If I Should Die Before I Wake Read online

  Of course, back then we were not yet starving. Things changed quickly, though, and soon we found ourselves without potatoes and other vegetables, without meat, with little more than some stale black bread, soup, coffee, and butter. For these we waited in long lines that straggled down the block and around the corner. We were tired, angry, and irritable. My resolve to treat everyone as my family faded, then disappeared with the food, as did the muscles in my arms and legs, and the belief that I would survive all of this, that everything was going to be all right.

  Zayde and Jakub worked on Brzezinska Street in the new shoe factory. They worked with the finest leather, fashioning it into high-quality shoes for men and women and boots for the soldiers. The shoes were all taken and sold outside the ghetto. No one inside could buy them. We walked around in the same old shoes with the soles worn through.

  Each day, Zayde returned from the factory looking a little shorter, a little thinner, and complaining of sore toenails and back pains. We laughed at first. Zayde and his toenails. If that is the worst of his problems, he will be all right, we told each other. We did not know then that it was a sign of the body deteriorating, of starvation. It wasn't until the Krengiels, a couple transported from Russia, moved in with us that we learned all the signs and symptoms of every disease imaginable.

  Mr. Krengiel was a tall, heavy man in his forties who wore a beard, had a balding head, hypochondria, and a whine that drove me crazy in any language.

  Mrs. Krengiel was neither short nor tall, fat nor thin. She would have been nondescript right down to her personality if it were not for her bright silver hair and the chocolate, egg-shaped mole on her left cheek.

  Mama had said that we had to be nice to them.

  "They are, after all, foreigners who have been plunked down in a strange place, separated from family and friends. It is the least we can do."

  We all tried our best to be nice. Jakub and Zayde found Mr. Krengiel a job at the factory, and Mama taught the couple English and German at night. We even offered to give up one of the two cots because Mama believed that each family should have one. They were not thankful.

  "It is silly for such a young healthy family to take a cot when it is obvious we are both not well," said Mr. Krengiel.

  "You are forgetting Zayde and Bubbe," Mama said, trying to keep her voice level. "Both are older than you."

  "Perhaps, but Bubbe is so healthy, and as you can surely see, we are not." Mr. Krengiel sat down on one of the cots and gripped the edge as if to say, You will have to pry me out.

  Mama looked tired. She had had enough. Her cheeks were sunken and her eyes so far away, setting back farther and farther in her head, with only brown circles marking where they used to be.

  "You may have one cot." She sighed. "But Zayde will have the other. Even you must see that he can barely hold himself up."

  "Zayde—pardon my honesty, but Zayde will be dead soon anyway. What does it matter now where he sleeps? There is no comfort for him now except in heaven."

  Mama held down her anger. The man was crazy, irrational. We were all just grateful that Zayde, Jakub, and Bubbe were not there to hear this. We knew that this crazy man would have said the same thing in their presence.

  "Each family will have one cot, Mr. Krengiel," Mama said through clenched teeth. "You are free to do with yours as you please. However, Zayde will be occupying the other and there is no room for discussion." She turned her back to him and held her head high, her shoulders tense, waiting for the next insane remark. But he was silent.

  Instead, every morning and every night, Mr. Krengiel groaned, complaining of the cold, the stiff back he got from lying on the cot and working at the factory, and his swollen feet—"a sure sign of starvation." If he wasn't whining about his body, he was dragging out some old letter from his cousin who had fled to America two years earlier. He would read aloud the same tired passages, and then look up at us with wonder in his eyes as if he were reading them for the first time.

  "In America, the sandwiches you can get you cannot imagine," he would then say to us. "Fresh white bread thick with sardines, sauerkraut, and three kinds of cheeses, and can you guess how much something like that costs? Can you, Chana?" He'd poke me in the stomach. "Can you, Anya?" Another poke. "A nickel! Oy! A nickel! You know what that is? You know what a nickel is?" Poke, poke.

