The Yellow Bird Sings

by Jennifer Rosner

  Chapter 42

  Róża squats in an abandoned apartment house across the street from where Siostry Felicjanki is supposed to be. Lidia thought it safest for her to leave Celestyn altogether, but she feels tethered to this place.

  Twilight bathes the sidewalk. A warbler flits about in the dust. Róża stares out at the rubble and lets herself imagine: Shira has only just been hiding in the mounds of broken brick and stone. She is not buried by it but is sitting atop it in a pale frock, tricking everyone by her statuesque stillness and silence.

  The next breezy day brings a new fantasy: Shira hopping across, her blanket billowing from her hand. Rain breaks the spell altogether, as it causes the rubble to turn gray and lose its powdery cover. Róża is unwilling to imagine Shira’s skin as a match for that stone. She halts her vigil and heads for the streets.

  Liberated Celestyn is lawless and chaotic and still dangerous for Jews. Róża moves through the streets quickly, eyes averted. Lidia insists on buying her food at the grocer’s. But Róża scours the debris-filled alleys to find “Shira things”—nubby pencils, an ink pen, stray papers, a child’s book, soaked, all of its pages curled. To hold even a frayed bit of string gives her strength when she returns to check the survivors’ registry, hoping, praying, that someone from the convent has submitted Shira’s information using her proper name.

  She steals glances at the children on the streets. She watches a baby in a pram, a toddler clasping her mother’s skirt, teetering toward a park bench. The resemblances to Shira transcend all logic—this would be the season of Shira’s eighth birthday—yet Róża continues as the resonances accrue in her mind and, collage-like, Shira rises up before her. Almond eyes, a heart-shaped face, a thick brown braid. It is for this that she walks on, block after block. Róża’s heartbeat quickens, a wild happiness builds. Until, without warning, like a balloon overfilled, her hope bursts.

  Róża closes herself back into her squat. She tells herself it’s best to lie down, to breathe deeply, to try to relax. But rather than relaxing, she is beset by another vision—a memory of her first night in the woods.

  She is in her forest dugout, feeling not so much bereft of Shira as relieved to be without her. And she had felt relief. After all of the holding and calming and whispering and shushing. It had been such a strain, a constant strain due to Shira’s every creak and sneeze, her every swallow. Her chirp.

  To be alone, even on the run, even in grave danger—yet without that extra needy weight, that other body on hers—was liberating. And oh. To eat. To eat anything and everything that she could find, without sparing, denying, saving, giving over.

  The day she, Miri, and Chana stole meat from a villager’s smoker perched at the edge of the woods, she ate until her belly was full to bursting without regard for anything—not the villager’s family, not the laws of kashruth—she’s sure it was pig that she ate. It was only afterward that she considered how severely reduced the convent rations might have become. How her child could be near to starving and she hadn’t thought to cache even a scrap of the preserved meat.

  * * *

  Róża paces the squat, unsettled, music pulsing in her head. She reaches for the found pen and paper. Turning the paper sideways, she lines it with staffs, adds in treble clefs and bass clefs. She scratches out notes—wholes, halves, quarters, eighths. Like everything else in this life, infinitely divisible.

  She writes lines for cello and violin, interwoven like two fluid bodies that form a single, silent tangle in the hay, each note a star in the constellation of her life’s anguish. She searches for Shira’s face in the array.

  Clouds plunge the room into semidarkness, all colors an octave lower. Róża stands up. As she does, she knocks over her tin cup of water, and the droplets set the ink to running: black notes drip down her legs, streak her shins, spot her toes. More agitated than ever, she heads once again for the streets.

  * * *

  Since the Russian soldiers came and left two days ago, the nuns hide, or they cluster together whispering, barely aware of the children.

  Mother Agnieszka quakes terribly. Sister Alicja spends most of her time in her chamber. Sister Nadzieja huddles with the other nuns and forgets to come to Zosia’s practice sessions. Not even Sister Olga checks to see that the girls are completing their chores.

