The Safest Lie

by Angela Cerrito

  A mother stands with her two girls. Their voices sing out to me, “Bread? Bread? Bread?”

  Mrs. Rechtman stops in front of a large brick building. People flow in and out of the doors, like river water swirling between rocks. Mrs. Rechtman bends to face me. “Stay by my side and don’t make a sound. When someone takes your hand, go. Don’t speak. Stay quiet. Do you understand?”

  I nod, afraid to make a sound.

  Mrs. Rechtman pulls the smock off and tosses it away. It’s snatched up by a street child before it hits the ground. I turn to look, but the boy or girl has disappeared down the road.

  Mrs. Rechtman rests a hand on my shoulder and we flow with the crowd into the building. The entry room is as large as the theater near my old house. It’s crowded with people and conversations. Everyone walks past us. It is as if I don’t exist.

  There’s a quick tug on my hand, and my feet immediately move to follow a lady with short dark hair. We walk together to the end of a narrow hallway. She opens a door and motions me inside. I realize it’s a closet. “Wait here. I will bring you to my office and hide you under my desk. I will only have a minute, so when I open the door, come quickly.”

  She closes the door and I am surrounded by darkness. I didn’t get a good look at the room before the door closed. I don’t remember how crowded it is. I stare at the place where the door will open, and stand up straight. I don’t dare move or even lean; I could bump into something. I wonder how long it will take for the lady to return. Please, please come soon, I pray.

  I try to be ready to leave quickly. What I will do if the lady doesn’t come back? Then I have a more frightening thought: what if someone else opens the door?

  Chapter 8

  When the door finally opens, the light stings my eyes. I blink a couple of times to be sure the lady standing in front of me is the same woman who hid me. I know for certain when she whispers, “Hurry.”

  The woman stands in the hall. Her head scans back and forth like a child waiting to cross a busy street. She tugs my arm. In just two steps we are across the hall, standing in a room full of furniture.

  “This is my desk. Quick, underneath.” I crawl into the space, fold my knees under my chin and lean against the cool wood. “Stay put,” says the woman. She sits in her chair and scoots forward.

  Of course, I’ll stay put. Where would I go?

  In a few minutes, the door begins to open and close. The office fills with the buzz of people working. None of them know I am here.

  Anna Karwolska! From the moment I left home, I hadn’t once thought about being Anna Karwolska. Without Mama’s questions it slipped my mind completely. Now, more than ever, I must keep Anna Karwolska first in my mind. I must become Anna Karwolska.

  People move about the room. Some talk. Some even laugh. But the lady with the short dark hair doesn’t budge. I spell my new name over and over again. I remember my birthday and my parents’ birthdays and my address in a town far away. I try to imagine Anna Karwolska’s city, her school and her friends. But I get all mixed up with my own school and friends, my life before we moved to the ghetto.

  The woman’s hand reaches under the desk. It holds a piece of bread, a full piece of bread. I take it silently. It’s real brown bread, not acorn bread. I smell it and my mouth instantly waters. I break the bread into four pieces and put them in my pocket. But bread this soft is too difficult to resist. I select a piece, pull the crust off. It is too dangerous to whisper. Instead, I recite the blessing in my mind and imagine myself speaking loudly and clearly. I eat the crust in tiny bites that melt in my mouth.

  I wish I could share some with Mama and Papa.

  The sounds in the office quiet down. The door opens and closes repeatedly. Throughout it all, the lady stays seated. When the office is finally silent, the lady bends down. “Wait here. There are windows in this room, so you must stay under the desk. Someone will come for you.”

  Who will come? And when?

  The woman moves away and there’s more room under the desk. I change positions for the first time since I crawled underneath.

  It grows dark in the office. The sun sets. No one comes.

  Someone will come for you. Thinking these words, whispering them helps me believe that they will come true.

  In my mind, I wander along the streets I walked with Mrs. Rechtman. Streets that could take me home to Mama and Papa. I can picture every twist and turn. If only I could spend one more night with my parents. I realize that I may have to spend the night here, alone, under a small desk, in a dark office in an empty building.

