Milkweed

  My feet led me back to the room. Mrs. Milgrom was lying on the mattress as usual, facing the wall. She looked the same in every way, and yet I knew at once that she was dead. Mr. Milgrom was sitting on the edge of the mattress. Janina was in his lap. Her face was in his chest and she was crying. Her father rocked her back and forth. When he looked at me, his eyes were shining.

  Ever since Mr. Milgrom had made me a member of the family, I had wanted to call Mrs. Milgrom “Mother.” I did so once, and she replied, “I’m not your mother.” I was confused. By the time I decided to try again, she had turned her back on the room for good. And now she was dead. And Mr. Milgrom’s eyes were making me sad. I put my hand on his shoulder, as Doctor Korczak had often done to me. I looked into his shining eyes and I said, “Tata.” He took me onto his lap next to Janina, and now I was being rocked back and forth too. I tried to cry like my sister, but I was too busy looking for Mrs. Milgrom’s angel.

  We sat up all night with the body of Mrs. Milgrom—except for Uncle Shepsel, who went to sleep when he returned to the room. In the morning Mr. Milgrom left and came back with the undertaker. He gave the undertaker a small bottle of white pills. He said he had been saving them for this day. He reached under the mattress and pulled out a little black bowl-shaped piece of cloth. I wondered what it was. He put it on his head. It was a hat.

  The undertaker and his two helpers carried Mrs. Milgrom down to the courtyard, where a cart was waiting. Mrs. Milgrom was laid in the cart and covered with a ragged scrap of cabbage-colored wool that had once been a blanket.

  The undertaker led the way out of the courtyard. Then came the helpers pulling the cart. Then came the three of us. Uncle Shepsel stayed back in the room.

  We were the smallest parade ever. There were many bodies along the way. I was surprised that we were not picking up some of them. But I was pleased also, because I did not want to see Mrs. Milgrom wind up on the bottom of a heap.

  I had never been so slow before. Even when I was not fleeing, I was running or at least walking fast. Everything I did was fast. I forced myself to keep pace with Mr. Milgrom and Janina. He held my hand. I kept telling myself: My mother is dead in the cart. I must not go faster than her.

  We passed the orphanage. Doctor Korczak stood in the doorway. He put his hands together and closed his eyes and said words. I could not hear them, but I could see them puff from his mouth in the winter air.

  Many women passed us going the other way. They all wore coats and wraps of fox and other furs. They looked very sad. Some were crying. They had been ordered to turn in all furs at Stawki Station.

  A man went marching past us in the street. He had no shirt or coat on, no shoes or rags on his feet. He made peeping sounds from a silver pipe that he held to his mouth. He waved the pipe in the air and called out: “Children! Children! Come with me! We go to the candy mountain! Follow me! Follow me!”

  At the gate to the cemetery on Gesia Street, Mr. Milgrom gave the guard a bottle of pills and we were let in. We went to an empty plot of ground. The undertaker’s helpers found shovels and dug a hole. A crow sat nearby on a tilting tombstone. It stared at me. I thought it spoke to me. In its croaky voice it said the same thing over and over. I could not understand. I left Mrs. Milgrom’s side and walked toward the crow. “What?” I called. The crow spoke one last time and flew off.

  As they were laying Mrs. Milgrom in her grave, the first bomb fell on the other side of the wall. I felt it in my feet. I looked up. It was raining bombs. The ground was trembling, as if all of the dead had decided to leave their graves at once. The undertaker and his helpers and the cemetery guards all ran. Mr. Milgrom just stood there, staring into the hole.

  A bomb exploded several blocks away on our side of the wall. Then more came. Mr. Milgrom looked at us. “Children,” he said. He lifted each of us and lowered us into the hole with Mrs. Milgrom. “Cover your eyes.” We curled around each other on the scrap of wool at the feet of Mrs. Milgrom. The earth was thumping like a heart. When I peeked upward, I saw Mr. Milgrom sitting on the edge of the grave hole, his feet dangling toward us.

