by Ann Arnold
Their raised voices seemed to wake up the rest of the men. Manek started to stir.
“Mamusia? Are you okay?”
“Yes, my sweet child, how did you sleep?”
Manek looked next to him, and then back to his Mamusia.
“Where is Zosia? I did not feel her get up this morning.”
The men all stared at Sala, no one daring to make a sound.
“She went on a little trip with Antony. I took her last night.”
“When will she be back?”
“I am not sure, but it will be soon, don’t worry.”
“But why didn’t we all go? And why did she leave without saying goodbye?”
All the questions, she knew they would come, but her head hurt her so much. Manek never asked questions, and she did not know how to answer, so she just stared back at her smart young boy. He had been a crutch for her, and now he seemed like such a small, fragile child. He was all she had left.
He was all she had left, because she gave away her daughter.
“It will all be okay. It just happened so fast, and we did not want to wake you. Please Manek, it will all be OK.” She did not know what she was saying anymore.
Thankfully, Ignash intervened. “Come, Manek, let’s go find some berries for breakfast.”
The other men also started to scramble around, no one looking Sala in the eye. It was just as well. She needed to sit for a moment and gather herself. Just a moment.
She lay down and closed her eyes, but she felt she would never truly sleep again.
* * *
She got through the day. Manek didn't ask questions about Zosia. Somehow, her incredibly smart boy figured out that wherever his sister had gone was destroying his Mother. Sala moved as she should. She kept watch. She gathered food with her son. She tried to wash their clothes when it was especially warm. She sat by the fire as the men told Manek stories to spend the hours.
And yet, deep inside, she grieved.
Sala didn't know you could walk and talk and move and eat and yet, feel nothing but sorrow. Losing Israel hadn't even affected her so deeply. Her arms felt empty. Her heart felt pained, each beat a belabored action of a dying organism.
The sun was no longer bright. The wind was cold. The stars were dull as viewed by her tired eyes.
Though the men went out to get them food, Sala knew it was her instincts that were keeping them alive. She was the one who chose their camp site. She was the one who remembered where they had been so where they should go next. She was the one who directed Manek on how to forage so they could supplement the meager potatoes the men retrieved from dark fields in the middle of the night. The potatoes were getting smaller and full of eyes. Whatever was happening outside of the safety of the trees was as bad as what was happening inside her heart.
She had to keep going. They had to keep going. She just didn't want to without her precious daughter.
* * *
Weeks turned into months. Time had passed and yet it seemed that it was standing still. Fall was approaching. Luckily, the forest had remained quiet after the massacre, but no one could be sure that they would not encounter a Nazi patrol at any moment.
The men made constant pointed remarks about hiding from the Nazis being quieter and simpler without Zosia. Yet Manek’s wide dark eyes kept looking at her with hurt, even a little fear. He had come to realize that this “little trip” was much more than his Mamusia had first said. Did he wonder if she would send him away next? Or was he just afraid, wondering what was happening with his little sister?
At the beginning he would keep asking her when Zosia would return. After a while he stopped asking. She caught him, four or five times a day, turning to talk to Zosia or to call her to him.
Yet Manek’s silent censure wasn’t the worst. The worst part was the way her arms felt so empty.
At night, when she woke up from another nightmare, and reached for the heartbeats … she could only count to one.
Nightmares were a constant problem. She kept seeing the massacre scene, but now, rather than the nameless woman’s daughter, it was her own child’s face. Zosia, her features streaked with blood, a gaping, burned hole in the middle of her eyes. Night had become as much an enemy as the Germans. The nightmares felt more like foreboding, she knew something was horribly wrong. She woke with a start.
“Manek …”
“Mamusia? What is wrong?”
“I think …”
“Go and get her.” How intuitive and smart he was, she thought, her little young man.
The next night Antony came, as he did sporadically each week. “Zosia,” she rushed over to him with Manek in tow. “Please, Antony. You have to get my girl.”
“Are you sure?”
“Right now. Please.”
“Has something happened?” He glanced down at the boy.
“No. I just … I cannot live without my Zosia. I cannot explain it, but I feel like I must go to her, she needs me.”
He nodded. “Then I will go now. It will be a long walk, but I can make it there by the morning.”
“We will come part of the way with you.”
“Of course.”
The first hour they walked in silence. She ignored the memory of the dark expressions on the three males’ faces they left behind when they realized where she was going. She walked with the gladness that Manek’s happy expression gave her. He was so excited, he had a skip in his step. As they walked, Sala kept mulling over something in her mind. She appreciated the steady calming presence Antony had. His deferential manner reminded her that she was the wife of an important man, and not how she was now, little more than a wanted criminal with a bullseye on her forehead. “Antony, I have thought about it. I think it is only right. It is what Israel would want.”
“What would Israel want, Sala?”
“He would want you to have the house. The one on the side acreage. The land is good, and if you put your mind to it, you could make a good life there. Israel would want you to have that house. I know it is smaller than ours—”
“It is a virtual palace, Sala. But you do not have to do this. I do not do this for money, or for reward. I do it out of honor and loyalty. I would never expect anything in return.”
