“What’s the ghetto?”
“Where the damned live.”
Though the people were quiet, there was much noise behind them. There was whistling and cheering and breaking glass. As the moving people came down out of their houses, other people rushed in. There were fistfights in the courtyards. People sailed from doorsteps. Top-floor windows flew open, the new house people shouted over the heads of the walkers, “It’s mine!”
But I was more interested in this ghetto place, wherever it was. “Be back by curfew.” It was all the warning Uri gave me anymore.
I walked with the Jews. For a while I got carried away. Ever since the great Jackboot parade, I had wanted to be in one. And so I marched along in a parade of my imagination, passing one plodding Jew after another, head high, arms swinging, goose-stepping as if I wore tall shiny boots myself. If anyone noticed, I was not aware. No one said a word. Soon enough, my imagination petered out and I slowed down to the pace of the others.
I found myself walking beside a boy who looked Uri’s age. The boy hauled a gray sack that bulged as if it held pumpkins.
“Do you know Uri?” I said.
The boy kept staring straight ahead.
I repeated myself, louder. “Do you know Uri?”
The boy did not seem to know I was there. That didn’t stop me. I was determined to talk.
“Uri has red hair. He’s not a Jew.” I was always careful not to give Uri away. “Can I touch your armband?” He didn’t respond. I touched it. “I’m a Gypsy,” I told him. “Maybe someday I’ll get an armband too.”
I pulled a sausage from my pocket. (I carried a sausage with me whenever I could find one. I snacked on it through the day.) I held it up to him. “Would you like a bite of my sausage?” For the first time I saw his eyes move. Then the lady walking on the other side of him said, “He’s not hungry. Please go.”
That was ungrateful, I thought, but I did as she said. I went from person to person, asking questions: “Are you going to the ghetto? . . . Will you have a nice house in the ghetto? . . . How much farther to the ghetto?” I never received an answer. To one and all I offered my sausage, but no one took a bite. No one saw me, or so I believed—except the foxes on the shoulders of some of the ladies. Their tiny black round eyes stared endlessly at me.
Once I saw a speckled mare. “Greta!” I cried out, and ran to her. But all she did was slobber over my head, and I knew it could not be Greta.
I heard children singing, a familiar voice calling, “Old Man Goose! One! Two! Three!”
I ran. “Doctor Korczak!” He staggered and laughed as I crashed into him. “Doctor Korczak, are you going to the ghetto too?”
“Yes,” he said, “we’re all going.”
“Is it wonderful?” I asked him.
He smiled. “We will make it wonderful.”
I marched with the orphans. They were singing. I did not know the words, so I just belted out sounds. When I was with them, I wanted to be an orphan too. Between songs came the clack and rattle of the carts and walking people. Once a voice came down from a high window: “Orphan pie!”
And then I saw Janina. She was trudging along with her family. The sack over her shoulder almost fell to the ground. I ran to her. “Janina!”
She looked at me. She smiled. “Misha!”
I burst: “Are you going to the ghetto? Where did you go? There’s somebody else in your house now. I don’t like him. He poured beer on my head. I smashed his foot.” She laughed. I said it again. “I smashed his foot!” She laughed louder.
“Janina,” I said, “nobody sees me, except Doctor Korczak.”
A voice came. “They see you.” It came from the man walking behind us. The piled-high cart he pulled was strapped to his shoulders. His was one of the faces I had seen around the birthday table.
“That’s my father,” said Janina.
“They don’t look at me,” I said to Janina’s father. The cart behind him creaked and rattled.
“They’re afraid of you,” he said.
I laughed. “Nobody’s afraid of me.”
Janina glared at me. “Don’t laugh at my father. If he says they’re afraid of you, they’re afraid of you.”
I looked up at him. Like everyone else, he stared straight ahead. His eyes were large and chestnut brown, like Janina’s.
“Why are they afraid of me?” I said.
Before he could answer, Janina piped, “Because you’re not a Jew, why do you think?”
I could not imagine such a thing: people afraid of me. I took out the sausage. “Want a bite?”