  When the sisters fail to prepare the day’s lunch as they customarily do, Ula takes the lead and all the girls work together to make a platter of simple sandwiches. Adela plucks one off the top and eats it. Zosia carries a sandwich to Sister Alicja and feels pleased when she takes a bite. Watching her chew, slow and glassy-eyed, Zosia thinks how, in the barn, when Henryk brought her mother potatoes, she set most of them aside, sucking on hay despite the growling of her stomach, the jutting of her bones.

  Zosia leaves Sister Alicja’s chamber to help the girls with the laundry. She finds that a novitiate, Sister Irena, has emerged, ready to lead the chore. Together they work with quiet diligence, scrubbing red spots from the nuns’ stiff underclothing.

  This is not what she thought the end of the war would mean.

  * * *

  Through the fog of an early morning, Róża thinks she sees Aron standing at the convent site. Even if he is a phantom, she can’t help herself from rushing toward him.

  “Aron?”

  “Różyczka!” His very real arms encircle her.

  “How did you find me here?”

  “Chana remembered the story you told about the convent address.”

  Róża buries her face in Aron’s chest, inhaling him, hiding from him. What must he think of her, never uttering a word about Shira, then leaving to search for her without as much as a goodbye? She floods with guilty feelings. “Where is Chana?”

  “She is with Hershel and some of the others, in Białystok. They planned to stay in Sonia’s childhood home, but they are sleeping on the lawn because the inhabitants refuse to leave. It’s all right—they’re safe. And now I’ve found you.” He takes her face in his hands. “Róża—”

  Róża sees Aron surveying the rubble, but she clings to other visions: someone saw carriages by the convent, a line of girls along the cobbles.

  “I have to keep looking.”

  Chapter 43

  Autumn 1945

  Zosia stares through the convent gates at the women walking past. One figure has her mother’s narrow frame and dark hair, even her familiar gait. And one farther down the street looks to be wearing a dress like those her mother used to wear. Zosia detects a smile—could it be recognition?—on yet another’s face. Until each comes closer and Zosia sees: they are strangers, merely.

  In her disappointment, Zosia runs the back of her hand against the wrought-iron pickets. She traverses the length of the yard, clanging, until she is bruised and aching with a pain she’ll feel most acutely later, when she raises up her violin and sends notes filled with melancholy into the reverberant air.

  Zosia still plays every day—lately, both parts of “Rutén Kolomejka” from Bartók’s 44 Duos, hers and Pan Skrzypczak’s, wishing for him to come, to still be her teacher.

  Sister Nadzieja explained, over and over, that he wasn’t able to travel the distance to the new convent. Instead, after receiving Sister Nadzieja’s letter about a donated gramophone, he sent several precious recordings with a note: My dear Zosia: Listen to these well and they will teach you what you need to know.

  After practicing, Zosia puts on the recordings and listens—to Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas or the Paganini 24 Caprices—while leafing through her workbooks and sheet music. Nearly every page has Pan Skrzypczak’s neat pencil marks, notating changes in tempo or dynamics, emphasizing the rests. One particularly cherished page has a tiny smear of jam from the day he brought her a special cookie at Christmastime. Another looks to have tiny nibble marks at the edge, as if a mouse holed into her cabinet. The pages that still carry the piney, leather smells of Pan Skrzypczak’s briefcase, the ones he brought her just prior to the move, she holds close
to her nose and she floods with his presence.

  In the careful, looping script the nuns taught her, Zosia writes a letter for Sister Nadzieja to post:

  Dear Pan Skrzypczak,

  I don’t think the motto Free but lonesome is any good.

  I listen to your recordings every day and I play best as I can but I don’t improve without you. I miss our lessons terribly. Please, won’t you come teach me?

  Your loving student,

  Zosia

  She waits anxiously for a letter in return.

  * * *

  One afternoon while Zosia cross-stitches pillow coverings with the other girls, a couple arrives and inquires after Mother Superior. The man wears a black coat and black hat; white fringes stick out beneath his shirt. Zosia recognizes the hunted look in his gray eyes.

  “Are there any Jewish children here?”

  “No, Rabbi.” Mother Agnieszka’s quick reply has gravel in it.

  “Might I nevertheless be permitted to see the children of the orphanage?”

  Mother Agnieszka hesitates, but the man strides over to where the girls are gathered. He stands before them and, as they go quiet, he sings.

