If I Should Die Before I Wake

  I hate it. I hate it all!

  I hate the Jews! And the Germans! And while I'm at it, I hate you, Mother! And I hate being trapped in this white place with you, Grandma, Grandmaw, with your droopy-dog look.

  I hate living in the ghetto, and starving to death, and watching the people I love die.

  I hate it all! All I feel is hate—all I am is hate.

  Just let me close my eyes. No more thinking. No seeing.

  Just let there be darkness.

  And silence.

  Just let me not be.

  Who's that? I hear someone. Is it Brad? Brad's here. I told you he'd come.

  "How is the patient?"

  "Reverend Jonnie! I'm so glad. I didn't think they'd let anyone else up here, but of course, you're her pastor."

  Never, Mother! Never a pastor who glides through life on his own oil slick.

  "What's the news on the outside? Have they found that boy?"

  "I'm sorry, Ruby. No, the news isn't good. The parents received a note in their mailbox last night. It said the boy is dead. No signature, of course, just a swastika."

  "Good Lord, the poor kid. And Hilary ..."

  It's not true. It's not. Grandma, don't believe him. They wouldn't do that. Brad wouldn't do that. It's not true. Oh, please, it's not true.

  Stupid Simon. Why'd he have to be so stupid? Why'd he have to be so little, so different?

  I asked him that once. No, really, I did. We were in the garden between our houses. He was working, weeding around the vegetables and grinning like he was having fun. That's when I asked him why he was so weird, why he had to act so different so nobody liked him. Know what he said to me? He said, "I thought you liked me." That's how stupid he was—is.

  I told him I didn't like him, and neither did anyone else. And he says, "You used to like me. You used to play with me, remember?"

  "That was because I was bored," I told him. "I could never like a Jew boy. You're all snobs."

  "We're not snobs, you just don't understand us. Why don't you try to understand us? Why don't you read your Bible, then you'll understand."

  "See," I said, "that's just what I mean, Jew boy."

  I kicked a clump of dirt at him. I mean, who acts like that? Who talks like that? Only Simon. Simple Simon.

  Oh, he's alive all right.

  "Let's not worry about Hilary's future just now. How is she? What does the doctor say?"

  "She just seems to be in this—limbo. I don't know if she's going to die or what. I don't think even the doctor knows."

  "We must have faith, Ruby."

  "Yeah, well, I brought my Bible."

  "But you're upset. Come, sit back down and let's talk."

  "It's just that it's not working. My prayers aren't working. There's no comfort in the words I'm reading, but I can't stop reading them. It's like someone else is choosing the words I have to read."

  I thought you brought the Bible for me, Mama—Mother.

  "Ah, God is speaking to you. You have been touched, blessed. We must get down on our knees and give thanks to God, who is preparing the way for what is to come."

  "What are you saying? Is God preparing me for Hilary's death, or is He punishing me for it?"

  "What do you think?"

  "I've never been so frightened." "Let us listen for God's precious words and He will give you the comfort you are seeking."

  "No. Please, I don't understand. Why do I feel so compelled to read this book of Jeremiah? It's the Old Testament. I've never had any use for it, but reading it now, it frightens me. I feel as if the Lord is trying to tell me something.

  "Tell me this, Reverend. Why should this passage frighten me so?

  "And they have built the high place of Topheth,

  which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to

  burn their sons and their daughters in the fire;

  which I did not command, nor did it come into my

  mind. Therefore, behold, the days are coming, says

  the Lord, when it will no more be called Topheth,

  or the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley

  of Slaughter."

  It frightens me, too.

  Grandma? She's reading about the past, and yet it is also the future, isn't it?

  "Perhaps you already know why this passage has special meaning for you. Do you? Ruby?"

  "I'm not sure. It's as if these things are yet to happen. That's how I feel. A punishment, maybe, because of something I've done, or—or thought.

  "I'm scared, Reverend."