  I wonder about the other children. There must be other children who have left the ghetto with new names. But only the guards go in and out of the ghetto, not regular people. Those who are out, stay out. And those who are in can’t leave.

  Except Jolanta. She brings us food and clothes and medicine, she leaves and comes back again. Almost every day. Could Jolanta have another name, like me?

  The wind rubs against the windows and the building creaks and cracks. There is no sound of another person anywhere.

  I used to cry. Before the war, I cried about any little thing. If my cousin Jakub teased me, I ran to my mother, eyes full of tears. If I woke at night to the sound of a dog barking in a neighbor’s yard, I rushed to my parents’ room, terrified. I stopped crying the night the first bombs fell on Warsaw. Papa and Uncle Aleksander had left to fight, to defend Poland. I huddled in the basement with Mama, Grandma, Aunt Roza and Jakub. Fire fell from the sky, buildings flew up in the air and the earth roared like it was being ripped to pieces.

  When the sun came up, the streets were on fire. People got busy stocking food, pulling the dead into the courtyards, putting out fires and searching for a safe place to hide for the next round of bombs. I shake my head to wipe away the memories of Warsaw on fire and take a breath to clear the crying feeling out of my chest.

  I still get tightness in my chest and a tickle in my throat at a crying time. But the crying feeling never reaches my eyes, never makes tears. Even today, when Mama and Papa couldn’t hold back tears, I didn’t, couldn’t, cry. I take another deep breath. I’m not going to cry. I take one of the pieces of bread from my pocket, whisper a blessing and nibble slowly. Someone will be here before I finish this bread.

  It’s such a small piece of bread, about half the size of my hand. Still, I’m determined to eat slowly. I count each bite, trying to make the bread last until I’ve reached one hundred. I manage eighty-seven bites, eating every crumb.

  It’s so late. I won’t sleep. I try to get comfortable in the dark office, leaning against the desk.

  Someone will come. I won’t sleep. I close my eyes and wait.

  Chapter 9

  Someone is shaking my shoulders. “What is your name?”

  “Anna, Anna Karwolska.”

  The lady looks like a teenage girl. She has straight light-brown hair and large green eyes. She takes my hands and helps me stand. We walk out of the office and down the empty hallway. There aren’t any people in the large main room and our footsteps echo on the floor. We hold hands as we walk outside.

  Everything is the same, but different. I look back at the door and realize that it’s not the one that I entered yesterday. The building has two large doors—one leading to the ghetto and one going to the outside world. I’m out of the ghetto for the first time in over two years.

  As the sun tries to come up, the girl leads the way through streets that twist and turn near the ghetto wall. Just on the other side are Mama, Papa, Mrs. Rechtman, Sonia, Halina and all of the others from the youth circle. These streets aren’t full of people. There isn’t anyone sleeping on the sidewalk, not a single child begging for food. I have to skip and run a bit to keep up with the girl. She’s still got hold of my hand. We finally stop near the cemetery, on a bridge overlooking a giant rubbish pile.

  “We have to get closer,” she says, and drops my hand.

  I follow her across the bridge and along a dirt path to the rubbish
pile. The girl crouches behind the mound of trash and crumbled bricks and motions for me to do the same. I come closer, get down and wait beside her. A few moments ago, standing on the bridge, I was hungry. I’m always hungry. But next to all of this filthy rubbish, I can barely breathe. The smell is worse than the community bathroom, worse than the pile of manure behind the stables. The air is rotten. Every breath I take burns my nose and throat.

  Just when I’m about to ask what we are doing, hoof beats approach quickly. The girl puts a hand over my head and we both curl into tight balls on the ground. It sounds as if the horse stops on the other side of the mountain of rubbish. It trots away in a matter of moments.

  The girl presses her arm tight over me until we can’t hear the horse at all. Then she rises slowly.

