by Anna Scanlon
I sighed heavily, letting the air escape. Eva sat up and struck a match, lighting up a Lucky Strike cigarette. She puffed quickly and evenly and offered me one. I leaned in and lit up my own, taking a long puff and letting the smoke tickle and sting my lungs. It felt good, cathartic in a way.
Without warning, there was a muffled knock on the door. If we hadn't been quiet at that very moment, we wouldn't have even heard the hand rapping on the wood. It came once and then twice, softly and then again a little bit insistently. Without getting up from my bed, I leaned over to open the door, expecting my mother trolling the house for dirty laundry or asking me to get up and feed Gable. Instead, Aliz stood in my doorframe, looking tiny and fairylike. She was dwarfed by the door, her height much smaller than a child of almost eleven. Her skin was white, bordering on gray, and her hair hung limply on either side of her shoulders, the front pinned back with a pair of my old pink barrettes. She said nothing at first, simply licked her lips, standing wordlessly like a ghost. It was as if she would float away at any moment, an ember in our imaginations. I had to remind myself that she was, indeed, a real girl.
Aliz had been with us for two days, but hadn't proven to be the terror we thought she would be, given her file and what we had been told about her. She sat politely, but quietly at meals. She accompanied Mother to the Piggly Wiggly, where Mother said she spent quite a bit of time staring in amazement at all of the produce, fruits and vegetables. Mother had lost her in the store for a moment, moving on with her shopping and assuming Aliz was following her. After a few minutes of panic, Aliz was returned to Mother at the front of the store where she was waiting calmly and coolly, picking up packs of gum and candy, feeling them and putting them back.
Her file seemed to describe an altogether different child than the one we had. The day we picked her up at the train station, her unruly behavior now seemed uncharacteristic of her. Mother had suggested that perhaps riding so long on a train and being handed over to different escorts during her journey had proven stressful to her. Perhaps even a trigger, Mother whispered, telling me in a hushed voice that the Jews had been forced to travel by cattle car to Auschwitz. I nodded when she spoke the words, as if I had any comprehension of what she had experienced.
The file, which had been translated in New York, offered a picture of an extremely disturbed little girl who spent her nights banging her head against the wall or screaming in terror. According to the curly cue writing, she didn't often speak, but when she did, she sometimes spoke to her parents or siblings. She screamed when she heard the name "Mengele". She hid bread in her dress and shoes. She slept on her doll, which they had found to be stuffed with both food and jewelry. She spent nights scratching at her arms, until her skin became red and angry, sometimes even bleeding. Sometimes, she kicked the nuns, even though they had given her relative freedom in Katowice to do as she pleased, reigning in the children only for mealtimes.
But this little girl before us was polite, spoke words of thanks and gratitude, never asking for anything, simply sitting with her hands folded as Mother turned on Vaughn Monroe. She listened intently, as if she understood his words, her eyes fixated on the radio.
"You're so lucky to be here," Mother spoke as if Aliz understood. I tried not to make a sound as she listed off the reasons why this girl, with no family, who had been subjected to disgusting and inhumane medical experiments had any reason to be lucky. Mother reasoned she was fortunate because so many immigrants from Europe were clamoring to get to the United States or Palestine or Canada. It wasn't easy to get a visa. People waited in Displaced Persons camps all over Germany for years, hoping and praying for a chance to get out of Europe. The communists had moved in to Eastern Europe and the Jews weren't welcome. In fact, pogroms had made their way through Poland again and a few farmers pitchforked Jews to death, stabbing them with their brutal anger. They were unwanted vermin, they reasoned. They weren't supposed to come back. Since Aliz had us, her visa was expedited and her journey paid for outright without Aliz having to search for sponsorship. There were millions of children, orphaned or lost, waiting and waiting with no end in sight. I shuddered to put myself in Aliz's worn out shoes.
