If I Should Die Before I Wake

by Han Nolan

  "Hil? Hil, it's me. It's Brad. I probably don't have much time. Your mother just went to get some coffee. She's crazy, you know that?"

  Please, I want Mama. I want Anya back. How can they just do that? How can they just take them and treat them like—like...

  "Things are good. We've got some more people, more warriors, and that other girl—that Megan O'Toole. Remember her?"

  They should have taken me, not Anya. She was so good. She was always so cheerful, full of life. What am I? I'm a burden. I'm a burden to Bubbe and Jakub.

  "There's a parade next week down in Washington, D.C., and a bunch of us are going. We'll show them how big we are. We're going to march in full uniform. We've got those leaflets, too, and we're going to drop them out of a window somewhere. It's big, Hil, like we wanted, remember? They'll be coming from all over the U.S."

  She always had extra food for me. Why would God take her? She was the strong one. And Mama, so good. I need her. I need them. Doesn't God see? Doesn't He know?

  God, listen to me.

  "The police, they're on our backs, they're on us all the time, and they don't see we're doing them a favor. Hey, we're just getting rid of all the undesirable elements. Right, babe? The Jew lovers."

  God, it should have been me. Why didn't I volunteer to go on that truck? Why did I hold back? How could I have let Mama and Anya just go? Where are they? God?

  "That Megan, the new girl, she's one violent piece of work. Tiny, like you, but all fire. Pure hate, you know? She's here, now, in this building. I—I said it was all right if she wore your jacket. You left it down in the meeting room. It's a good thing, huh, or it would have gotten all tore up in the wreck. You wouldn't want my birthday present to you in shreds. She's taking good care of it. It fits her."

  Could I pray? Would that help?

  "Hey, two Jews were shot a couple of nights ago. That's good, huh? It was one of us, but I don't know who. No one's saying. They'll be all over me again, now that they got my name. Hey, who cares, right? For the cause. Heil, Hitler, man. It's worth it to go to jail, but if I go, I'm going to take a Jew out first, even if it's just a little Jew, a little Simon Jew. It's one less, right? Yeah, if I'm going to jail, I'm going to make sure I did something worth going for."

  Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven....

  "Things are heating up, Hil. That's a pun, in case you didn't know. Right now, while I'm talking, things are heating up. Megan's down in one of them ladies' rooms setting up the fireworks. This whole building's going to go up in flames. You're a hero, Hil, Remember that. You're dying for the cause. White Power!"

  Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

  Yes. Deliver us from evil. Dear God, deliver us from evil.

  "Hil, I've got to go. I can hear your mother coming. How does she walk in those pointy-heeled slipper things she wears? She's crazy. Heil, Hitler, babe. See you in hell."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Chana

  "BUBBE, why are we still here?" I heard myself asking as I sat in the dark, huddled on the floor, my throbbing head resting against a strange wall.

  "Because God wills it," Bubbe murmured, her voice not needing to travel far to be heard. "And because we must be the ones to remember, and carry on, for future generations."

  "Phfutt." I spit, ignoring that she was not answering my question about the prison, but her own about life and still being alive. "What generations? They are gone. So many people. So many deaths. How could God allow it? Bubbe?"

  "Yes, Chana."

  "I don't think there is a God."

  "Perhaps not your God."

  "Will He strike me down for not believing?"

  Bubbe chuckled.

  "I would not care if He did. At least there would be a reason for it. I think that is what I understand the least, this useless, pointless suffering and dying. Why do they not just shoot us and get it over with anyway?"

  I heard the stranger on the other side of me draw in her breath and begin to recite the Shema Yisrael.

  "Hush, Chana! You are frightening the others," Bubbe hissed.

  I looked around me, trying to see the shapes of the faces that stared back at me through the darkness. Who were they? What were their crimes? Were they like Bubbe and me? Had they escaped from some ghetto only to be caught and thrown into prison? Had they been tortured as we had been? Had they planned their defense as Bubbe and I had done, so we were sure to give the same explanation for our presence on the train where we were caught?