  Janina pulled something from her pocket. It was a milkweed pod. She must have plucked it from the plant in the alley. It looked empty. She blew into it. Three or four puffs rose into the air. They sailed up and out of the grave, past Mr. Milgrom and into the rectangle of gray sky and the black falling teardrops of the bombs.

  33

  When the bombing stopped, we returned home to Uncle Shepsel shouting in the courtyard. “It’s the Russians! We’re saved!” He danced into the street. “We’re saved!”

  Uncle Shepsel was the only one dancing.

  Upstairs, we found other people in our room. With people being trucked into the ghetto every day, this was happening everywhere. Now it was happening to us.

  Janina snapped, “You’re in our house.” Everyone stared, but no one said anything. Mr. Milgrom pushed his pill cabinet and the table to one side of the room. To the people he said, “You can have the mattress.”

  I went to find the boys. Enos was standing on top of the butcher shop rubble. He was laughing. The others were staring up at him.

  “What’s funny?” I said.

  “What’s funny?” He laughed some more. “Everything! They herd us in here like animals. They build a wall around us. They starve us. They freeze us. They beat us. They shoot us. They hang us. They set us on fire. And then guess what?” He reached down to Big Henryk and rapped him on the head. “Guess what?”

  “What?” said Big Henryk.

  “I’ll tell you what.” Enos started laughing again. “The Russians come along and say, ‘That’s not enough. You Nazis are too easy on them. So we’re going to bomb them.’ And that’s what they do.” He threw out his arms. “They bomb us!”

  He looked at us all. “You don’t think that’s the funniest thing you ever heard of?”

  No one laughed, not even Kuba.

  Funny or not, the bombs kept falling and the winter was cold and the people were hungry. Orphans by the thousands roamed the streets in their rags and boils, slumped in doorways, begging for food, clothing, anything. There was nothing to give them. So they starved and froze and died in the snow, their arms frozen outward, still begging. The children who lived were all scraps and eyes. This was the ghetto: where children grew down instead of up.

  I couldn’t believe there had been a time when the boys and I had wrestled in piles of food.

  One day Janina and I heard a commotion in the courtyard. We looked down from the window. A Jackboot and his girlfriend were standing in the entrance. The man had a bag. He was pulling pieces of bread from the bag and tossing them onto the snow. Every time he tossed a piece ten people pounced on it. The soldier and his girlfriend laughed. They called other couples to come and watch and laugh with them. I saw one girlfriend who did not laugh.

  If only lice were food. Every morning we awoke with eyelashes gunked with lice. They made a pop! and squirted red when we squeezed them between thumb and fingernail.

  Every day the man with the silver pipe marched up and down the streets. “Come to the candy mountain!” Once, I saw a boy stagger after him, but the piper was going too fast.

  With the new people in the room, Janina and I could no longer leave our smuggled food on the table. When we returned each night, we slipped food into the coat pockets of Mr. Milgrom and Uncle Shepsel as they slept.

  There were seven new people. Five were adults, two were little twin boys. The adults never spoke to Uncle Shepsel or Mr. Milgrom, but the twin boys came to Janina and me when we were playing pick-up-sticks. They tried to play, but they were too little to do it right. They made Janina laugh. She began to leave a piece of potato or onion under their noses at night.

  There was even less food now since the bombing by the Russians. It had gone on for many days. Most of the bombs had fallen on Heaven. The clang of the trolleys was gone. The colors were gone, except for the glowing blue line of the camel.

  We smuggled e
very night. On the way over, Janina stayed far behind. Sometimes I turned quickly to catch sight of her, but there were only shadows. It was her game.

  Then we had an unexpected holiday.

  As I was nearing the hole in the wall one night, I heard a sound. I looked. There was something on the ground. I picked it up. It was a cabbage. A firm, fine one. Suddenly more things were falling at my feet. Sausages and potatoes. By now Janina was with me, scooping them up.

  “Somebody is throwing food over the wall,” I said in wonder.

  We stood there, looking up, but nothing else came down. We ran home with the food, giggling all the way.

