slips into dreams that rouse her, panicked.
Her bird is no longer yellow. His feathers are white, though the downy lower barbs are brown, and the children point and laugh. Or else he is all white and Zosia can’t spot him in this place of white plaster, white curtains, starched bedsheets, and snow. When he settles to sleep beside her, she rolls onto him and squishes him—she can’t protect him even from herself!
Zosia wakes with a start to find Kasia’s doll on her pillow, set next to her shred of blanket. She blinks back grateful tears. In the quiet of the room—even quieter than the barn without the sound of rustling hay or rabbits or falling snow or her mother—she listens to the other girls, breathing softly in sleep. The difference between them and her, so palpable, is beyond her understanding. It is more than how they know the rituals and regimens of the convent and recite every hymn by heart; how they swarm together so easily; how she stands apart with just the little violin. More than that she has secrets buried inside, secrets she is under orders to forget and is forgetting, though she wishes desperately to remember.
Zosia is given a new secret when Mother Agnieszka leads her to a hiding place—a closet in the hallway of the chapel, filled with fancy white prayer robes that are quilted and stitched with shiny gold threads. At the back is a wooden partition, a false back, behind which is a smaller, interior space. Zosia peers in to see that the walls are made of rough scrap boards and the corners are studded with nails, half hammered in, half bent.
“You are to slip behind this wall and remain hidden when soldiers come. Do you understand? You are not to climb out until Sister Alicja, Sister Nadzieja, or I tell you to.”
Mother Agnieszka slides the hangers back and forth along the high rod, demonstrating how a soldier might search the closet without discovering Zosia behind the partition. Zosia breathes in the starch of Mother Agnieszka’s wimple and wonders if she, too, has been having trouble sleeping. Her pale, papery face looks tired.
Zosia’s favorite thing about Mother Agnieszka is her singing voice: she starts off lauds each morning with clear, jewel-like notes. Also, she plays checkers with the children some nights, and she puts Ula in her place for bossing. Still, it bothers Zosia that she is called “Mother.” She is not her mother, though she is asking Zosia to hide, just as her mother did.
“I have your word that you will keep still and silent here?”
Zosia nods. She knows how to make herself invisible.
Zosia knows too—though she doesn’t speak of it to Mother Agnieszka—that soldiers searched the convent the previous night. While washing up in the girls’ bathroom, she heard the loud boots—giants’ steps—echoing through the halls. Sister Alicja swooped in and hustled her toward the back door leading to the nuns’ quarters; then, changing direction, she closed her into a toilet stall, where they waited in silence. Even after the soldiers’ footsteps and shouts receded, they stayed put several minutes. Sister Alicja whispered to Zosia that ordinarily when the soldiers came, it was for what they might find in the pantry—coffee or sugar or, in earlier days, chocolate. But this time their search was wider.
The very next night, soldiers storm the convent again.
At the first sound of boots approaching, Zosia gets the nod from Sister Alicja and slips out of bed before the other children are alerted to a roll call. Zosia runs, blanket clenched in hand, down the long corridor, past the portraits of patron saints and the stone sculpture of Mary. She climbs into the chapel hall closet, pulls the door shut behind her, and crawls back behind the partition. Her nightgown snags on a nail, but she wriggles it loose and settles, rubbing her finger over the looping thread. It is cold and cramped here; it smells like sawdust and iron. But worst, it is completely dark.
When Zosia had peered into the closet earlier, light had shone in from the open door. Closed now, it is pitch-black and there doesn’t seem to be enough air. Zosia opens her mouth wide, gulping. Her chest feels tight and the skin on the back of her neck prickles. She thinks of the closet in Gracja, her grandparents’ thick coats at her shoulders, the barn floor dugout, her mother’s hand clasped tightly to hers. Over and over, she runs her finger across the stitches in her blanket.
Zosia hears soldiers nearby. It sounds like they are overturning the chapel benches, ripping hangings from the wall. Is someone pulling open the closet door?
She hugs her knees to her chest and buries her face. She can hear that the robes are being heaved, side to side. A hanger clangs to the floor. Suddenly the sharp tip of a bayonet pierces the partition wall, inches from Zosia’s left shoulder.
“Nie!” Zosia’s yelp is involuntary. She leans as far back as she can and claps a hand to her mouth, praying that the tromp of boots muffled her cry. Sister Alicja’s panicked voice comes from outside the door.
“You will slash the holy robes. I beg you, please, to stop that!”
“What care do I have of your robes?”
The soldiers’ footsteps recede. Zosia’s face wets with tears, but she doesn’t dare move until, later, Sister Alicja retrieves her. Zosia begs, “Please, please let me go back to the barn with my mother. I promise, I will not make a sound—”
Alicja touches Zosia’s cheek, sorrow in her eyes. After checking that the other girls have been put back to sleep, lights out, she gently leads Zosia to her bed.
* * *
Zosia sits on her hands to keep from tapping. It’s a special feast day, and the church service, with a visiting priest from Holy Trinity Parish, is running extra long. For the past forty minutes Zosia’s stomach has been rumbling and her eyelids have gotten nearly too heavy to hold open, so it is a surprise when the priest’s Epiphany homily piques her interest.
