Milkweed

  Then an idea came to me.

  Although Janina did not like her comb, I knew of something she would like very much. Almost every time she ate I heard her mutter, “I wish I had a pickled egg.” I knew about pickled herring but not pickled eggs. I thought: I’ll find an egg and a pickle.

  There was only one day of Hanukkah left. That night when I went to the other side, I forgot about everything else. I could not remember seeing an egg in my smuggling searches, but then I hadn’t been looking for eggs. I knew eggs were kept in cool places, so I looked in iceboxes and basements. I went to all my best houses plus the blue camel hotel and found not a single egg.

  As for pickles, I was hoping for the fat, juicy kind that Uri used to eat, but the best I could do was a jar of pickle spears in someone’s pantry. I was traveling light this night, so I just took a couple of spears from the jar and put them in my pocket. Now all I needed was an egg.

  It had begun to snow. I lurked down alleyways, jiggling strange doors and windows, trying to get in somewhere. There were more ruins now, after the Russians’ bombing. Parts of Heaven were beginning to look like the ghetto. At last I found an egg, not in a great house but in a shoemaker’s shop. And not in an icebox but sitting on a scrap of leather on a workbench. I cradled the egg in my hand. I knew how fragile they were. I could already hear Janina’s joyful squeal.

  On the way back, out on the street, I heard a whistle blast. I thought nothing of it. The Jackboots were after someone. The whistle kept getting louder, and then a shouting voice: “Jude! Jude!” I didn’t understand. No one ever stopped me over here. I ran. A second voice was shouting. Snowflakes pelted my face. I kept my fingers loose about the egg.

  I could not run in a straight line, for there were craters in the streets from the bombing. And I could not lead them to the hole in the wall. I darted into an alley and into the shadows and deep into a heap of rubble. I crouched, panting, pressing the cold, smooth egg to my lips. The shouts and whistles grew faint. I waited for a long time. The snow piled on my hat and collar. I could smell the pickles in my pocket. I warmed the egg with my breath.

  The sky was turning from black to gray when I made my way back to the two-brick hole. I reached to the other side and laid the egg in the snow and wriggled after it. I had been having no problems getting through lately. Big Henryk’s walloping must have worked.

  The moment I returned to the ghetto side I realized why the Jackboots had been after me. I had forgotten to take off my armband. I had been announcing to all of Warsaw: Look! I’m a Jew! Escaped from the ghetto! It was a wonder they hadn’t noticed me sooner.

  Darkness, my friend, was leaving. I had to hurry. I ran. Dashing around a corner, I tripped over a body half hidden in the snow and went sprawling on the sidewalk. The egg flew from my hand. At first I was happy for the pillow of snow, but when I picked up the egg I saw in the dim light that the shell was cracked. I was heartbroken. All the dangers it had survived, only to come to this.

  And then I noticed that it was only cracked, not broken apart. There was no yellow seeping into the snow. I didn’t understand. An egg that cracked but didn’t break. It was a miracle!

  I ran the rest of the way, veering around bodies. Mr. Milgrom was already awake when I got home. Janina was sleeping. I showed him the egg and the pickle spears. “For Janina,” I whispered. “Happy.”

  He looked at the egg and pickle spears, but he looked longer at me.

  “Look at the egg,” I said. “It doesn’t break. Is it a miracle?”

  He studied the egg. He held it to his ear and shook it. He nodded. “No,” he whispered. “The miracle is you. The egg is hard-boiled. It will not break.”

  A hard-boiled egg. This was new to me. I hoped Janina would like it.

  That night I gave it to her. Her eyes bulged like bird’s eggs. She peeled off the shell and shoved the whole egg into her mouth. She closed her eyes and made little sounds as she ate it.

  “Wait,” I said. “Pickles.” I held them out. “Pickled egg.”

  She waved the pickles away. “Pickled eggs are purple,” she mumbled through the mush in her mouth. The twins were staring. Their teeth were going up and down with hers.

  When she finished eating the egg, she hugged her father and said, “Thank you.”

