Milkweed

  29

  We made it to the wall and practically dove through the two-brick hole, but we didn’t smuggle that night. I had the idea that as long as we didn’t steal food, she was safe. As we passed houses, she kept pestering, “Let’s go in there . . . there!”

  To distract her, I led her to the merry-go-round. It was deserted and dark. The people were in bed. A streetlight in the distance caught several horses leaping out of the shadows. There was no music, nothing going around, yet I could have sworn they were moving. I looked at the empty spot. I thought of the beautiful black horse, chopped off at the hooves. The three hooves were still there. I thought of the man who turned blue.

  We went to the far side, away from the light. We each climbed onto a horse. We pretended we were galloping, racing. Janina kept shouting, “I win!” After a while she came over to my horse and climbed on behind me. She put her arms around my waist. Her chin jutted into my back. “Faster! Faster!”

  When I got tired of this, I said, “Do you want to see an angel?”

  “What’s an angel?” she said.

  “I’ll show you.”

  We climbed down from the horse and I took her to the cemetery. The moon was going in and out of clouds. The night sky looked like smoking rubble. It took a while but I finally found it. It towered above us. The wings blotted out much of the sky. “There,” I said.

  She gazed up, her mouth open. “Angel?”

  “It’s not a real one,” I told her. “It’s only made of stone. It’s what real ones would look like if you could see them.”

  “Why can’t we see them?”

  “Because they hide inside people. There’s one inside of you.”

  “Inside me?”

  I clamped my hand over her mouth. “Everybody has an angel hiding inside. When you die, your angel comes out. You can die, but not your angel. Your angel never dies.”

  She looked up at the great wings. “It’s too big to fit inside me.”

  “When it’s inside you, it’s little,” I told her. “When it comes out, it grows, like a balloon.” My own mouth was never shy about adding details that the boys had overlooked.

  She felt herself all over. She stuck her fingers in her ears, in her nostrils. “I don’t feel it.” She reached up and pulled my mouth open and tried to peer inside. “I don’t see yours.” She stomped her foot. “I want to see one!”

  “You can’t,” I told her. But I didn’t exactly believe that. I believed that sooner or later I would catch a glimpse of one coming out of a freshly dead body, or just hanging around, reluctant to leave. “They don’t live here. They live in Heaven.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Enos says it’s right here, on this side of the wall, but I never saw an angel over here. Kuba says it’s in Russia. Olek says Washington America.”

  “What’s Washington America?”

  “Enos says it’s a place with no wall and no lice and lots of potatoes.”

  Janina reached out and touched the stone foot. Then she smacked it. “I don’t like you,” she said.

  We went home.

  I hoped we wouldn’t walk into a lineup again. We didn’t. But there was something else. Creeping along the shadows toward home, we saw an orange glow beyond a corner and heard a strange sound, like a fierce gust of wind. We sneaked up to the corner for a peek. I couldn’t believe what I saw. A man was spouting fire. The fire came gushing out of a hose like burning horsewater and down into a sewer hole in the street.

  Enos!

  Ferdi!

  Olek!

  We ran home. I couldn’t sleep. At sunrise—Janina was snoring—I raced to the butcher shop ruins. They were there. All of them. I told them what I saw.

  Ferdi blew a smoke ring.

  Olek said, “Flamethrower.”

  Enos said, “They’re cracking down.”

  Kuba said, “You sewer rats should come over the wall with me. The sewer stinks.”

  “They can’t watch all the manholes,” said Enos. “And the flamethrower only reaches twenty meters.”

  “It’s gorgeous,” I said. They all stared at me. I would have stared at myself if I could. I don’t know where I got that word. But it was true. When I saw the brilliant orange flame in the night, I saw better than ever before how gray was the world I lived in.

  30

  I could not stop Janina from following me. And we couldn’t eat merry-go-round horses and stone angels. So, soon we were stealing food again. And then something happened, and I was glad it did.

  The day was hot. Steamy. Janina and I were down near the entrance to the cemetery, on Gesia Street. We were watching the long parade of body wagons lined up at the gate. The wagons were pulled by men-horses. The bodies were in heaps. The number of them was much higher than I could count at the time. A peppery cloud of flies hovered over the flopped arms and legs. The air buzzed.

