If I Should Die Before I Wake

by Han Nolan

  "It is all right," he said. "Your son, he has gone to get us some. That is why we are here, hiding. We will bring you no trouble, we will be gone soon." He slid his eyes sideways for a glance at his brother.

  We all looked at Bubbe. She would know if this was so.

  Bubbe stepped toward the boys. "I think that you should not pace before the windows. And your bundles, they could be carried in such a way..." She crouched down to adjust their things. "There, no one would know you have no stars." She turned away from them still smiling, but I could see sadness and worry in her eyes. She had touched them. She knew things about people after she had touched them. It was part of her "gift from God," as she called it, to know, and to see. She once tried to explain it to me, this "gift," as we were pasting photos into our photo album together.

  "It is like this, Chana," she said. "I just empty myself of all thoughts, all concerns for myself, and then I reach out to the person before me. I touch him and look into his eyes and he shows me his past, who he is, and from that I can see his future. Yet sometimes, sometimes I feel it is a burden and not a gift at all."

  "But why, Bubbe? To see so much, I think I would like it."

  "Yes, it is good because in seeing them I understand them, and in understanding them I can love them, and in loving them I am closer to God. In that way it is a gift."

  "Then how is it not a gift?"

  "It is difficult to know so much about a person and yet be able to do nothing for him."

  "But sometimes," I argued, "sometimes you can help?"

  "I have learned, Chana, that it is usually best to let things alone, to let things take their natural course. Yes"—she nodded, more to herself than to me—"it is best that way."

  Now Bubbe was walking back toward the table, her finger on her mouth, pensive, as though trying to make up her mind about something. Then she spun back around to face the boys. "Listen, stay here tonight. Do not leave. It is better that you stay, really it is. I shall speak to Jakub about it, he will understand."

  "What will I understand?" Jakub asked, stepping into the room, his eyes bright, his hand tucked inside his coat.

  Bubbe took Jakubs free hand in hers and looked into his face. "Not tonight, Jakub. It cannot be tonight."

  He brushed her away, closing his eyes and turning toward the boys. "I know what I am doing, Bubbe. I have done it before."

  Bubbe caught hold of his hand once more. "Yes, but not tonight, not with them."

  Jakub spun around and glared at Bubbe. He said nothing. Their eyes locked. The rest of us remained still; no one dared speak. I was not sure what this battle was about, but I felt certain Bubbe would win. Jakub knew better than to ignore her warnings.

  "Jakub, I ask you one thing," she finally said. "Can you live with yourself if this fails?"

  Jakub's nostrils flared. "It will not fail. I am not a child anymore. If you only knew the things ... Never mind." He turned away, reached back into his jacket, and pulled out two flat paper parcels. He handed them to Schmulek and Chajmek. He then hugged the two brothers and said, "Hainik is waiting. Do not fret, it is good."

  The boys thanked him, their uneasy expressions falling away. They turned to Mama and Mrs. Krengiel and thanked them as well, ignoring Bubbe, and then left. Jakub watched them go down the stairs and then came back into the room.

  "You always said to have faith, Bubbe," he said, not looking at her but going to the table, serving himself some cold soup, and sitting down. "Where is your faith now? To many I am already a hero. They have faith. I have faith. And you, Bubbe, do you no longer have faith? Did your faith die with Zayde and Mr. Krengiel?"

  Bubbe came over and stood behind Jakub's chair. She leaned over and with his face cradled in her hands kissed the top of his head. "Is it faith we are talking about, or ego? Perhaps you have faith in God. I know you have faith in yourself. But what about those boys? Could you put your faith in them? Did you think beyond the chance to once again be thought of as a hero? When Hainik leaves them at the wall, they will be on their own. Will they make it? Are they clever like you, Jakub?"

  Jakub dropped his spoon into his bowl.

  Bubbe continued talking. "I have learned that it is not enough to have faith; we must know also where, and in whom, to put that faith. Where is your faith, Jakub? Is it with them tonight?"

