Refugee

by Alan Gratz

  The guard ignored Mahmoud. He stood right in front of her, but she looked over him. Past him. Mahmoud was invisible as long as he did what he was supposed to do, and as long as he was invisible he was safe, and she was comfortable.

  It was time for both of those things to change.

  Mahmoud took a deep breath and pushed the door open. Chuk-chunk. The sound echoed loudly in the big room, and suddenly all the kids stopped playing and all the adults looked up from their mattresses at him. It was green outside, and sunny, and at first Mahmoud had to squint to see.

  “Hey!” the guard cried. She saw him now, didn’t she? The UN observers did too.

  “Stop! No! Not allowed!” the soldier said in bad Arabic. She struggled to find the right words and said something in Hungarian that Mahmoud didn’t understand. She started to raise her gun at him, and then she glanced up and saw the frowns on the faces of the UN observers.

  Mahmoud stepped outside. The woman looked around at the other guards and called out to them, as if asking what to do. Mahmoud took another step, and another, and soon he was away from the building, walking toward the road.

  Waleed ran through the door after him, followed by the rest of the children. The Hungarian guards yelled after them, but they didn’t do anything to stop them.

  “Mahmoud!” Waleed said, panting as he ran up alongside his brother. His eyes were bright and alive for the first time Mahmoud could remember. “Mahmoud! What are you doing?”

  “I’m not staying in that place and waiting for them to send me back to Serbia. Come on,” Mahmoud said. “We’re walking to Austria.”

  Gunfire crackled. An artillery shell whistled overhead and hit with a shuddering thoom somewhere nearby. Ruthie cried, and Josef’s mother hugged her close.

  Josef peeked out the window. They were hiding in a tiny schoolhouse in a village called Vornay, somewhere south of Bourges, in France. The desks were all in perfect rows, and a long-forgotten assignment was still written on the chalkboard. It was dark outside, and the trees surrounding the schoolhouse made it even darker. That was good—it helped them hide. But it also made spotting German storm troopers harder.

  Josef ducked back down inside, and his eyes fell on a map of Europe on the wall, the various countries shaded different colors. How wrong that map was now, just a year after he and his family had come to France as refugees. Germany had absorbed Austria, and conquered Poland and Czechoslovakia soon after. Holland and Belgium and Denmark had fallen to Hitler, and the Nazis occupied the northern half of France, including Paris. All of France had surrendered, but there were still pockets of Free France Forces resisting the Nazis throughout the countryside. The countryside where Josef and his family were now.

  The only refugees from the St. Louis who were still safe, Josef realized, were the ones who had made it to Great Britain—though word was that Hitler was going to try to cross the English Channel any day now.

  Josef and his mother and sister were trying to get to Switzerland in the hope that the Swiss would give them refuge. They’d made it this far traveling by night, sleeping in hay barns and out in fields under the stars, but the Nazis had finally caught up to them.

  A light played across the window above him, and Josef chanced a look out again. Storm troopers! Headed toward the school!

  “They’re coming!” Josef told his mother. “We have to go!”

  His mother picked up Ruthie and headed for the door, but Josef stopped her. There was only one door to the schoolhouse, and the Nazis would be using it. “No—this way!” he said.

  Josef kept low as he scurried to the back wall of the classroom. There was a window there. They could climb out and run for the woods.

  He tried the handle. It was stuck! Josef looked over his shoulder. He could see the beam of a flashlight in the hall outside, could hear the familiar German language of his homeland. They had to get out of there!

  Josef threw his elbow against the glass, and it shattered. That brought a cry from the hallway. Josef knocked the rest of the glass out of the window in a panic. He felt his coat sleeve rip, felt something cold and sharp against his skin, but he didn’t have time to think about that. He helped his mother out first, then handed Ruthie out to her through the window.

  “Go, go!” Josef said before he was even all the way out the window, and his mother picked up Ruthie and ran for the darkness of the woods. None of them carried suitcases anymore—those had been left behind long ago—but they all still wore their coats, even though it was the height of summer. His mother had insisted.

