“Are you okay—?” I started to whisper, but she was gone before I’d finished the sentence. I heard the soft, rapid patter of her footsteps as she ran down the stairs, followed by the door of the lobby closing as she ran out into the street. Alone again, I became aware of the mess in the hall. There were drips and small puddles all along the floorboards, and a lingering scent—something deeply unpleasant but that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I glanced back at my door and bitterly regretted not putting on my shoes. As I stepped farther out into the hallway and my bare toes met the filthy water, I tried not to think about the source. I wanted to convince myself that Sara was experiencing some plumbing problems, but that didn’t explain the stranger in the stairwell. I wondered if I should just go home, back to bed, to pretend I hadn’t seen any of this. I dismissed that thought in an instant. Whatever was going on, Sara would surely be grateful to have my assistance with the cleanup, especially if it extended all the way down to the front door. Mr. Wójcik on the second floor was a real stickler for keeping the communal areas clean, and Sara wouldn’t want any trouble from him.
This thought reassured me that I was doing the right thing, and my footsteps became bolder. By the time I reached her door, I had convinced myself that rather than disobediently sneaking around our building in the middle of the night, I was simply doing the Christian thing by helping my neighbor.
“Sara?” I called softly as I unlocked her door and let myself inside. The smell from the hallway was much stronger here, so strong that when I breathed in, I unexpectedly gagged. Panicked, I pressed my fist to my mouth and looked around her room in alarm. I finally stopped pretending otherwise: if Sara were having plumbing issues, it was definitely her toilet, and my feet were covered in waste. “Sara?” I called again as I closed the door. Upstairs, I could hear the sound I had heard from my bedroom—only now that I was closer, it sounded nothing at all like a cat and exactly like a child sobbing.
A chill raced down my spine, and goose bumps prickled across my skin. The pounding of my heart became so intense I could hear my pulse thudding in my ears. I thought about turning around and creeping back across the hallway to burrow back into bed. But I couldn’t put the pieces of the puzzle together. How exactly did the smell of sewage and the mess in the hall and the strange girl and the crying child all fit together?
I started up the stairs, following muddy footsteps. As I reached for the balustrade, my hand was shaking, but I pressed on. At the top, I paused at the door and pressed my ear against it. There, I heard the unmistakable sound of quiet speech. I couldn’t make out the words, but I recognized at least two voices and thought I could detect the soothing cadence of Sara’s. I drew in a deep breath, and then knocked quietly and called, “Sara?”
The voices stopped abruptly, and then in an artificially high tone Sara called back, “Elz·bieta? Don’t come in here!”
There were frantic sounds within her bedroom, and I knew I should obey her and walk away without opening the door. But desperate curiosity and an instinct I couldn’t explain compelled me to push the bedroom door open. As I did, several things caught my attention: a heap of dank and muddy clothes, spreading a filthy puddle toward the rug beside Sara’s spare bed, and Sara herself, her hands on the shoulders of a semidressed child as she shuffled her into the closet. Sara closed the door so fast that she barely missed catching the child’s fingers. She stood with her back to the closet door, raised her chin high and crossed her arms over her chest.
“What are you doing here so late?” she demanded.
I stared at her, almost doubting my eyes for a second or two. It had all happened so fast. Had I really seen a child there? Surely not. Why would Sara have a child in the closet in her bedroom?
My gaze fell to the pile of muddy clothes, and I drew in a breath. As the scent of sewage hit my lungs again, I covered my nose and my mouth, then narrowed my eyes on her.
“Was that a child?”
“There is no child,” she said abruptly, then took a step toward me. “You are dreaming. Go back to bed.”
But the closet betrayed her, because from inside I heard a strangled, muffled sob. Sara met my gaze, almost pleading with me not to draw attention to it—which, of course, I immediately did.
“Let her out!” I exclaimed, stepping hastily toward her.
“She’s fine,” Sara said, sighing in resignation. “They are fine.”
She turned and opened the door and dropped her voice, murmuring quietly in soothing, soft tones, as she shepherded four small children out of the closet. Two were completely naked, other than smears of mud and filth across their skin. One little boy was fully clothed, from a neat black cap on his head down to makeshift shoes of muddied hessian wrapped around his feet, tied tightly with wound twine. The last child, the little girl I’d heard crying, was barefoot, but she was still wearing a dress. I looked from the children to Sara and then back to the children again.
Until that very moment, I thought I had understood what it was to be afraid, but it suddenly occurred to me that there were depths of fear I had never imagined possible. These children—these emaciated, filthy children—looked as though they might drop dead from terror at any minute.
I rubbed my eyes, as if that would make the children disappear, but this was no hallucination. As tired and bewildered as I was, the smell in the room was so overwhelming it could not be denied.
“Are you going to stand there gawking, or are you going to fetch me some towels?” Sara asked me pointedly. My jaw flapped, and then I retreated and ran down the stairs, very nearly slipping on a puddle. I gathered towels from Sara’s linen closet and returned to the bedroom, where I set them on the bed. Sara took one and crouched to gingerly, carefully wipe the filth from the face of the littlest girl, who was still weeping. Without looking at me, she said lightly, “Now, Elz·bieta, you must go and draw me a bath. Make the water as hot as you can stand against your own skin. And we will need soap—there is a fresh packet under the sink in the kitchen. Take all of it into the bathroom, and then let yourself out, and go home and back to bed.”
“I don’t understand. Who are these children?”
“I’m babysitting for a friend.”
“Why did you hide them in the closet, then? And why are they covered in...” For some reason, the word stuck in my throat. “Why are they so dirty?” Sara glanced back at me, her gaze expressionless. For a moment, I convinced myself that there was a perfectly logical explanation for all of this, and I was being obtuse. Just before Sara turned her attention back to the child, though, I caught a hint of panic in her gaze. “You’re lying to me.”
“It’s just very complicated and—”
“I’m not a child.”
Sara threw an amused smile over her shoulder.
“You’re thirteen years old. You most definitely are a child.”