Sala smiled. No, he would never ask. That humility only made her want to do it more. It also assured her that giving him the house was the right thing. “I know this, Antony. It is what my husband would have wanted. You should have that house and farm. If this war ever ends, and we are still alive, I swear I will sign the deed over to you.”
“This is most kind of you, Sala. But again, that is not the reason I am helping you.”
Dawn broke over the countryside, and for the first time Sala could see what the war had done to the farms in the area. There would be famine. The crops were abandoned or the fields not sown. There were few animals, and what cattle she could see were gaunt. The Nazis took Poland to feed their army. But they did not know how to farm, nor did they care to. They did not understand the importance of being caretakers of the earth. And now the soil was turning on them. If the world had forgotten the Polish people, at least the soil was proving its independence and showing the Nazis what you sow when all you plant is hatred.
As they slowed before one farm, she took note that rather than dawn heralding the call to work for the men on this place, no one emerged from the main farmhouse at the rooster’s crow. Either these people were lazy, or they no longer felt any reason to bother caring for the land. Israel always said you had to take care of the land so the land would take care of you.
As they approached the house, she stopped and waited deep in the forest for Antony to retrieve her precious Zosia.
Time seemed to stand still. He was gone for what seemed like hours. What was taking him so long? When she finally heard the rustling in the trees, she anxiously stood up, with her heart beating so fast she felt it would explode in her chest.
Antony appeared, but not with her daughter. He had brought a smal
l little boy, whose shaved head made him look like a wrinkled bean. The boy had stopped short in the small clearing.
“Antony, where is she?” Sala said in despair.
He returned to fetch the young emaciated child. He walked toward her, looking down at his feet, hiding the tears in his own eyes. He had to swallow the shame in his voice as he whispered. “This is your child.”
Kneeling before her, Sala gently cupped Zosia’s cheeks. The white blonde hair was gone. The chubby rosy cheeks had also disappeared. In their place were boils and sores. The men had wanted Zosia to learn how to be quiet, and now Sala wondered if she would ever speak again. Only in the shape and color of her eyes could Sala find the child she had left. “Oh, my Zosia … what have I done to you?”
“Mamusia.”
One word, filled with all the love and forgiveness only a child could grant. She folded Zosia in her arms and sobbed into her stubbly head. These monsters had almost killed her girl, all because she had let her go.
She would never make such a mistake again.
When she rose, Zosia was still wrapped in her arms. It no longer mattered to her what the men said, she would never leave a child of hers again. For the first time since they viewed the massacre, the image of the destroyed little girl with half of her face missing started to fade away.
In the meantime Antony had disappeared, and when he joined her again, she couldn’t help but ask, “Where did you go?”
“I thought I would make sure to get Zosia some reparation for their abuse.”
“What do you mean?”
Antony held out a bag filled with potatoes. “These will help you put some meat on her bones.”
She did not know what else to say. At that moment she realized Manek was standing close by her side. He had been so quiet she had almost forgotten he was there. She looked down at him and took his hand. They were together again, from here on out. They would live together, or they would die together. No exceptions.
Thank goodness for the Dziedics. After Antony returned the hollow shell of what had once been her lively daughter, they went directly to their neighbors. Winter was coming, and shelter from the cold had to be found. She had no desire to go back to the woods, back to those men she no longer trusted would look out for them. The Dziedics would help them until she found shelter for the winter, they always did. And in the meantime, hiding in the attic of the barn, with her two children beside her, under the hay, would be a welcome relief to the months of agony she had endured without her child.
Zosia had endured too much. Straightaway, Sala set out to help Zosia heal from the trauma of her abandonment, both body and soul. Her child’s hair and body began to fill out again, but no longer would her daughter yell or make much noise at all. All those months she had been living with the hens, told to “guard the chickens.” Sala could only pray that her daughter would one day forget this nightmare and never look back.
It was November and an early snowfall fell upon Brzostek. Sala knew this was not a good sign of the winter to come. To make things even worse, Zosia became ill with the measles. The fever she suffered was terrifying in their primitive conditions. Sala would go out to get snow and ice and try to pack her small, fragile child until the fever finally broke. The constant guilt that she had led her poor baby to death’s door, and then the agonizing fear that she herself or Manek would also get sick, weighed heavy on her heart.
Finally, Zosia started to get better, and Sala decided she had to find more permanent shelter. She could not stay there for long. She had meant all along for the Dziedics house to be merely a temporary shelter. They had to keep moving. Not after that close encounter with the SS the time before. She could not afford any more holes in her coat.
Antony had not come around lately. She understood, but it did not help the feeling that everybody had abandoned them.
Instead she went out on her own. From house to house, she searched for someone willing to risk their lives to protect a Jewish family. With the death of her cousins Bunek and Isaac, she was sure she, the children and Ignash were all that was left of the Schonwetters. Most of the people she entreated were happy to take them. This eagerness scared her. No sane person would want to risk the wrath of the Germans. Sala suspected their open arms meant they saw an opportunity to profit from their presence. She knew they would turn her and the children in at their first opportunity, for nothing more than a jar of marmalade or a kilo of sugar. So she would move on.
