If I Should Die Before I Wake Read online

  Mrs. Hurwitz kept scrubbing and I wasn't sure she heard. I was about to repeat my question when I saw her nod.

  A sound slipped through my lips before I could catch myself. Within seconds I had an officer behind me, the barrel of his gun thrust against my shoulder. I kept scrubbing, acting as if it wasn't there. What did I care if I was shot? It would be better than seeing my mother, so beautiful, so proud, at the feet of these men, scrubbing their floors with her underpants. Let them shoot me, I thought.

  He stood like that for only a minute and then left, swearing at me, the clumsy Jew, as he walked away. The sound of his voice made me sick. The sound of his shiny black boots, reminding me of the victorious march down the center of our streets not long ago, made me want to spit in his face. Oh, if I could only spit in his face. I felt tears running down my own face, and I let them drop onto the stairs. I rubbed them in—hard, as hard as I could. Then I decided, no, I would not wash these steps with my tears but with my spit—my contempt. And so together, the rest of that morning and into the afternoon, with each clank of our bucket, Estera Hurwitz and I spit at the men with the guns and the shiny black boots.

  Finally, late in the afternoon, they allowed us to leave. My legs could hardly straighten as I pulled myself up, using the banister for support. My knees looked like two red doorknobs, round and swollen. Mrs. Hurwitz was even worse, and I had to help her as she hobbled down the stairs. I led her out into the wonderful fresh air, and the two of us just stood and inhaled. Even manure smelled good after breathing cleaning fumes all day.

  The other women had already left, and so together, Mrs. Hurwitz and I set off, eager to rejoin our families.

  We had been walking for a quarter of an hour when we saw a bit of commotion farther down the street.

  "Come on"—Mrs. Hurwitz tugged at my coat sleeve—"I know another way."

  I was just about to follow her when two officers shifted their position and I glimpsed between them, dangling from a tree by his coat, my father.

  "No!" I shouted, and I ran down the sidewalk, forgetting the sidewalk rule.

  Three officers turned and aimed their guns at me.

  I heard my father shout, "Go home, Chana!"

  I ignored him. How dare these beasts do this to him! Didn't they know who he was?

  "That's my father, let him go!" I pointed at him and demanded again, "Let him go!"

  The men began to laugh. It was such a big joke. Then they turned and aimed their guns at my father.

  "No!" I shouted again, speaking to them in their own language. "Why are you doing this?"

  One man spoke, without looking at me, without taking his eyes off of my father—my dear, dear tata.

  "Your lazy, filthy father refuses to work. He's too tired, he says. He needs to rest, he says, and so he leans against this tree. Ha! He needs this tree to hold him up. You see, we've helped him. Now he can rest."

  The blood was rushing to my head so fast I thought it might explode. How dare they treat my father like this, and how dare all these people—for I had suddenly noticed there were many neighbors of ours—how dare they stand there watching and laughing, no one bothering to help.

  I moved closer, ignoring my father as he tried to shoo me away with his hands. "My father is ill," I said. "He has a heart condition. Please let him down. I'll do his work for him. What is it you want him to do?"

  This, too, was funny to these men, but one of them led me behind a long building to another street. There were many men already there, all friends of my father's, shoveling dirt and heaping it up into a pile against the building. The officer pointed his gun at my father's shovel. "You work," he said, "and don't rest, or you, too, will hang in the tree."

  I grabbed the shovel and began my work with gusto, following behind a young boy about my age. I scooped up the dirt and pitched it against the building. I tried to ignore the jeering on the other side. I would work until the job was done. Then Tata and I could leave, and he and I would never speak of this day to anyone, ever.

  My pile of dirt was rising clear up to the level of the first window and yet I wasn't tired. Tata, he would be proud of me. I smiled to myself and then caught a glimpse of someone, a girl, staring back at me through the window. She had a face like mine, only older, wiser looking, especially the eyes. They were dark and deep set and looked at me as if they knew everything about me, about the world. I could see pain in those eyes. They were trying to tell me something. I stopped shoveling, only for a second, only to understand. Then I heard two shots explode on the other side of the building.