  I closed my eyes and wondered how long we had been there. It seemed weeks since we had last had something to eat or drink, but I supposed it must have been only a few days. What did it really matter? Starving was starving; thirst was thirst.

  During the hours when the Nazis left us alone in our cell with the others, I liked to close my eyes and remember the night before we were caught. Never had I felt as victorious as I did that night, standing with Bubbe beneath the warm glow of an electric light, in a house with running water, a toilet, and heat, and staring up into the friendly yet disguised faces of our rescuers.

  Thanks to Jakub our escape had been easy. A few planks against the wall beyond the cemetery, set up at just the right place and just the right time, and we were up and over the wall and fleeing into the night. There were no gunshots or whistles or dogs behind us. Everything was timed perfectly. I could just feel it inside that everything was going to work. I felt no panic as we scurried through the forbidden alleys in the new leather shoes that Jakub had somehow procured, and our somewhat new coats without the Star of David stitched to their fronts and backs. I said a quick prayer as I followed my grandmother into the backseat of a car that had a doll lying beneath the back window. I hoped we hadn't somehow chosen the wrong car.

  As we settled in, the man turned around in his seat and I saw the fuzziest face I had ever seen. He was all beard and mustache and eyebrows. The only other things that stood out were his ears. He spoke to us in German and for a moment I thought we had indeed climbed into the wrong car. I felt my whole body go limp, like a puppet cut loose from its strings. I saw Bubbe smile and heard her respond also in German, and although I understood the language quite well, I didn't hear a word they said. The man handed us each a blindfold and Bubbe explained to me in my dumbfounded stupor that we were to wear them so we would be unable to tell anyone where we had been should we ever get caught.

  "Ja, ja!"The man nodded. Then he turned back around and sped off through the alley. We didn't speak the rest of the trip.

  I tried to settle back in my seat as we passed through what must have been familiar towns, but I found that my body was shaking, my teeth chattering. Bubbe reached out for my hand and squeezed it. I tried to smile and then realized she couldn't see me. I took a deep breath and snuggled up against her. I felt guilty that she had to keep reassuring me, to keep comforting me. After all, I was the reason we were here. I was the reason we were risking our lives. I was the one who had to leave. I couldn't stay there in the ghetto, not without Mama and Anya. It was too much to ask. I had tried. After the end of the roundup of the children and the elderly and the infirm, we were all supposed to go back to work, to get on with our lives—but how could I, when all that was my life was gone?

  Every day I dreamed of running away, of hiding, of curling up into a ball in a hole somewhere and just staying there until I died. It's what I wanted to do, but Bubbe wouldn't let me. She kept me busy—hop, hop, hop—every day. She had me running errands, standing in long lines for our food rations, going with her as she went around to visit the sick who refused to go to the hospital, returning to my own job at the workshop, and preparing the nightly soups. Yes, she kept me busy, but not so busy that I didn't notice a child here and there hurrying along the streets, or trying to sell the last stale bits of homemade sweets. And why were they s
till in the ghetto and Anya and Mama gone? Were they special? Were they the privileged ones, children of the Jewish Police, perhaps? It wasn't fair. I couldn't stand to see them.

  Nothing, though, was as unbearable as when a new family moved into our one-room home. All of them were still together—mother, father, and three children. It was too much. I had been preparing the evening meal when the five of them walked in, all smiles, their arms full of bundles that they dropped at their feet as soon as they had entered.

  "Yes, it is true," the father said, acknowledging my astonishment, "we are to live here with you. It is just you?"

  I could not help hearing the hopefulness in his voice. The two girls, mop-headed twins, were already laying claim to one of the cots as they shook off their shoes and climbed in.

  "No," I said. "My bubbe and Jakub, my brother, are with me. My sister and mother were taken in the roundup last September."

  "And now it is almost Chanukah. We will be celebrating together," the father said as if he had not heard me.

  I placed the wooden spoon I was holding down on the table and picked up my coat from the chair. Then, after smiling at the mother, father, and son—who were still standing like straw-stuffed dummies amongst their belongings—I left.