  ***

  The next morning, as I was walking toward the intersection of Smugowa and Franciszkanska streets, I saw the backs of two boys hanging on the other side of the barbed wire; both had been shot through the head.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Hilary

  I DON'T KNOW WHERE I AM. Everything is gray, as if I'm standing in a fog, the fog cast by the old woman in front of me. I stare at her and wonder. Is this Bubbe? Is it Grandma? Does it matter? I stare at nothing, into nothing, and wonder why I fight so hard to pull myself back through the hazy film that separates my two worlds. What's waiting for me?

  Bubbe?

  Grandma? I don't understand. Help me.

  I don't know ... my mind ... I no longer know what's real. Is this my real life, here in this gloom, with you?

  I see you. You smile at me. You cry. I can see your tears. Almost like—like you love me, but why? Why should you?

  Why is it that I can only hold my mind here and know where here is when I'm staring at you, watching you? It's through you that I hear the others. It's through you that I'm living this—this life. Isn't it?

  But why?

  "For thus says the Lord:

  Your hurt is incurable,

  and your wound is grievous.

  There is none to uphold your cause,

  no medicine for your wound,

  no healing for you."

  I'm not ready to go, to—to die.

  Mama? Mother?

  You can't hurt me. You can't reach me.

  I choose whether I live or die. Here I have a choice. I have a choice, don't I?

  "Hey, Ruby."

  Brad?

  "Brad! What are you doing here? And in that neo-Nazi shirt. I'm surprised they let you in—or did you sneak in?"

  It's Brad! Grandma, it's Brad! I knew he'd come. Didn't I tell you?

  "I've come to see Hil."

  "Well, you can just turn around and leave. She doesn't need you now."

  No!

  "She doesn't look so good. All those tubes, what are they for?"

  "Hey, get away! They're keeping her alive. She's dying, for Pete's sake."

  I'm alive. Don't listen to her.

  "Yeah, I heard."

  "How did you hear?"

  "The police. They been questioning us. They been asking about the missing kid."

  "Yeah, and—?"

  "And nothing. I don't have nothing to say to them."

  "What about the accident? Didn't they question you about that?"

  "Sure, they been all over me about everything."

  "Everything?"

  "Yeah, everything. So I'm through talking about it, okay?"

  Don't tell her anything, Brad.

  "I think I have a right to know what they asked you."

  "Hey, it's nothing. Only like if I know anything about some threatening phone calls a bunch of Jews been getting, or about a stack of books on the Holocaust that's disappeared from the library, or about the kid. Things like that."

  "Do you? Does Hilary?"

  "Hey, they been all over me. I've said nothing. Hear that, Hil? Nothing."

  I know. You and me, we stick together. That's what's important, you and me.

  "Then what are you so jumpy for? You high? I can tell you, if you looked as nervous and jumpy with the police as you do now, it won't be long before they're arresting you."

  "They ain't got nothing on me, lady. Nothing on me cause I ain't done nothing. Right, Hil?"

  "You talk like she can hear."

  "Well, maybe she can. Hilary. Hil, can you hear me?"

  "Hey, don't do that. Get away from her. Get your hands off her."

  Were yo
u touching me? I want to feel you. I can hear you.

  Don't listen to her. Don't let her tell you what to do. She wants me to die.

  Brad, when I get better, you and me, let's get married and leave the Warriors. Let's forget about them. We don't need them, or anybody. We can get on the Harley and travel all over the country, and it can be just me and you, together.

  "Brad, sit down. Get away from her."

  "I'm not hurting her."

  "What do you know? She's here because of you. She's dying because of you."

  "Listen, I never forced her to get on my bike. What do you think, I did it on purpose? She loved the Harley as much as I did. Said it made her feel alive."

  "Sure, look at how alive she's feeling."

  Oh, Mama, you don't know. I did feel alive, really alive, riding on his bike. The speed, the air slapping at my face, the smell of the grass and wet trees when we rode over to Burleigh—it was electric. And the freedom, the excitement of getting out on the highway with my arms wrapped around Brad and riding anywhere and nowhere. That was the best part of my life. It's why I'm holding on, why I'm fighting to stay alive. For me and Brad, not you.