  The only thing any of them still carried was Bitsy, the little stuffed bunny Ruthie had never parted with. It was tucked tightly under Ruthie’s arm.

  Josef leaped down from the window, stumbled, got back up, and ran.

  “There! There!” The beam of the flashlight found him. A pistol cracked, and a bullet blew the bark off a tree less than a meter away from him. Josef stumbled again in panic, righted himself, and kept running. Behind him, the storm troopers were yelling to each other, barking like dogs after a fox.

  They were on the scent now, and wouldn’t let up. Not until Josef and his family had been caught.

  “There’s a house up ahead!” his mother yelled over her shoulder. She swerved onto a small dirt lane, and Josef overtook her, beating her to the door. It was a little French country house, with two windows on either side of a double door in the middle and a chimney on one side.

  Josef caught a faint whiff of smoke from the kitchen fire, and a curtain fluttered in the window.

  Someone was inside!

  Josef pounded on the door. He glanced over his shoulder. Three flashlight beams were bouncing up the lane toward them.

  “Help. Please, help us,” Josef whispered frantically, still pounding.

  No one answered, and no lights came on inside.

  “Halt!” came a young man’s voice.

  Josef spun around. There were four German soldiers behind them. Three of them pointed flashlights at them, making Josef squint. He could still see well enough to know that two of them had rifles pointed at them. A third carried a pistol.

  “Hands up. Put the child down,” the storm trooper told Josef’s mother. Ruthie tried to cling to her, but Mama did as she was told.

  Dully, Josef realized that he’d lost some of the feeling in his right arm, and that his sleeve was coated in blood. He’d cut himself on the window glass. Badly. He squeezed the place where his arm had grazed the glass, and the pain was so blinding it almost made him pass out.

  Ruthie had her head down, crying, but she raised her little bunny’s right arm and said, “Heil Hitler!”

  One of the soldiers laughed, and as he blinked the pain of his arm away, Josef thought maybe the soldiers would let them go. But one of them said, “Papers.”

  They were in trouble now for sure. Their papers had big letter Js stamped all over them. J for Jew.

  “We—we don’t have papers,” Mama said.

  One of the soldiers gestured at her, and a storm trooper with a rifle marched up to them and checked her coat pockets. He quickly found the papers she carried for her and Ruthie, and just as easily found Josef’s papers on him.

  The soldier brought them back to a man with a flashlight, and he unfolded them.

  “Jews,” the man said. “From Berlin! You’ve run a long way from home.”

  You have no idea, thought Josef.

  “We’re going to Switzerland,” Ruthie said.

  “Hush, Ruthie!” Josef hissed.

  “Switzerland? Is that so? Well, I’m afraid we cannot allow that,” the soldier said. “You will be taken to a concentration camp, like the rest of the Jews.”

  Why? thought Josef. Why bother hunting us down and taking us back to prison? If the Nazis want us Jews gone so badly, why don’t they just let us keep going?

  One of the soldiers came toward them with a gun.

  “No! Wait!” Josef’s mother cried. “I have money. Reichsmarks. French francs.” She fumbled insi
de her shirt, where she kept their money hidden. The bills fluttered to the ground.

  The soldier moved the bills around with his feet and made a tsking sound. “It is not enough, I’m afraid.”

  Josef’s heart sank.

  At the chance she might really be able to buy their way out, Josef’s mother became hysterical. “Wait! Wait! I have jewelry. Diamonds!” She yanked at Ruthie’s coat, pulling it off over her head.

  “Mama! What are you doing?” Ruthie cried.

  Josef’s mother ripped at the seams, the way his father had when he’d rent his garments for old Professor Weiler on the ship. From Ruthie’s coat she pulled something that glittered in the light of the electric torches.

