“Well, I’m just a little girl. Who cares about a little girl?” She twirled about. “Besides, we live in the ghetto now. We’re safe.”
We ran down the street.
To my eyes, this side of the wall looked very much like the other side: crowds of noisy people. Even the fox furs riding the shoulders of the rich ladies seemed as if they might speak at any moment.
Everywhere we went people were selling things, calling out:
“Mirror! Mirror! Unbroken!”
“Beautiful pictures! Three for the price of one!”
“Toys! Toys!”
“Hairbrush! Cheap!”
I saw a boy with one arm. “Olek!” I cried out. We ran to him. Olek squinted at us, shading his eyes with his one hand. “Olek has one arm,” I said to Janina.
She punched me. “I can see.” She turned to Olek. “What happened to your arm?”
Olek looked down at his right shoulder. For a moment he seemed surprised to find the arm was gone. He frowned. “Train,” he said at last.
Janina reached out. “Don’t be sad. This one is good.”
“This is Janina Milgrom,” I announced proudly. “She’s my sister.”
It just came out.
Olek looked at her, but he did not smile. We all looked at each other for a while, then went our separate ways.
Later we saw gray, unspeaking Jon. He was sitting on the sidewalk, his back against the ripped wall of a bombed-out building. “Hello, Jon,” I said.
Jon did not seem to hear me. His eyes were closed.
“He’s sleeping,” Janina whispered.
Just then one of Jon’s eyes fluttered open. “This is Janina Milgrom,” I said.
Janina held out her hand. “Hello.”
The eye closed.
I whispered in her ear. “He doesn’t talk.”
Janina pulled me away. “Let him sleep,” she said.
I raised my voice as if he were far away. “She’s my sister.”
As we walked away, I said, “Jon is gray. He’s sick.”
Janina said, “Why do you tell them I’m your sister? I’m not your sister.”
I shrugged. I didn’t know.
Before we got back to Niska Street, we heard squeals and shouts down an alley. A knot of children was writhing on the ground. Suddenly one of them, a boy, popped out of the knot and came running toward us. As he sped by, I could see that he clutched a potato in his hand. Some of the other children raced after him. The rest dragged themselves off down the alley.
Janina looked at me. “What happened?”
“Unlucky orphans,” I said. I told her that was what Enos called them—orphans who did not live in Doctor Korczak’s home, or any other, and who roamed the streets hungry and begging and sick.
“Be glad we’re not unlucky orphans,” I told her.
“Is gray Jon an unlucky orphan?” she said.
“Oh no,” I said. “He’s a lucky one. He’s with us.”
18
WINTER
Uri had found us by our first morning inside the wall. But now we saw even less of him.
“Do you go to the other side?” I asked him. “Do you have a work permit?”
“Don’t ask,” he said.
One cold day Uri and I were on the street. I was wearing two coats, but I could not make my feet warm. There were many people. I saw a boy. At least I thought it was a boy, from his size. He was lying on the sidewalk. I wondered how he could sleep with all the noise and people.
It was very strange. He was not in a doorway, where I had often seen people sleeping. He was not even on the edge of the sidewalk. He was right in the middle. The people just walked around him, making the shape of an eye. It was also strange that although no one seemed to see him, no one tripped over him.
But the strangest thing of all was the newspaper. It covered him like a blanket.
“Uri,” I said, “that boy is stupid. The newspaper can’t keep him warm.”
“Nothing can keep him warm,” said Uri. “He’s dead.”
We were stopped, looking down at the dead boy, the only ones not walking by.
“Why is he dead?” I said. “Did a Jackboot shoot him?”
Uri shrugged. “Maybe. Or no food. Or the cold. Or typhus. Take your pick.”
“What’s typhus?”
“A sickness. Very popular.”
“Unlucky orphan.”
“Yeah.”
He pulled me along.
From then on, I saw dead people under newspapers every day. It was easy to tell the children—only one page was needed to cover them.
One day I asked Uri, “Why are they covered with newspaper?”
“So nobody can see them.”
“But I can see them,” I said.
Uri did not answer.