“There may be no more popular children’s game than hide-and-seek. We all know how it is played: one child closes his eyes and counts while the other children hide.”
Up and down the rows of pews, listing children sit upright. Zosia pulls her hands out from under her legs and tucks them into her lap.
“With the call of ‘Ready? Here I come!’ the hiding children are sought out, one by one, from their hiding places. The first to be found becomes the new seeker, and the game begins anew.”
Children nod at this, but the priest’s face is solemn, a wrinkle at his brow.
“Do we ever stop playing it? As we get older, we spend a good part of our lives hiding from and searching for other people. We even play this game with God. Sometimes we foolishly believe we can hide from Him. Other times, it seems as if He is hiding from us.”
Zosia shifts in her seat.
“Epiphany tells the story of men who journeyed in search of Christ. Even with the help of a guiding star, they had difficulty finding him. They expected he would be in Jerusalem’s royal palace, yet he was in a stable in the nearby village of Bethlehem.”
Jerusalem: Zosia knows this place, where Moses led the Jews after years of slavery. “Next year in Jerusalem,” her grandfather would say from his pillowed seat at the head of the Passover table.
“Are we looking for Jesus in the wrong places? Worse, are we hiding our sins from His judgment?
“Jews seek to hide their crim
es: the killing of Jesus; the taking of Christian blood to make matzos; the profiting from the miseries of Europe’s poor. And those who aid and abet them? Just as the Jews cannot hide their sins from God, nor can those who help them. Jews are Christ haters. Those who have no limits in their love of Christ must have no limits in their battle with those who hate Him.…”
Zosia struggles to breathe. She has been hiding; is she who the priest is talking about, greedy, dirty, and evil? And are the nuns sinning by keeping her here? Is this why Maryla and then Mother Agnieszka vowed her to silence, why she is alone—Sisters Alicja and Nadzieja are not really her sisters, as she’s daydreamed—and will be alone until her mother comes for her?
Amid the blinding winter light and the rustle of robes, Zosia feels dizzy and faint. She tries to understand whether she loves Christ, or could; whether she ever would.
Heat sears her cheeks; she is certain her face has flushed red. She looks behind her to see Ula and Adela looking at her, looking through her, as if they know the truth of her hiding.
When the homily is over, Zosia bursts out of the chapel. By the time others file out, she is already near the back hedge, slipping into a concealed spot between a row of plants and a stone wall. She closes her eyes, remembering a word smeared in black paint on the bakery window: Jude.
Sister Alicja finds her after the children have gone in for lunch.
“Zosia.”
“Can I be baptized?” Zosia’s voice shakes with urgency.
“What?”
“I want to be baptized.”
“No, Zosia. I don’t think that would be right. But you can participate in a communion ceremony with the other girls come spring.”
“Will that help?”
* * *
Sister Alicja rebleaches Zosia’s hair that night and arranges her chore assignment to floor bleaching the following day. As Zosia mops the dormitory landing, Ula hops up the stairs, squinting and sniffing the air.
“Where were you yesterday, Zosia? You missed the fancy Epiphany luncheon.”
“And we didn’t see you at bedtime the night before last.” Adela has come up behind her.
“I have to finish the floor.” Zosia tries to turn, but Ula wrestles the mop away.
Zosia steps back, afraid they will try to hit her with the stick, but now Adela takes a dramatic sniff, her snub nose upturned.
“Oh, that nasty smell makes me have to spit.” She crinkles her nose and spits. A blob of spittle lands in Zosia’s hair.
“Me too, I can’t help it.” Ula’s spit reaches Zosia’s cheek and slides to her neck.
Ula, dangling the mop low, lets it drop to the floor. “Let’s go. Come on.”
“I don’t think Zosia can come; it’s still pretty dirty here.” As Adela says this, she upturns the pail of brown water upon the just mopped floor. Before it reaches their feet, Ula and Adela rush down the steps.
* * *
Zosia weeps as she cleans herself up and remops the landing. She sees, in the floor’s shine, her own enraged reflection. She is furious at those girls, and she is furious at herself for not fighting back.
Her hands continue to shake even after she wrings out the mop and dumps the pail, as she stores the supplies in the cleaning closet and makes her way to the music classroom.
Chapter 27
Zosia reaches for the little violin, tightening the bow and tuning the strings the way Sister Nadzieja has taught her. Still shaky, she begins searching for the notes.
All her life she has been hearing them, though she’s had to keep them tamped down, muted. Today, reeking of bleach amid school desks dwarfed by walls of cracking white plaster, she hunts. Her fingers clamp, first to this string, then to that one, while her bow rushes in for the test.
One by one, the notes accumulate to take her back, back. She is in the parlor in Gracja, nestled in her grandfather’s lap, the sound of her parents’ music like the whip-up of dust clouds around manic dancing feet. Vibrant melodies. The wild pluck of strings.
Zosia’s own sound comes out alternately scratchy, then airy, and she can’t play at all fast. But she sticks with it, and in time she masters a crisper sound, a steady rhythm: the whirring wind.