Mother had enrolled her in the same grammar school I had gone to, just a few blocks down the street from our house. She would start in a week, when Christmas break was over. She had been placed in first grade, even though by her age she should be in fifth. She had gone to school through the American equivalent of second grade in Hungary, it had been discovered, but missed the rest of her years due to her imprisonment and subsequent time spent at the convent. Not knowing English would make it even more difficult for her.
"We'll teach Aliz at home and she'll also learn at school, "Mother had said with a smug smile. "She'll catch up to the kids her age soon enough. I know she will. She's a smart girl."
The latter was ascertained without any such proof, whatsoever.
And now Aliz was standing at my door, paper-thin and wide-eyed. In her short-sleeve pink blouse, the one I had worn when I was eight years old in a school play, I could see her tattooed number for the first time. The engraved ink stared back at me, the blue lines etched in her skin forever. She must have noticed us staring at it, as she moved her right hand to cover it, shame in her eyes.
"What's happening, Aliz?" Eva asked, sitting up and looking at my cousin straight in the eyes. Aliz looked back at her, studying Eva's pink mouth with intent.
"Vat's chappening?" Aliz repeated, her voice gravelly and thick with a Hungarian accent. My mother still had hers, but Mother's was now softer, the edges rounded out so it sounded more pleasant. Aliz's was new, harsh.
"That's right," Eva nodded, laughing a little bit. Aliz shirked into the doorframe, as if she wanted to disappear inside of it.
"She's not laughing at you," I assured her, putting the cigarette in my mouth and my hands out to her. Aliz looked back at me with her big, saucer brown eyes, the corners of her mouth turned downward. I patted my bed, urging her to come sit down next to me.
She tentatively took a step forward, her slippers catching on the rug, making static.
Eva and Aliz stared at each other for a few moments, Aliz's eyes studying her hair, her maroon dress and looking down at her bare feet. She had painted her toenails red a few hours earlier and the nail polish was glistening in the late afternoon sun pouring through the window. Eva took another drag, sucking in and out. Aliz's older sister, the cousin I had never met, would be our age right now. I wondered if she had survived, would she be sitting here with us talking about college applications, crushes and puffing on Lucky Strikes?
"Isabelle's talking about college applications," Eva told Aliz, as if she would understand. Mother thought simply talking to Aliz would improve her almost nonexistent English skills. She had, after all, simply taught me Hungarian by speaking to me.
Aliz furrowed her brows and took another step forward, sitting down on the messy mass of sheets I had meant to take off the bed earlier in the day. She kicked her legs back and forth and then crossed her arms over her chest, the scars all over her arms even more apparent, more angry in the light. They danced up and down her white skin like little half moons.
After a few moments of silence, the three of us not sure where to look, I thrust my cigarette forward to Aliz's lips. Her right leg was constantly in motion and her left hand kept picking at a loose thread on her dress. At the very least, it would get her to calm down. She studied me again and then took the cigarette in her right hand, taking a drag on it, before coughing vehemently, hitting her chest with the palm of her left hand.
"It's okay," Eva told her with a smile. "I did that too the first time. Well, the first four or five times."
Aliz kept her head down, the cigarette in her hand and hair covering her eyes. I could hear her sucking and chewing on her cheeks from under her hair as she continued to look down, the cigarette dangerously close to burning her skin.
"Aliz," I told her, holding my hand out for the Lucky Strike, i
ts ashes coming off in clumps onto her tiny little hand. She made no move, but sat, her back straight, as she let the cigarette turn into a butt, burning the inside of her fingers as it did so. Alarmed, Eva ran to the bathroom to grab a glass and put the cigarette out. But even as it slowly burned her fingers, she didn't even flinch or scream. She simply sat, chewing on her cheeks. It was the same way she must have sat as they burned her family, until there was nothing left of them but ashes.
"Here!" Eva picked up Aliz's hand and thrust it into the glass that was half-filled with water. Her small hand fit all the way into it. As it submerged, the cigarette flickered out, first to a spark and then gone completely.