  “Thank Misha,” he said. “It was his idea. He found it on the other side.”

  She hugged me. I was surprised she could squeeze so hard.

  Uncle Shepsel returned. He came to the room only to eat and sleep now. He believed that the less time he spent with Jews, the more Lutheran he became. But even Lutherans get hungry, and when he came in the door he sniffed the air and said, “Pickles.”

  To my surprise, Mr. Milgrom took a pickle spear from his pocket and gave it to Uncle Shepsel.

  As for me, I had been awake too long. I lay down. I felt a comb in my hair . . . combing . . . combing . . .

  35

  SPRING

  “What’s that?” Janina said. She went to the window. The twins ran after her.

  We were in the room. It was day. There were voices outside the window. I joined the others.

  In the courtyard below, children were singing. They sounded more like crows than like children. When they sensed we were watching from above, they turned their faces up to us, all rags and eyes.

  “Why are they singing?” I said.

  Mr. Milgrom’s voice came over my shoulder. “They are hungry. They are singing for food.”

  “We have no food,” I said.

  This was true. When Janina and I returned from Heaven each night—she was going out with me again—we dropped something through the window of Doctor Korczak’s orphanage and brought the rest straight home and ate it at once.

  “Come away from the window, children,” said Mr. Milgrom.

  The singing in the courtyard went on for a while, then it went away.

  The flies were always singing. The days were warm and the bodies were cold and the flies were singing and drinking at the eyes and boils of the children. No one took from the bodies under the newspapers, as there were no clothes left to take, no shoes, only rags. I believed I saw angels lurking behind the eyes of the living, waiting. Angels and crows passed each other, one leaving, the other coming.

  Every day a parade of body wagons backed up at the Gesia Street gate of the cemetery.

  Smugglers hung like sad fruits from lampposts with signs around their necks.

  The piper marched up and down the streets and blew his silver flute and cried out, “Come to the candy mountain!”

  On Sundays the Jackboots came with their girlfriends to pinch their noses and take pictures and toss pieces of bread to us pigeons. One soldier made the others laugh: he wore a clothespin on his nose.

  Food was harder and harder to find, even in Heaven. Sometimes all I could find was green bread. Sometimes there was nothing in a garbage can but drippings of fat in the bottom. I had no container, so I scooped two handfuls and returned with that. The others ate the fat from my hands.

  Even with smuggled food, Janina had gotten thinner and thinner. Her face had become as thin as a fox’s. While the rest of her became smaller, her eyes grew larger.

  In other ways Janina was her old self again, chattering, complaining, shadowing me everywhere I went, in everything I did. She made me self-conscious. I hesitated to do things that had always come naturally. I had stopped harassing Buffo so that Janina would also stop, but it didn’t work. In fact, she went even further. She became a gnat in the nose of every Flop she saw. She called them names. She threw stones. She sneaked up behind them and whacked them on the backs of their knees with a metal pipe.

  I smacked her. I shouted at her. But I could not change her. I could not understand her moods, her outbursts. I mostly accepted the world as I found it. She did not. She smacked me back and kicked me. In time I found my own best way to deal with her. On many days I went off to a favorite bomb crater and lowered myself into it and licked traces of fat from between my f
ingers and closed my eyes and remembered the good old days when ladies walked from bakeries with bulging bags of bread.

  36

  One minute I was walking alone—I was heading for the bomb crater—and the next minute someone was beside me. I gave a yelp. “Uri!” He had not been around in a long time. I hugged him. He pushed me away.

  “Shut up,” he said. “Just listen.” He smacked me on the back of the head. “Are you listening?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Get out,” he said.

  “Get out?”

  He wore a blue-and-white armband just like mine.

  “I’m not going to say it again. Get. Out.”

  I was confused. “Get out of where?”

  “Out of the ghetto. Out of Warsaw. Out of everywhere. Just get out. Go. And don’t look back.”

  There were no scabs or boils on Uri’s face. He wore clothes. Shoes.