Then I saw one of them become seen. By a man. He stopped in front of one. He put his foot on top of the humped newspaper and tied his shoe.
The same bodies were never there two days in a row, but there were always new bodies in new places. Sometimes the feet were sticking out from the newspaper. In the first days the feet always had shoes. Then they stopped having shoes. Then the socks were gone.
In the nights I wondered who put the newspapers over the bodies, and who took the bodies away.
I thought: Angels.
19
The boys and I, we slept in the rubble. We did not have a blanket, but we did have a round braided rug. We all slept together under it. But that wasn’t our main blanket. Our main blanket was ourselves. We slept with our arms around each other, our noses pressed into each other’s necks. Enos called it trading lice. If anybody farted, he was kicked outside the rug. When Uri was with us, I slept next to him. Many nights he wasn’t there. I wondered where he was, but he had said don’t ask, so I didn’t ask.
We were huddled kittens, the bunch of us. We were voices in the dark. Often we talked about mothers. Though I could not remember mine, I had a pretty good idea what a mother was. Not Ferdi. He was always saying, “I don’t believe in them.”
“Where do you think you came from?” said Enos one night under the rug. “An elephant?”
“Who do you think are all those ladies holding children’s hands?” said Olek.
“Fakes,” said Ferdi, whose answers were never long. He blew more smoke than words.
“Everybody has a mother,” said Kuba. “Everybody.”
“Orphans,” said Ferdi. Whenever he spoke, you could smell his cigar breath.
“Orphans had mothers too, dummy,” said Enos. “They’re dead, that’s all.”
“Real mothers don’t die,” said Ferdi.
No one had an answer to that. So we talked about oranges. Like mothers, oranges were a common topic. Enos said he had eaten them many times, but Ferdi said they were only made up.
“What do oranges taste like?” I asked Enos.
He closed his eyes. “Like nothing else.”
“What do they look like?”
“Like a little sun before it sets.”
Ferdi said, “Oranges don’t exist.”
In the morning light, most of us would begin to believe in mothers and oranges again, but for now, under the rug in the pitch-blackness, hearing the faint sounds of the city from the other side of the wall, Ferdi had given us doubts.
Each morning we crawled up out of the rubble and onto the streets. Sometimes we stayed together, but mostly we went our own ways. In a group we were more of a target for the Flops, who were the ghetto police. We had no armbands, no identification papers, no records, nothing.
“We don’t exist,” said Ferdi under the rug one night.
Enos’s voice came: “Tell that to my stomach.”
Enos wasn’t the only one. All of us were hungry. This was something new. Until now we had simply taken what we needed to eat. All of Warsaw had been our food market. Even in the ghetto at first, there had been food for the taking for quick hands and feet. But now, after months of winter, we were finding our
hands and our stomachs empty.
Ladies no longer walked down the street with loaves in paper bags. Bakers didn’t bake, as there was no flour. There were shops here and there, but the shelves were mostly empty. Where there was a morsel of food on a shelf, there was someone standing in front of it, often with a club in his hand.
Uri came with food sometimes. A jar of molasses, a turnip. When he brought chewing gum, we chewed the sugar out of it, then swallowed it whole.
Uri said, “They’re starving us.”
“Why?” I said.
“To get rid of us. To kill us,” said Enos.
“Why don’t they just shoot us?” I said.
Enos snickered. “Save money on bullets.”
In the beginning there were horses in the ghetto, but then they began to disappear. Sometimes parts of them reappeared on Gesia Street. Gesia Street became an outdoor market. It was known that if you had food to sell, that was where you went. People stood on the sidewalk in the snow. Resting on an upturned crate or school desk would be the shank of a horse or a side of dog or cat, a box of salt, a licorice stick, an onion, a potato or two.
The vendors hugged themselves against the cold and cried out:
“Fat here! Nice goose fat! Twenty zlotys!”
“Bones! Bones! Crack the bones! Lots of marrow!”
“Pigeon!”
“Squirrel!”
“Dog! Dog! Best offer!”