  The next night we were ready as the food came flying over the wall again. This happened night after night. Tins of sardines and herring. Fruit and babkas of all flavors. More than anything, we loved seeing the astonished faces of Mr. Milgrom and Uncle Shepsel when we returned with our nightly feast.

  And then, just as suddenly, the flying food stopped. We were back on our own.

  We always met on the other side. If she didn’t find me searching for food, she would be waiting for me at the two-brick hole. We always came back through the wall together—me first, then her—ever since the night we found Olek.

  Until the night I couldn’t fit back through the hole.

  First I took off my coat and stuffed it through the hole. I still couldn’t get through. I panicked. I tore off my pants and jammed myself into the hole and didn’t stop until I was through. I reached back for my pants and re-dressed myself, but Janina was already laughing so hard her cabbages were rolling across the ground.

  The next day at the butcher shop I found a good bone among the charred bricks and handed it to Big Henryk and said, “Beat me.”

  Big Henryk was confused. I knew he wouldn’t understand.

  “I’m getting too big,” I said to Enos. I lay on the ground on my back. I raised the bottoms of my feet to Big Henryk. “Beat my feet,” I told him. “I need to stop growing.”

  Enos laughed. “Beat him,” he said. “If you don’t, I will.”

  Big Henryk’s first wallop sent me skidding over the frozen ground like a sled on ice. Everyone laughed. Enos pushed against my shoulders to keep me from sliding. He told Big Henryk to beat away.

  Big Henryk was beating away on the soles of my feet when I heard the moo. We all heard it. I couldn’t believe it. All along I had been on the lookout for the cow. I so wanted to please Doctor Korczak. And now here it was, plain to hear as a Flop’s whistle. But it didn’t sound right.

  It was nearby. We ran to the street. To a courtyard. There it was, galloping across a balcony, a flaming, fiery cow, screaming while a Jackboot behind it laughed and the flamethrower retched more fire until the cow plunged through the railing and sailed through the air, flames flapping like wings to the ground.

  One person ran across the courtyard to the burning cow. And then it was mobbed.

  34

  “This year you will celebrate with us,” said Mr. Milgrom.

  He meant the holiday called Hanukkah. It was the first Jewish word I had learned. He had wanted to include me the year before, but Mrs. Milgrom would not allow it. “No,” she had said, groaning from her mattress. “He is not a Jew. I am not his mother.” “She is not herself,” Mr. Milgrom had said. Still, I was not allowed. For eight nights I had sat in a corner and watched.

  Now it was Hanukkah time again, and Mrs. Milgrom was gone and Uncle Shepsel had walked outside, being a Lutheran now, and I was in. On the first day Mr. Milgrom told me the story of Hanukkah. How long ago the Greeks tried to destroy everything Jewish. (“See, this is not the first time.”) How the Jews were outnumbered and had no chance against the Greeks but beat them anyway. How the Jews celebrated by lighting an oil lamp. But the celebration would have to be short because there was only enough oil to last for one day. And then a miracle happened. The oil lasted for eight days.

  “And so Hanukkah is eight days when we remember that time, and we remember to be happy and proud to be Jews and that we will always survive. This is our time. We celebrate ourselves. We must be happy now. We must never forget how to be happy. Never forget.”

  “Happy.” I had not heard that word since Mr. Milgrom spoke it at the last Hanukkah. I asked him the question that had been on my mind since then. “Tata, what is happy?”

  He looked at me and at the ceiling and back to me. “Did you ever taste an orange?” he said.

  “No,” I said, “but I heard of them. Are they real?”

  “Never mind.” He stared at me some more. “Did you ever—” He stopped and shook his head.

  After more staring, he said, “Were you ever cold, and then you were warm?”

  I thought of sleeping with the boys under the braided rug: cold, then warm. “Yes!” I blurted. “Was that happy?”

  He smiled. “That was happy.”

  I felt again the cuddled tent of warmth. Sometimes I would stick my nose out to better feel the warmth on the rest of me. “Under the rug.”