  A hollow-eyed, rag-draped skeleton appeared before us. I could not tell if it was a boy or a girl. It held out its hand. Uri pulled a fat pickle from his pocket. He bit off a piece, took the piece from his mouth, and gave it to the hand. We walked on.

  “Why?” I said.

  “Deportations,” he said. “They’re going to begin soon. They’re clearing out the ghetto.”

  “Deport——?”

  “Deportations. They’re going to get rid of all of you. Take you away on trains.”

  This sounded good to me. “Where?” I said. “Russia? Washington America?”

  He curled his fingers around my neck. He squeezed. “I don’t know. You don’t want to know. Whatever you do, do not get on a train. Do not be here when the trains come. Just go. Get out. Run. Don’t stop running.” He looked at the sky. “Ever.”

  I looked at the sky with him, but nothing was there.

  He stared at me. “I never asked you—how do you get to the other side?”

  I told him about the two-brick hole.

  He wagged his head. He almost grinned. “You little turd. I knew you’d be good for something.”

  “Remember when I saw you in the blue camel hotel?” I said excitedly.

  He bounced a knuckle off my forehead. “You didn’t see me anywhere, you hear? You never saw me. You don’t know me.” Another knuckle. “You understand?”

  I nodded, but I did not understand.

  “I have to go,” he said. “Here.” He gave me the rest of the pickle. He stepped back. He stared at me up and down. He wagged his head. He looked sad. “Darker than ever.” He spit on his finger and rubbed my cheek. “Before you go, find some water and wash your face.” He reached into a rubble of bricks and pulled out a handful of white dust. “See this? Rub your face with it. Your hands.” He washed my hands in the dust. They became whiter than his. “See? Before you go”—pointing to my armband—“take off that thing.” He grabbed my hair and shook my head till I was dizzy. “Do not look at anyone. Do not stop for anything. You are not a Jew. You are not a Gypsy. You are nobody.” He slapped my face. “Say it.”

  “I am nobody.”

  He let me go. He backed off. His red hair was cut so short it was just a tinge of rust creeping out of his cap. He turned and walked away. He came back. He squeezed my neck. “Tell no one but the boys,” he said. He looked about. “How are they? Are they all right?”

  “Not Olek,” I said. “Olek is hanged. With a sign.” Uri stared at me. “They smuggle, like me. But not through the hole. They’re too big.”

  Uri looked at the sky for a long time. He closed his eyes. He looked back to me. He reached into his pocket and handed me something. “Here.” He walked away for good.

  It was a piece of candy. The chocolate coat was melting. I ate it. It was a buttercream with a hazelnut heart.

  I went straight to the boys at the butcher shop ruins. I told them I had seen Uri. “He says we must go.”

  Kuba laughed. “Go? Go where?”

  “Out of the ghetto,” I said. “Out of everywhere. Run. Run forever!”

  Kuba and Ferdi laughed. Enos did not. “Why?” he said.

  “Deportation.”

  The boys looked at one another.

  “What’s that mean?” said Ferdi.

  “I don’t know,” said Enos. But I could tell that he did.

  Big Henryk boomed: “Run!”

  I saved the pickle for my family. As they chewed the pieces, I said, “We must go.” I said it in a whisper so the new people in the room would not hear.

  “What are you talking about?” said Uncle Shepsel.

  “Uri says the trains are coming to take us away. He says we have to run.”

  “Who is Uri?” said Mr. Milgrom.

  “Uri is my friend.”

  “Your friend is cuckoo,” said Uncle Shepsel. “Why would they take you anywhere? They already have you like pigs in a pen. What else can they do to you? And I say ‘ you’ ”—he pointed to each of us—“because I am no longer one of you.” He licked pickle juice from his lip. “I am a Lutheran. Everyone knows. I have nothing to fear. I am only thinking of you”—he jabbed his book in Mr. Milgrom’s face—“with your Hanukkahs and stubbornness. You. ”

  Janina pulled on her father’s sleeve. “I want to go away on the train, Tata.”

  Mr. Milgrom patted her hand. “There will be no train. Uncle Shepsel is right. There is nothing else they can do to us.”