  Only a few living people came with the wagons. Except for the rags they wore and the fact that they were standing, they looked like the bodies. One old woman held on to an ankle jutting out from a heap. A Flop at the gate collected money. Only the dead got into the cemetery for free.

  We heard a commotion. We followed the noise to an intersection of streets. There were Jackboots and Flops and young boys. One of the Flops was Buffo. People were watching. I think they did not want to watch, but Jackboots were pointing guns at them. There was also, in the middle of the square, a pile of onions. I could smell them.

  A Jackboot was pulling open the jackets of the boys, and the onions were tumbling out. The boys all seemed to have the same problem: they were hunchbacks. Only the humps in their backs were made of onions.

  When all the humps were emptied out, the Jackboot called to the people. “We tell you! Do not smuggle! We tell you!” And the Jackboots and Flops began beating the boys with their clubs, and the boys’ hats flew and they were screaming and falling and bleeding among the onions and the people watched and did not move.

  I pulled Janina away. “See?” I said. I squeezed her arm. I shook her. “See what happens when you steal food! Do you want that to happen to you?”

  She yelled into my face, “I hate you!” She broke loose and ran off.

  Good, I thought. She finally learned her lesson. And for the rest of that day I thought, The pest is gone.

  I wanted to make sure, so I told her father. I told him she had been following me, smuggling with me. I told him I could not make her stop, I could not keep her safe. She stood beside me, gaping. Her father’s face turned hard and ugly. I thought he would smack her, but he didn’t even touch her. He bent down until his face was right in front of hers, like a Jackboot in a lineup. He looked at her as if she were a stranger. He said one word: “No.”

  Her lip pouted out and quivered. Her great eyes watered. She ran to the mattress and threw herself onto it and huddled into her mother.

  When I went out that night, she stayed put. It was getting harder to creep down the stairs in the dark now, as people were sleeping there. More and more people were being trucked into the ghetto. People were living in stairwells and bathrooms and cellars and roofs. I felt my way through the sleeping bodies and waited in the shadows of the courtyard. No one came down after me. At every corner along the way to the two-brick hole, I stopped and looked back. No one followed. I wriggled through the hole and thought: I’m free!

  The next day, back inside the wall, I was sitting on a curb in the street. I was watching a little girl on the opposite curb lunching on the snot pouring from her nose when I heard a familiar cry: “Fatman! Fatman!”

  I ran. Sure enough, there was Janina in the middle of the street, squatting on her haunches, hurling her voice, thumbing her nose at Buffo, taunting him in perfect imitation of me. I saw the gleam in Buffo’s eyes as he came clumping after her, spewing flecks of mint, his massive belly bouncing.

  Janina screamed and laughed and ran. I fell in beside her, and when we turned a corner I shoved her into an alley, and w
hen Buffo came around I threw stones at him, and I saw his eyes darting about for her and his fingers curling. I couldn’t stand the thought of him pulling her into the death balloon of his belly. I remembered Kuba and the funeral in the cemetery. I turned my back on Buffo and pulled down my pants and gave him a moon. I heard his roar, and I had to run while pulling up my pants.

  When I finally appeared back in the courtyard, Janina could not stop laughing.

  I hated her mimicking me in everything I did. All my talents were useless with her. I could not escape her anymore than I could outrun my shadow. From that day on I stopped tormenting Buffo, only to give her one less part of me to copy.

  That night I raided two homes on the other side but got only a few sprouting potatoes and a can of sardines. Once again Janina had stayed behind. I dropped a potato through the open back window of the orphanage and returned to the room, stumbling over sleeping bodies on the stairway.

  Lying down in the blackness of the room, I reached out to touch Janina. I felt nothing. I groped around. She wasn’t there! I sat up. I had a thought but I couldn’t believe it. I sat up until I heard the door squeak open. I lay down. I felt her step over me to her place on the floor. I went to sleep.

  I had put two potatoes and the sardines on the table when I came in that night. In the morning, there were three potatoes more plus a pancake.