  You should be frightened, Mother. Not for your sake, but for mine. The words are a part of my present, my future. They're a part of that other world I keep spinning into. They're part of my punishment.

  "And for what thought or deed do you fear God's punishment? He has long ago forgiven you for abandoning her. Let go of it, Ruby."

  "But how can His forgiveness matter if Hilary won't forgive me? She's never forgiven me. There's so much guilt—I feel so much guilt for Hilary's life, a wasted life."

  "It's her wasted life. She's chosen to waste it. She's chosen to hold on to her past and carry it with her like some banner of hate for the rest of her life."

  "But it's my fault. I ruined her life."

  "Let go of it, Ruby."

  "I don't think I can. Sometimes—sometimes I think it would just be better if she died.

  "Your ways and your doings

  have brought this upon you.

  This is your doom, and it is bitter;

  it has reached your very heart."

  I'm spinning back. Deep within my own head I'm spinning and the words from the Bible follow me. They follow me back into the darkness.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Chana

  Your ways and your doings

  have brought this upon you.

  This if your doom, and it is bitter;

  it has reached your very heart.

  WORDS. I kept hearing words. They were Yiddish, and Polish and German, Russian and French; so many people crammed into the ghetto and all of them speaking. They were talking about death and fear and hunger and Hitler and God, but most of all, they were talking about rules.

  Rules! My head echoed with rules, ached with rules. There were rules for everything, and every day that I survived, a new rule was tacked onto the ever growing list: No Jew can leave the ghetto; children should not sell candy on the streets; Jews should not eat in the soup kitchens but in their own homes; no marriages, divorces, or funeral rites are to be performed; workshops are to remain open on Shabbos and Yom Kippur; one thousand people are to report to 7 Szklana Street for resettlement outside the ghetto at nine o'clock in the morning....

  We would all have gone mad if it were not for the jokes, the ones that reminded us that we were all in this together. Only we could understand the humor in the statement "You cannot die, either, these days." There was no time to die, no place, and the rules almost forbade it and at the same time hurried it along. The daily death count rose steadily—twenty-five—thirty-five—sixty-five people dead: starved, diseased, killed, or suicided.

  Zayde's death was one of many that February in 1942, and it was five days after his death before he was buried. His body lay discarded on the frozen ground with the others until a grave could be dug for him. We could not wash him or perform any of the traditional rites other than having Jakub recite the Kaddish, the prayer for the soul of the dead, as they lowered Zayde's body on two slats of wood into the ground.

  It was a terrible time for Bubbe. There was no time for sitting shiva, no time for mourning. Each day was like the next, as though Zayde had just gone out for a loaf of bread and would be back soon. Bubbe went every day to the overcrowded hospital and returned home each night with news for Mrs. Krengiel about her husband. He was not a popular man there, but she did not tell his wife this. She only said that his condition remained the same. To us she said that he whined and begged and refused to budge from the bed.

  "Today we all had
enough of him," she told us one night after an impossibly long day on her feet. "All day long, calling out for food. 'Oy, Bubbe, some bread,' he says as I pass his bed. The others, they are ready to throw him out into the yard, from a window most likely, and I do not blame them. We none of us have enough to eat; where does he think he is?"

  We had never heard our Bubbe speak so harshly of anyone before, and I derived a guilty sort of pleasure from watching her lose her temper and become just as irritable as the rest of us. It was somehow good for me to see that even she was affected by the lack of food and the crowding and the constant work. Just staying alive had become a chore, and some days, almost more work than we could handle.

  I could no longer concentrate on my studies; it had been days since I had been to school. All I could think about was food. Any other thoughts just made me cross. I would get my bread at the beginning of the week and by Wednesday I would have eaten it all. I would then panic, realizing that I might not eat again until the next week, but Anya always came through for me with some bit of something to eat each day. I was still too proud to go work with her in the "fields," but not too proud to take the food she got for it.