  "The bike is ruined, anyway."

  "Right, Brad, the bike and Hilary, but not you."

  "Yeah, not me. Hey, what do you want from me anyway? Want me to lie down on the highway and wait for some Mack truck to flatten me? That ain't gonna do nothing for the Hil girl."

  "The least you could do is pretend as if you care."

  That's your department, Mother.

  "I'm here, ain't I? Look, she knows the score. When you fight for something important, you expect risks. It's no game we're playing here."

  "Hey, don't con me. It's all a game. You don't love Hilary. You recruited her the same way they recruited you. The Warriors feed on troubled kids."

  "I never told her I loved her. She knows the cause comes first."

  But you do love me. Brad, I know you do.

  "The cause? You call pestering those Jewish people and destroying their property a cause? You call kidnapping a child a cause? Where is he, Brad? What's happened to the boy?"

  Oh, Brad, tell her. Tell someone. Or just go get him yourself. That's it. Get your janitor friend to unlock the school again, and then you can get him out. No one will have to know it was you. Wear your costume. Do it. Then we can forget about this mess and start all over. Get Simon out, Brad. Okay? I never expected it to go this far. I never wanted it to go this far.

  Okay, yes, I did. I did. I hated Simon. I hated his stupid beanie, and his schoolbooks carried like silly treasures in his monogrammed backpack, and those squeaky leather shoes. I hated that he enjoyed gardening. I hated hearing his voice through his living room window on those stinkin' summer nights, chanting in some spitty foreign language. And I hated his freakin' happy family where nothing ever went wrong. He wanted me to understand him? Why didn't he ever try to understand me?

  "I said, I don't know nothing about that kid."

  "And I don't believe you, Brad. What about that note?"

  "Lay off me, okay? I didn't come to talk to no dumb-ass mutha, I came to see Hil."

  "You watch your language!"

  "White Power! Heil, Hitler! Death to Jews, it's the final solution!"

  "Keep your voice down. What's wrong with you? You're as jumpy as a ... Are you on something? Are you high? Do you even know where you are?"

  "Yeah, I know where I am. I'm in a friggin' Jew hospital."

  "That's enough."

  "What? You afraid I might wake Hilary up or something?"

  "There is someone else in this room, Brad."

  "What? Where? Behind this curtain?"

  "Hey! Get away from there and show some respect."

  "For that old lady? She's gone already. She ain't hearing nothing."

  Oh, Brad, stop. If I could just talk to you. I need to tell you....

  "Well, good for you, Brad. Now you've got the nurse coming to the window."

  "Look, okay, Ruby. I'm sorry. I ain't out to cause no trouble, really. I just came here to have a word with Hil. In private. Then I'll leave, okay?"

  "You can talk, but I'm not leaving. You're too jumpy. I don't like it."

  "Hey, listen, Ruby..."

  "Speak, thus says the Lord:

  The dead bodies of men shall fall

  like dung upon the open field,

  like sheaves after the reaper,

  and none shall gather them."

  "What's that crap?"

  "It's the truth, Brad."

  Yes, Mother, it's the truth. My truth.

  "It's crap!"

  Grandma, I'm tired. My mind, I feel it slipping, I can't hold on. I can't focus. I want to stay with Brad. Why doesn't my mother just go away? Why does she have to stay? If she wants me to die, why does she stay?

  Grandma, you're changing. You're like a rainbow. Your hair is blue, and green, and yellow. Your face is red.

  I see such pretty colors spinning past me.

  I'm spinning, Grandma, spinning away. And the colors, so pretty, so gay...

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Chana

  GAY COLORS CONTINUED to pass before my eyes as my consciousness spun off into this other world. As things began to settle and my eyes began once again to focus, I saw that the colors were from the quilt Mama was tearing. It had belonged to the Krengiels, the only one they had brought with them from Russia. In another time, what Mama was doing would have been a desecration, but these were desperate times, and tearing the quilt so only part of it could be used as a shroud for Mrs. Krengiels body while the rest was used to keep us warm, that was now just good common sense.