  Earrings. The diamond earrings Josef’s father had bought her for their anniversary one year. Josef remembered Papa giving them to her. Remembered the smile on Mama’s face, the light in her eyes, both long gone now. Mama had sewn her earrings into the lining of Ruthie’s coat! That was why she had never let Ruthie take it off.

  The soldier took the earrings from Josef’s mother and examined them in the light. Josef held his breath. Maybe they would let his mother buy their way out of this after all.

  “Everything I was able to keep,” his mother said, “it’s all yours. Just please—let us go.”

  “These are very nice,” the soldier said. “But I think there is only enough here to buy freedom for one of your children.”

  “But—but that’s all I have left,” Mama said.

  The soldier looked at her expectantly. At first Josef didn’t understand what he wanted—they didn’t have anything else to give him. But then the Nazi pulled Josef and Ruthie to him and turned them around for Mama to see, and that’s when Josef understood. The Nazi didn’t care how much money they had, how many jewels. It wasn’t about that. He was playing with them. This was another game, like a cat playing with a mouse before he ate it.

  I think there is only enough here to buy freedom for one of your children.

  One of Rachel Landau’s children would go free, and one of her children would go into the camps.

  The Nazi soldier smiled at Josef’s mother. “You choose.”

  Here, in this boat that had been her home for four days and four nights, Isabel’s little brother was born.

  Not right away. First had come her mother’s frantic pushing, pushing, pushing to bring the baby into the world, while the rest of them paddled, paddled, paddled. All but Señora Castillo, who sat on the bench next to Mami, holding her hand and talking her through it. Behind them, the Coast Guard had finished picking up Isabel’s grandfather and was headed their way, lights flashing.

  Their little blue boat was close to the shore. The waves around them were breaking with white caps. Isabel could see people dancing on the beach. But they weren’t close enough. Weren’t going to make it. That’s when Mami’s cries had mixed with Amara’s yell to “Swim for it!” and Luis and Amara hopped over the side, half swimming, half tumbling toward shore.

  “No, wait!” Isabel cried. Her mother couldn’t swim for the beach. Not like this. They had to paddle in or her mother would never make it to the US.

  Isabel and Papi and Señor Castillo rowed as hard as they could, but the Coast Guard ship was faster. It was going to catch them.

  “Go!” Isabel’s mother told her husband between pants. “If you’re caught, they’ll send you back.”

  “No,” Papi said.

  “Go!” Mami said again. “If I’m caught, they’ll just—they’ll just send me back to Cuba. Go, and take Isabel. You can—you can send money, like you always planned!”

  “No!” Isabel cried, and amazingly, her father agreed.

  “Never,” he insisted. “I need you, Teresa. You and Isabel and little Mariano.”

  Isabel’s mother sobbed at the name, and tears sprang to Isabel’s eyes too. Like the boat, they had never settled on a name for the baby. Not until now. Naming the baby after Lito was the perfect way to remember him, no matter where they were.

  “But they’ll send us back,” Mami sobbed.

  “Then we’ll go back,” Papi said. “Together.”

  He put his forehead to his wife’s temple and held her hand, taking Señora Castillo’s place as Mami made her last push.

  The Coast Guard ship bounced in the waves. It was almost on top of them.

  “It’s time!” Señor Castillo said. “We have to swim for it. Now!”

  “No, please,” Isabel begged, paddling helplessly against the tide, tears running down her face. They were so close. But Señor Castillo was already helping his wife over the side into the water.

  They were abandoning ship.

  Isabel’s mother cried out louder than before, but Papi was with her. He would take care of her. All that mattered now was rowing. Rowing as hard as Isabel could. She was her mother’s last hope.

  “Take—take Isabel with you,” she heard her mother say between pushes. But Isabel wasn’t worried. She knew her father wouldn’t listen. That he would never leave. Neither of them would. They were a family. They would be together. Forever.

  But then suddenly arms were picking her up, lifting her over the side!

  “Say good-bye to Fidel,” Señor Castillo said. He was the one Mami had been talking to. He had come back, and he was the one lifting Isabel out of the boat and into the water!

