“I’m fourteen tomorrow, Sara. And I’m mature for my age because everyone is mature for their age now.”
“Well, isn’t that the truth?” she said and sighed heavily, then she rose to stand and looked me right in the eyes. “My friend had an accident at home, and the children were caught up in the mess. It’s very dangerous for children to be exposed to raw sewage like this, so she asked me to look after them until she cleans up. Any other questions?”
“Then, why hide them?”
“You startled me. That’s all.”
“I startled you, so you pushed four children into a tiny closet?” I said incredulously. Sara met my gaze boldly, almost daring me to challenge her further.
“It’s late. I’m tired, and I wasn’t thinking,” she said, finally looking away to the little girl, who was gasping for air between each desperate sob. With a sigh, Sara bent and scooped the girl up and held her close, and she murmured quietly into her ear. She spoke so softly I couldn’t identify the words, but one of the sounds registered and a shock wave of tension ran through my body.
Sara was speaking Yiddish to this child, and the impossible scene before me suddenly made some sense.
“Elz·bieta, I need to soothe this little one and get these children clean, and you need to get to bed.” The little girl rested her head against Sara’s shoulder and stared at me. Her cheeks were hollow, and her red-rimmed eyes seemed artificially huge in her tiny face. Worst of all, the child’s skin had a sickly gray-yellow tone to it, visible where Sara had wiped the mud from her face.
“What’s wrong with her?” I whispered, taking an automatic step into the room. Sara closed her eyes briefly, then turned away to look down at the other children, who seemed frozen in complete and terrified silence. When she didn’t respond, I prompted her again. “Sara?”
“She is unwell, but it is not the kind of unwell that comes from disease. It is a kind of unwell that comes from neglect. This little girl simply hasn’t had enough to eat.”
“We could get her...” I was ready to suggest Uncle Piotr could find food for us, maybe even to admit for the first time something I’d scarcely even admitted to myself up to that point: Uncle Piotr seemed to have an uncanny ability to get hard-to-find objects. Rarefied foods sometimes appeared in our kitchen, and more than once, I’d heard him on the telephone discussing objects I knew to be contraband, like crystal radios or identity papers, like the ones he’d found so quickly for me. But before I could say any of this, Sara interrupted.
“This is not something we can fix with one meal, Elz·bieta. This little girl needs to go to a new home. They all need to go to new homes.”
We stood in fraught silence for several more moments. I didn’t want to say it, as if speaking the words aloud would somehow increase the danger we were all in.
“These are Jewish children, aren’t they?” I whispered dully. I raised my gaze to Sara’s. She swallowed, then forced a laugh.
“Of course not—”
“Sara,” I said, my throat tightening. “Please do not lie to me. I’m not a fool.”
Her tone, at last, grew impatient.
“These children have swum through a sewer to get here, Elz·bieta. They are tired, and they are dirty and scared, and if I don’t clean them, they will all die.”
“Die?”
“There is typhus in the sewer,” she said plainly. “There are typhus germs all over their little bodies, even as we stand here stating the obvious. I need to scrub these children clean, wash and dry their clothes, and then get them out of this apartment before sunrise. I do not have time to explain this to you—not right now anyway. You must leave me to my work, and then tomorrow we will talk, I promise.”
“Let me help.”
“If your family wakes up, they will notice you missing—”
“—and they’ll step into the hallway, see a trail of festering sewage that leads to your door and check here first.”
Sara winced.
“There is a mess in the hallway?”
“It’s not nearly as bad as it is in here, but yes, there is a very obvious mess.” Sara closed her eyes briefly, seeming momentarily defeated, and that’s when I made my decision. “I’ll draw the bath for you, then go clean the hallway.”
Sara looked so exhausted in that moment that my heart ached for her. She opened her eyes and stared at me.
“Please,” I added, “let me help. I can’t sleep anyway.”
“Fine,” she said and sighed, then she bit her lip. “But you must be quiet out there. No one can hear you, because if someone comes out to see what’s going on—”
“I’ll tell them there was a problem with your toilet.”
“Good girl. And start at my door, won’t you? Work your way downstairs from here.” She looked down to the child in her arms and then back to me, her gaze intense. “The sooner we hide where the trail ends, the better.”
* * *
It took more than an hour to clean from Sara’s apartment to the front door of our building. It wasn’t a significant distance, but I had to move slowly in order to remain quiet. By the time I walked back upstairs, the floor was drying, and I paused in the hallway to survey my handiwork.
Truda had taught me well. I had done a good job, and this unexpected burst of late-night domestic activity was the most satisfying thing I had done in months. It wasn’t the cleaning, it was the simple fact that I had helped my friend and the knowledge that I was doing exactly what my brother and father would have done.
When I let myself back in, Sara was sitting on the sofa, her head in her hands. It was oppressively hot in her apartment now, the stove on and the oven door propped open. The children’s newly cleaned clothing hung in every conceivable space to dry. As I set the mop and broom down, Sara looked up and offered a weary smile.
“Where are the children?” I asked her uncertainly. Sara pointed toward the stairs.
“Sleeping. And you, my friend, must take yourself into the bathroom and wash your hands and your feet very carefully with what’s left of my soap.” She rested her palms on her knees, then pushed herself to her feet. “While you do that, I’m going to make us some tea.”
I scrubbed my skin so carefully that by the time I was finished, my hands and feet were red and raw. By the time I returned to the kitchen, Sara had two steaming mugs of tea on her low-set coffee table. I thanked her quietly as I sat beside her. She gave me a sad smile as she reached for her tea.
“I know you’re curious, and I’d love to explain the whole, complicated mess to you, but it would be far too dangerous. All I can tell you is that a courier was taking these children somewhere safe. But there was an incident, and she had to quickly find an alternative place.”