  37

  SUMMER

  Janina was the first to hear it. We had just wriggled through the hole back into the ghetto. My pockets were stuffed with chunks of rotten cabbages.

  “What’s that?” she said.

  We listened.

  In the black distance there was a faint sound of metal clanking, screeching.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  She yelped. “It’s the trains!”

  She ran. She ran stupidly, down the middle of the street, ignoring the shadows. Onions bounced from her pockets. I ran after her. The clanking and screeching became louder.

  “Janina! Stop!” I tried to shout without shouting. Curfew began when the sun went down. Nighttime was dangerous for everyone, not just smugglers.

  I caught her. I held her by the arms as she tried to kick me. I wanted to hit her, but I was afraid to let go. “They’ll shoot you, you stupid girl.” I felt her shoulders slump. She relaxed. She was giving up. I let go. She turned suddenly and raised up on her tiptoes and bashed her forehead into my nose. I howled. Tears leaped to my eyes. When I finally managed to see, she was gone.

  “Good,” I whispered. “Stupid girl.” I threw a stone. I shouted as loud as I could: “Stupid girl!”

  I tried to go home. I tried to sit in the shadows and wait for her to come back. In the end all I could do was start walking toward the noises in the night. They were coming from Stawki Station, the railroad yard just on the other side of the ghetto wall.

  I had long since discovered that the two-brick hole I used nightly was not the only one in the wall. Near the Stawki Street gate there was another. I wriggled through it and found myself once again outside the wall. I saw that there was not one train, but many. Thick, yellow light came from lamps hung high on a forest of poles. Locomotives huffed and whistled and blew steam from their wheels. Endless lines of boxcars vanished into the blackness. Jackboots and Jackdogs flashed from the shadows.

  Uri was right.

  I found Janina sitting on a collapsed smokestack. I could not help myself. I climbed up beside her.

  We watched a train come in and line up with the others.

  “Where will they go?” she said, never taking her eyes from the trains. “Where will they take us?”

  “You don’t want to know,” I said.

  “Do you know?”

  “Yes,” I lied. “But I’m not telling you.” Punishing her.

  We watched some more.

  She said, “I know where they’re going.”

  “Where?” I said.

  She nodded like her father did when he was saying something important. “T
hey’re going to the candy mountain.”

  We said nothing of the trains the next day. We didn’t have to. Everyone in the ghetto knew. The words were in the air, buzzing with the flies:

  “Trains . . .”

  “Deportations . . .”

  “Stawki Station . . .”

  “Why . . .”

  “Where . . .”

  Uncle Shepsel became more and more agitated. He wagged his book at the new people. He ranted at the people on the stairway. He called down from the window to the courtyard: “Jews! Repent! It is not too late! Come with me! Save yourselves!”

  At the butcher shop ruins, Enos laughed and laughed. He stood on a pile of bricks and spread his arms and shouted: “They’re doing it! They’re really doing it!”

  The piper marched in the streets.

  Sounds of singing came through the open windows of the orphanage.

  All eyes and ears turned toward Stawki Station. Even the morning corpses seemed to be listening.

  Two nights after we first saw the trains, as we returned from the garbage cans of Heaven, we heard the sounds. Gunshots. Whistles. Screams. Snarling dogs. When we came to the two-brick hole, we peeked through, our heads pressed together, one eye apiece. People were going by, many of them, down the middle of the street. Everyone carried a suitcase. My first stupid thought was Parade! Then I saw the Jackboots poking them with rifles and the dogs lunging and snapping. The people went by so slowly. Their feet seemed to slide along the street, not walk. They did not look like they were going to the candy mountain. I thought they would never pass.

  The next day the streets were empty.

  Voices in the stairway, in the courtyard, said: “There is a quota. The trains must take five thousand Jews every day.”

  Voices: “Ten thousand.”

  Voices: “Until—”

  And then someone said: “Resettlement.”

  What did he mean? Resettlement? What resettlement?

  “They have had enough of us here,” the someone said. “They are sick of us. They are kicking us out. They are sending us to the East. To resettlement. We will have our own villages. No one but Jews!”