What She Lost

by Melissa W Hunter

  My mother stood slightly behind him, her face blank. She wore the same traveling clothes she had left in, her good coat, dress, and the beautiful scarf over her head, but she looked disheveled, as though she hadn’t taken any time or care when dressing in the morning. Her coat wasn’t buttoned properly so the hemline appeared uneven, and her long skirt was heavily creased. Her eyes were empty, lifeless, blind to her surroundings. Her movements were slow and stilted as she put down her bags.

  But the twins saw the one person they had been longing for the most.

  “Mama!” they cried, running to her. Something stirred in her as they wrapped their tiny arms around her waist. She looked down at them, and suddenly, she was crying, her tears falling on their heads as they reached up to be encircled in her arms.

  “Oh, my babies,” she sobbed. “Oh, my dears. My sweet, sweet dears.”

  I felt tears surface in my own eyes. I wanted to run to her too. I wanted her to comfort me as well. I wanted my father to look up and smile, to hold his arms open to me, but I stood rooted to the spot. I watched as my brothers approached my father and took his arm, leading him inside. Still, I didn’t move.

  My aunt and uncle were there, taking my parents’ luggage, guiding them into the small living room and telling them to sit. My mother fell into a chair, the twins crawling into her lap. I glimpsed Gutcha and Daniel hiding in the shadows of their bedroom doorways.

  “Is it true?” Aunt Leah asked, as though the past day was just a dream and there was still a chance this nightmare would end, still a chance Esther would walk through the door, smiling and healthy and young, ready for a long life.

  My mother nodded, accepting the handkerchief my aunt offered her and dabbing at the corners of her eyes. Aunt Leah sat across from her and gently took her hand. “She is at rest now,” my aunt said with comfort in her voice, but my mother began twisting the handkerchief in her hands, tears falling fast down her cheeks.

  “They took her from us,” my mother choked. “They took her into a room and told us to wait. She was so weak, so pale. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to go with her and hold her, but they told us we had to stay where we were. I shouldn’t have listened, I shouldn’t have—”

  My aunt put her arm around my mother and tried to comfort her, but my mother pushed her away. “We begged them, day after day, but they wouldn’t let us see her. And when they finally came out, all they said was they were sorry. She was gone. No explanation. They had taken her away. She’s buried, and I don’t even know where! My angel, my sweet, sweet angel.” Then she fell against my aunt, sobbing uncontrollably.

  We were all crying then. I had never felt a sorrow as piercing and deep as I did in that moment. It wrenched my gut and made me want to scream. I realized then that I had hoped seeing my parents would make me feel better, but instead, the finality of the situation weighed down on me, and I was forced to accept that Esther was really not coming home. Esther would no longer lie beside me at night, holding my hand as we whispered our secrets to each other. Esther’s voice would no longer ring through our home, her laughter and smiles brightening our days and lifting our spirits. Her beauty would no longer charm everyone who saw her and turn heads on the street. And the idea of her in a grave in an unfamiliar city, far away from us, made me ache. I tried not to think of her alone and afraid, buried in an unknown grave, but instead imagined her running beside me after school, her face flushed and healthy, her eyes bright and her lips red, her hand forever held in mine.

  Six

  Olkusz, Poland, summer 1939

  “Sarah, wait for me!”

  I turned to see Gutcha calling to me as I walked home from town, my arms weighed down with grocery bags. It was early summer, and the air was already heavy with heat. Gutcha waved as she ran to catch up to me, her slightly plump cheeks flushed, her braids flying in the air behind her. I tried to wave as well, but the bags shifted precariously, and I caught them before they fell to the ground.

  “How are you?” Gutcha asked as she took a bag from my arms and we started walking together. It was always the first thing anyone asked me: How are you? How are your parents? How is your family? It was polite conversation, but it was also a way for others to find out how we were faring after Esther’s death. I always smiled and said, “We’re doing well, thank you.”

  What I didn’t share was the truth—that even after a year, my mother still cried herself to sleep at night, my father was exhausted and despondent all the time, and in general, a little of the life had gone out of our home. Over time, I had begun to feel comfortable in my alcove again, though I didn’t want to admit that I still had nightmares and would reach for Esther in my sleep, only to find the space beside me empty.

  “Have you heard the news?” Gutcha asked as we turned onto the path that led toward home.

  “What news?”

  “Papa’s been talking about it all day. He says we’re going to war.”

  My head turned. “War?” I asked. “With Germany?”

  Although we didn’t have a radio, gossip was a reliable source of information in our town. And each day, neighbors whispered new information between themselves. I had even overheard my father’s customers talking about what was happening when I helped in the shop. Germany was under the leadership of a man named Adolf Hitler. Austria had been annexed the previous year, and now there was widespread fear that Poland would be next. My mother and aunts gathered around the kitchen table to talk about the latest rumor or guess at the future as they hung laundry to dry. My father and uncles stood outside most evenings to escape the heat, huddled in the doorway of the bakery, smoking cigarettes, heads bent in discussion.

