If I Should Die Before I Wake

by Han Nolan

  "Of course the children at school teased her at first, with her wearing all that white every day, but then they just forgot about her. She simply blended into the schoolroom like a forgotten piece of chalk. You can imagine my first parent-teacher conference, with me sitting in one of those tiny chairs pulled up to the teacher's desk while the teacher sits towering above me in her teacher's chair.

  "'Frankly, Mrs. Burke,' she says in this hoity-toity voice, 'I can only show you her work, I don't know your daughter in any other way. Dicky Reilly, now, he and Pete Dennis are troublemakers. Then there's the little girls' social group that has its ups and downs throughout the day that I've got to supervise and, of course, the class projects. Well, as you can guess, it's quite easy to overlook a quiet little miss who does what she's told and turns in a neat paper.'

  "Really, that's the way she talked, all superior and making sure I understood it wasn't her fault she didn't know Hilary even existed. So whose fault was it? Mine? Then I ask her if Hilary has any friends, and she's real cagey, not really answering me, just saying, 'She doesn't seem to talk, now, does she?' Saying it as if she thought Hilary couldn't talk, like she didn't know how! Then she says how she felt Hilary needed to see the school psychologist. A psychologist! At six years old, mind you. Well, I told her. I said I didn't believe in any of that psychological mumbo-jumbo, and if my baby was in trouble she could just talk to the good Lord. God would show her the way. And you know what? I never went back."

  "To that teacher?"

  "No, Nurse—what is it—Fulbright? No, I never went back to that teacher, that school, or any other school. I hate schools, always have."

  See what I mean? My mother doesn't go to school to see how I'm doing because she's always hated school. It has nothing to do with me. I don't see a psychologist because she doesn't believe in them. I'm expected to talk to the "good Lord," but why? What good has it ever done? He's never talked back.

  "Thus says the Lord:

  Stand by the roads, and look,

  and ask for the ancient paths,

  where the good way is; and walk in it,

  and find rest for your souls."

  I don't want to hear it, Mother. I hear the clinking of glass and a quick ripping sound. Something inside me shifts and shivers as though a cold shot of quicksilver has gone surging through my veins.

  "Look at her. I always liked it best when she was asleep. I could look at her then. I could know her then, or at least pretend I could. She's so small and thin, and pale. Not because she's dy—hurt, but just naturally. Just like Alice in Wonderland, she is. People always said that. And until she met up with Brad, she always lived on that other side of the looking glass, in her own world, never bothering to look out at us—at me."

  You got that right, Mother. I always felt like Alice on this crazy, mixed up, upside down, inside out planet. And why should I have looked out from my world? Would you have been there if I had?

  "When I'd come home from work at night I used to stop outside her bedroom door. It was always closed. I could hear her though, singing. She and her father were always singing together. He sang bass in the choir at church. When Hilary was born, I dropped out of the choir, but he kept going, and on those Sundays when he had a solo, even when she was an infant, he'd have someone bring her upstairs to hear him sing. She loved it. She loved the sound of his voice.

  "Now I sing in the choir at a different church. She's never heard me. She has my voice, not his."

  Daddy dies and suddenly you're in that wacko church all the time, drooling over every word Reverend "Hi-call-me-Jonnie" bellows. Then you start parading around with a Bible and quoting Scripture, and going on retreat and to choir rehearsals and anywhere but home to your empty house. Empty except for that white lump of nothing crumpled on the floor upstairs.

  You took God away from me. I knew God when I was five. I could hear Him when I was five. But then you turned religion into a performance, a three-ring circus with a new trinity—Father, Mother, and holy "Hi-call-me-Jonnie"—clowns, all of you.

  "It's the church that saved me. It's God who's given me strength and courage. If Hilary makes it, I hope she can find God someday. She thinks she's so powerful, so indestructible, hanging out with those hoodlums. She doesn't know how weak she is. All that hiding behind her clothing, behind her 'Heil, Hitlers,' behind her fear. She's weak. Like I was. She's just like I was."

  That's crap, Mother. Pure crap, and I refuse to listen to it.

