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

church bells pealed, signaling the start of Sunday mass. The space beneath the grate was still empty. Dejected, I prepared to leave. But a moment later, a bright circle appeared in the darkness behind the grate. The girl was here. Excitement rose in me. The vision in my mind, which I had imagined since the previous day, was suddenly real.

The girl stared up at me for several seconds, two dark eyes blinking like a scared animal trapped in lights. I could see her more closely now. She had a smattering of freckles on her nose and one of her front teeth was chipped at the bottom. Her skin was so pale it was almost translucent and her veins seemed to form a map beneath her skin. She looked like a china doll that might break at any second.

“What are you doing down there?” I asked. The girl opened her mouth, as if to answer. Then, seeming to think better of it, she looked away. I tried again. “Do you need help?”

I wasn’t sure what else to say. She didn’t seem to want to talk, but remained there, staring up at me. Give her the bread and go, I thought. I reached in my pocket and pulled it out, then kneeled close to the grate.

I started to reach down and then hesitated. An image popped into my mind from a few years earlier when I had found a stray dog in the street. I had brought it home proudly, but Ana Lucia scowled. My stepmother hated animals and mess and I was certain she would make me turn it out once more. To my surprise, she did not. “You’ve taken it on now and you’ll have to take care of it.” As awful as my stepmother was, she felt duty bound and she made me feed and walk it until, months later, it died.

It was the worst thing to compare this poor girl in the sewer to an animal. But I knew that if I helped her now, she would somehow become my responsibility and that terrified me.

Still, I pushed the bread through the grate. “Here!” The girl was several feet below me, and as the bread sailed too far to the left of her, I feared she would miss it. But she moved with surprising speed and scrambled to catch it in her hand. Realizing that it was food, her eyes widened with delight. “Dzie˛kuje˛ bardzo.” Thank you very much. She smiled with her whole face and the joy she found in the tiny piece of bread broke my heart.

I expected her to gobble it down, but she did not. “I have to share it,” she explained, as she put it in her pocket.

It had not occurred to me before that there might be others below ground with her as well. “How many of you are there?”

She hesitated, as if unsure whether to answer. “Five. My mother and I, plus another family.”

I noticed then the tear on her sleeve, a line that went evenly around the circumference where stitches of fabric had been pulled out. My breath caught. Sadie had worn a band with a blue star, just as my classmate Miriam had. “You’re Jews.” She lowered her chin in confirmation. Of course, some part of me had known that already. Why else would one hide in the sewer?

“Are you from the ghetto?” I asked.

“No!” she snapped, taking offense. “The ghetto was a place where we stayed for a few awful months; it was not my home. I’m from Kraków, just like you. We lived in an apartment on Meiselsa Street before the war.”

“Of course,” I replied quickly, chastised. “I only meant, was the ghetto where you came from before here?”

“Yes,” she said softly. My eyes traveled above the alleyway to the east. The Germans had built a high-walled ghetto in Podgórze, a neighborhood just a few kilometers east along the riverbank from here, a few years earlier and forced all of the Jews from Kraków as well as from the surrounding villages to move there. Then, just as improbably, they had emptied the ghetto and sent all of the Jews away. “When the Germans liquidated the ghetto, we were able to escape to the sewer.”

“But that happened more than a month ago.” I recalled hearing the news that the Germans had taken the last of the Jews from the ghetto in Podgórze. I did not know where they had been sent. But I understood now that it was the very reason the girl was hiding. “You’ve been in the sewer ever since?” The girl nodded. A chill ran through me. Living in the sewer sounded horrid. Wherever the Jews were being taken, though, must be even worse. Going underground had undoubtedly spared her that fate.

“How long will you stay there?” I asked.

“Until the war is over.”

“But that could be years!” I blurted.

“There really isn’t anywhere for us to go.” Her voice was calm, accepting of her situation. I admired her bravery; I did not think I could last an hour in the sewer, if our situations were reversed. Pity rose up in me. I wanted to do something more to help her, but I didn’t know what. I pulled a coin from my pocket and pushed it through the grate. It clattered to the ground and she scampered to pick it out of the mud.

“That’s very kind, but I’ve no way to use it down here,” she said.

“No, of course not,” I said, feeling foolish. “I’m sorry, I don’t have more food.”

“Can you see the sky from your window?” she asked abruptly.

“Yes, of course.” The question seemed an odd one.

“And all of the stars?” I nodded. “How I miss that! I can see just a tiny little sliver of the sky from down here.”

“So?” I didn’t mean it unkindly, but given her situation, it did not seem the thing to worry about. “Aren’t they all the same?”

“Not at all! Each one is its own picture. There is Cassiopeia and