  "Tata!" I cried. I dropped the shovel and fell into the dirt pile screaming, knowing somehow that from that day forward, I would be screaming forever.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Hilary/Chana

  I CAN HEAR MYSELF screaming but it doesn't sound like me. It's not my voice. I stop. It scares me to be screaming with someone else's voice.

  Old Grandmaw's staring at me again, like we've been here all the time, just looking at one another. I want to roll away from her or close my eyes, anything to get away from her, but I can't move. She floats toward me, like some kind of spirit, with a wet cloth in her hand. She wipes my face and then I hear her dunking the cloth. I hear the water running off it as she lifts it up again, and I think of me and Estera Hurwitz, dunking our undergarments into our bucket.

  I don't feel so good. Hey, Grandmaw, get me that Dr. Hamburgerstein, or a nurse or something.

  Don't look at me. And don't think I'm crying over you, Jew lady. What's wrong with you anyway? Your hair's all mashed flat in the back. Why do you always look as if you just got out of bed?

  Well, I don't feel sorry for you, whatever your problem is, and I'll tell you something else just so you know, no freakin' dream's going to change my thinking. That's all it was. Stupid dream.

  Do you know about it? You look as if you do. You look as if you know everything. Jews always think they know everything.

  My father died. They hung him in a tree and shot him. I mean I dreamed my father died. I mean, this other father died, not my father. Not my real father. My real father died when I was five. Roy Burke was his name. Just so you know. Just so you know I'm not crying 'cause of some frickin' frackin' dream. And cool it with the cloth already. Wipe your own face. What do you care about me anyway?

  Making me scrub floors with a pair of tights. I can tell you that'd never happen in real life. No one controls me like that. No one.

  What's that? Hear that? That's my mother. I can pick her tippy-tappy footsteps out anytime.

  Yeah, hear that? Those are her bracelets. She must have a hundred of those cheap pieces of tin clanking around her arms. Oh, and she's got this big old zircon ring. If she touches you with that thing on, watch out. Her rings are always too big for her fingers, so they slip around to the palm of her hand, and then she like taps you on the shoulder or something and you're freakin' bruised for life.

  "Hilary? Baby?"

  Hey, Grandmaw, get her out of here. I mean it. I don't want to speak to her. You know she'll blame this whole accident on Brad.

  "It's so quiet in here, just you and that other patient there, both of you barely breathing. And all those bandages and tubes. Just look at you. Baby, can you hear me?"

  Grandmaw? Why can't I see her? Why do I see only you?

  "Your face, your beautiful face. Will those bruises go away? You always had the most beautiful complexion. No acne, rosy cheeks, ruby lips, silky blond hair—before you shaved it all off, that is. You were just like Alice in Wonderland, remember?

  "Couldn't they wipe off that blood?

  "Baby, can you hear me? I'm here. Right by your side."

  So what's she want, a freakin' standing ovation? It's all show, this coming to see me. She doesn't care.

  "I brought you something. It's a book. Well, it's my Bible. You can't exactly read it yet, I know, but I can read it to you."

  See. This is her way of torturing me. Like I want to hear her quoting Scripture. That's
all show, too, her church and Bible thing.

  "That awful Brad boy asked for you. I tell you that because I'm a good Christian woman and I won't tell you any lies or keep anything from you, but that boy's got nerve. Won't come in here himself. No, not into a Jewish hospital. Shows how important he thinks you are. No guts. That's what it is. Sure, it's easy to hide behind bushes and attack people in the dark, but we won't see him anywhere around here, I tell you."

  Hide behind bushes? What does she know?

  "Figures—he escapes the accident with hardly a scratch and here you are lying on death's dark doorstep.

  "It's God's will, I suppose.

  "I'd just like to know how this accident happened. Of course Brad was most likely drunk. Takes after his drunken father, that boy does, and he'll be just as violent with his own family, too, mark my words."

  Shows what you know. And like you're the perfect parent? At least his father's always there. His father didn't run away and leave Brad all alone for three freakin' days when he was only five freakin' years old. And anyway, he didn't have anything to drink that night. It was too important a night for drinking.

