01
My sister’s almond eyes opened wide, the way they often
02
did. “She’s so brave,” she whispered.
03
“Don’t even think it,” I whispered to her, because it seemed
04
they must have had a way of knowing then, even our thoughts.
05
When you are stripped naked, shaved bare, nothing is yours
06
anymore, nothing is left.
07
We stood in line again for a long time, and her words, they
08
began to hurt my ears. My bare flesh turned numb. My ears
09
felt like they were bleeding.
Jestes diablem.
The Polish woman
10
screamed and she screamed.
11
The guard held her down as he tattooed her arm, and then
12
he shoved her roughly and yelled at her in German to shut up.
13
She was still screaming.
14
Finally another guard came and pulled her away, into the
15
other line, made up of people, I would later learn, who were
16
immediately gassed, instead of put to work. They were not
17
supposed to tattoo you if you were to be gassed right away, but
18
with her, they made an exception.
19
My sister was standing just in front of me watching all of
20
this. I saw her open her mouth, and I covered it with my hand
21
and pushed her back behind me so I could be tattooed before
22
her. I wanted her to see that it wouldn’t be so bad.
23
“It’s only a little ink, just a number. Don’t scream,” I whis
24
pered to her. “Don’t struggle. Just be quiet and do what
25
they ask.”
26
Her almond eyes stared back at me, so wide they could
27
burst. She opened her mouth again but no sound came out.
28S
I held out my arm, closed my eyes. My skin singed and
29N
cried out in pain, but I did not say a word. I bit my lip.
I opened my eyes again, and there it was, thick dark ink
01
on my forearm: The letter
A,
followed by five seemingly ran
02
dom numbers.
03
My sister went just after me, and her number was one
04
digit higher than mine.
05
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Mother said afterward. “It is
06
nothing. It cannot mean something. We cannot make nothing
07
mean something, girls.”
08
“When we go home, it’ll be a badge of honor,” my sister said.
09
10
11
“Margie.” Shelby interrupts my thoughts. “Are you okay? You
12
look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
13
“Yes,” I whisper. So many ghosts. Everywhere, all the time.
14
I am one myself, am I not?
15
“Your face is so flushed,” Shelby says. “It’s warm in here.
16
Take your sweater off. It’s 1959, for goodness’ sakes. A girl can
17
show a little skin.” She laughs and holds out her own bare
18
pale freckled arms, which radiate from her blue cotton short
19
sleeveddress.
20
But I shake my head. I will not take my sweater off. I will
21
never take it off.
22
23
24
25
26
27
S28
N29
01
02
03
04
Chapter Ten
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
When I walk outside at 5 p.m., my arm through
15
Shelby’s, who is trying to convince me to go get a drink with
16
her, I see Bryda Korzynski sitting on the bench outside the
17
office building, and then I think my heart may stop.
18
She stares right at me: brown eyes, hard like stones. So I
19
know she has been waiting there, just for me.
20
“You go on ahead,” I murmur to Shelby. “I should study
21
tonight.” But I’m wondering whether I can outrun Bryda. I am
22
a fast runner. I outran a train, once; outran the men who I
23
thought were chasing after me. When my life depends on it,
24
I can run.
25
“Oh, Margie,” Shelby says. “One of these days I’ll loosen
26
you up a little bit.”
Paragon of virtue,
my sister taunts in my
27
head, the way she always did when she teased me about being
28S
too good. But Shelby goes on without me, without any more
29N
of a fuss, because, as she mentioned in the elevator on the
way down, Ron has agreed to leave work early for once and
01
meet her there.
02
“Miss Franklin,” Bryda says. She doesn’t stand, but I stop
03
by the bench. Mainly because she is Joshua’s client and I
04
don’t want her to tell him I am rude. Without that, I’m pretty
05
sure I would be running right now.
06
“Yes,” I say to her. “Can I help you with something?”
07
“You not from Poland,” she says.
08
“What?” I let out a laugh that catches in my throat, so it’s
09
possible it’s not a laugh at all, but a scream. “It’s been a long
10
time. But I am,” I say. Lying is a second skin. It suits me bet
11
ter than the first one, maybe. It is not the kind of skin a para
12
gon of virtue wears, is it?
13
“Where in Poland?” she asks, her eyes narrowing to slits.
14
“Kraków,” I say, too quickly.
15
“You not from Kraków,” she says. “Austria, maybe. Germany?”
16
I shake my head. “But I am,” I say meekly. “It’s just been
17
so long.”