  Sometimes, if I was lucky, I could sneak off to Krawiecka Street, to the House of Culture—a long, low building with a green roof that stood out among the grays and blacks of the other buildings. There I could almost forget I was starving.

  The entrance was on the side of the building. If I got there early enough, I could enter without being seen and walk through the lobby and along a corridor to a small room where there was a hole in the ceiling. The hole was near the entrance to the room, and I could shinny up the door until my feet were resting on the doorknob and, with the door swung out just so, eventually push myself up and through the hole. Once there, I waited, sometimes hours, but it was always worth it. From my perch in the ceiling I could hear the violins, the cellos, the basses, and the violas playing Beethoven's Symphony. I could pretend I, too, was there rehearsing and performing for Mr. Theodore Ryder, the conductor. I could dream about the days before the war, before the ghetto, when Tata had arranged for me to audition for a local orchestra. It was not world famous, but I was by far the youngest member to ever audition for them, and wonder of wonders, I got in! Tata was so proud. We had a celebration with all my family and friends. Mama made me a new dress to wear on performance nights. It was deep red, the color of beet juice. It was too big for me and I couldn't understand how it could be so big when Mama had so recently taken my measurements.

  "Mama, it is so beautiful," I said as I twirled around for everyone to see. "But it is too big. You'll have to take it in."

  "Chana, come here, child."

  I eyed Mama from across the room. She shifted in her seat and glanced sideways at Tata. Tata merely hung his head.

  "What is it, Mama?" I asked as I pirouetted over to her, the skirt flying out like a tutu. I curtsied before her and smiled.

  "Mama?"

  "This dress is for next year, when you will be going into the orchestra. For when you are thirteen. That's not so long from now and you will be older then, more prepared...."

  "Thirteen! What difference will a year make? They accepted me now, for this year." I turned to face Tata. "Did they not, Tata? I am to go in this year, am I not?"

  Mama got her way, not realizing there would never be a next year—not like we had planned. Tata was dead, and Zayde, and I was here in a hole in the ceiling. My violin, my treasure, was here in the ghetto, but I had not played it. I had picked it up after the shiva and had tuned it, but I could not play, nor could I cry for Tata. Another day, I told myself, but so far another day had not come.

  The night after Bubbe had said those wonderfully wicked things about Mr. Krengiel, she came home so upset she could not speak. No one could get a word out of her, and she sat in the corner of the room with a blanket wrapped around her until Mrs. Krengiel returned home from her job in the straw factory.

  Mrs. Krengiel took the news of her husband's death much better than Bubbe, who, after imparting the news, sat back down and did not talk or eat the rest of the evening. She went on like this for days, returning each night from the hospital to sit in a corner with a blanket wrapped around her. She was praying, I think. I could sometimes hear a word or two, but she would speak to none of us, nor would she eat her dinner.

  Mama was so upset by the change in Bubbe that she could not sleep at night. Instead she would watch Bubbe, who was still in her corner, refusing to sleep on Zayde's cot, insisting that Anya and I share it.

  One especially cold night, we were all awake, listening to the distant sounds of the trains screeching and grumbling, the echo of boots slapping the pavement, of car horns and sirens, and drunken voices raised in song. It was strange to think this nightlife existed side by side with ours in the ghetto, a few mere strands of wire separating us, and yet it was enough. Those strands of wire sliced through our existence, dividing us up, life on one side, death on the other, heaven and hell shoulder to shoulder, never touching, never blending.

  Anya kept turning over in the cot this way and that, and I was just about ready to kick her onto the floor when she got up on her own and went over to Bubbe's corner.

  Bubbe was still sitting on the floor, knees to her chest, her head back against the wall. The moon spread its light across her blanketed feet, the quilted shapes, torn and dirty in the daylight, looking white and clean. Anya tried to whisper, but she had never been good at it, always thinking she was quieter than she really was, innocently giving away birthday and Chanukah surprises. I heard her whispering to Bubbe.