  "To whom shall I speak and give warning,

  that they may hear?

  Behold their ears are closed,

  they cannot listen;

  behold, the word of the Lord is to

  them an object of scorn,

  they take no pleasure in it."

  Grandmaw, are you here? I can't see you. Everything is fading. Everything is spinning. I don't want to go back there—please!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Chana

  EVERYTHING WAS AT FIRST MISTY and unclear. I was walking through a thick, steamy grayness and all around me I could hear the footsteps of others, perhaps hundreds of others. Out of all of those footsteps, I began to pick up my mother's very even, rhythmic steps, and my grandmother's, quick, and heavy on the heels. I kept walking, not seeing, only hearing and smelling and feeling. The air, with its sharp odor of souring decay, stung my eyes and made tears stream down my face. I blinked and blinked, squeezing out the stinging and trying to focus on what I was pulling behind me. What was I holding? My hand was hot and sweaty. I felt skin against my skin and realized I was holding little Anya's hand in mine and pulling her along, following the sour odors like a dog.

  My back was bent with the bundle I was shouldering, and my right hip felt bruised by what could only be the end of my violin case thumping against me as I walked. I wanted desperately to set the bundle down and plunk myself on the ground, but I could not. There were soldiers. I could hear their sturdy boots slamming down on the cobbled road behind me. I could hear their shouts of "Schneller, schneller!" as they tried to hurry us along, faster and faster. I picked up my pace and Anya groaned beside me. I looked down and I could see her. Through the clearing mist and my own tears, I could see her dark head bobbing up and down as she trotted along, trying to keep up.

  "It cannot be much longer," I whispered to her. She squeezed my hand and looked up at me, her eyes wide, her lips pressed between her teeth. I tried to smile.

  "Poor Zayde," she said after a little silence. "Will he die, do you think?"

  I looked ahead of us to search out Zayde's small gray head in the crowd of weary people trudging along in straggled lines. I found him at last, lying huddled against the wall of the cart we used to carry our belongings. Jakub was pulling the cart and carrying a bundle on his back as well. Beside him, on either side of the cart, were Mama and Bubbe, each with her own bundles and suitcases, whispering prayers for Zayde.

  At seventy-one, he was twenty-one years older than Bubbe and looked even older. Like Tata, he had a weak heart that would beat frantically against his chest anytime he strained himself or whenever he was overtired. We were all surprised he'd lasted as long as he had, all of us except Bubbe, who said that his will to live was so strong he might bury us all first.

  I hurried up alongside Mama and the cart. "Mama, he is lying so very still," I said as I looked down at the thin gray man who resembled my grandfather only slightly.

  "It is all right, Chana. He will be all right. It is just rest he needs."

  I was not sure I believed Mama, but I wanted to and I tried to sound cheerful when I said, "We will all be all right as soon as we can get to our new home and wash this mud off."

  I frowned at my cold and soaking feet. It was early spring and all around us the snow was melting and had turned the ground to mud. As people dragged past us, their feet would splatter the mud onto our legs. At first there were apologies, but as we continued to walk on the uneven pavement, everyone with their loads on their backs and in their arms, the apologies
became fewer and fewer, until people neither noticed nor cared. All around us people kept tripping, stubbing their toes into the cobblestones and broken pavement, and landing, with their bundles flying, in the clinging black mud. By the time we arrived at our destination—the poorest, dirtiest part of Lodz, called Baluty—we all looked as if we belonged there.

  I swallowed hard as we squeezed along the narrow streets past rows of ugly, crumbling, sagging houses. Which one would be ours? I wondered. I heard Anya whimper, and I saw her worried expression as she looked up at Mama.

  Mama patted her head. "Just think, the people who used to live here all survived, and if the Germans had not chased them out, they'd be here still. They have had to live in poverty all their lives. They have no money and no education. They could not take care of their homes. But just wait and see how we fix up ours. If the Nazis want to stick all the Jews into one little corner of the world, well ... we will show them what we can do with the garbage dump they have put us in."