  Oyfn veg shteyt a boym,

  Ale feygl funem boym,

  Zaynen zikh tsefloygn.

  In his voice, Zosia hears the very sound of her mother, a melody that penetrates to her bones.

  Perhaps she cries out, for as soon as it is over, the rabbi is deep in conversation with Mother Agnieszka, all the while gesturing toward Zosia.

  Zosia scrambles to her feet. “Do you know my mother?” she asks him. Before he can answer, she turns to Mother Agnieszka. “Does he?”

  Mother Agnieszka’s face furrows. She wraps Zosia in an embrace, then lets her go and turns briskly away. The rabbi takes Zosia’s hand in his. She keeps hold of it, dry but soft, and inhales the stale wool smell of his coat.

  That afternoon, Zosia is packed up to go. She is told that she will finally be with her own people.

  “My mother? Do you mean I will be with my mother?”

  In every dream in which she leaves the convent, Zosia is nestled in her mother’s arms. What if she is supposed to wait here for her? Uncertain, she goes to stand before the stone statue of Mary and, for several minutes, presses her fingers to the carved folds of Mary’s robes. Kasia finds Zosia there and clings to her. Zosia clings back.

  When Sister Alicja comes for her, Zosia breaks into sobs. She doesn’t understand where she is going. Can’t they bring her mother here? Why must she leave the people who care for her? Why must she let go of her truest friend?

  * * *

  As Sister Alicja ushers Zosia through the front hall, several sisters are gathered in the corridor, talking.

  “How can it be better for her to be taken away from here, to be placed among strangers?”

  “All I know is they have been annihilated. They must reclaim whoever is left.”

  “But why her? She’s just one child! They speak of sending her to Palestine!”

  There is a shuffle on the stair.

  “Sister Olga, are you crying? For Zosia?”

  “I was frightened. God forgive me, I know there was no excuse for my nosing around. Poor girl, where are they taking her?”

  “We don’t know. We must trust in God’s will.”

  * * *

  Sisters Alicja and Nadzieja huddle around the carriage and take turns squeezing Zosia tight. Choking back tears, Sister Alicja loops the toggle buttons at the collar of Zosia’s coat. Sister Nadzieja hands Zosia a large duffel, the little violin concealed inside, to take with her.

  It is only dusk, but already the moon is out. Zosia’s heart clamors. She reaches for her braid.

  “Am I going to be with my mother?” Zosia asks.

  Again the two nuns hug her, burying their faces in their sleeves. They have been like mothers, caring for her, giving her what she needs.

  Again, Zosia bursts into tears.

  * * *

  In the coach, Zosia sits sniffling and puffy eyed beside the rabbi’s wife. Head scarf drawn tight, she seeks to soothe Zosia with a hand on her arm, her eyes soft. But with Sisters Alicja and Nadzieja turning back at the convent gate, Zosia feels a rising panic. Am I being taken to my mother or to strangers, like Sister Irena said?

  With a jerky start, the carriage begins its ramble over the uneven cobblestones, away from the convent building. The rabbi’s wife hums another melody that is familiar. Zosia cups her hands in her lap, wishing for the comfort of her bird amid all the confusion. But in her mind, her bird has grown larger, fiercer. His bright yellow feathers appear coarse and gray, and his feet boast sharp talons. His call is neither a melodious eighteen-note wonder nor a tremulous wavering between two notes. It is a strident warning shriek.

  * * *

  Zosia wakes, shivering, with the rabbi’s wife still beside her in the carriage. It is entirely dark except for a thin strip of light bleeding in at the curtain’s edge. Zosia yanks the curtain aside and sees that they are stopped outside a large encampment with lanterns illuminating a path to a doorway.

  “Where am I going?”

  “Don’t worry, dear. You’ll stay here just until we can secure safe passage to your homeland.”

  Does this mean I am going home? Am I here first, to find my mother?

  The rabbi’s wife leads Zosia, clasping tight to her duffel, up the path. Inside, a large room is subdivided by blankets hanging from the ceiling. Along the corridor, the air reeks of sweat and soured milk. A baby yowls from within. Lifting the sides of blankets and peering in, the rabbi’s wife disturbs several families getting settled for the night before she locates the orphan unit and, within it, an empty bed. She pats the covers, indicating for Zosia to get in.