  "Are you trying to die, too, Bubbe?"

  Bubbe took her hand and rubbed it against her cheek. She whispered something to Anya and Anya wrapped her arms around Bubbe's neck and said, "Zayde's here with us, just like Tata and God and even Mr. Krengiel. You told me so, remember? And I did not believe you, but now I see them all at night when I close my eyes. I remember them, and Mosze and Nadzia, and I hear them talking to me. Do you, Bubbe? Do you hear their voices sometimes? I do. Even when I am digging I can hear them. When I am so hungry."

  Bubbe held Anya in her lap and whispered to her. She spoke a long time, maybe all night, I do not know—I drifted off to sleep.

  By morning Bubbe was her usual self, running late for the hospital and tossing kisses behind her as she and Jakub hurried off together.

  Anya and I were already late for school, but it no longer mattered to us. Neither of us went to school anymore. It was easier to keep our minds off of food when we were physically active instead of sitting still in a classroom listening to our stomachs rumble and watching our feet swell. Mama tried to convince us to keep up our studies, but she no longer had much control over us. Our lives had been turned upside down and she was forced to accept our choices, realizing that just having us home each night for dinner, still alive, was enough.

  She could not even get that much from Jakub, who stayed out most nights. Sometimes he would come home in the early morning and stay only long enough to toss out bits of information before rushing off to the shoe factory. We all had our suspicions as to what he was doing, but we never dared voice them for fear that the Nazis might somehow overhear. As in the days after Tata's death, Jakub always had some new piece of information to impart, something no one else seemed to know. How did he know the movements of the war, where the Russians were, what decisions the English had made? He had to have access to a radio, and yet radios were illegal here in the ghetto. Newspapers were as well, but they were smuggled, often by small children, through the fence, and slipped along from one coat to another, read, and later used as wastepaper.

  Bubbe had often seen Jakub coming out of the barbershop on her way to work, with his hair no shorter than the day before, and it was our growing belief that hidden somewhere in that shop was a radio. This we knew was dangerous enough, but Jakub, if it was true, did not stop at that.

  One week he had been gone almost every night, not even returning in the m
orning before going off to work. Mama was convinced he was dead in spite of Bubbe's reports of seeing him, and she was just about to go looking for his body when he showed up with two boys in tow. The boys' names were Chajmek and Schmulek. They were brothers, the older one eighteen and the younger sixteen. It was evening and Jakub said he had to hurry away, but he wanted to leave the boys behind.

  "What is this about, Jakub?" Mama asked, watching the two boys pacing the floor, each with a bundle on his back.

  "They will only be here for an hour at the most," he said. "Do not worry, I will be back," and with that he was gone.

  Schmulek, the older brother, stopped pacing and offered to help Mama with the soup as though there were vegetables to chop or barley to add. Mama refused but offered them each some of our food. I could feel my greedy old stomach begin to churn. They, in turn, refused, saying that they had plenty to eat in their bundles, and then resumed pacing, the younger one constantly wiping his runny nose on the sleeve of his coat. Something about this action repulsed me. Why, I was not sure. I had certainly seen far worse here in the ghetto, but it was enough to keep me from drinking my soup. I could not keep my eyes off them, and I was embarrassed when one or the other of them would look up and smile at me. I knew I was blushing, and I would try to look away, but a minute later I was watching them again, sure that they had once been quite handsome, before hunger had gnawed at their bodies and siphoned the color from their faces.

  Anya must have been watching them, too, because she suddenly spoke up in a voice filled with surprise and delight. "Oy! They have no stars on their jackets!"

  Chajmek and Schmulek dropped to the floor as though they had been shot. Anya put her hands over her mouth, Bubbe and Mama jumped up, and Mrs. Krengiel and I remained seated, staring.

  Chajmek was the first to regain his composure. He gave us all an ingratiating smile.