  It went that way night after night: through the wall, into Heaven (thanks to Enos, that’s what we were calling the other side of the wall), raiding kitchens, cellars, trash cans— separately. Like a good little girl, Janina was obeying her father: she did not go with me. She went on her own.

  Sometimes we passed each other in the shadows. Once, we found ourselves spinning around the revolving door of the blue camel hotel at the same time. We pretended not to see each other. One time we almost bumped heads reaching into the same garbage can.

  In the mornings, there on the table, would be our loot. She mixed hers with mine. Every morning Mr. Milgrom thanked me for the food. He never thanked Janina, as he believed she never left the room all night. She never claimed credit.

  To stop the smugglers, the Jackboots sent more patrols and more dogs into the ghetto at night. There were gunshots. Screams. The orange glow of flamethrowers. But I wasn’t afraid. There was still the darkness. And Buffo seemed to appear only in daylight.

  One day we were both very sleepy. It had been harder than usual to find food in Heaven the night before, and day was coming by the time we both made it back to the room. We slept for a while and went outside together. We played pick-up-sticks in the dust of the courtyard and then went wandering about the streets. I was, as always, on the alert for signs of Buffo or the mystery cow, but in time the buzzing of the flies and the warmth of the day took the edge from my attention and made me drowsy. I wobbled into an alleyway and laid myself down. Janina, of course, did the same. Within moments I was sleeping.

  Next thing I knew, I jerked awake. Janina was screaming. A barefoot clump of rags was slouching off down the alley. Janina was reaching for her shoe on the ground. “He tried to steal my shoe,” she whined.

  I laughed. “He thought you were dead.”

  She yelled after the clump: “I’m not dead!”

  As she put her shoe back on, she was staring at me. “What’s that?” she said. She was pointing to something.

  I looked. It was a brown seed with a spray of white fluff coming out of it. It was clinging to my shirt. And suddenly the word for it was on my tongue, a word I didn’t even know I knew. “Milkweed,” I said.

  She plucked it from my shirt. She held it by the seed up to the light. She dusted her nose with it and giggled. She brushed the fluff across her cheek, closing her eyes. She stood on tiptoes and held it as high as she could and let it go. It sailed toward the sky.

  “That’s my angel,” she said.

  Then they were all around us, milkweed puffs, flying. I picked one from her hair. I pointed. “Look.” A milkweed plant was growing by a heap of rubble.

  It was thrilling just to see a plant, a spot of green in the ghetto desert. The bird-shaped pods had burst and the puffs were spilling out, flying off. I cracked a pod from the stem and blew into the silk-lined hollow, sending the remaining puffs sailing, a snowy shower rising, vanishing into the clouds.

  31

  WINTER

  A dead leaf skittered in the moonlight as I wriggled my way through the two-brick hole to the other side. I took off my armband. I knew Janina was somewhere behind me. On this bitterly cold night the streets of Warsaw were almost as deserted as those of the ghetto, but the blue camel hotel was always bright and warm.

  As I sailed through the revolving door, I caught a glimpse of red hair in the lobby. I went around again and stopped inside. It was Uri! He was dressed in fine clothes—white shirt, black trousers, shoes. I watched him for a moment. He was emptying ashtrays into a wheeled trash can that he pushed around the lobby. I called out: “Uri!” He didn’t hear me. He was heading for a hallway at the back of the lobby. “Uri!”

  I ran after him. When I got to the hallway, he was gone. I went down the hallway, peeking into dark rooms. Suddenly I was off my feet and flying into one of them. The door slammed shut. I couldn’t see a thing, but I knew it was Uri holding me and whispering into my ear. “What are you doing here?”

  “I saw you. Ow!” He was squeezing my arm. “I called you. Didn’t you see me? What are you doing here?”

  He shook me. “Never mind what I’m doing here. I work in the laundry. If I see you in here again, I’ll tell them to shoot you. My name is not Uri here. You never, never call me that.” His hand squeezed my neck. His breath was in my face. “Do you hear?”

  I nodded, choking.

  “Never come in here again. Get out. Now!”

  The door opened and I was flung into the bright hallway.

