On the second day, Alice came with a bowl of warm water, antiseptic, and bandages. She helped me take off my underwear, which tore the scabs that had formed, but she was very gentle.
“These aren’t too deep. You will heal.”
She helped me into a fresh uniform, a knitted cardigan, and new tights.
I did not say anything, nor did I wish to look at her.
“Matilda . . .”
When I finally turned to look at her, I saw that her face had become very blotchy, and there were dark circles around her eyes.
“Don’t let this change you,” she said.
After she had gone, I wondered which parts of me I shouldn’t change.
I have not heard the other children out at the swings. Perhaps it is the weather, or perhaps they are being punished, also. I carry much guilt. If I had taught them the Führer’s words . . . I decide that if I get out, I will be a good girl. I will teach the others how to speak German better than Germans do. We will speak it day and night. We will memorize the words from the book.
Or I will find a way for us all to escape.
I have not yet decided what we will do.
My meals are smaller, but I am not very hungry anyway. Sometimes Nurse takes almost a whole bowl of oat porridge away. She does not talk to me. I remember seeing her look away when Frau was hitting me. I do not think she has ever seen someone punished like that before.
I do not care that there is scurrying in the night. I am too sore to care.
One day, I think it is the fifth, I hear Jacek outside the hut. He has come to take my toilet bowl and empty it.
“Are you all right?” he whispers.
I crawl from my mattress to peer at his face through the hole. His face lights up when he sees me. I did not realize until then how much I missed him.
“Yes.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Not so much now. But I’m very cold. Are you cold in the hut?”
“Yes. When are you coming out?”
“I don’t know.”
“I have to go. I will see you later. But we can’t wait till you come back. We want to hear more stories.”
Just the sight of Jacek’s face has made things look brighter.
“I can’t, Jacek.”
“You can,” he says. “We will just have to learn our German as well.”
Finally Nurse comes to take me back to the hut. The snow clouds have come out to laugh, then curse at me. I am taken to the washrooms and then to the hut. Nurse says that Frau has made a new rule: no more Polish words are to be spoken at all. If Frau hears any of the “orphans” do so, they will be sent to the bolted room.
The others are still in their nightgowns. I want to run to the children and hug them, but they are solemn. It is then I notice that something is different. Luise’s face is red, her eyes puffed out like they have been stung by bees.
I don’t say anything until Nurse is gone.
“Where is Adele?”
“She’s been taken.”
“Where to?”
“To her new family,” says Jacek. “Nurse said they were desperate for a child.” He has known this would come. He has seen this all before.
Luise is lying on her bed sucking her thumb. I have never seen her do this before.
“Why wouldn’t they take Luise, also?”
“They don’t take children together. Frau says it is better if they’re separated,” says Jacek. He is picking a scab off his knee. He is not looking at any of us.
This is such terrible news. I thought we would stay together until our parents came to rescue us. I have grown used to them.
“Soon we will all be gone,” says Jacek.
“I have parents. They wouldn’t do that,” I say.
“I have parents, too, but that doesn’t make any difference,” says Jacek.
“Luise, do you have parents?”
She nods.
“But why do they call us orphans?”
“Because that’s what they want to call us.”
“They can’t take us away,” I say. “That is wrong. My parents would not agree to it.”
“Your parents will not even know,” says Jacek.
I cannot sleep that night. Luise has been crying for much of it, until she climbed into bed with me. Sarah is at the bottom of my bed, also.
“Jacek,” I whisper.
“Yes,” he says.
I am relieved he is awake.
“Are you scared?” I say.
“Yes.”
“I think we should run away.”
He sits up on the edge of his bed. I ease myself off mine and move to his so I do not wake the others. I can just make out his eyes and nose, which look smudged in the dark.
“How? Where will we go?”
“Back to our parents,” I say. “We can ask someone on the outside to take us there. We can give them the names of our towns. We can make up a story about who we are. We can say we were accidentally separated from our parents and lost our way.”
“But Luise does not even remember her real name—how is she going to remember the town?”
I am remembering the files in Frau’s office that have our names on them, which may also have our addresses. I also saw that there were keys in her top drawer. Perhaps one of those will open the hut. Perhaps they are spares. Perhaps she won’t notice they are gone.
It is snowing today, a heavy fall. The snow is heavier up here in the north, though I saw a little wildflower the other day between patches of snow, fighting to stay alive.
I am teaching the children to write in German. Jacek is very good, Luise is not trying very hard, and Sarah is too distracted. The Mein Kampf that had my stories in it was taken, and a new one has appeared. I read passages aloud, and the others recite after me.
It is not the same without Adele. Luise lies on her bed. She is always looking at things inside her head now. She does not want to talk at all. She does not like the German language. Sometimes she even snaps at me when I tell her that it is time for washing.