  At last we arrived at our apartment. Had it been assigned to us? I wondered. By whom? The new Chairman? I had heard about a man here named Chaim Rumkowski. As we scrambled and trudged through the mud and the streets, we caught bits of conversation about this man—our new leader. He was called the Chairman of the Jews, but the Nazis were the ones who gave him the position. Would he work for us, or for them? Everyone wanted to know. Already there were rumors good and bad about this man, some people spitting as they said his name and others speaking of him as if he were a king—"So good to the little orphans," they would say. He frightened me. Anyone having to do with the Nazis did. He would take orders from the Nazis—how could that be good?

  Zayde was struggling to climb out of the cart, while Jakub was struggling to keep him in it and carry the cart upstairs.

  "Jakub, it is too much. I am not dead yet. Now let me walk."

  Jakub's eyes teared up. "Please, Zayde, let us do this. You are making it more difficult and already you are overtired."

  "So, now it is you decide to think of this family. Now you think of me. Let me out, I will walk."

  "No!" Jakub burst out as he dumped the bundle from his back onto the floor. "I am thinking still of me, Zayde. If you die, I will be—I will be the man of the family." He paused and then whispered, "Please, Zayde, I need you."

  Zayde humphed and turned his head away, falling against the wall of the cart. "Then find someone to help you," he finally said.

  At long last we hoisted Zayde over some friendly stranger's shoulder and hauled him and all the belongings we had brought with us up to our new home. I wanted to throw my exhausted body down on a bed or a chair, but the sight of our home—our room—left me standing on my wobbly legs in the doorway.

  "I am not going in," I said as my mother and grandmother dragged the load from the cart across the room. "Where are we all to sleep? There is nothing here! How will we live in this place? Even you cannot fix this, Mama. Look!"

  She looked. We all did.

  There was just the one room for all six of us. The walls were so smudged with dirt and soot it was hard to make out their true color. A table with the front legs shorter than the back stood in the center of the room with two green and two brown chairs pulled up to it. Looking beyond the dirt and litter that cluttered the rotting, sloping floor, I spotted two cots, both tipped over on their sides. The ceiling sloped down toward us but showed no evidence of imminent collapse.

  Mama rushed to the windows and flung them open while Bubbe helped Zayde over to one of the cots, which Jakub had righted. From my spot in the doorway I caught a glimpse of the view through the windows before Mama slammed them shut again. The back of our room overlooked one of the refuse heaps, which was overflowing and crawling with rats. I shuddered.

  "Mama, we cannot live here," I said, thinking that somehow she and Bubbe would figure out a way to get us all back home. "Really, we cannot."

  Mama was not listening. She opened the only door in the room besides the entrance and discovered a small, greasy kitchen.

  "Nu, we are here," she said as she turned and faced us all, her body sagging against the little cookstove. " Jakub, I want you to find us some water. Anya, sweep the litter into a corner, and Chana, run and see if you can find where the Hurwitzes have settled; they cannot be far."

  I was glad to get away, to get back outside and see life, such as it was, streaming before me. People were still coming, young and old, laden with unruly bundles bursting with pots and bowls, irons and brushes and blankets. Droshkies, horse-drawn wagons, clopped by, carrying sick, gray-faced people, with dogs yapping at the wheels as they wobbled over the cobblestones. I stepped out into the street as an elderly woman leaned over the edge of one of the wagons and vomited. It landed on the lower half of my dress and on my shoes. I cursed her and then, shocked by my own behavior, began to cry as I roamed the street, forgetting what or who I was even looking for. I stumbled along with the crowd, full of self-pity, ignoring the children smaller than I who bravely scrambled along beside their parents without complaint. I hated them. I hated everyone and everything, and if one more person so much as splattered one more clump of mud in my direction I swore I was going to...

  "Chana!" I heard someone call. "Chana! Up here, child."

  I looked up and saw Mrs. Liebman waving from her window as though she were watching a circus parade passing by, and perhaps she was.

  "Hello!" I called up. "I—I am looking for the Hurwitzes. Have you seen them?"

  "You will not find them with your face on the ground. A hug and a cool cloth are what you need. Then you find your Hurwitzes."

