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

narrow windows of our apartment. Once I had taken for granted that the stars would always be there. Then they had been stolen from me, as surely as Papa had. I looked up now, drinking in the magical view, even more brilliant than I had remembered.

I was out of the sewer. I wanted to dance, to run, to scream. Of course, I did not. We were standing on a bit of riverbank close to the concrete embankment that led up to the street. Though deserted, the riverbank was exposed. We might be seen by the Germans or the police at any moment. “We can’t stay here,” I said.

“No,” Ella agreed.

I stood upright beside her, noticing for the first time how much taller than me she was. She was staring at me, and I wondered if it was my bedraggled appearance. “What is it?” I asked.

“It’s just so strange to see you at eye level,” she replied, and we both laughed softly. “You should wipe the dirt from your face,” she added more seriously. She looked around for something I could use and, finding nothing, pulled off her fine silk scarf and handed it to me. I could feel my own filth seeping through and soiling her scarf. She did not complain. I handed it back, wishing I had a way to wash it before I returned it to her. She used the edge of it to wipe clean a spot on my cheek that I had missed. Then she wrapped the scarf loosely around my head like a shawl. “There you go.” She smiled brightly, as though that had fixed everything.

“Thank you.” A wave of gratitude washed over me, and impulsively, I hugged her. I thought she might pull back, repulsed by my smell. But she did not. Instead, she squeezed me back tighter. We stood embracing, not moving, for several seconds.

When we pulled apart, my necklace caught on the top button of her dress. I disentangled it carefully. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the charm.

“It was my father’s.”

“It’s lovely. But what does it mean?”

I traced my finger over the Hebrew letters, gold and glittering in the moonlight. My father had done this when I was a child as he explained the meaning and I could almost feel his hand on mine now, guiding me. “Chai. It stands for life.”

“It’s beautiful. But you’ll have to take it off.” I recalled Saul warning me about the necklace, too. In the sewer, I could disregard his concerns. But wearing it up here on the street and revealing that I was Jewish could mean detection and death. I unclasped the necklace and put it in my pocket.

“Now come,” Ella said.

We started east along the riverbank toward Podgórze, the neighborhood where the ghetto had been located. The streets looked bigger than I remembered and everything seemed more ominous and menacing. I should not be here. I was seized with the urge to crawl back into the ground.

We made our way toward the ghetto, taking the alleys and hugging the shadows of the buildings. I cringed at the sound of our shoes scratching too loudly against the cobblestones. Even being out at this hour was a crime, and if seen, we would be detained and questioned. I would never see my mother again. I walked tentatively, afraid that each step might be my last. Ella, though, moved through the streets with a surety that I envied. Resentment rose up in me unexpectedly. This was my city as much as hers, or at least it had been. But now I was an outsider, visiting only by her good graces. I pushed down the feeling. The only thing that mattered now was finding the food. I thought of the others back in the sewer who were counting on me, what would happen to them if I failed to find food or did not return.

We soon reached the Rynek Podgórski, the neighborhood’s main market square, which sat just outside the ghetto walls. It was deserted now except for a few rats searching the trash bins for food. We skirted the edge of St. Joseph’s, the immense neo-Gothic church at the head of the square, and reached the ghetto wall. Although there was no one to keep inside anymore, the ghetto gates were still closed. We followed the perimeter of the high brick wall until we found a section that had been knocked down, then stepped gingerly over stones and rubble to get inside. The devastation was so much worse than I had heard about or realized from below, building after building burned out, the windows smashed, just shells of where people had once lived. I looked at Ella, who had stopped walking. I knew the ghetto all too well, but this was the first time that she was seeing it and her face was twisted with dismay as she saw the awful way we had lived—and how it had all ended.

“Come,” I said, urging her onward. Now I had to lead the way, weaving through the ghetto streets toward the house on Lwowska Street that Saul had told me about. The air was tinged with coal and something more acrid, perhaps the smell of garbage burning. At the corner of Józefińska Street, I paused, looking in the direction of the building where we had once lived. The ghetto had not been my home—we had been forced there, and before the sewer, it was the worst place I had ever known. Still, this was the last place my parents and I had really been together, and I found myself assaulted by my memories and a kind of nostalgia I had not expected. More than a small piece of me wanted to go and see our apartment once more.

But there was no time. We pressed onward. Amidst the destruction, there were several houses that had been refurbished, with new glass in the once-broken windows or, in a few cases, newspaper held in place with tar to cover the gap.