worse, hidden from worse. So I breathe deeply, and I tell
01
myself to stay.
02
“I know it’s a lot to ask,” Joshua says. “But you understand
03
how important this is, don’t you? Please, Margie. This is
04
really a very big deal for me. And I need your help here.” His
05
gray-green eyes, they plead with me in their softness. And I
06
think guiltily of the way Bryda’s voice shook as she called her
07
boss a Nazi. This is a good thing that Joshua is trying to do,
08
an honorable thing. And what will Joshua think about me if I
09
refuse to help him?
10
“Okay,” I finally agree.
11
“Thank you,” he says. I nod and stand. “And remember,”
12
he says, before I open the door, “not a word to anyone.”
13
14
15
“What was that all about?” Shelby whispers, when I’m back at
16
my desk.
17
“What?” I say, innocently enough.
18
“I was watching through the glass. It looked . . . steamy.”
19
“Steamy?” I say, my voice uneasy. I shake my head. “No. It
20
was nothing, really.”
21
“He didn’t tell you what they were fighting about, did he?
22
Ezra’s still miffed about it.”
23
“That’s not my place,” I say.
24
She rolls her eyes at me. For a second I think she might
25
call me a paragon of virtue. But then she says, “If you find
26
out, you tell me. I’m dying to know.”
27
“Of course,” I say. But Joshua needn’t worry. I am good at
S28
N29
01
keeping secrets. I am wrapped in them now, the way I am
02
wrapped in lies, like my sweater, clinging tightly to my skin,
03
even on the hottest of days.
04
05
06
When the big clock by the elevator strikes four o’clock, I lie
07
to Shelby and tell her I have a doctor’s appointment and have
08
to leave early.
09
“Everything all right?” she asks. I nod and stare past her,
10
in through the glass window by Joshua’s office. He has the
11
phone slung between his shoulder and his ear, and his brow
12
is ripe with concentration as he’s talking. He notices me gath
13
ering my things, and he waves me toward the elevator and
14
shoots me his uniquely Joshua smile. I smile back.
15
But in the elevator, I am no longer smiling. I hold tightly
16
to the yellow paper with Bryda’s address in my hand
. I can lie
17
about this,
I think, the way I have lied about so much else
18
already. I can tell Joshua I went and not go. I can crumple up
19
the paper in my hand and walk my usual route down Market
20
Street toward home.
21
But I also know that Joshua is a meticulous lawyer, and
22
that he will almost certainly follow up with Bryda with a
23
phone call, and that tomorrow, also, he will expect a list of
24
names and numbers from me.
25
I have a choice, I think as the elevator doors open into the
26
lobby and Henry tells me to have a good afternoon. I can do
27
as Joshua asks. Or I can walk out the door of this office build
28S
ing and not come back. There would be other jobs, and there
29N
is always Ilsa’s house.
I think about the way Joshua just smiled at me, the way he
01
is filled with so much goodness, and I know I will do what he
02
asks. I do not want another job. And besides, I think as I step
03
out onto the sidewalk, Ezra will never let Joshua take this any
04
further.
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
S28
N29
01
02
03
04
Chapter Fourteen
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
I have to take two city buses to get to Bryda’s
15
apartment, and the whole way there I think about what I
16
will say to her. If she accuses me again, I will tell her that
17
she knows nothing about me. I will be strong, and I will be
18
firm, which are both things I am used to, and quite good at,
19
being.
20
I lean back against the hard bus seat, and take a few deep
21
breaths. I am glad to be sitting now, because my legs they
22
already feel unsteady.
23
In Amsterdam, before we went into hiding, Jews were no
24
longer allowed on buses, so we walked everywhere, even in
25
the heat of the summer, even with packages to carry. We
26
walked and we walked, our yellow star across our hearts, right
27
there, like a target.
28S
In Philadelphia, it is easy to take a bus, and for this I am
29N
grateful. There are so many, you just have to read the map to
know which one and pay a little money to be able to navigate
01
around the city.
02
I have never been to Bryda’s part of town before, and as
03
the bus pulls closer, I can see why. The buildings are shabby
04
row houses with crumbling striped awnings and low brick
05
apartments, flanked by beggars on the street. I think of
06
Jodenbreestraat, the street in the center of Amsterdam where
07
Jews lived, that began to crumble just before we went into
08
hiding. So many Jews taken away. There was no one left to
09
take care of the street any longer.
10
As the bus comes to a stop, I look out the window and
11
consider not getting off at all. There are beggars here too,
12
even at the bus stop. I could stay on the bus until it loops back
13
again closer to Center City, I think.
14
But I find myself standing slowly, walking toward the door
15
and then onto the street, where I find myself staring into the
16
face of a wan beggar.
17
She is a young girl, her hair pulled in a messy braid, her
18
face streaked with dirt. She holds out a cup and looks at me
19
with wounded brown eyes. She is too thin. Her dirty plaid
20
dress falls over her.
21
I reach into my satchel, pull out a shiny nickel, and drop
22
it in her cup.