  “No,” he said. He tapped my chest. “Happy is here.” He tapped his own chest. “Here.”

  I looked down past my chin. “Inside?”

  “Inside.”

  It was getting crowded in there. First angel. Now happy. It seemed there was more to me than cabbage and turnips.

  I looked at Janina sitting potato-faced on the floor. She hadn’t smiled since the burning cow. “Janina does not have happy.”

  He squeezed my shoulder. He smiled sadly. “No.”

  Mr. Milgrom took the silver candleholder from the pill cabinet and lit the first of eight candles. The twins came over to stare at the flame. The other new people stayed on their side of the room.

  Gunshots echoed in the streets as Mr. Milgrom said words over the candle flame. The flame gave a faint yellow tint to his frozen breath. Then he sang a song. “Sing, Janina,” he said, but Janina only gave a grunt or two. Then he pulled Janina and me to our feet, and the twins also, and he made us all hold hands and we danced in a circle while Mr. Milgrom sang and the candle flame quivered and somebody screamed in the night.

  The smile never left Mr. Milgrom’s face. I copied his smile as best I could. Janina’s shoulders slumped and her shoes dragged across the floor.

  I wondered if the orphans were dancing in a circle.

  Then Mr. Milgrom took something, and another something, from his coat pocket. They were wrapped in newspaper. He gave one to Janina, one to me. I tore mine open. It was a comb. I couldn’t believe it. I remembered the canister full of combs in the barbershop. I remembered Uri combing my hair. Now I had my very own!

  I threw off my cap and sank the comb like a spade into my hair. It stuck. I pulled. I couldn’t move it. I dropped the comb and began tearing apart the thatch of hair with my fingers. I tried the comb again. Using all my strength, I was finally able to pull the comb through my hair. I could feel the lice and their eggs peppering the back of my neck. I heard them ticking onto the floor.

  In the light of the candle, I combed and combed and combed my hair. Not until the next day did I notice that Janina’s gift was still wrapped in newspaper.

  “You’re not going to open it?” I said.

  She pouted. “No.”

  So I opened it. It was a comb just like mine. I gave it to her. She threw it on the floor. I picked it up and began combing her curly brown hair. “See?” I said. “Doesn’t that feel good? And it’s better than picking out lice with our fingers.”

  She did not answer. She did not smile. She did not stop me from combing.

  On the second day of Hanukkah, when Mr. Milgrom went for the silver candleholder, it was gone. Mr. Milgrom seemed surprised, but I wasn’t. In my world, things existed to be stolen. With the other family in the room, everyone knew who did it. And why. If you knew who to deal with, things could be traded for money, and money could be traded for food.

  Mr. Milgrom accused no one. He simply looked out the window and said loud enough for all in the room to hear: “Wha
t a shame when Jew will steal from Jew.”

  He found a candle stub and lit the tiny wick with a match. He looked at Janina and me. “Who will be the menorah?” The menorah was the candleholder.

  “I will!” I said.

  He gave me the candle. He made for it a collar of newspaper so the hot wax would not drip on my hand. I stood at attention and held my arms out and did my best to imitate a menorah. Mr. Milgrom said the words and sang. I asked him if I could sing the song I learned at Doctor Korczak’s orphanage. His eyes glistened in the light from my candle. “Yes! Yes!” So I sang my song—a singing candleholder—and Mr. Milgrom and the twins danced in a circle and laughed. Janina refused to get up from the floor.

  So the days of Hanukkah went. When the candle burned away, Mr. Milgrom struck a match and said that maybe it would last for eight days, like the oil in the story. But it burned away before he finished speaking. “So,” he said, “we ourselves will be the candle flames.” He put his hands on his chest. “Feel your hearts, how warm they are.” And I did, I could feel my heart getting warm, I could feel the flame in my chest as we danced in a circle.

  Each night I went out for food, but Janina stayed behind. She never left the room. She never spoke. She even stopped complaining. I combed her hair for hours each day, but I could not comb a smile onto her face. I also was losing my happy.