18
“Why you wear sweater when it so warm today?” she asks.
19
“I’m cold,” I say, wrapping the sweater tighter around
20
myself.
21
“You one of us,” she says. I’m still shaking my head, back
22
and forth, back and forth. I want her to stop. I want it to stop.
23
It never stops.
Nothing can’t mean something,
Mother said.
24
She was wrong; nothing could mean everything. “Your eyes,”
25
Bryda says. “They like eyes of dead person.”
26
“You’re mistaken,” I whisper.
27
And then I do run, as fast as I can, the clicking of my
S28
small heels on the pavement, not nearly enough to drown out
N29
01
the sound of Bryda Korzynski’s voice echoing in my ears.
You
02
one of us.
03
04
05
You cannot understand what it is like to hide until you have
06
done it yourself. And I do not mean the kind of hiding my
07
sister and I did as girls on the Merwedeplein, where we’d play
08
and hide-and-run around the thick oak trees before we’d
09
catch each other and start all over again, counting off in Ger
10
man:
Eins, zwei, drei
. . . But real hiding, where your life
11
depends on being squirreled away, being somewhere or some
12
one else—that’s entirely different. That was what we did, of
13
course: my family, the van Pelses, and the dentist. We were
14
not the only Jews who hid this way, but now we are the most
15
well known. From 1942 to 1944, the seven of us inhabited the
16
five small rooms in the annex above my father’s office on the
17
Prinsengracht, Amsterdam.
18
You cannot understand the fear that courses through you
19
at the sound of every noise, every rat or howl of wind creaking
20
the attic, wondering if it is someone coming for you. The fear
21
of discovery, it is the kind of fear that makes your heart feel
22
always full, pounding too fast. It is the kind of fear that keeps
23
your eyes pried wide open at night amid the dark and the
24
snores of your parents, even if you haven’t slept in days. And,
25
it is a fear that does not go away, even now, even fifteen years
26
removed, in a new city, with a new name, a new religion, a
27
thick sweater.
28S
You not Polish
. Bryda Korzynski said.
You one of us.
29N
That night, after Bryda has confronted me on the sidewalk, I lie in bed, for a long time fully awake, listening, listen
01
ing, waiting. It feels peculiar, that the only sound I hear is the
02
sound of Katze scratching against the furniture with his
03
claws.
04
After a little while I get out of bed, and even though it is
05
late, already past nine, I pull the smallest folded square from
06
my satchel, unfold it, and stare at the address and phone
07
number again.
P. Pelt. 2217 Olney Avenue
.
08
Peter told me that he would be Pete in his American life.
09
“I’ll be Pete, and you’ll be Margie,” he’d said. “Good Ameri
10
can names
.
” Is that what the operator had said?
Pete Pelt
. Did
11
I hear her wrong?
12
I feel my breath tightening in my chest, and I can see his
13
face, right there, so clearly, the way it was when he was afraid,
14
when he too feared discovery. I think about the time in the
15
middle of the night. 1943 or 1944—it all falls together now.
16
There was a crash, then a clanging in the office below us. The
17
next morning we would learn that someone burglarized the
18
office, but in the middle of the night I did not know at first if
19
they were burglars or the Green Police. I prayed they were
20
burglars. People who stole things felt so much safer than
21
people who stole people.
22
“Margot,” Peter whispered in the dark, his voice tracing a
23
circle in the air in my parents’ room, where I slept on a foldout
24
after the dentist arrived a few months into our stay. Mother
25
and Father were both still sleeping. I heard Mother’s soft
26
breathing, and Pim’s—that was our pet name for Father—
27
snore. I was afraid to move.
S28
I could barely see Peter in the darkness, only the outline
N29
01
of his hand holding on to something. “I will use this,” he whis
02
pered. “I will slash their throats.”
03
Then I realized it must be the knife, the one we had used
04
to prepare potatoes that night for dinner.
05
“Don’t move,” I whispered. “They’ll hear you.”
06
“I will use this,” he repeated. “I will slash their throats.”
07
“Oh, Peter,” I whispered. We both knew he wouldn’t do it,
08
but I guessed he felt safer holding on to it, feeling he had
09
something, some way to stop them. Peter was seventeen then,
10
not yet a man, but almost. He was independent, more so than
11
me and my sister, more detached from his parents, certainly.
12
And he was brave, but he was not stupid. If the Green Police
13
had charged in and saw Peter holding on to a knife, they
14
would’ve shot him faster than he could move. They would’ve
15