  We could not understand the man. He arrived fat and got no thinner as the days passed, no matter that he ate no more than the rest of us. But one night I watched as he lay on the cot with his wife sleeping on the floor below him. I knew he was awake because his nose was not whistling. The moon shone into the room, a giant beam highlighting his corner of the room, making it glow, making him glow as he rose from the bed, carefully stepping over his wife. He looked like a ghost all silver and white moving in and out of the shadows as he crossed the room. I closed my eyes as he made his way toward me, pausing at times to listen—for what? I waited until I heard him pass and opened my eyes again. He was heading toward the kitchen! I knew instantly what he was going to do. It all made sense now. Every morning we would all say how our imagination would play tricks on us at night and that the remains of our loaves of bread would grow bigger in our minds as we slept, only to grow smaller when we woke. It had not been our imagination at all. It was fat Mr. Krengiel stealing bits of bread from each of our loaves!

  I waited until I was sure he was into the bread before jumping up. "Mr. Krengiel!" I shouted. "How dare you! You chozzer! Stealing our food while we starve to death."

  By this time everyone was awake, and Jakub was about to strike the greedy man when Bubbe came up from behind and gently touched Jakub's arm.

  "No, Jakub. Let him explain," she said.

  "What can there be to explain? Stealing our bread—Zayde's bread." Jakub nudged Mr. Krengiel. "Look at my grandfather. Look at him! How dare you take his food!"

  Mr. Krengiel looked and then sank to the floor as though his bones had turned to liquid.

  Jakub turned a helpless face to Bubbe. "What is he doing now?"

  Bubbe rushed forward, calling out commands over her shoulder. "Get some water, any water, and someone help me get him to the cot."

  Jakub swore under his breath and helped Bubbe lift the limp body up off the floor. "He is pretending. You know he is pretending."

  Bubbe turned a cold eye toward Jakub and said through gritted teeth, straining beneath the weight of the man, "Do not say things you may regret, child. It is hard enough living here without adding guilt to your load."

  They dropped him on his cot and only then did we notice that Mrs. Krengiel was still asleep.

  All of us had gathered around the two of them, Mama with the dish of water, Zayde sitting upright on his cot, Anya and I next to Bubbe and Jakub. Who could speak? We all knew Mrs. Krengiel could not have slept through all the noise we had been making. She was faking, we knew, but we said nothing, waiting for Bubbe to make the first move—and she did.

  Crouching down on the floor, she tapped Mrs. Krengiel's shoulder and whispered, "You must get up now, dear, your husband needs you. He is very ill."

  Slowly she rolled over and, looking dazed, opened her eyes and sat up. "What is it? What are you all doing? Surely it cannot be morning yet."

  In the morning Bubbe took Mr. Krengiel to the hospital where she was working as a nurse. We all felt it was nonsense. Letting Mrs. Krengiel pretend she was asleep so she would not get blamed for her husband's greed was one thing, but going through all the trouble to haul Mr. Krengiel across town to the hospital was another. What good could it do? The farce had been carried too far and we all said so, but Bubbe stood firm and off he went.

  Mr. Krengiel was there for four weeks and during that time we all went back to our usual existence of starving, working, and studying. Even little Anya had found herself a job.

  Both of us were supposed to attend school. At first, we walked along together to the building where classes were held, but eventually we found our own friends, some old, some new, and
we separated at the first corner and walked to school with them. I never thought about not seeing Anya around anymore. There were more and more students every day as new arrivals from Holland, Russia, Germany, and even France entered the ghetto.

  Then Anya began to bring home an extra ration of bread or a potato and sometimes extra money, claiming that people would give it to her on the streets.

  "This is nonsense," Mama said. "No one simply hands out food and money. Anya, you must be truthful."

  "But, Mama, I hand out food and money to the sick people lying in the streets."

  "You are not sick. You are not lying in the streets. Anya, if you are sneaking beneath the wires, I will drop dead now with the heart attack. They will beat you or even shoot you if they catch you outside the walls."