“No!” came a woman’s voice, but it was too late. Janina had snatched the sausage and ripped off a big bite. She handed it to her father. He looked at it for a while and finally took a bite. He held it out for the lady, but she shook her head. Another hand reached over and snatched it. This man finished it off.
“That’s my uncle Shepsel,” said Janina. “He lives with us.”
I reached for Janina’s sack. “I want to carry it.”
She gave it to me and at once went skipping ahead. I slung the sack over my shoulder. It wanted to pull me backward. “What’s in there?” I called.
Janina came skipping back. “All my favorite things. Except my scooter. Mama wouldn’t let me bring my scooter.” She glared at the lady.
I pointed to her armband. “Do you like it?” I said.
“Tobiasz—” said Janina’s mother.
“Never mind,” said her father. “He’s the boy.”
“I know. The thief.”
“Never mind.”
And then there was noise up ahead. The rattle of cart wheels grew louder. “Come . . . come . . .” Janina’s father grunted and leaned into his harness until he was practically level to the street. The parade was going faster. Dropped pots rang like sick trolley bells. People were shouting. People were running.
16
“A closet?” said Uri.
“A closet,” I said. I footed a line in the dirt, dividing our stall in half. “This big. That’s what Uncle Shepsel said. ‘We’re living in a closet.’”
I was telling him about the day. I told him how I met Janina and her family and that everyone rushed into the ghetto, and that was how I knew the ghetto must be a wonderful place. I told him how we went into a courtyard, a dirt square surrounded by high flat walls of houses, and how Janina’s father sent Uncle Shepsel—“Hurry! Hurry!”—and Uncle Shepsel dashed into one of the houses and up the stairs and Janina and I followed him but I was last because of the sack, and Uncle Shepsel planted himself in a doorway on the fourth floor and we planted ourselves too until Janina’s mother and father lumbered up. And we went back down and unloaded the cart and carried the things upstairs, and some things needed two or three people to carry, but there was always one person left behind planted in the doorway, and the house was “a madhouse”—that’s what Janina’s mother said, “a madhouse”—because so many other people were doing the same thing and there was only one stairway and someone was planted in every doorway.
When everything was carried up, Janina’s father and Uncle Shepsel broke apart the cart with hammers and kicks and carried the gray, splintery cart pieces up too, even the wheels. When everything was finally in and Janina’s father shut the door, that was when Uncle Shepsel said it: “We’re living in a closet.”
I told Uri what happened when I left. Janina wanted to walk down to the courtyard with me, but her mother said no. So she went with me to the landing outside the door, and then she said, “Wait” and went back inside. When she came out, she was grinning. “Close your eyes and hold out your hand.” I did as she said. I felt something in my hand. “Open.”
It was a piece of candy, a buttercream with a hazelnut heart. Except it was only half a candy; even half the hazelnut was gone.
“I didn’t know what it was until I bit it,” she said. “Then I saved it for you.”
I ate it. I hadn’t had one in a long time. I had thought I would never tas
te another. She kept grinning. I ran down the stairs.
When I returned to the ghetto, there was a wall in the way. Men were building it with bricks. It was three of me high. I walked along until I came to a section that had not yet been completed, where the wall was only a couple of bricks high. I stepped over. Someone yelled. I ran.
Running wasn’t easy because again I was carrying a large sack. This time the sack was filled with food. The harvest was in and the pickings were good for quick hands and feet.
I found the house. It was on Niska Street. I climbed the stairs to the door. I knocked. A gruff voice said, “Who’s there?”
“Misha Pilsudski.”
I heard a squeal, then the rattle of locks. The door flew open. Janina threw up her hands. “Misha!”
Janina’s mother lay on a mattress in a corner of the room. She opened one eye and grunted, “You again.”
“What’s that?” said Janina, pointing to the sack.
Uncle Shepsel slammed the door shut and locked it.
“Food,” I said. There was a square table in the middle of the room. I dumped out the sack.
Janina clapped. “Food!”