  I suddenly longed to throw myself into Mrs. Liebman's arms and feel her plump body, like so much eiderdown, swallow me, comfort me, protect me. I rushed up the stairs and found her waiting for me in the doorway of her home.

  "Chana." Mrs. Liebman held out her arms and I ran to them, sobbing. I let her rock me and soothe me, her voice washing over me like the gentle waves of a lake. "Shh, it is all right now. Shh, it is all right."

  Eventually, I became aware of other voices coming from behind her. I opened my eyes and saw her daughter, little Gitta, staring up at me with her head tilted to one side, her left hand tugging at her mother's dress. I pushed away from Mrs. Liebman and rubbed away the remains of my tears with the sleeve of my dress.

  "I am sorry," I said as I backed away from them. "You have your own family—sorry." I looked over Mrs. Liebman's head and saw the rest of her family, all nine of them, crowded into a room that looked even smaller than ours.

  "We are all of us family now, Chana. You understand?"

  "Yes."

  "Let us clean you up then. With such a mess the Hurwitzes would not recognize you."

  I allowed her to lead me into the room—their home—already scrubbed clean but so crowded with family and belongings there was little space for us to move around. As she rubbed me clean with a cloth dipped from time to time in a bucket of water, we exchanged stories.

  I learned that the Germans had chased them from their home just over a week ago. They were almost the first from our neighborhood to arrive in the ghetto. I could not believe it when Mrs. Liebman said that already the ghetto had been cleaned up considerably since they had arrived. I marveled, too, at the high spirits of the whole Liebman family. The younger children were running up and down the stairs while older ones stood around and chatted. Many were laughing, and others were looking out the window to the street below.

  Mr. Liebman caught my quizzical glance and smiled. "It is good now, Chana. No more killings and riots. No more chasing us off the streets and rounding us up to clean the walls and dig ditches. We can look after our own again. It is crowded, yes, but they leave us alone. It may not be such a bad thing, this building of a wall around our ghetto, if it keeps the Nazis out. The Chairman, he has already begun plans for rebuilding the workshops and factories, so it is good. Relax and smile, and have some sausage." Mr. Liebman stabbed a chunk of sausage onto his fork and held it out to
me.

  I could not remember the last time I had eaten. I thanked him and grabbed the sausage, greedily stuffing it in my mouth and smiling as they laughed at my bulging cheeks.

  Someone called up from the street below, offering a game of cards outside, and the whole family charged down the stairs. Mrs. Liebman and I and the baby, whom I now saw for the first time asleep on a rug in the corner of the room, were the only ones left. I thought about what Mrs. Liebman had said. We were all family now—all of us together, living on top of one another, crowded into one section of the city, all Jews, all hated, but all a family. I knew this was important. I needed to remember this. I needed to save my own anger and hate for the people on the other side of the fence. The woman who vomited so ungraciously on my dress was my family, and I vowed to be nicer to everyone I saw, everyone I came in contact with. And I vowed to remember this day, and this thought, and this moment alone with Mrs. Liebman, always.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Chana

  MY WORLD SPUN FORWARD, flinging me headlong into the midst of ghetto life. I felt my life before the ghetto, with Tata, and our home, and being warm and well fed, had been but a fantasy. I could hardly remember anything outside of the ghetto. Surely I had lived here all my life, gone to school here always, scraped for food always—always starving, always dirty, always sick.

  Anya, little Anya, had proved to be the strong one. She was cheerful, resourceful, and generous. Beside her, I felt mean and greedy.

  It already seemed a long time ago, the late spring of 1940, when they sealed off the ghetto and I joined the Hachschara, a special training group. Back then, still the early days, I was determined to ignore the barbed wire that wrapped around our packed and dirty city like sausage casings, guarded by Nazis at every post, and become a part of this clean-up crew. A man named Jakub Poznanski divided us into small groups and showed us how to work the soil and plant grass and flowers. We even managed to find some benches to dot about our little parks. My hopes were high back then, and no one was prouder than I when on one sunny Sunday afternoon all of us in the various Hachschara groups paraded before the Chairman, some three thousand of us, chanting and singing and marching to the Hebrew commands.