"Aliz!" I exclaimed, attempting to meet her eyes. It was impossible under her blanket of hair. "Are you okay?"
I picked up my blanket and began to dry her hand. I put it up to my face to get a closer look at the burn, but she pulled it away immediately, putting it back in her lap. As soon as it had returned to the safety of her left hand, I felt something warm on the bed, grazing my left thigh. As I looked down, I could see Aliz's skirt had now turned dark, urine grazing my bed.
"Oh!" I exclaimed standing up instinctively. Aliz merely sat on the bed, her hair still covering her saucer-brown eyes. I grabbed her by the upper arms and stood her on her feet, urine dripping from under her skirt to the floor in small waves. She finally lifted her face to look at me. It was stained with tears, yet she hadn't howled or made noises like most children would when crying. Instead, her tears fell silently, forming a small river on her neck. Finally, she sniffed, the only indication of her tears.
"You'll be okay," I told her putting my arms around her small, square shoulders. She didn't hug me back, merely stood with her arms at her sides, small sniffles muffled in my dress.
But I wasn't sure she would be.
14 CHAPTER fourteen
✪
That Monday, school started back up after our Christmas break. Even though there was no Christmas for my family, it was still a nice respite from the droning lectures of teachers, essays and boring, dry books. After dressing, combing my hair and painting my face with the requisite make-up, I took the brass key to the desk from its hiding place. I traced my fingers over it before plunging it into the lock, hearing it snap open and pulling open the drawer swiftly. I rifled through the papers for my applications, my applications that seemed like a childhood, selfish want in the face of Aliz and Auschwitz. I stuffed them in my satchel, intending to dispose of them in the school trashcan.
I had spent all night tossing and turning, wondering what I should do about the applications. Like the Tell-Tale Heart, that Edgar Alan Poe story we had read last year in English class, they seemed to be pulsating, turning red and hot and ringing in my ears. I turned on my light around three in the morning, pulled out the papers and examined them. I ran my fingers along the rough paper, feeling more foolish than ever. Aliz had been shoved with needles that contained mystery solvents, taken from her home, had everything she owned stolen and ultimately lost everyone she had ever known. And I was complaining over lack of money to go to college. The shame in my chest started to grow like a weed. Would it really be so bad if I just did what was expected of every other girl? If every other girl did it, lived life as a housewife, how bad could it really be? I could steal away a few hours in the afternoons between laundry and cooking to read. Maybe my future husband wouldn't hate the idea of me of taking some college classes and would let me take Latin or Italian once a week.
Just as I was about to shove the papers back in their hiding spot, I heard the familiar knock at the door, the small rapping-but-not-quite-knocking that belonged to no one but Aliz. I buried the papers back in their original spot and stood up, walking over to the door.
To my surprise, Aliz stood calmly in front of me, dressed in a frilly cotton nightgown I had worn when I was eight or nine, her hand covering what appeared to be a deep wound on her left arm. Her face was rapidly draining of color, blood spilling out of the container of her right hand and spilling onto the carpet. She didn't scream or cry or even wince. She simply stared at me with her wide-set brown eyes, her hair, messy from sleep, framing her white face.
"Oh my God," I whispered, attempting to collect myself enough not to faint at the sight of it. "Let's take care of this."
I sucked in my breath and guided her toward the bathroom, my hand on her back as I steered her. In that moment, the scene of the crime became clear. One of Mother's butcher knives sat on the sink, soaked in Aliz's blood. Every color of the stuff, from pink to ruby red splashed in the sink, with some littering the floor. There was a small bottle of antiseptic, sitting open on top of the toilet. Cotton balls smeared in blood sat perched next to the bottle, in various stages of soaking it up. A gauze bandage sat open and ready for use. And then it became clear: Aliz had calculated this injury. Maybe it was to get out of school, a cry for help, a release from her troubles or a reason to send her back to Europe. Something in her apologetic brown eyes told me I may never know.