  "No, Mama. It is as I said, people give it to me, and I give some to the others and bring the rest home for Zayde." Anya lowered her eyes. "He is so ill, Mama. The wind someday will blow him away."

  Mama gave up asking her, but none of us believed her story.

  One night, Mama asked me to follow her to school the next morning to see that she did not go under the wire.

  The two of us set off together that next day with the sun rising high in the icy sky. The roads were slick with yesterday's rain. We walked carefully through the mud, tucking our bread under one arm, our books under the other, and jamming our hands into our pockets. At the end of the block we separated as usual, but as Anya made her way down a narrow side street, I turned back around and followed her. She scurried along the streets, her body swaying, her hair swinging side to side, the way it did whenever she felt especially important or grown-up. She seemed so small, retreating down yet another street and turning right, small and fragile and innocent. I wanted to rush up and cover her with my arms, wrap my coat around her delicate body, and keep her warm, but I knew she would have none of it. Despite her appearance she was feisty and strong, and more apt to be putting her arms around me or wrapping her coat around some poor shlepper passed out in the mud than accepting help for herself.

  She stooped before a broken window located at the base of a crumbling building and pulled out something stashed inside. It was a large iron hook, rusty and heavy, judging by the way she was carrying it. She left her books inside the window and hurried away. I followed her out toward the cemetery and, worse yet, toward the large, foul-smelling garbage fields, crowded now with people dressed, partially dressed, or completely naked, down on their knees digging. As she climbed one of these heaps of refuse, ignoring the rats and discarding her coat and dress in a pile with the others, she was greeted by those of her friends who had arrived there before her. After hugs of hello they returned to work, Anya beside them with her iron hook, as intent and solemn as a little old man panning for gold.

  I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Here was a whole other world that I had never seen, or perhaps had chosen not to see. Observing them now, I saw them perhaps as an outsider might see them, as the Germans would see them—filthy Jews, digging around in their own garbage, their own excrement.

  One woman gleefully held up the tiniest bit of coal, another an old rag, and still another a sliver of wood, all gold to them, almost priceless. It was, for most of them, their lifeline.

  Men trudged by with thick bands of rope wrapped around their waists or over and around their shoulders, their bare feet pushing against the ground, leaning forward, heaving and pulling giant wagons of excrement. They were the fecal workers, the ghetto's beasts of burden. They came through our gutterless streets once or twice a week, cleaning up, helping us to keep typhus and other deadly diseases at bay. Perhaps, I thought to myself, standing there in front of the "fields," I owe my life to them, my health—and yet I had ignored them. They were, in my mind, the excremerit they cleaned up. They were the people we pretended did not exist, the same way we pretended not to see our neighbors and friends squatting down in the streets to relieve themselves, the same way we pretended not to be doing it ourselves.

  As I looked at them now, sweating on this cold, windy day, their overalls flapping against their emaciated bodies, I whispered, "You, I will remember. You are important to me."

  Mama was not happy to hear about Anya skipping school to go digging up coal and selling it to people only slightly better off than we were. She had planned to have it out with her when Anya returned home, but Zayde got there first. He was home early from the shoe factory, claiming it was too painful to sit.

  "My bones, they must be dissolving," he said, and then tried to laugh it off. "Chana, it is magic. I sit down one day and my bones are there, another day, pfft! They are gone."

  I helped Mama lower him onto the cot. He was shivering. I ran and grabbed up all the blankets we had and began placing them one by one on top of him.

  "No! It is too painful. It hurts, Chana. Please, no blankets."

  I looked at Mama. What were we to do? He was freezing and yet the blankets were too heavy for him.

  "Lie down next to him," Mama said.

  I stared down at Zayde quivering on the cot, his skin shiny, waxy, almost colorless. I decided I had heard Mama wrong and looked up at her, waiting.

  Mama nodded. "Go on, child, lie down. Your body heat might help."