  “No—no!” Isabel cried.

  “You saved my life once, now let me save yours!” Señor Castillo told her.

  Isabel didn’t listen. She kicked and screamed, trying to get free. She didn’t want to go to the States if it meant leaving her parents—her family—behind. But Señor Castillo was too strong. He tossed her in the water, and she sank under the waves in a tangle of arms and legs and bubbles before quickly hitting bottom.

  Isabel found her footing and pushed herself back up out of the water. It was chest deep, and the waves that slid by her toward shore lifted her up and set her down again on the sand. Iván’s cap had come off her head in her splashdown, and she snatched it up before it disappeared in the surf.

  Then she grabbed the side of the boat to climb back in.

  Señor Castillo’s arm went around her waist and pulled her away.

  “No!” Isabel cried. “I won’t leave them!”

  “Hush! We’re not going anywhere,” Señor Castillo said. “Help us pull the boat to shore!”

  Isabel looked around, and for the first time she saw that Señora Castillo was still there, and Luis and Amara were there too. They all stood waist-deep in the water around the boat. They had come back!

  They all found somewhere to grab on to the boat and pull, churning up the sand at their feet. Isabel sobbed with relief and grabbed hold. It was harder for her to pull when the waves kept lifting her, but the sight of the Coast Guard boat bearing down on them helped motivate her.

  So did the cheering.

  The other refugees on the Coast Guard ship were hopping up and down and clapping and yelling encouragement, just like the crowd on the beach had when they’d left Havana. Isabel saw her grandfather running up and down the ship, waving them toward shore like a baseball player urging a home run ball around the foul pole. She laughed in spite of herself. The water was just below Isabel’s waist. They were almost there!

  The Coast Guard ship cut its engines to run up to them, and that’s when Isabel heard her baby brother cry out for the first time.

  The sound stunned Isabel and the others into stillness. It took her father a moment to cut the umbilical cord with his pocket knife. Then he stood up in the boat with something tiny and brown, staring down at it like he held the world’s most incredible treasure in his arms. Isabel gaped. All this time, she had known her mother was having a baby. Isabel had seen plenty of babies before. They were cute, but nothing special. But this—this wasn’t just a baby. This was her brother. She had never met him before this moment, but she loved him now with a deepness she had never felt before, not even toward Iván. This was Mariano, her little brother, and
she suddenly wanted to do anything and everything she could to protect him.

  Papi finally looked up from his newborn son. “Help me get Teresa out of the boat,” he told the others.

  The Coast Guard ship was almost alongside the boat, and the adults scrambled for the other side.

  Papi bent down over the bow and held out her crying baby brother to Isabel. As if in a dream, Isabel’s arms reached up and took him. He was covered with something slimy and gross and was screaming like somebody had slapped him, but he was the most amazing thing Isabel had ever seen.

  Little Mariano.

  Isabel hugged him protectively against the push and pull of the waves. He was so tiny! So light! What if she stumbled? What if she dropped him? How could her father have put something so new, so precious, in her arms? But then she understood—Isabel had to carry little Mariano to shore so her father and the others could carry Mami behind them.

  “Go, Isabel,” her father told her, and she went.

  Isabel held the baby up high to keep him out of the waves that pushed them both to shore, stumbling as the water crashed against the back of her legs, but step by step she staggered up onto the beach.

  Onto United States soil.

  Isabel turned in the sand, soaking wet and exhausted, to look behind her.

  Papi and Amara and the Castillos were on their feet, carrying Isabel’s mother through the shallow water, where the Coast Guard boat couldn’t go. The ship had cut its lights and was backing out to sea. On the rear of the boat, among the waving, cheering refugees, was Isabel’s grandfather.

  Isabel held the screaming baby up high for him to see, and Lito fell to his knees, hands clasped to his chest. Then the engines roared, the sea churned, and the Coast Guard ship disappeared out to sea.