She sat down on the edge of the yellow tub, extending her injured arm to me. Precariously, she removed her right hand, showing me her left forearm, which was now soaked in blood. Most of the serious bleeding had stopped, though, so it looked as though I could keep this one a secret from my mother as well, even if it would take some cleverness. It crossed my mind as I surveyed her wound that perhaps disguising this was irresponsible, but if my Mother did find out, she would be so overwhelmed that she might actually comply to commit her for her own safety. Small things, such as untucked shirts, corners of the tablecloth not being perfect and dog footprints on the floor drove my mother into a small fit of rage. This would be too difficult to handle for her. She'd, no doubt, call for help. The stories I heard about those places from friends and family who had dealt with them in secrecy made my stomach turn. The idea of lobotomy crazy doctors who used electric shocks on their patients or let them fester in their own mess sounded just as bad as Auschwitz.
As the blood began to slow down to a trickle, I could see that the origin of the injury wasn't as bad as it looked. In fact, it was just a simple cut, albeit a very long one, down her forearm. Wadding up some toilet paper in my hand, I spilled some of the antiseptic on it, making the hangnails on my ring finger and thumb sting. Taking Aliz's arm, I wiped up the blood, in various stages of drying, in an attempt to clean the cut a bit better. She flinched, but didn't cry out the way I did when I was a child. I remembered crying just seeing the antiseptic after falling off my bicycle or skinning my knees on the playground at school. I shuddered thinking she had been subjected to horrors worse than this, things I could only dream up in my worst nightmares. The sting of the antiseptic was nothing.
As I cleaned up the cut, the tattoo Aliz had been given suddenly became apparent beneath the blood. The slash mark was right down the middle of the numbers, as if she had tried to remove them herself. Having watched her father's steady hands as a doctor and then watching Mengele butcher children, she must have thought she had the skills to perform her own crude surgery on herself. Maybe she hadn't intended to kill herself or get sent back to Europe, maybe she simply didn’t want be the girl with the numbers on her arm. She would stick out enough, being eleven years old and in the first grade, her English warbling and accent thick. She didn't need to stand out further.
By the time I completely stopped the bleeding and cleaned the blood off of the carpet, it was almost four in the morning. The earliest sounds of morning came from outside my window, the chirp of the birds waking and calling out to one another. The sun had just begun rising, casting a purplish blue tint into my room.
As I walked back into my room, poised to sleep for another couple of hours, I could feel Aliz on my tail. She hadn't gone back to her room, but had followed me into mine. Smiling, I allowed her to curl up next to me in my bed, her warm body comforting against my skin. In minutes, her face relaxed and her eyelids fluttered. I hoped her dreams took her somewhere sweet, to mountains made of chocolate
and lakes made of honey. Anywhere but Auschwitz.
I helped dress her in the morning too, making sure Mother didn't have a chance to see the bandage. I changed it once more as the one I had put on in the wee hours of the morning had become soaked with stray trickles of blood. If she wore a dry one, maybe Mother would just think she had decided to cover up her number for school.
In the last few moments before we were to leave, I opened my plaid satchel and stuffed my college applications in them. It wasn't just the money I was concerned about, but Mother herself. When the troubles in Europe first started, my father seemed genuinely interested in igniting the spark that had been lost between them. But as time marched on, his interest seemed to wane, until it was almost nothing. His mother, a feeble woman with a humped back and shrill who lived in Napa Valley, would never approve of a divorce. At least, that was what he said a year ago when I asked him if they would ever try to patch things up between them. The answer didn't provide a solid yes or a no, simply an insinuation that he wanted to start a new life, but probably wouldn't have the guts to do it. I couldn't blame him, really. It was exhausting to live with the dead, to eat with them, sleep with them, breathe them. One couldn't live in their world and ours. He had never really ignored me, but I think he felt a little hurt by the fact that I didn't like to spend my school vacations with him. It wasn't that I didn't want to, but the idea of my mother sitting alone with no one to help occupy her time made me nervous. If no one was there to anchor her into the world of the living, I might lose her, too.