  It had been raining, the ground turning to mud, the day Mrs. Krengiel did not go to the straw factory to make the plaits for the inside of the Nazis' army boots. Instead, she dove headfirst out our second-story window, broke her neck, and died. Quiet Mrs. Krengiel Nondescript Mrs. Krengiel, living with us all those months, never sharing her thoughts, never letting her despair show on her face.

  I wanted to care about her, about her life, but I was tired of caring. Hers was just one of many bodies found in heaps below second- and third-story windows, or in puddles of blood next to the barbed wire, or in gray, decomposing piles waiting to be buried. I feared that if I cared I would be joining them. A soft heart was deadly here in the ghetto.

  I saw each day pass much the same as the last: hunger, death, new rules, new jokes, less food, and hot summer nights spent outside in the yard, gathered around the well, talking until dawn. Nothing surprised me anymore, nothing scared me, except deportation orders. Where were they sending those people they rounded up by the hundreds, even thousands, and shipped off on the trains? Everyone had their guess, their story to tell, but no one knew for sure. In earlier days the Germans told us that families were being sent to work camps, where the living conditions were better. There was more food and less-crowded living space. Postcards even came back from nearby cities, but they all sounded the same and nothing like the friends and relations who sent them.

  As time went on, such pretenses were discarded and the Jewish Police would enter homes at night to grab up people who had been selected for deportation and send them off to the central prison. There they would wait a few torturous days wondering about their fate before being sent off to the trains. Then they were no longer in the hands of the Jewish Police but of the German Krippo, who would make them hand over their food, their blankets and backpacks, wedding rings and watches. If they weren't fast enough, they got the whip.

  These things we discussed on those moist summer nights in the yard, leaning against the walls of the buildings, against the well, heads turned upward, watching the stars come out. We'd talk and we'd wonder. Where could a body go without his belongings, without his wedding ring and watch? How could these stars and that moon be the same as those that shone elsewhere in the world, and if we were indeed God's Am S'gulo, His chosen people, for what exactly had we been chosen?

  Dur
ing the day we would trudge to work (I now worked at the straw factory), and we would watch with dread, our breath held, as the letter carrier passed out his summonses. Would it be our family today? It didn't matter; if it wasn't for us it would surely be for our neighbors or friends.

  All this worry and speculation, though, was but a preamble to the nightmare that began on the third anniversary of the war.

  I awoke that first morning of September with the sun already burning hot on my face. I sat up, my body feeling beaten from sleeping on the pavement where I had eventually drifted off last night. Anya and her best friend, Hala, still slept soundly beside me. We were used to sleeping outside now, the bedbugs and heat being unbearable inside. Looking beyond the yard I could see Jakub hurrying along, headed this way, and I remembered that not only had he not come home last night, but neither had Bubbe. I searched for Mama in the crowd of bodies propped up against the well and found her slumped against Mrs. Hurwitz, asleep. I ran over to her and shook her awake.

  "Mama, Jakub's coming. He looks upset. Maybe it is Bubbe."

  Mama and Mrs. Hurwitz sat up, both squinting up at me like sleepy cats. Others stirred around them, shifting their bundles under their heads, trying to find a more comfortable position.

  "It is Jakub, see?" I pointed toward him, and Mama, seeing him, rose slowly to her feet, her head wobbling on her neck as though he had delivered a blow to her face.

  Jakub stopped a few feet away from her. Panic was in his face, his eyes wide and unblinking.

  "Military trucks are pulling up outside the hospital," he said. "They are loading all the sick onto them, tossing them like treyf, like unkosher meat, as if they were already dead!"

  People jumped up and gathered around him and began asking questions. Had he seen their brother, or father, or aunt? Where were the people going? What was to be done with them?

  Jakub just stared. He couldn't answer them, and he didn't need to. By then, we already knew what was going to happen, where the sick were going. People who had recently entered the ghetto from the provinces had spread the news: Jews shipped out were shipped to their death.