At first the animals appeared in the market in their feathers or fur, as naturally dead as the foxes that some of the ladies still wore about their shoulders. Then, if they had fuel for fire, the vendors began to skin and pluck and roast them. The carcasses were laid out, blackened and crusty and minus their heads, and the vendors’ cries went out and the prices went up.
One day I walked along Gesia Street with Enos. The smells of the roasted animals made my mouth water. I hadn’t eaten since the day before. Men with clubs stood by the displays of food. Flops walked the street. Enos himself seemed not hungry but playful. He wiggled down the street and fluttered his fingers and made his voice high and fancy like a fox fur lady’s and said, “Oh yes, that’s lovely, I’ll have that entire goose,” pointing at a bird no bigger than a sparrow. “And that fine squirrel, half a pound of that, please . . . and that nostril of horse.” I was laughing at Enos, and the men with the clubs were swatting at us, telling us to move on, and then I looked at Enos’s face and suddenly I knew he wasn’t playing after all. He winked at me. I grabbed two sparrow-size birds from under a falling club, and the both of us ran till we couldn’t hear the screams behind us.
In time there were no more birds and dogs along the Gesia Street market, but the vendors never seemed to run out of squirrel. Soon everybody knew why. The charred, headless, tailless bodies laid out on the crates were not squirrels at all—they were rats—but the cry of the vendors never changed: “Squirrel! Squirrel!”
One day on my own I snatched two roasted rats. I ate one myself and took the other to Janina’s house. I kept the rat in my pocket so no one would take it from me. Only Janina and Uncle Shepsel were home. Mr. Milgrom was off at the work camp, as usual. Mrs. Milgrom was at her job at the Jackboot uniform factory.
I took the rat from my pocket and held it by one leg for them to see. “I brought you a squirrel,” I said.
Uncle Shepsel laughed. “Not only do you smell, you’re stupid,” he said between laughs. “That”—he flicked it and it swung from its leg between my fingers—“is a rat.”
Janina took it from me. She made a face at Uncle Shepsel. “It’s a squirrel. I’ll save it for Mama and Tata.”
Uncle Shepsel coughed. He looked around for somewhere to spit, then spit on the floor.
Janina punched his arm. “Tata said don’t do that. Spit out the window.”
Uncle Shepsel said, “Your mother and father know a rat when they see one. They won’t eat it.”
Janina stomped her foot. “It’s a squirrel. They will. They’re hungry.”
“So am I,” said Uncle Shepsel, and snatched the rat from her hand. Janina grabbed for it, and now they both had it, Janina pulling on the tiny front legs, Uncle Shepsel on the back. They grunted and scowled at each other. The rat came apart in the middle. Janina staggered backward onto her rear end. By the time she got up, Uncle Shepsel was munching on his half. She tried to reach it, but he was too tall. He kept swatting her away with his free hand as he finished off his meal.
I was there when Janina’s mother came back from her job. I saw the delight on her face when Janina said, “Mama, food!” And I saw the look change when she saw what it was.
When Mr. Milgrom came in, he looked at the little half carcass and shook his head sadly and said, “No . . . not yet.” He went to the mattress and lay down with Mrs. Milgrom. Janina started to cry. She threw the rat on the floor and kicked it at Uncle Shepsel. Uncle Shepsel picked it up. I left then as he was brushing floor dirt from the rat.
The next day I began walking along the wall. Until then I had not thought much about the other side. Now I thought: There’s food over there. More than rats. The gates in the wall were guarded by Jackboots and Flops.
The wall was much too high to climb over, and even if I could get to the top, there was the thicket of barbed wire and broken glass. All that day I walked and looked, walked and looked. At last I saw something. It was not far from the uniform factory. There was a break in the bricks. It was low enough for me to reach. It was two bricks wide. I didn’t know it then, but it was a drain hole of some sort. It would never occur to them that anyone could squeeze through a space two bricks wide.
I left then and came back after dark. I was through the hole in a second. I stood on the other side.