Turnips and apples rolled onto the table and off to the floor. There were bunches of carrots and celery and loaves of bread and jars of jam and molasses and bags of sugar and links of sausage. Everyone gathered around. Even Janina’s mother got up from the mattress.
“Where did you get it?” said Janina’s father.
“Many places,” I said.
Uncle Shepsel snapped a carrot in half. “The smelly nimble-footed thief.”
Janina’s mother opened up a white, dusty bag. She dipped in a fingertip, tasted it. “This is baking powder. You need an oven to bake. Does he see an oven in here?” She returned to the mattress. She lay facing the wall. “I remember ovens. I had one”—she coughed—“once. I was a human being once.”
Uncle Shepsel looked at her with sad eyes. “Once upon a time.”
“There’s a wall outside,” I said. “Why is there a wall?”
“Keep out the riffraff,” said Uncle Shepsel with a sneer.
“How did you get in?” Janina asked me.
I told her how I found a low place in the wall and simply stepped over. I added: “I can go anywhere.” I was not boasting, I was simply stating a fact. I had come to love my small size, my speed, my slipperiness. Sometimes I thought of myself as a bug or a tiny rodent, slipping into places that the eye could not even see.
There was a knock on the door. Uncle Shepsel’s finger flew to his lips. “Don’t speak,” he whispered. “We’re not here.” Then he sagged as Janina’s father called out, “Who’s there?”
“Hiram Lefkowitz,” came the answer.
Janina’s father unlocked the door. “Yes, come in.”
As Uncle Shepsel threw a coat over the food on the table, Hiram Lefkowitz came in. He took off his hat and held out a piece of paper. “Doctor Milgrom—”
Janina’s father took the paper. “I’m not a doctor.” He went to a waist-high, box-looking thing squatting on the floor and pulled at it. It opened up like wings. It was a chest with many little drawers. On either side of the chest were shelves of jars, some with powders, some with liquids of different colors. It reminded me of the barbershop. I wondered how the bottles had survived the rickety trek across the city.
Janina’s father took something from a drawer, put it into a little envelope, and gave it to the man. The man pulled an apple from his pocket. He looked about to cry. “I wish—”
“Go,” said Janina’s father, ushering the man out. “No need. Go.”
The man reached back to touch Mr. Milgrom. “Shalom.”
“Shalom.”
Uncle Shepsel shut and bolted the door. He wagged a finger in the face of Janina’s father. “By tomorrow the whole place will know. We’ll be overrun.”
Mr. Milgrom pulled in the wings, and the chest of drawers became a plain-looking box again. “What would you like me to do? Save it all for ourselves? He gave me a prescription. I did my job.”
“There’ll be nothing left in a week. They’ll clean you out.”
“Maybe we’ll be out of here in a week.”
“If we’re out of here, it will be in our graves.” He pointed out the one window. “You think they’re putting up that wall only to last a week? We’ll be lucky to ever get out of here!” He was shouting.
Janina’s mother groaned on the mattress.
Janina and I were in a corner that would become our corner. “My father is a pharmacist,” she told me.
“What’s pharmacist?” I said.
“A pharmacist makes medicine.”
“What’s medicine?”
She looked at me strangely. “Medicine makes people better when they’re sick. It’s like pills and castor oil.” She made a face. “Ugh.”
“Your father is Tobiasz Milgrom,” I said.
She beamed. “Yes.”
“You are Janina Milgrom.”
“Yes!”
“I am Misha Pilsudski!”
She clapped her hands. “Yes!”
Uncle Shepsel glared at us. Janina stuck out her tongue at him. I giggled. Not only did I have my very own last name but now I knew someone else’s. I giggled as if I were being tickled.
17
Suddenly everybody was living with Uri and me in the stable. Enos the grim-faced. Kuba the clown. Ferdi the smoke blower. One-armed Olek. Shoeless Big Henryk. Gray, unspeaking Jon. And others, boys no one seemed to know.