Her throat tightens and her chest heaves as she sounds out other melodies, songs she composed in her head in the barn, recalling times when her whole family was together: walking by the riverbank, the water scalloped by a gusting breeze; conversing after dinner, instruments within reach.
Only in this music, wistful and defiant, can she find something of her own without giving herself away. Find her family, her home. Shuttered windows. Yellow stars. Notes like these to bridge the shared night.
Chapter 28
Spring 1943
In the woods, the frozen earth begins to thaw. Róża, Miri, and Chana finally break winter camp and begin the journey southward. The icicles that have bearded the trees all winter drip wet and clear. Róża yanks off a long ice tip to suck on as she navigates the thick spring mud.
Róża’s boots are still hanging on, wrapped in dirt-caked twine. Because her socks have worn thin at the heels and are stiff with dried blood at the toes, her feet chafe inside her boots, causing her flesh to tear and flap. The cracks in her hands have no chance of healing as they bleed anew with each burrow’s digging. Róża wraps herself in her threadbare sweater, its buttons long missing.
All three of them are stained with dirt, their hair matted and itchy from lice, their faces sunken and gaunt, their lips swollen and cracking. As mirrors for one another, they offer no comfort. But the focus is on movement and on food. The thaw coaxes new shoots from the ground and new buds on plants that can be eaten.
Their boots leave tracks in the mud. Each tries what she can to prevent it: Chana wears a pair of socks over her boots; Róża alters her stride in an effort to obscure the pattern and even walks on all fours at times. Since the soles of Miri’s boots have detached completely, she ties them on backward so that her tracks point in the opposite direction.
“Now soldiers will have to split up and search in both directions to find us.”
Róża swells with gratitude for their company.
She thought she’d be on her own by now. Chana spoke continually of enlisting in a partisan group. But Miri proved as determined, and eventually, the sisters agreed to accompany Róża as far as the woods’ southern edge before searching for a unit. Perhaps Miri’s desire to help Róża reunite with Shira has something to do with her mother, who fought to save their little brother even as the soldiers brought batons down upon her. Whatever the reasons, Róża is glad they’ve stuck with her.
Peering at Shira’s photograph, a fixture in Róża’s hands by firelight, Miri says, “You must get her.”
“Yes.” Róża takes in her daughter’s face, the cream of her cheeks and the almond of her eyes.
Unimpeded by wind and frost, they cover substantial distances. Now Róża’s imagination runs. She conjures the convent with thick stone walls and wrought-iron gating. She pictures her arrival there, even muses at the prospect of concealing herself at first, just for a short time, peeking through the gate to glimpse Shira before surprising her. Placing a small gift, perhaps something knitted or sewn, at the edge of the yard just as the children are let out to play and stepping out as Shira finds it and whoops with joy. If only somehow Natan could be there too. He loved Shira’s squeals, her full belly laughter. Sounds that Shira was made to stifle and that Róża can hardly remember.
Róża’s night terrors recede as they move southward toward Celestyn, as she imagines Shira safe—and soon found. Guided by Natan’s old compass, the three women walk together past a train track, its wood ties looted for burning. Miri keeps one hand clasped around Róża’s arm. Chana is talking about food again. This time, about eggs.
“Do you know that, for an entire year, I devoted myself to making a new egg dish each day?”
“Hmm?” Róża purses her lips. Miri gives her arm a squeeze. She thinks of her friend
Marek’s old potato jokes. Why did the potato cross the road? Because he saw a fork up ahead. What do you say to an angry potato? Anything, just butter him up.
“It’s true,” Chana insists. “It required me to learn a lot about French cooking. I made every kind of omelet, custard, soufflé, meringue.”
“They were delicious, all three hundred and sixty-five of them,” Miri says.
Róża smiles, wondering what kind of beautiful, well-equipped kitchen Chana and Miri must have had. Her family’s kitchen was fine—and her mother was a masterful baker—but Róża could never have made such delicacies, certainly not a year’s worth of them. She looks from sister to sister, registering for the first time that they’d been wealthy.
“Were these ‘egg dishes’ or just dishes that involved eggs? I mean, could you count a crepe?” Róża asks.
“Yes, why not?”
“What about a simple cake that calls for an egg?”
“No.”
“Spring salad?”
“Yes.”
Róża can’t actually remember the last time she had an egg of any kind. But she remembers when Shira had them. Róża’s mouth pools as she thinks of it and she swallows hard. Her recurring wish: that she’d pocketed some from the coop before she ran from the barn.
Still arm in arm with Miri, Róża feels her boots sink and squelch with every step.
“Mousse?” Miri is now asking.
“Of course!”
“What about challah?”
“I don’t think challah counts.”
“But a challah takes a lot of eggs.”
All three are silent now, remembering. Róża fingers the frosting tip in her pocket.
“Deviled eggs?”
“Kluski?”
For the next several hours, they go on like this. Róża and Miri scour their minds for every egg dish they have heard of, asking if it counted and if Chana made it during her egg year.
The Yellow Bird Sings Page 10