20
I expected to come back with so much food I’d have to push it one item at a time through the two-brick hole. But all I could find was a jar of fish chunks. As I squeezed back through the hole, the jar fell and broke. I picked up the chunks, brushed off the dirt, ate one, and stuffed the rest into my pockets. I went straight to the Milgroms’.
Uncle Shepsel gave his usual greeting: “Ah, the smelly one.”
It was dark outside, but there was electricity this night. A single lightbulb dangled from a cord in the ceiling. Mrs. Milgrom was on the mattress. Mr. Milgrom was at the one table, seated in the only chair, doing things with his pills and bottles. There was a large purple welt on the side of his neck. It looked like an eggplant.
Janina was laughing.
“What’s funny?” I said.
“You.” She pointed. “You peed yourself.”
I looked down. The front of my pants was soaked. It was the juice from the fish chunks in my pockets. “I have food!” I announced proudly. I pulled the fish chunks from my pockets and put them on the table. Uncle Shepsel picked one up. He sniffed it. “Pickled herring.” I saw Mrs. Milgrom’s head rise from the mattress.
Uncle Shepsel devoured his piece at once. Mr. Milgrom and Janina each grabbed a piece and took it over to Mrs. Milgrom. They laughed, seeing they were both doing the same thing. Mr. Milgrom pulled Janina’s head into his chest. “I’ll see to Mother,” he said.
Janina held her fish chunk up to the lightbulb. The skin on one side was silvery. She turned the chunk over and over, studying it. Then she licked it as if it were a taffy, each side of it. Finally, she bit off a little piece with her front teeth. As she chewed, she closed her eyes and smiled dreamily. It took her a long time to finish it.
There were only chewing sounds as they ate their chunks of pickled herring. Everyone wore coats and hats and scarves, but all had taken off their gloves, the better to feel the fish. Their frozen breaths clouded the waxy smear of light.
When the last chunk was gone, Janina pointed at me. She looked angry. “You didn’t eat.”
I was starting to explain that I had had a chunk before I arrived when the sound of a machine gun peppered the night. It was very near. Then there were screams and thuds and running feet and shouts: “Out! Out!” br />
Uncle Shepsel stood in the middle of the room and raised his hands and shouted to the ceiling, “This is it! It’s over! This is it!”
“Shut up,” said Mr. Milgrom as he helped his wife up from the mattress. Janina gaped at the door. It was bedlam on the other side.
“Open the door,” said Mr. Milgrom calmly, “before they come in for us.”
Uncle Shepsel continued to scream at the ceiling, “This is it! This is it!”
I was about to open the door when Mr. Milgrom said, “No, wait.” Slumped against one wall was a large, stuffed cloth bag embroidered in black and green designs. Mr. Milgrom reached into the bag and pulled out a blue-and-white armband. He slipped it over my coat sleeve onto my right arm. “I got this for you,” he said.
I opened the door. People were stampeding by, tumbling down the stairs. Screams. Shattering glass. Gunshots.
We made our way down to the ground floor. Janina squeezed my hand. I could feel her trembling. Bright lights flooded the courtyard. I shielded my eyes. Janina nudged closer to me. Voices shrieked out of the blinding lights: “Move! Move! All you filthy sons of Abraham! All you stinking Zionists! All you dirty Jewish pigs! Line up! Line up!”
Lines were forming, like a company of soldiers. I thought: Maybe we’re going to be in a parade. We found places. We stood.
“Silence! Silence! You filthy swine!”
Mr. Milgrom whispered, “Stand straight. Look healthy.”
I heard Mrs. Milgrom groan.
As we were lining up, snow began to fall. The flakes were fat and starry in the blinding lights. “Stand at attention,” Mr. Milgrom whispered. I didn’t pay him much mind. He had no way of knowing how impossible it was for me to stand still. I had never stood still for more than five seconds in my life. Nevertheless, I tried. Mr. Milgrom was on one side of me, Janina on the other. The soldiers screamed. With my new armband, I thought: I am a Jew now. A filthy son of Abraham. They’re screaming at me. I am somebody. I tried to listen well, to hear what they were screaming, but I could not understand much beyond “dirty” and “filthy” and “Jew.”