“Luise,” I say, “you should learn German so you don’t get punished. The fat-faced officer might be back, and he might swear at you. Or worse, he might beat you.”
But she still says nothing.
“Story,” says Sarah. Sarah is not learning any words, German or Polish.
“Yes, story!” says Luise, suddenly alert. “The one about the boy who finds his parents across the sea.”
Jacek nods his head in encouragement.
“I’m sorry, Luise. I am not allowed to tell any more stories.”
She lies back down. Even Jacek has turned to face away from me.
Don’t let this change you.
“Maybe just one then . . .”
While I am in the laundry washing our clothes, Jacek rushes in. It is Sarah. They have taken her. I run back to the hut and find only Luise there.
“Who took her?”
“Nurse.”
“No parent?”
“Just Nurse. There was a van at the front of the house.”
“Why?”
“Nurse says that she is going somewhere else where they can teach her better.”
I have to see for myself. I have to stop the truck. There is a guard standing outside, so I run through the kitchen door and into the hallway that will lead to the front of the house. Halfway down, Cook grabs hold of my arm. She is very strong.
“Stop!” says Cook. “You will get yourself in more trouble.”
“But Sarah—”
“Is about to leave.”
“Where to?”
“To another shelter.”
I don’t know whether to believe her, my eyes scanning the vehicle at the front of the house. There is no sign of Sarah.
“Matilda,” she says, “there is nothing you can do. If you go out there, they will put you on the truck, too.”
“Then Sarah won’t be alone.”
“You don’t want to go there. There is no chance, once yo
u are on that truck, that you will ever see the others again.”
I do not fight her. I want to cry, but people are here. The older girls have come to see the commotion. When they realize what has happened, they roll their eyes and leave again. They do not care. There is nowhere to cry in private, so I swallow my tears and follow Cook back to the kitchen. Alice is there with a lump on her stomach that I have not noticed before. She now wears the same dress as me but hers fits much more snugly, with the buttons straining to stay fastened across her chest.
“She was not good enough to be adopted,” says Alice.
“What do you mean?”
“The baby isn’t smart enough to be a German.”
“Alice!” says Cook in a raspy, loud whisper.
“What?” says Alice. “Why can’t they know?”
I don’t understand what that means or where Sarah has been taken. When I am back in the hut, I tear pages out of Mein Kampf into little pieces in my anger. Jacek and Luise watch, but they don’t say anything. Later I hide the torn pages in my toilet pot.
The plan is that when we come to breakfast, Jacek will tell Nurse that he saw people watching us from the woods. Then Nurse will alert Frau, who will walk out the back. While they are outside, I will go into her office and retrieve the keys.
The plan works, at first, though it is Cook who goes to find Frau because Nurse is busy. In the office the drawer is locked. I look around the shelves but can’t find a key to the drawer. I return to the kitchen before Cook and Frau come in from outside. The plan has failed. We must think of another one.
I have asked Nurse if I can have more duties, if I can be of more help. In the month since I was released from the small locked house, I have been very good, always saying, “Yes, Nurse” and “Yes, Frau Haus.” I have offered to take on extra washing. I sweep out the hut and wash the steps at the entrance. All these things I do without being asked. Sometimes when the older girls come into the kitchen, which isn’t very often because they have their own dining room, I tell them how pretty they are and how I like their hair.
Frau has called Jacek and Luise into her office to recite some German. She asked them to answer questions in German and read some passages they have never seen before. Later they told me that she said they had done very well, and she was pleased. She said that perhaps they can be Germanized after all, and perhaps they will also be adopted. They didn’t want to hear this, but they pretended they did. They acted like they were keen to leave and go to new homes once they had learned all the German.
But it isn’t because I like it here that I am working so hard to impress. It’s because I have a plan. If I can have more chores, then I may have access to more of the house. Then I can find the key to unlock our hut at night. One corner of the property is not patrolled, and I know the guards are lazy at night. I have heard them talking and laughing.
We plan to leave next month because the weather is still bad now and the ground is frozen. Luise is very keen to go, as is Jacek.
In Frau’s office, I ask her if I can help Cook with the cooking since I was very good in the kitchen at home. I say I will also help Cook clean up afterward. While I am asking this, I am looking around the room to see where the key to the top drawer might be hidden. I know that Frau has a set of keys that she doesn’t wear, and Nurse has a set of keys that she does.
Frau has granted me permission to do as I suggested, though I must be in Cook’s view all the time, and I am allowed only in the kitchen, not farther into the house.
“You have shown great progress, Matilda. I hope that you will continue to do so well.”
I want to ask her what happened to the good food and the teacher we were promised, but I bite my tongue.
“Thank you, Frau Haus,” I say crisply in German. “I feel honored to be here.”
When Cook finds out I will be helping her, she does not look surprised. Once Nurse is out of the room, she says, “What are you up to?”
“I want to help you,” I say.
“Tch,” she says.
