The Woman with the Blue Star, Pam Jenoff [highly recommended books txt] 📗

I returned to the grate, but hung back farther now, heeding Mama’s warning. I suddenly realized how vulnerable I was, how easily I might get caught. It would be foolish to get any closer. The girl was not Jewish, I reminded myself. Despite the fact that we had lived among the Poles for centuries, many were glad to be rid of the Jews and turned them in to the Germans. There were even stories of small Polish children telling the Germans where escaped Jews were hiding, pointing them out as they tried to run in exchange for a piece of hard candy or a simple word of praise. No, even a nice-looking girl my own age was not to be trusted. I could still see the girl, though, and found myself curious about her.

The girl looked down. At first, she seemed not to see me in the darkness beneath the grate. It was as if the pitch-black of the sewer had somehow made me invisible to her. Then, as her squinting eyes adjusted to the darkness below, she found me. I tried to step back from the light, but it was too late—surprise flickered across her face as our eyes met. She opened her mouth, preparing to say something about my presence. I started to dart back into the shadows. Then I stopped. I had spent so long scurrying in the darkness, like some kind of sewer rat. I was not going to do it again. Instead, I closed my eyes, bracing for certain discovery and imagining all that would come after. When I opened them again, the girl had looked away. She had not said anything about me after all.

I exhaled, still standing frozen. A few seconds later, the girl looked back and smiled. It was the first honest-to-goodness smile I had seen since coming to the sewer.

Our eyes met, and even though we did not speak, the girl seemed to read all of my sorrow and loss. As I watched the girl, yearning broke over me. She reminded me of friends, of sunlight, of everything I’d once had that was now gone. I desperately wanted to go and stand alongside her. I reached my hand up. She did not come closer, but looked at me with an odd mix of pity and sadness.

There was another sound behind her, footsteps made by loud boots. The girl might not tell anyone else about me, but surely others would. Terrified, I slipped back into the darkness and ran from the grate to the safety of the chamber once more.

7

Ella

Just as well, I thought after the girl beneath the grate disappeared and I started back with the cherries. If someone was hiding in the sewer, it was for no good reason. The last thing I needed was to get involved in someone else’s problems.

But as I crossed the bridge back into the city center, an image appeared in my mind of Miriam, a dark-haired girl I had known in Lyceum, the high school I had attended before the war broke out. Miriam was quiet and studious, the pleated skirt of her uniform always meticulously pressed, bobby socks perfectly white. I had not known Miriam before high school; she was from a different neighborhood and not part of the circle of girls whom I’d called friends. She sometimes loaned me her eraser, though, and helped me with math at recess and we grew close over our four years in school together. Many days, I sat with her at lunch, her quiet, thoughtful humor a welcome change from the noise and gossip of the other girls.

One day not long after the war began, the teacher called Miriam abruptly to the front of the class and instructed her to go to the director’s office. Miriam’s eyes widened with fear and she looked toward me with worry. There was a ripple through the classroom. Going to the office meant you were in trouble. I could not imagine what solemn, mousy Miriam had done.

After Miriam had left the room, I asked for a pass to go to the toilet. In the hall, a trickle of pupils were leaving their classrooms, other students being summoned to the office. They were all Jewish. I saw Miriam walking down the corridor with her head low, alone and scared. I wanted to say something or reach out to her, to protest the unfairness of these students who just wanted to learn like everyone else being taken. But I silently returned to class.

The Jewish pupils did not come back to school after that day. When I told Krys what had happened, he clenched his fists angrily, but did not seem surprised. “They are taking the Jews’ rights and privileges,” he told me. “If we don’t stop them, who knows what they will do next?” For me, this was not about politics, though, but the friend I had lost. Miriam’s departure from school left a much greater void than I could have imagined. I’d thought of her many times since, curious what had become of her. Sometimes I replayed that day over several times in my head. What would have happened if I had said something in protest, tried to help her? It would not have changed anything. I would have gotten in trouble and they would have expelled the Jewish students just the same. But Miriam would have known that someone cared enough to speak up for her. Instead, I had done nothing.

The girl in the sewer was a Jew like Miriam, I realized. She must be hiding from the Germans. I wondered if there was something I should have done to help her—and whether or not I could have managed it if there was.

The truth was, I was not a brave person. I would never help the Germans—of that much I was certain. But I had not been courageous enough to stop them from expelling Miriam, and I was wary of trying to help this strange girl now. Keep