  “Have you heard what’s happening to the Jews in Germany?” Gutcha asked now, lowering her voice. “I heard Mama telling Papa that her brother’s business was destroyed.”

  “Your uncle’s business?” I asked. “What happened?”

  “They threw bricks through the windows and set fire to the building,” Gutcha said, her eyes downcast. “Mama read the letter Uncle Shlomo sent us. It was scary.”

  “But that won’t happen here,” I said. “That couldn’t happen here.”

  We continued walking in silence. Gutcha kicked a pebble with the toe of her boot. We watched it roll to the other side of the dirt lane and ricochet off the wooden wheel of a wagon. Glancing up, we saw Aaron pushing his cart in the opposite direction. For a moment, our eyes met. His lips turned up in a smile of greeting, and he nodded. I nodded back mutely. Then he gave his cart a shove and passed us without a word. We occasionally saw each other in town, but we never spoke about my sister. The way they felt about each other was a secret between us, and we had reached an unspoken, mutual understanding that it would remain that way. I still remembered Aaron’s face when his family paid their respects at Esther’s shiva—the haunted look in his eyes, the quiver to his lips, bright blotches of red staining his cheeks. Later, when I’d stepped outside, I’d heard him sobbing in the alley behind our home. I’d retreated silently so he wouldn’t know I was there, but my heart broke a little more in that moment.

  We had reached my front path. The windows were open to let in the midsummer breeze, and I heard music from inside our home. I smiled and turned to Gutcha.

  “Jacob’s playing for Helena again.”

  Gutcha grinned back at me, and we walked to the window to peer inside. Our concerns about the larger world melted away as we spied on Jacob and our next-door neighbor’s daughter Helena.

  I had to admire my brother as he stood in the center of the room, eyes closed, swaying slightly with his head bent over his violin. He had turned eighteen earlier in the summer and was tall and handsome and strong, resembling my father more with each passing day. But while my father used his hands to mold and sculpt dough, Jacob used his to make music.

  His love of music began at an early age, when my mother took him to see a traveling klezmer band
perform in the town square. According to my mother, Jacob had stood transfixed, his small hand gripping hers tightly, refusing to move as he watched them play. Once the sun was low in the sky, he began to shiver from cold, but still she had to urge him to return home. He kept turning to gaze back at the musicians, even as they were swallowed by dusk, the rise and fall of musical notes pulling at him like a magnetic force.

  One of our wealthier neighbors, the Gellers, owned a radio, and one day after school, Jacob heard Franz Schubert’s Symphony no. 4 in C Minor playing through their open window. He froze on the spot, listening, until Sam finally threw his cap at Jacob to get his attention. Jacob soon made a habit of walking past the Geller house each day in the hope that Radio Poland was broadcasting symphonies by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, or one of the more contemporary composers. Mrs. Geller found him one afternoon sitting in the bushes beneath the window and invited him in to hear Władysław Szpilman play Chopin over tea.

  He became fascinated with the stringed instruments, particularly the violin, and he begged for one of his own. His passion soon became obsession. My mother surprised him on his tenth birthday with a hand-me-down violin she had purchased with a little money she had saved, and he immediately began to play. Like a magician, he was able to conjure the sweetest melodies from the strings without having taken a single lesson. When he played, he appeared transported, stuck in a dreamlike daze. He swayed, lost in the music that surrounded him, turning the violin into a vessel of lyrical poetry. The Gellers invited him over whenever a symphony was broadcast, and he would come home and play by ear what he’d heard.

  We all loved to hear him play, but his best audience was my mother. She asked him to play for her almost daily. She said the moment he pulled the bow over the strings, the moment the first notes rose into the air, she was hearing the voice of God. His music filled our home in the evenings. Her favorite melody to hear him play was “Kol Nidre,” the solemn and reflective music of Yom Kippur.

  Now, he was playing a tune that was light and happy, and Helena was watching him with large green eyes filled with adoration.

  “When is the wedding?” Gutcha asked.

  “They haven’t set a date,” I said, “but I imagine it will be soon.”

  “It’s no wonder they both agreed to the match. Just see how they look at each other!” Gutcha sighed as we turned away from the window.

  “I know,” I said, recalling the afternoon when, shortly after Jacob’s eighteenth birthday, my father had proudly announced that Jacob and Helena had given their consent to the proposed match. We had always known Helena’s family; Helena’s father, Shimon, was a reputable czapnik, or hatmaker, in the town. Her mother, Dina, had been my mother’s childhood friend. But I was still surprised when my father made the announcement, standing proudly beside Jacob with his hand on my brother’s shoulder. Jacob’s face was flushed and embarrassed.

  “Did you have any idea they felt that way about each other?” Gutcha asked.

  “No!” I said, shaking my head. “I wonder if they even knew themselves. But ever since it was agreed upon, they haven’t left each other’s side.”

  Gutcha hugged the grocery bag close to her chest and said dreamily, “I’d like to feel that way about someone.”

  “I’d like someone to feel that way about me!” I exclaimed, and we giggled as we opened the door.