I don’t think she believes me.
A new child has arrived. She was brought in before dawn. She is frightened. She has fair, curly hair and bright-pink cheeks, and she clutches a small blanket that is covered with pictures of rabbits.
She is introduced as Juliane. Nurse opens the door to the hut and shows her to one of the spare beds. When the door is shut and she sees our foreign faces, she bursts into tears. Jacek and I rush to her and tell her that everything is good here, even though it is not. We tell her that we will look after her.
In the kitchen I help Cook and keep an eye out for Frau and Nurse. I know that Nurse occasionally spends time with the older girls in the paddock next door. I know that sometimes during the day Frau leaves the house. I am studying to know when it is a good time to go into her office. I also have to be careful of Alice. Sometimes she is in her room, sometimes in the kitchen, and sometimes she sits outside in the cold and writes something in a notebook.
Cook has given me the key to the storeroom at the back of the house. She has asked me to get some flour. Alice is sitting outside on the cold ground, and I stop to talk to her. She does not like to talk to anyone.
“Why is your stomach getting bigger?”
“That is a very rude thing to say. Go away, little Gypsy!”
I laugh because I like the sound of “little Gypsy.”
“Why are you laughing?” she asks crossly.
“Because it does not sound so bad when you say it. Your voice is too sweet.”
Something in these words takes the frown from her face, and the line of her mouth widens to nearly a smile.
“Well, you are still one,” she says and goes back to her notebook.
“Are you having a baby?” I say.
“Yes,” she says, and looks away toward the field where the other girls are in their winter-white uniforms, marching in the snow. I heard them complaining about the task as they left the house today.
I shift from foot to foot while I think up more questions.
“Why are you still standing there?” says Alice. “Haven’t you got washing to do? I have a ton of it. You can do mine next.”
“Are you married?”
“You are too nosy.”
She stands up to walk inside.
In the storeroom there are sacks of food. It smells like lemons, wheat, and herbs. I love the smell. Some shiny red apples are visible through a gap in the top of one of the sacks. I take one and squeeze it into my underclothes. There is a bag of dried dates, and I take a handful and squeeze them in as well.
Back in the kitchen I have to walk very carefully so that nothing falls out from my underpants. Cook lets me roll some dough. She says that because I am such a good helper, she will make some extra pastries for us—which the older girls, Frau, and Nurse usually have—but that we cannot tell anyone.
I like Cook. She is not like Nurse, who watches everyone with roving eyes, and not like Frau, who carries a baton and is always looking for reasons to punish.
Once when Cook raised her hand to point somewhere, I flinched and she put her arm down.
“I won’t hit you,” she said. “You have nothing to fear from me.”
At night I bring the apple out, and we all take a bite, and I share the dates. Juliane is keen for these, though she is still sobbing.
“I want Mama,” she says.
“Your mama will come back for you one day, but for now we will look after you,” I say. Because there is nothing else to say.
I sing songs quietly into her ear until she falls asleep. Little children are not as annoying to me as they used to be. I like that they follow me and listen to everything I say. And suddenly I am wondering whether it is a good idea to run away because Juliane is only four and a half and too young to run away. I am wondering what will happen to her if we leave. Who will look after her?
When she is asleep, I put this question to Jacek and Luise.
“She will have to live on
her own for a while, like I did,” says Jacek, as if he is throwing these words casually over his shoulder. “She is new. We shouldn’t care so much.”
“It doesn’t matter about Juliane,” says Luise, but with more desperate urgency, shaking her head. She is still not the same. She has not smiled once since Adele was taken.
“It doesn’t matter,” agrees Jacek.
“No, it doesn’t matter,” says Luise again.
But it does to me. A little.
It is afternoon, and we are having bread and soup in the kitchen. One of the older girls runs into the room. She says that a girl is injured from a fall in the field and for Nurse to come quickly, that the girl is bleeding from the nose. Nurse rushes through the back door with her medical bag, and Frau follows, leaving her office door wide-open. When Cook leaves to go to the storeroom, Jacek nods.
This time the drawer sits open. Frau has not had time to lock it. I search through the keys in the drawer. I take two of the largest keys that look like the ones Nurse carries and hope that one of them unlocks the hut. The cabinet where our files are kept is locked.
When the lights are out and Juliane is asleep, we put the key in the lock and turn it. We have success.
“We can go now,” says Luise, who is coughing. She has had a fever this week. “We can go tomorrow!”
“No,” I say. “Not yet. You have to get better first, otherwise you won’t be able to run far, and it is not warm enough. We leave next month, like we said. Besides, we still have to find out where you have come from. We need to find the documents that your parents signed.”
Jacek agrees with me. “It will be too hard to dig under the fence. We need time for the ground to thaw. But we don’t need the documents. We just have to get to Poland. Luise might remember where she came from once we are there.”
Broken Angels Page 18