  I did as I was told while Mama made a tent over us. She placed a chair at each corner of the cot and spread the blankets out over and across us. Then she tucked them under the legs of the chairs.

  It was a cozy little tent, dark and private, something Anya and I would have enjoyed together, but Zayde and I? I closed my eyes and listened to Zayde's shallow breathing.

  He was whispering, "Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eiohainu Adonai Ehad."

  I whispered it, too, and realized that by its end he was no longer shivering. I turned my head and, with my eyes now accustomed to the dark, saw Zayde smile and then let out his breath. I turned away and stared up at the pattern on the blanket above us.

  I laughed to myself as I saw the pattern move before my eyes. Mama was behind us in the kitchen, chopping up the frozen beets we had been given. The patterns shifted again and I could make out the shape of a face. It is like finding shapes in the clouds, I thought. Perhaps I am seeing the Moshiah. Perhaps he has come at last to save us, to tell us all will be well, bringing food—potatoes, and onions, and sausage, and butter.... The face lost its shadows and I saw it was not the Moshiah at all but my friend. I called her that now, the girl who saw me and knew me, and understood. She smiled down at me, a smile like Zayde's, and I tried to smile back but could not. I was cold, suddenly very cold, and I wondered if Zayde was cold, too. I reached out to touch his arm. Yes, he was cold, like an iron rod, cold and still, so very still. My zayde was gone.

  Baruch dayan emet.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Hilary

  I'M TRYING TO WIGGLE MY TOES, make something move. I need to get away, get out.

  Nothing happens.

  The old lady's standing with her face turned away so I'm staring at the back of her head. She's hardly got any hair back there, and what little's there is all pressed and matted. I can see a scar, too, like a strip of seersucker running down her scalp toward her neck. I don't want to look at it.

  Bubbe?

  Grandma? Turn around. What's wrong? Do you know something?

  I'm so hungry. I feel as if something is chewing up my insides.

  My zayde. I've lost my zayde. It feels like hunger. I can't tell them apart, sorrow and hunger—and pain. I think I'm hurting somewhere, everywhere, but I'm not sure. I just feel hungry—very, very hungry.

  I need my mother. If you won't turn around, Bubbe, and speak to me, then please, go get Mama.

  "Therefore I am full of the wrath of the Lord;

  I am weary of holding it in.

  Pour it out upon the children in the street,

  and upon gatherings of young men, also;

  both husband and wife shall be taken,

  the old folk and the very aged."

  No! I don't want to hear
that! I don't want to hear her. She frightens me.

  Why are you quoting those verses at me? You don't know. Why do you read as if you knew, as if you understood?

  My zayde ...

  Why must people die? Why must the wrong people die?

  Why didn't we die, Mother? Why did it have to be Daddy? And where is that greedy Jew boss who killed Daddy now? Is he living in some fancy mansion, bought with his blood money?

  And the Germans—who guard the gates of the ghetto, who keep the food out and death in—will they ever suffer? Is there no punishment for them?

  "They know no bounds in deeds of wickedness;

  they judge not with justice

  the cause of the fatherless, to make it prosper."

  I don't understand. Can you hear me, Mother? Grandma, turn around. Someone explain what's going on. Why is she reading that passage to me?

  I don't want to hear her. She's reading as though she and I were connected somehow, as if she knew about the Germans, about this other world.

  Ah! Now you turn around.

  You and I are connected, too, aren't we, Grandma? Only I don't know how, or why. And why should Mother and I be connected? She never wanted me and I never needed her, so why—why must we be connected?

  Am I wicked?

  Is it wicked to hate people who have destroyed your life? Is it wicked to hate people whose sole purpose is to make your life miserable?

  Does Simon hate me? How long have I been here? How long can a person live without food? Why did I have to know him? Why did he have to move in behind us right before Daddy died? What kind of sick joke is that? Moving a Jew family, a happy, smiley Jew family into my life? I don't want to be connected to him. I don't want to care about him. I don't care.