  It wasn't until I reached the street that I began to run and to let myself cry. I ran through the dark streets still crowded with people dragging home from their jobs, hopping over people lying along the curbs, too cold, too starved to move. I didn't know where I was running until I was there—at the House of Culture. Yes, I thought to myself as I faced the building with its roof still shining green, even in the dark. I will hide up there in my special place, and I will never come out. I will die up there. I will die and they will play the most beautiful music in the world in the concert hall beneath me. A wonderful way to die.

  As I entered the building I could hear voices in the distance and the sounds of various instruments tuning up. I waited a moment and listened for the violins. I wished that I had brought my violin with me. I didn't want to play it, I just wanted it with me. It was a beautiful instrument—my father had had it made especially for me for my tenth birthday—and the thought of those two little girls back in the room finding it and putting their dirty hands all over it almost made me turn back—but no, I had come here to die. I wouldn't need my violin in heaven. I crept down the hallway and into the side room and looked up at the ceiling. The hole had been sealed up.

  I could see the board by the light in the hallway, but I didn't understand. It can't be sealed, I told myself. I climbed onto the door handle and then clung onto the top of the door with one hand as I pressed against the board. Surely it would give way. This was my special place. They can't take away my special place. I pushed and banged as I wobbled and swung on the door. "No!" I shouted, and banged some more.

  "No, child, you must get down from there."

  I felt someone grab me from behind and lower me down from the door. I flopped out of his arms and sank all the way down onto the floor and hid my crying face in my skirt.

  "You do not want to be going up there" came a man's gentle voice.

  "What do you know about it?" I sobbed.

  "I know it has not been cleaned. They just sealed it up. Was it your family they shot up there? Is there something up there, perhaps, that you feel they may have left behind for you?"

  I looked up at the man, seeing him for the first time. His skin was gray, his cheekbones sharp ridges cutting into his flesh, but his eyes, even in the dimness of the light, drew me toward him. I knew, like me, he had lost. He held out his hand to me and I took it. He smiled. Maybe everything would be all tight. Starvation and loss had not cut off all feelings. This man was reaching out to me, and together, for a little while perhaps, we could be father and daughter.

  I stood up and looked again at the sealed-up hole.

  "How is it that you were not up there with them?" the man asked, still holding my hand.

  I stared at him, my mouth open, but I could make no sound come out.

  "A nightmare, those days. I lost so many—and you, your whole family. Such evil cannot last forever."

  "My whole family," I repeated. "No, not my whole family, just—just my mother and sister, I..." I could not go on. At last I understood. I looked back up at the ceiling and I saw the hole again, but this time it was as if the board was not covering it. I could see sunlight shining through it, and then beyond the hole at the back of the attic, a family huddled—watching the German Police approach—blankets, photographs, clothing collected at their feet. I saw the Nazis' eyes, as cold and dark and soulless as the revolver aimed at the faces of the family. I saw the blood. I felt it dripping onto my face, and I pulled away from beneath the hole, out of reach of the man's hands. What was I doing here? What silly notion had I had to think that I was going to lie up there and drift blissfully off to heaven while a Bach concerto echoed in the rooms below? Death was ugly. Hadn't I seen enough of it to know at least that?

  The man took a step forward. I backed away, his eyes no longer able to keep me there.

  "I should not have spoken of your family." He pointed toward the ceiling.

  "They were not my family. They were not my family," I shouted. "It has nothing to do with me! They are nothing—nothing to me!"

  I ran from the man with the caring eyes, and he did not call me back. I knew of no place else to go, and so I ran back home, back to the room with the five strangers—three of them children under ten.

  It would have been unbearable had I not decided to escape. Day and night from that day forward I plotted my escape route, watching where and when others from my side of the fence stole their way to the Aryan side in search of food or work. So many people were willing to risk their lives this way, and yet just living in the ghetto was a risk to one's life. To survive was to be at risk.