23
24
25
Sometimes I am haunted by my sister’s eyes. It’s hard to
26
remember them the way they were, when we were girls, living
27
in the house on the Merwedeplein, or even when we lay
S28
next to each other quietly in the annex, writing in our diaries.
N29
01
I cannot remember their inflections of joy, or the way they
02
darkened with jealousy when she asked if she could read my
03
diary and she read how I felt about Peter, or even the way they
04
fell when she cried, as she did so often. All I can remember
05
is the way they looked, at the very end. She was skin and
06
bones by then, her face barely even a shape, her eyes sunken
07
and huge. They were brown, the color of almonds, with small
08
green flecks. They were too big for her face. They begged me
09
to help her.
10
I try to shake the thought away as I walk to the stairwell
11
in Bryda’s brick apartment building, then up three flights to
12
her floor. The smell of garbage in the stairs overtakes me, a
13
smell like rotting putrid rats, and I gag, because suddenly I
14
am there, again, hauling trash with my sister. Her eyes. Like
15
saucers. Begging me to carry her.
16
I take a deep breath once I’m in the hallway, practicing in
17
my head what I will say to Bryda, how I will keep the conver
18
sation all business, only about Joshua. But the smell in the
19
hallway is not much better than in the stairwell. The air is
20
stagnant and I fight the urge to vomit as I wrap my sweater
21
tighter around my chest.
22
I reach my hand up to knock on her door. Apartment 3C in
23
the north section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
24
of America. It is a long way from Auschwitz, Poland. But as I
25
knock, I understand, it is not as far as you might think.
26
27
28S
“You,” Bryda says, when she opens the door, her voice thick
29N
with disgust.
“Hello,” I say, as cordially as I can, given the circum
01
stances, and then quickly spit out what I have just rehearsed
02
in my head. “Mr. Rosenstein asked me to stop by and talk.
03
Can I come in?” I don’t want to come in. Every bone in my
04
body is telling me to run.
Run.
Take two buses back to Mar
05
ket Street. Then run again, to my neighborhood, where the
06
rats stay hidden—or at least Katze sometimes keeps them at
07
bay when he feels like it, and the smells are of blooming
08
spring flowers and taxicab fumes.
09
She opens the door a little wider, and I step inside. The
10
room is tidy, but smaller than mine by at least half, a little box
11
room without a trace of a kitchen, only a hot plate on a table,
12
next to a wooden chair. There is a cot in the corner, where I
13
imagine she sleeps.
14
Even in the annex, at the height of the war, we had more
15
than this.
16
“So,” Bryda says. “What you want?”
17
Her hair has tumbled out of the bun, after what I imagine
18
was a long day of sewing for her, and today she wears a blue
19
Robertson’s Finery uniform, with a sleeve long enough to
20
cover her number. For this, I am grateful. Though I notice the
21
way
Robertson’s Finery
is stitched in yellow, just across her
22
heart—it is so much like the color and placement of the yel
23
low star we once wore.
24
I clear my throat. “Mr. Rosenstein asked me to come over
25
and visit with you and gather up the names and contact infor
26
mation for any people you found to join you.”
27
“Group litigation?” she says. I nod. “So he really do
S28
help me?”
N29
01
“Maybe,” I say, because I am still entirely unconvinced
02
about Joshua’s being able to go anywhere with this case after
03
the screaming match in his office with Ezra, and also because
04
I don’t want to get Bryda’s hopes up. Perhaps she deserves a
05
lot. The war is over; the Nazis are done. But it is still quite
06
hard to be a Jew, even here, in America, and also to live
07
openly without fear. I have considered before what might hap
08
pen if I were to walk down Ludlow in the summer, wearing a
09
sleeveless dress without my sweater, my Jewishness right
10
there, so obvious, out in the open, for everyone to see. I imag
11
ine the terrible way people might look at me, as if they knew
12
everything.
13
“I have two names,” I realize Bryda is saying now, and I
14
swallow hard, trying to erase the bitter taste in my mouth that
15
comes with fear. “I tell them to you, you write them down.”
16
“Okay,” I say, pulling the yellow legal pad that I took from
17
the supply closet at work out of my satchel.
18
“I do not write anymore,” she says. She holds out her right
19
hand, which I did not notice before is missing the forefinger.
20
I turn away at the sight, not wanting to imagine how she
21
received that horror. “It not what you think,” she says.
22
“Okay,” I say again, because, of course, I am thinking it
23
was the Nazis’ doing, that it happened in the camp. But I
24
don’t ask her what really happened—I don’t want to know,
25
and besides, I am suddenly having trouble speaking. Bile rises
26
in my throat. The air is too warm; it’s suffocating, drowning
27
me under the weight of my second skin, and the sweater. She
28S
tells me the names, and I scribble them quickly down.
29N
When I look up, she is staring directly at me, squinting
until she reminds me of a hawk, perched at the edge of a cliff,
01
searching for prey. “What?” I finally say to her, and somehow
02
I think I am able to disguise the fear in my voice as annoy