“We stick out like purple turds,” said Enos. He said that since the rest of the Jews went to the ghetto, the boys could no longer blend in with the street crowds. “And there’s finches everywhere.”
“What’s finches?” I said.
“People that tell the Jackboots where Jews are hiding.”
“I’m glad I’m not a Jew,” I said.
He gave an ugly laugh. “Don’t worry, the ghetto is for you too. I hear they take Gypsies. And cripples. And crazies. If you want to be safe, be a cockroach.”
There must have been a finch around, because one morning as we were sleeping in the hayloft, the door flew open and voices shouted. We scrambled—like cockroaches—but Jackboots were everywhere. One of the new boys jumped from the loft. He was shot in midair and flopped to the ground floor like a rag doll.
They marched us to the ghetto. Since they had finished the brick wall—topped with broken glass and coils of barbed wire—I had not been able to visit Janina. I took this as a personal insult and challenge. I had never before been kept out of any place I wished to be, and I had no doubt that I would soon find my way to the other side of the wall. Still, I wasn’t too proud to be grateful that the escorts were making it so easy.
Something else occupied my mind even more along the march: Uri. He wasn’t with us. When the Jackboots rousted us in the stable, he wasn’t there. This was not surprising. In recent weeks, Uri was often gone, sometimes for days at a time. With his red hair and I-belong-here invisibility, Uri believed he would never be seen as a Jew. He was fearless on the streets. Also, he believed he was much smarter than the Jackboots.
I always knew when Uri was about to disappear: he would put his fist under my chin and whisper between clenched teeth, “Don’t let me hear . . .” He meant that he had appointed some of the boys to finch on me if I did something especially stupid and silly. I think he would have been surprised to know that I actually heeded his warning, as much as I was capable of heeding a warning. For some reason, I felt freer to be stupid and silly when he was there than when he was not.
It never occurred to me to worry about Uri. I believed he knew everything and could handle anything. But, prodded along by the Jackboots’ rifles, I did wonder about him. Where was he? What was he doing? What would he think when he returned to find the stable empty? I did not wonder if he would find us. I knew he would.
Instead of the sidewalk, the Jackboots marched us down the middle of the streets. Horse wagons
and automobiles made way for us. People stared. We’re a parade! I thought. But for this parade the people were not silent.
“Bye-bye, you little snots!”
“Over the wall with you!”
“Filthy Jews!”
I didn’t bother to tell them I wasn’t a Jew.
On one street we marched down the trolley tracks, and here came a trolley heading right for us. We hesitated. The Jackboots shouted. We continued. We did not stop. The trolley did. Then, with a clank and a clang, it began to move backward, and that was how we went down the street, the trolley backing up before us as we marched on.
Soon we turned onto another street, and there was the wall. To the left and right, it went on forever in both directions. The bricks were red, the sky was brilliant blue, the knots in the barbed wire sparkled like ladies’ earrings. A yellow bird landed on a curlicue of wire, stayed for a moment, and flew off.
We came to a gate in the wall. The guard opened it. We marched through. The Jackboots stayed behind. One of them bowed deeply. I didn’t understand that he was mocking us. I bowed back. He kicked me in the rear end and sent me sprawling to the ground. The gate slammed shut.
I made a beeline for the Milgroms’ apartment. When Janina opened the door, I announced, “I live in the ghetto now!”
“Just what we need,” said Uncle Shepsel, “another neighbor.”
I didn’t see Janina’s mother and father. “Where are your parents?”
Janina told me that her father had been taken out of the ghetto and out of the city on a work detail. Her mother was sewing uniforms for Jackboot soldiers in a Warsaw factory. Only people with work permits were allowed through the gates in the wall.
“Let’s go outside!” I said.
We bolted from the apartment and ran down the stairs, Uncle Shepsel shouting, “Wear your armband!”
It was cold and bright outside. We ran about the courtyard like let-loose puppies. Uncle Shepsel’s voice came down from the window. “Your armband!”
We ran out to the street. “Why don’t you wear your armband?” I said to Janina.
“Why don’t you?” she said.
“I’m not a Jew.”