  “You’re to be called Tzofia from now on. Don’t worry, you can be yourself here—everyone is just like you.”

  * * *

  She feels even lonelier than when she looked down the row of convent beds to see Adela and Ula and the other girls. For the first time she considers their loneliness—Ula, orphaned at age three; Adela, left at the convent door despite rumors that her parents still lived in the outskirts of Celestyn. Above all she misses Kasia, who showed her whipped cream in the clouds, skating floors in newly polished wood, and holy expressions in the faces of cats; who from her first “hallo” treated her, always, as her friend.

  She tosses in bed for hours. With another new name, she is a stranger to herself again. She suddenly, desperately longs for her blanket, with its bumpy stitched seam. Why didn’t I think to take it?

  She gets up and wanders through the corridor. Peering through a streaked window, she sees it is early morning. In a dirt area between low-slung barracks, children chase one another in packs, racing and climbing in the branches of a lone tree. The sky is overcast, gray. Tzofia puts her hands to the cold glass.

  Farther down the corridor, a cluster of women circle a woodstove in a room cluttered with mismatched chairs, trunks, and stacks of books. From the doorway, Tzofia studies the lines on the women’s faces, the expressions in their eyes. She watches for the tilt of their heads, listens for the lilt in their voices. She finds no trace of her mother.

  At mealtime, Tzofia follows the children to a dining hall and watches as the adults gather to eat, hats and skullcaps and kerchiefs upon their heads. No signing of the cross but, instead, shawls around shoulders and heads bowed in prayer. She feels lost here, where children run loose and the day unspools without regimens or rules. She misses the confines of the convent wall; she misses the church songs and rituals, her days structured around morning and evening prayers. Under her breath, Tzofia says grace over her food and barely touches it.

  As the eaters disperse, a bony, hollow woman grabs hold of Tzofia’s shoulder and looks wildly into her eyes. She smells of salt and singed nuts; the flesh above her left cheek quivers. Tzofia can see that the woman is lost, too, drowning in her own hopes.

  “Is it you, my daughter? Can it be?”r />
  The woman’s confusion matches Tzofia’s. She stares into the woman’s eyes. They are wrong: not the color of midnight. “No!” Tzofia shouts.

  “My sweet Rachel?”

  “Let me go!”

  If Tzofia is certain of anything, it is that she is not this woman’s daughter. She fights to break away from the woman’s tight grasp and haunted gaze.

  Tzofia runs across a muddy path and enters a building filled with classroom desks and chairs and more strangers. On the chalkboard, words in other languages: Hebrew and English. She wants to get out of this place! If she can’t be with her mother, she wants to be with Sister Alicja and Sister Nadzieja, who care for her. She peers through the doorway. A cloud of blackbirds darkens the sky.

  The scary woman totters away.

  * * *

  Later in the evening, a crowd congregates around a bonfire and the singing starts. Tzofia once again hears the long-ago songs, songs her mother sang to her at bedtime in Gracja and whispered to her in the barn. She leans in, surveying the faces, old and young, around the circle. Who are these people, and how do they know my mother’s songs?

  The singing rattles her even as it pulses in her veins. She covers her ears and imagines the ringing Latin chants of the convent. She closes her eyes to see the chapel in its hushed glory, the sisters gathered in the sanctuary, kneeling, praying for their protection. She wonders about her communion service: Was it real, or was it just Mother Agnieszka’s way to keep her safe?

  In an effort to soothe herself, Tzofia retrieves her violin. She bends one finger and then another to the strings, her bow moving slowly as she locates the notes, just as she did in the convent classroom with Sister Nadzieja standing beside her, listening. She lets herself be guided by the swell of voices around her, and soon there are no individual notes, no separable lines of melody or harmony. Tzofia is tucked in the nest of her bed quilt, her parents kissing her cheeks with gentle mama bird and tata bird pecks. She is in the barn loft, her father already gone but her mother there, breath and sweat mingled with hay. She is in the doorway of the barn, her arms extended, reaching out for her mother’s hands. One by one, the singers around the fire trail off as the haunted tones of Tzofia’s violin articulate the displacement that, together, they share.