  After the kidnapping Billy and Chucky drop him off at his house and he gets on his bike and picks me up. Just like he said he would, out in front of the 7-Eleven. Ridesup on his Harley, his white teeth shining out of the dark, and I know right away it went okay. And we're laughing at each other, just happy, you know? I hop on and hug him around his waist and we go tearing outta there over to Chucky's.

  When we pull up outside of Chucky's house and Brad turns off the motor, I can hear the shouting coming from the basement. Brad grabs my hana and we charge into the house. The shouting's louder now, and it's like that first night when I joined the Warriors, 'cause they're going to initiate another girl into the group and everyone's real hyped. We go down into the basement lit up with red lightbulbs and black candles, and there's everyone with their robes on and facing the poster on the wall. We slip into our robes, blood red with these black patches on the shoulders that show swords bent into the shape of swastikas. We find our places in line and join them.

  "Heil, Hitler! Heil, Hitler!" we shout.

  Hitler's face stares back at us, larger than life, just like the man himself. We just keep shouting, and I can feel the goose bumps crawling all over me as I feel the excitement, the unity, the thunder in the room. There's like twenty of us there, and we don't stop shouting until the Great Warrior arrives, and by then my voice is so hoarse I'm not even sure I'm making any noise. When Hack makes his way up to the front of the room, we sit down and the ceremony begins.

  Meg O'Toole is called up to the front and is handed two unlit candles, one for each hand. Brad goes up, rolls out the Nazi flag, and drapes it around her waist, tucking it in so it stays up. Then Hack commands the rest of us to stand and form a circle. The room's real quiet when we do this, no shoving and giggling. Then Hack unrolls the female initiation scroll and begins.

  "Do you, Megan Reese O'Toole, promise to uphold the principles of white supremacy and the purity of white womanhood?"

  "I do!" she shouts through strands of yellow hair hanging in her face.

  "Do you take the Aryan race to be your one and only religion?"

  "I do!"

  "Do you recognize all Jews as children of Satan?"

  "I do!"

  "Do you promise to do your part in bringing about the Final Solution—the destruction of all Jews and the creation of a united Aryan nation?"

  "I do!"

  "Do you acknowledge that you are a seed bearer and life giver of the white race, and in so being you will do no race mixing, upon pain of death?"

  "I do!"

  "Do you acknowledge yourself to be a woman, and therefore the weaker vessel and servant to the one man given to you in marriage?"

  She looks over at her boyfriend, just like I did with Brad during my ceremony, and shouts, "I do!"

  "Do you swear to uphold the secrecy of these meetings and the activities of the Aryan Warriors?"

  "I do!"

  "Megan Reese O'Toole, your ultimate role will be that of wife—serving your husband—and of mother, giving birth to our future. By accepting this role in the race wars, you will achieve a place in history. No higher honor can be so bestowed upon a woman.

  "As a member of this den, you may attend and participate in all general meetings. You may wear the armband and the robe on such occasions as is necessary. Participation in 'outings' is at the discretion of the Great Warrior."

  Then Hack lifts his head up from the scroll and nods to Chucky. Chucky steps forward, pulls out his plastic lighter, and lights Meg's candles. Meg steps forward and we pull back so she can walk through the circle and over to the table, where a cross made out of two broken branches tied together with a strand of rawhide stands in a pewter mug.

  She lights one branch with the red candle and we all say, "The blood of all Jews shall burn." Then she lights the other branch and we say, "Their ashes shall become crusts in hell."

  Then she sets the candles in the holders placed on either side of the burning cross and turns to face us.

  Hack raises his right hand out in front of him and shouts, "Sister! Heil, Hitler!"

  "Heil, Hitler!" the rest of us shout, including Meg. Then we all step up to the table and pass around this sharp pocketknife. We each cut a slit in our palms and squeeze out the blood. Then we go back to our circle, with Meg in the center, and she goes up to each of us, one at a time, and presses her bloody palm to each of ours and we say, "Sister, welcome," and she says "Brother" or "Sister" back. Then when she's gone all the way around, Brad removes the flag and Hack hands her her robe.