  I stand and follow her to the other side of the huge rubbish pile. She bends down and digs into the grime with her bare hands. Underneath the stones and broken bricks is a wooden crate. It’s a bit smaller than a doctor’s bag. The girl lifts the box and, for the first time, I see her smile.

  “Follow me,” she says. “But stay behind me like we aren’t walking together. If anyone stops me, keep walking. Walk right past me for at least two blocks, then stop at the first bench you see and wait.”

  I nod. It feels like years since I’ve had a normal conversation. The only time anyone speaks to me is to give me orders. I follow the girl and wonder about the box. It must be full of food. What else is worth digging through disgusting trash to get? We walk on. In time the buildings become farther apart and we turn away from the city. My legs are heavy as if my shoes are really galoshes filled with water. I put one foot in front of the other again and again.

  The girl turns and waves me forward. “You can walk with me now.” The wooden box is scraping her skin with every step, the insides of her elbows are bleeding.

  “I can hold it,” I tell her.

  She shakes her head. “It will ruin your clothes.”

  “I have long sleeves and you’re hurt.” I hold my arms out. She surprises me and sets the box carefully in my arms.

  “Please, be very careful.” I match her pace and keep the box close to my chest. We’re surrounded by fields now, with only a few small houses standing back from the road.

  The box is heavier than a loaf of bread, heavier than twenty loaves of bread, but it is too small for that much food.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Straight.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “You can call me Miss.”

  “Miss? But, you’re so young. I bet you’re still a teenager.”

  The girl, Miss, rubs the insides of her arms. She bends and straightens her elbows. She doesn’t tell me her real name. A thin man on a bike passes us. He doesn’t say hello. We don’t even look at him.

  “We should hurry,” says the girl, Miss. She speeds up and is quickly ahead of me. I focus on each step. To catch up with Miss I would have to run. Impossible. Walking is enough of a challenge.

  I can do this. I lift my legs high, but they seem to come down in the same place. The grass bends and sways in the fields beside me, making my head spin. I can’t keep my knees straight. I set the box on the ground, carefully. Then I collapse beside it.

  Above me, Miss says, “We didn’t come this far to stop here. It’s the next house.” The words are far away, like part of a bird’s song.

  I’m flying in the air. No, I’m moving forward. I’m on a horse.

  I wake up when I feel myself sliding. Miss is carrying me on her back. She’s bent over, setting the box next to the door of a farmhouse. She helps me slide off her back and onto my feet.

  “Let’s get in before we are seen,” she says. Miss shifts her gaze to the box and picks it up. “Or heard,” she adds.

  It is cool and dark inside the farmhouse. There is a small square table covered with a white cloth, and in the very center is a bowl full of apples. Miss sets the wooden box on a chair and tries to open it. After pulling and prying with her hands, she leaves and comes back with a tool like a short silver stick.

  Miss turns the box this way and that, inspecting it. She puts the tool between the boards very carefully, as if she were making a box instead of trying to break one open. My eyes keep drifting to the bowl of apples. I haven’t seen fresh fruit in over a year. Apples. A whole bowl full of apples! I try to remember the last time I bit into an apple. My head begins to spin again.

  Miss tilts the tool and cracks one of the boards. Carefully, she moves on to the next. After four boards are pulled aside, Miss reaches her hands into the box and pulls out a tiny baby.

  “What?”

  “Her name is Rachel,” says Miss. “You helped save her.”

  Chapter 10

  Miss cleans Rachel and wraps her in a new blanket. Rachel doesn’t squirm; she doesn’t make a sound.

  “Is she ill? She’s so quiet.”

  “Induced sleep,” says Miss. I don’t understand what that means. “She’ll wake in about half an hour.”

  I can’t concentrate on Miss with the apples so near. A whole bowl full of apples. Food, sitting untouched, waiting to be eaten. I know it’s impolite to ask for food. Instead, I say, “Miss, wherever did you find so many apples?”

  “We have an apple tree.” Then, as if she can read my mind, she takes the bowl of apples and places it in a high cupboard. Miss pours a glass of water and sets it in front of me on the table. “Broth and bread for you today. Mother insists on two days of broth and bread before any other food. You’ll become terribly sick otherwise. I’ve seen it happen.”