  Jacob’s wedding soon became all we talked about. With his schooling almost behind him, he worked longer hours in the bakery beside my father. We all knew he would take over the business one day. Helena’s presence became commonplace in our home as well, along with her mother and older sister Malka. Malka had turned down a marriage proposal to attend college to become a teacher. She was one of the few girls in our town to go away to school, and she was now home for the summer. Together, Helena, Malka, and Dina visited often during the warm summer afternoons. They gossiped as they sat around our table, chopping vegetables or ironing linen or mending our school clothes for the coming autumn. They shopped at the market stalls for Shabbat on Friday mornings. They were showing Helena how to keep a suitable Jewish home, to become a proper berryer, and I was occasionally allowed to join them. I loved listening to the details of the wedding that was to take place that fall, after the High Holy Days.

  One afternoon, Helena and Dina showed up on our doorstep with a box in their hands. My mother let them in, and they placed the package on the table. “Look, just look!” Dina exclaimed, her hands clasped to her chest as Helena gently raised the lid of the box. I bent over to see what was inside. Helena lifted what appeared to be a white gossamer cloud in her hands. “Isn’t it beautiful?” Dina breathed, gingerly spreading out the fluid material for us to see. “It was my grandmother’s veil,” she said. “My mother wore it at her wedding, and I wore it for mine. And now, Helena will wear it for hers.”

  My mother and I moved closer for a better look. The fabric was two layers of a sheer, delicate tulle attached to a comb with small crystals sewn to the edge. Iridescent threads were woven throughout and shimmered in the light.

  “Oh, Dina,” my mother exhaled, “how lovely.”

  Dina took the comb and turned Helena around to face the mirror. We watched as she smoothed back Helena’s chestnut-colored hair from her face and secured the comb to the crown of her head. The diaphanous material cascaded over Helena’s shoulders, down her back, and gathered at the floor. She smiled at her reflection in the mirror, and I thought I had never seen anything so beautiful.

  As we stood beaming at Helena, the door burst open. We all jumped as Sam rushed in, his face red and flustered.

  “Mama, where’s Papa?” he asked breathlessly.

  “Samuel!” my mother exclaimed, her hand to her chest. “You gave us a scare! Papa’s at the bakery like always. What’s the matter?”

  There was a noise behind Sam, and we heard Jacob calling my brother’s name from the street. My mother and Dina snatched the veil from Helena’s head and, as carefully as they could in their haste, folded it back into its box. Sam turned without answering and ran from the house, leaving the door open in his wake. I hurried to the door in time to see him sprint past Jacob, headed toward the center of town, holding his cap to his head. Jacob was standing at the foot of our walkway, staring after him. He turned then and paced up the path toward our door. I stepped back from the threshold to let him enter.

  “What’s the matter with your brother?” my mother asked, her voice calmer now that the veil was safely hidden. “He was in quite a state.”

  “Mama, listen,” Jacob said softly, glancing around at each of us. “There’s a rumor spreading around town, and it’s serious.”

  “What is it?” I asked, curious, as my mother and Dina frowned and Helena stepped closer to Jacob.

  “Sam overheard Mr. Geller talking to Mr. Applebaum. Mr. Geller says he heard an emergency broadcast on the radio that Germany is assembling troops and plans to invade Poland.”

  I turned to look at my mother. A million thoughts raced through my head—what did this mean for us? Would Poland fight back? Would there be a war, like everyone was predicting? And why was Sam so agitated?

  “This can’t be true,” Dina gasped, her voice a whisper of disbelief. “Come, Helena. We must go find your father.” She reached for her daughter’s hand and pulled her toward the door. As Helena passed Jacob, she looked searchingly into his eyes but didn’t say a word. Jacob stood silently in the doorway as she left, watching her go.

  My mother wiped her hands on her apron and began untying it from around her waist. “I must find your father too,” she said in a decided tone. “Perhaps he should hear the news from me, not Sam.”

  “He may know already, Mama,” Jacob said. “The whole town seems to be gathering in the square.”

  My mother frowned as she headed out the door. Jacob turned to follow, but I reached out and grabbed his hand before he could leave as well. “Jacob,”
I said, “why did Sam run off? What’s his rush?”

  “Mama’s not going to like when she hears.” Jacob sighed, shaking his head. “Sam wants to join the Polish army.”

  Seven

  The cobblestone streets in the center of town were already crowded by the time I reached them. I recognized many of our neighbors waving to one another or moving in groups to find shade under the eaves of the shops that lined the sidewalk. Voices carried on the still air like a low hum. A charged energy pulsed from the town square. I could smell the familiar odor of motor oil and horse manure mingled with the scent of salted meats hanging from hooks, fresh fish packed on ice, and fried onions from the vendors’ carts. My father was standing with Sam by the door to the post office. By the looks of it, they were already in a heated discussion.

  “Papa!” I called, waving to him. He gave a distracted wave in return, but I could tell from the frown on his face that he was preoccupied.

  “It’s going to happen, Papa,” Sam was saying as I ran to join them, breathlessly blowing hair out of my eyes. “Yosef, Morty, and I have been discussing it for a long time. It’s not going to be good if the Germans take over Poland. We need to fight back!”