  After she puts it on and joins our circle, Hack says to her, "You are a member of the Great Aryan Warriors. This is now your family. You belong to us and we to you. As long as you follow the laws of this den, we will protect you. Heil, Hitler!"

  I can't help it, I'm standing there crying just like I did during my own ceremony, but then, as our shouts get louder and stronger, I can feel the atmosphere change and it's like a party, everyone standing close and proud.

  Then we start chomping on chips and M&M's and telling each other about our victories that night, laughing and shouting and carrying on. And then at the end, we're shouting "White Power" and "Death to Jews" and more "Heil, Hitlers," and you never felt such power. Like we owned the world. We owned it. I swear we held it in the palms of our hands and it was up to us whether we were going to crush it or hold it up.

  That's our power, Mother. We're together, united and strong, like a real family.

  Yeah, being in that room, with all the shouting and the ceremony and having Brad's arm around me, I knew I'd die for any one of them if I had to. I'd die for the cause. I could tell, too, just by looking at all the faces, the shining eyes, that everyone felt like that. That's our power. We didn't need to drink. We were drunk with our own victories, our power.

  So get it straight, Mother, it wasn't any drinking that caused the accident. It was the stinkin' rain. By the time we left the meeting and made our way over to Burleigh, it was pouring and we took a skid going around Bishop's corner. Brad's good on a bike, Mother; he couldn't help the rain. Anyway, he wasn't drunk.

  ***

  "I just pray to God that you had nothing to do with the disappearance of that little Schulmann boy. It's all over the papers."

  He's still missing? Brad said he was screaming loud enough to wake the dead. How long have I been here? Hey, Grandmaw, how long I been in here? Well, it can't be too long. It just seems like forever 'cause I can't move, right?

  Now don't go giving me that suffering-cow look again. Look at me. Mother says I'm on death's dark doorstep and you know what? I feel like death, so don't be giving me that suffering look. Jews always think they've got a monopoly on suffering or something. Hey, I know suffering. I don't need to be a part of someone else's. They'll find the stupid kid. Besides, how bad could it be, being shut up in one of those big old lockers? How b
ad could it be? So it's a little dark. And hot, I guess, or maybe it's cold. Do they leave the heat on over vacation? The kid's probably out by now anyway, right? While Mother's been giving me her phony see-how-much-I-care speech, the police have been rescuing Simon. Right?

  I guess if he's got to go to the bathroom he'll just do it in his pants. Well, so what, right? Worse could happen. He can breathe. The locker's got vents. Who the hell cares about him anyway? Jew boy. Who the hell cares?

  "I won't disturb the others if I read to you, will I? I'll just read to you quietly.

  "I suppose I can use this chair. Now let's...

  "God is our refuge and strength,

  a very present help in trouble.

  Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change,

  though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;

  though its waters roar and foam,

  though the mountains tremble with its tumult."

  Grandmaw? Hey! It's happening again. You can stop it, I know you can.

  I'm falling back into that dark place, spinning away, spinning down. I can see the darkness and the pinpoint of light where the old lady's face stares out at me. The pinpoint begins to grow, letting in more light, shutting out the darkness, erasing Grandmaw's face and bringing into focus a room, square and small.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Chana

  THE SIGHTS AND SOUNDS before me were instantly clearer than the last time I had visited this other world. The colors, the images, were sharper. As I looked about the room, with its high ceiling and creamy white walls, empty fireplace, and furniture in shades of blue and brown worn into comfort, I knew immediately who, and where, I was. I knew this time that I was thirteen years old, living in Poland, and that this was my living room. The people gathered there with me were my family. I knew, too, that we were still "sitting shiva," in mourning, for my father. The two plain mirrors facing one another on opposite walls were covered with white cloths, and I understood, as if I had always known, that this was part of the ritual of the shiva. The circle of low stools upon which my mother and Bubbe, my grandmother, and Zayde, my grandfather, sat were also part of this seven-day ritual of mourning my father.