“No,” I say. “I have no reason to go into your office, nor have I been given permission to do so.”
Heinrich steps forward, hands in his pockets. “It’s the quiet ones I never trust.”
“I’m not quiet. I’ve been doing my job.”
He narrows his eyes at me like an animal before it lunges. My breath tightens, but I force my spine straight. I won’t let him see me flinch, despite the image of a woman lying dead on his front lawn earlier today.
“Is that right?” he says.
He pulls folded papers from his pocket. My documents. The ones I gave him when he took me as his servant. I didn’t think he’d hold on to them all this time, but since he had, I figured he hadn’t read them thoroughly.
“These are missing critical information,” he says.
“The information doesn’t exist,” I reply before he can say anything more. “I’m an orphan.”
He arches a brow, an expression that calls me a liar without saying the words. “We’ll see about that. Report to the prison camp tomorrow morning at ten, sharp. Your name will be on a list. A guard will bring you to me.”
“There is nothing to see, or find,” I say too quickly. I sound too confident. I should have kept my lips sealed.
A smirk pokes at the left side of his face. “If you’re just here to do your job,” he says, his smirk fading into the age lines around his mouth, “and you are who you say you are, it won’t matter, right?”
I turn around and walk away from the family room, toward the stairs. “What should I do with the children?”
“Do not bring them. Ada can manage to watch over them while you’re gone.”
He’s sending me to Auschwitz. It’s a trap. I know it. He’s done with my presence in this house. Done with me listening to their arguments. Done with whatever he thinks I’ve stolen, and the way I stand up to Ada…
The easiest way to get rid of evidence is to…
TWENTY-TWO
HALINA
I spent several hours scrubbing the stench of vomit out of my black dress and apron last night. I can still smell the rot of partially digested food. But I have to change out of the striped prison uniform before showing up at the gates of Auschwitz. Heinrich saw me in that attire last night, didn’t question it, didn’t even know his daughter was vomiting from drinking the same bourbon-laced milk as his infant.
Ada handed me a map on my way out the door as Marlene was pleading to go with me on my “walk.” I could run. I could escape. There’s a false feeling of freedom as I walk down the street, but as I turn a corner, I find guard posts, roads blocked, and only one direction free to pass. I might be living in an attic of a house rather than a cell, but there is no way out of this prison town.
The unfamiliar road I’m following by points on the map, reminds me of the time I tried to run away from the orphanage when I was twelve. There were no Nazis here then, just tall trees, unmarked paths and an idea that there could be a life waiting for me somewhere. If I could find my parents, they’d see me and wish they hadn’t left me. I didn’t consider how I would go about finding these two strangers. I guess I just figured I’dwalk past them someday and feel a sense of connection—know it was them, and that they had been looking for me just like I was looking for them. It was such an outlandish thought and dream, one that got me lost in the woods and eventually found by the police who took me back to the orphanage. There was no escaping the life I was destined to live then or now.
A red post box catches my attention at the next corner I’m taking. I was hoping to find one so I could mail my letter to Julia. I pull the sealed envelope from my apron pocket and quickly drop it into the box as I continue walking down the street, doing what I can to avoid extra attention from onlookers in the nearby buildings.
Within view is a wide, brick building the trains travel through. I look down at my map, finding my destination to be in a different spot to the main gate. A train passes, the rumble startlingly loud with a faint murmur of cries beneath the steam whistle. I can’t help but watch as the train passes, spotting hands poking out between the wooden slats of the cattle cars.
Bile rises from the depths of my stomach from the overwhelming grief, the sound of pain, and the violent odor of rotting earth mixed with thick smoke. All those stories—the rumors and assumptions. Do these people know where they’re being taken? Where they’re going to end up?
I should be focused on where I’m going. I could be walking in as unsuspecting as them, just through a different entrance.
The path I’m on runs alongside a tall fence, topped with barbed wire. At first, I avoided looking beyond the fence and into the camp, afraid of what I might see. The truth. People are everywhere, just men from what I can see though. They’re all dressed in the blue and white striped uniforms, standing in a line, walking in a line, dragging a wagon, or doing nothing at all except staring back at me. The longer I keep my eyes set on what’s happening within, the more I see. People fallingto their knees, some crawling, others not moving, face down. I straighten my focus, promising to only look straight ahead rather than at the reality I’m passing. A watch tower looms over my head, making me feel like nothing more than an insect as I pass. Another wooden tower unfurls ahead, but it’s short and behind a gate.
The people in front of me have the same badge as the two kapos I saw at the Schäfers’ house. They show their forearms as identification, a number that’s matched up to the notes in the guard’s hand.
I don’t have a number but I know Gavriel has one. I step up to the tall guard, his face hidden in the shadow of his low angled cap. “I’m here to see Officer Schäfer. I’m the nanny at his household for his children. My name is Halina Wojic.”
The guard watches me in silence for a long moment—a form of intimidation maybe. It’s not needed. I don’t want to be here. He finally glances down at the papers clipped to his board and flips a few pages then drags his pencil down the center of the page. He turns to his right, presses his fingers beneath his front teeth and whistles to whomever is listening.
“Another guard will take you to him.”
A minute doesn’t pass before another identically uniformed guard approaches the gated entrance. Without a word, he gestures for me to follow. As if I’m stepping over the ledge of two different worlds, the weight of my body pulls me into the soggy ground, my shoes smacking from the tackiness of the mud. Fumes of burning rubbish assault my nose. There are no prisoners in my path, but I feel them around me. The air is quiet, no birds, or chirping insects, just distant groans, and muffled shouts.