  Outside on the street, I expected to see Janina. She was usually within sight, following me but pretending she wasn’t. I didn’t see her. Something inside me said, Good. Something else said, I don’t like this.

  I disappeared into my usual shadows and alleyways. I did not seek out new places on this night. I went to familiar, reliable garbage cans and a few unguarded home pantries, places we both knew well. I kept expecting to bump into her. I kept glancing around. She wasn’t there.

  The moon, as always, had moved halfway across the sky by the time I was done with my shopping. It was full on this night, my least favorite kind of moon. Normally, I dashed for the wall and practically dove through the hole. This time I stopped at the wall and waited, crouching, in the shadow.

  I could not stay long. The wall was patrolled. Nothing but the patrols moved in Warsaw at this time of night. I kept waiting, hoping to see a tiny fragment of shadow break away and come running to the wall, to me. Somewhere on the other side of the wall, a dog barked, a whistle blew. I thought of the other boys. I hoped they were safe.

  Something moved down along the wall. A glint of silver in the moonlight. A patrol was coming. I stuffed my sack through the hole, then myself.

  A minute later I found her. She was near a street corner, standing still, not even trying to hide herself, her sack of food dumped on the ground beside her. I did not want to call out. I approached her quietly from behind. She did not move. She seemed to be looking at something. She was looking up. And then I saw. A body was hanging from the crossbar of a streetlight whose lamp had long since stopped shining. It was hanging by the neck.

  I wondered why the hanging body had stopped her. It was not the first she had seen. Death was as familiar to us as life. Even those still breathing, walking—they looked as if they were waiting for someone to tell them they were dead.

  So why was my heart hammering my chest? Because the body, I could see now as I stopped beside her, had one arm. It was a boy. It was Olek. A sign was hanging across his chest. In the moonlight it was easy to see the words, but I could not read. Flat on the ground, his shadow was hanging too.

  32
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  The next morning Enos told me what the sign said.

  “They’ll hang us all,” he said.

  “Not me,” I said. “They can’t catch me.”

  “Not me,” said Janina. “They can’t catch me.”

  Enos laughed.

  We sat on rocks at the ruins of the butcher shop. No one said anything. Ferdi smoked. Kuba stared at the dust. For once, he had nothing funny to say. Big Henryk bawled. He took off his shoes and pounded the frozen earth with them. He threw away the shoes and bawled some more.

  I said, “I saw Uri.”

  No one looked up.

  Janina spat in the dirt. “I hate your angels.”

  The next day the first snow flurries came. Children held their faces to the sky, trying to catch flakes on their tongues.

  I visited the orphanage. Doctor Korczak was teaching the children a song. When he saw me, he said, “Misha, come join us. Sing with us.” I stood in the middle of the children and sang the words. After the singing we were each given a cabbage cake and a spoonful of fat. I never saw Doctor Korczak eat. Everyone had shoes. When I left, I walked about the ghetto singing my song in the snowflakes. I saw a boy eating a newspaper.

  A voice called, “Misha Pilsudski! Misha Milgrom!”

  I recognized the voice but I couldn’t believe my ears. I turned. It was Uncle Shepsel. Since the day the Jews paraded into the ghetto, I had not seen Uncle Shepsel outside the room, except for lineups. He was smiling, showing the world his brown teeth. His hand came down on my shoulder. “Misha . . . Misha . . . Is it not a beautiful day?”

  I looked around. It seemed like any other day to me. Gray. Up the street a man was banging his head against a stone wall.

  But I was an agreeable fellow. “Yes,” I said.

  “Yes . . . yes . . .” He looked around. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath and stood like that for a while. I thought he had gone to sleep. The head of the man up the street was red, but he was still banging. Uncle Shepsel opened his eyes and smiled down at me. I had seen the same smile in the room lately, as he read the book that had changed him from a Jew to a Lutheran. He removed my cap and mussed my hair. Lice eggs flew like baby snowflakes. He replaced my cap. He nodded dreamily. Suddenly his expression changed. He seemed confused. He looked hard into my face and did not seem to know me. “You go. Every night you go,” he said. “Why do you come back?” I did not have an answer. Maybe he found it in my face, for after a while he turned and walked off. Up the street the man was on the ground.