  I drink the water and finish the bread in my pocket as Miss prepares the hot broth. When she sets it in front of me, the broth smells so strong, as if it holds the flavor of one hundred bowls of soup.

  As I reach the bottom of my bowl, there is screaming and howling outside. Miss peers through the window. “It’s Mother,” she says. She flings the door open and runs to help. A woman marches to the house. Each of her hands holds the arm of a child. A boy and girl scream with all their might on either side of her. They have tattered clothes and dirty faces and are so thin, like skin on bones.

  Miss runs behind her mother, drapes an arm around each child’s shoulders and follows them into the house. Once inside, the two children fall to the floor and cry. The woman says, “We made it home.” She lets out a long sigh and smiles. It is a real, true, happy smile. It makes her eyes shine and her whole face light up.

  My stomach flip-flops. I haven’t seen so many smiles in one day since before the war. I walk close to Miss’s mother. She strokes my chin with a finger. “And who do we have here?”

  “I’m Anna, ma’am.”

  “Yes, you are.” She smiles again. “Have you had some broth? Some bread?”

  “Yes, Mother,” Miss answers for me. “But she really wants an apple.”

  The boy and girl continue to sob in the corner. The boy simply cries, but the girl calls out for her mother, as if her mama is close enough to hear her.

  Miss’s mother reaches for the bowl of apples. “You can’t have one today,” she says. “But pick the one you like and I will save it just for you.”

  I pick a big red apple from the top and she crinkles brown paper around it.

  The boy has his arm around his little sister. She calls out, “Mama, Mama, Mama.”

  It makes my heart ache for Mama and Papa. I sit down next to them. “You don’t have to cry,” I tell them. “Everyone is nice here. There’s food, broth and bread, even apples.”

  The boy quiets down, but the girl lets out a long howl, “Maaaaamaaaa!”

  “Your mother is certainly happy you are here.” I try to comfort her. But this only makes the girl cry louder.

  “Our mother is dead,” says the boy. “Died this morning.”

  I remember that I am Anna Karwolska. “My mother is dead too. So is my father. My name is Anna, what’s yours?”

  “Hot broth. Warm bread. Anyone hungry?” Miss sets two steamin
g bowls on the table.

  The boy stands up first. His sister stops crying and follows him. They climb onto their chairs and drink their broth. While they are quietly eating their bread, a new cry fills the air—baby Rachel. Her voice is soft and pouty; she sounds like a small animal. Miss and her mother both rush over to hold her. Miss is first. She swoops Rachel into her arms and begins to sing. Rachel coos and stretches happily.

  Miss’s mother stands next to me. “You did a good job comforting those two,” she tells me. “Now let’s get you cleaned up.” She walks out of the room.

  I follow and start to tell her that I washed just yesterday, but the words stick in my mouth because in front of me is a bright white bathtub. A bathtub! And when she turns the knob, water runs out of the faucet. She pulls a basket off a shelf and sets it next to the tub. I lift the cloth on top to find two bars of soap, a packet of hair soap and a brush for my nails. The water runs on and on, covering the bottom of the tub and starting to fill it. I want to turn it off, save some for later. It feels like so much water to use for cleaning one person.

  “What’s your name?” I ask her.

  She smiles and says, “You can call me Auntie.”

  After my bath, Auntie combs out my hair and plaits it into two braids again. When she gets to the bottom of the first braid, I hand her a strip of faded pink cloth. “Can you please fasten it off with this?”

  She holds out her hand and takes the cloth without question. She does the same for the second braid too.

  Chapter 11

  The boy and girl who came yesterday are called Martin and Frieda. I wonder if those are their real names. Auntie’s house is like a school. I soon discover that I haven’t learned everything about Anna Karwolska. I have a special saint and saint’s day, July 26.

  “This day is as important as your birthday,” Auntie tells me. “Don’t forget it.”