Then she came to the Ribbas. From the rumors that the men brought back from their excursions during the summer, she had learned that he had hidden Jews in the past winters. He lived far from the Dziedics, so it alleviated the fear of Germans looking for her so close to her former home.
“Please take my children,” she begged the farmer. “Hide us. Just for the winter. Come spring, we’ll return to the forest and you’ll never see us again.”
“I can’t. The Germans—”
Sala looked around at the farm in desperation. It was small, but it was well tended. They understood the rules Israel had taught her. The fields were tilled, and the one cow and herd of pigs were fat. “I beg of you. Please take us. I promise, I will give you a jewel if you do. Just for the winter, during the cold.”
Mr. Ribba’s piercing eyes were hooded with reluctance. “There won’t be much room …”
“We won’t mind. I understand farmers. We don’t need much room. Hardly any at all. Just someplace warm during the winter and some food once a day. Please. I beg you.”
“Fine. Fine. Come back tomorrow and I may have an idea.”
She pretended to go, but she lingered in the forest to watch what the farmer did next. There were no German patrols nearby, and Mr. Ribba did not go to seek out the Kapos in the village. He remained busy in the stable for a long time, but other than that she saw no sign that he was planning to break his word.
Traveling as she did only at night, she made her way back to her children.
They started the long walk to the Ribba farm. Zosia did her best to keep up, but Sala’s longer legs and Manek’s quick pace meant she kept falling behind. Finally, Sala picked up her daughter to carry her. The sky grew dark fast, heavy clouds covering the moon, and the temperature dropped even faster. The snow on the ground only made the trek worse. Sala felt the cold seeping into her bones. Each breath was as if icicles were forming in her lungs, and her breathing grew slower from the effort.
It was just so cold. All she could do was keep moving, her arms tight around Zosia, who mercifully had fallen asleep. Their coats were so thin, the wind seemed to slice through them with no effort. Her hands were buried in her sleeves beneath her child, and she warned Manek to keep his inside his coat pockets.
Amid her fatigue a memory from long ago crept into her thoughts. The Jewish High Holiday, Rosh Hashana. The Jewish New Year, the holiest day. The house was warm as toast from all the baking, and fires blazed in every hearth. She could almost smell the challah as she walked, hear Manek laughing with David and Zosia as they played around the house, Manek helping with the…
Manek . . .
Sala whirled around as she suddenly realized she hadn’t seen her son in a while. Running back through the snow, she found him face down in a snow bank, fast asleep. When she turned him over, she saw he had urinated on himself.
“Mamusia,” Manek murmured, rubbing his eyes sleepily. “Give me a few more minutes, Mamusia. I will go and feed the dogs later.”
He thought they were still at home.
“Manek,” Sala said firmly, ruthless with fear. “You must wake up now.”
“I can’t, Mamusia.”
“Yes, my son, you can. You can do anything. Look at how much you have already done. We must go. We must keep moving. You can do it, Manek. I would carry you if I can, but please, my son, please try to keep walking.”
He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Then he looked down at his lap with horror and jumped out of the snow. “Mamusia … I … I …”
Sala could
n’t believe that even during this dark night she could find some humor in the situation. “Well,” she gave him a smile. “At least half of you is warm.”
“But, Mamusia, I …”
“I know, don’t worry. I won’t tell if you don’t.”
Trying to hide the tears that threatened to fall, he finally smiled sheepishly. “Who would I tell, Mamusia?”
“Let’s go to the Ribbas. Perhaps they’ll have a warm room for us to sit in. We will worry about your clothing later.”
At long last they finally approached the farmstead. It was so quiet, she feared it was deserted. Then she saw the puffing smoke streaming from the chimney. Sala brought the children to the stable and then used the flagstones to the house, to avoid leaving any footsteps in the sodden ground. Tapping on the window, she got Mr. Ribba’s attention. He gave her a nod and motioned for her to wait.
When he came out of the house, she and the children followed him into the stable. He pushed aside a patch of hay strewn on the floor and wrenched up a hatch made from wood to reveal a … grave.
“Get in.”
“Excuse me?”
“Get in,” he said.
Sala looked at Manek and back at her host, trying to process what he was asking of her. “You want us to get into a grave?”
“It is your hiding place.”
“Is this what you were doing when you asked me to come back in a day?”
“Yes, digging this.” He gestured again to the hole.
“I’m not getting into a grave,” she said.
“Mamusia.” Sala looked down with surprise to see Manek helping Zosia climb down into the pit. Ribba had only dug four feet down, but Manek was still careful to help lower his little sister into the hole without hurting herself. “Mamusia, look,” he gestured at the low chopped-out walls. “It’s warm. Nice and warm. We don’t have to worry about someone seeing us through the trees, and the wind cannot reach us down here. We will be able to sleep, really sleep, and not have to worry about anything.”