  Whenever I was with Bubbe, however, I made it a point to be thinking of anything but my plans of escape. I didn't want her figuring out my plans and trying to stop me.

  One evening in early January, as we were returning home from our visits with the homebound patients, Bubbe said to me, "You are happier now, Chana? You are doing better?"

  I turned my head away from the fence, away from the icicles that wrapped around the barbed wire and gleamed, beckoning, whispering, willing me to go and touch. "Yes, I am doing better, but I still miss Mama and Anya."

  Bubbe nodded. "You think they are out there somewhere."

  I jerked my head up and looked into her eyes. What was the use of pretending with Bubbe? I tucked my chin into the collar of my coat. "Yes," I said.

  "Then we must look for them." Bubbe took my hand. "I will get Jakub to plan our escape."

  "You what? Bubbe!" I threw my arms around her and squeezed. "You knew all along." I stepped back and stared at the face of my amazing bubbe. "Is it true? Will you go with me?"

  "You must promise me one thing."

  I spread out my arms and spun around. "Anything!"

  "We will do it Jakub's way. We will leave when he says it is all right. You must be patient."

  "Yes! Yes! Yes! I promise."

  It was March before Jakub could arrange things on the outside and gather the shoes and clothing appropriate for a grandmother and granddaughter traveling through Poland. We had known Jakub would not want to go with us. He had his own life now, one of which I knew Mama and Tata and even Zayde would be proud. Still, as the night of our escape approached, the idea of leaving him behind, of saying good-bye to yet another member of the family, became unbearable, and I begged Jakub to go with us.

  "No, it is too late to be changing plans," Jakub told me in a voice that had recently become deeper, richer—his adult voice. "If this is to work, you must not be thinking about me. You are moving away, forward, into the Aryan world, and all your attention must be focused there. It is your life, Chana."

  "Yes, but I need—"

  "You are not serious about leaving then. I have made all these plans. Henrick wil
l be waiting. For nothing I have made these plans?"

  "No, Jakub, I am going. But I will miss you. Can you let me at least say that?"

  "There will be no time to spend missing me. We will see each other again. Keep that in your mind. We will stand together at Hitler's execution."

  "Oh, Jakub, do you think it will ever happen? Will this ever be over?"

  Jakub moved forward in his chair and grabbed my hand. He lowered his voice. "I have learned that the German Sixth Army has surrendered to Russia."

  "What? When? Where? Oh, Jakub, really?"

  He nodded. "February second, in Stalingrad. Seems the winters are a bit too hard for the Germans. You will see, before the end of 1943 this war will be over."

  I grabbed Jakub around the neck and hugged him. "And we'll all be together—you, me, Bubbe, Mama, Anya, and Nadzia. Oh, what a celebration!"

  "Chana, you must listen. We need to keep our minds on the plans. Now, tell me again what you are to do."

  "Bubbe knows the plans. You know I will be safe with Bubbe. She won't forget."

  "Chana! You are being foolish and unrealistic. You could be separated or Bubbe could get—killed. It could happen, you know it could."

  "I am to get into the car that is waiting in the alley. There will be a doll with a missing foot lying in the back window. We will get in and Henrick—not his real name—will take us to a house where he will take our pictures and give us papers that say that we are Rachela and Ewa Krisowski. Then we are to get ourselves into the roundup of Polish workers going to Germany, which you say is easy to do because of all the chaos, but we will see. Then we will ride to Germany—phfutt—where our false papers will be less suspicious since all the Jews have been rounded up there already, and we will work beside the Germans— phfutt. There now, did I leave anything out?"

  On the night of our escape the air was cold and dry, the night sky clear and alive with the stars and the moon. It was unusual weather for that time of the year. We had counted on the damp and the fog to keep us under cover as we hurried through the alleys to the waiting car. Just the same, I preferred the clear night. It made me feel awake, electric, invincible. Once inside the car, riding with the blindfold on, that charge, that energy, left me, and all I could do was fold myself up against Bubbe and cry. It was too much for me to believe we were free.