Rena's Promise (30 page)

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Authors: Rena Kornreich Gelissen,Heather Dune Macadam

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Historical, #test

BOOK: Rena's Promise
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"I think my sister has malaria." I'm not sure if I should continue. Quickly I glance across the work area; no one can overhear us. My shovel never falters from its movement. "Maybe if we had some tomato juice and a slice of lemon, we could wash the crust from her lips. It might break the fever." I have managed the impossible; I have communicated an entire sentence without interruption. Rock against metal scrape abrasively against one another. I can continue these movements for hours without aching muscles or fatiguedigging, digging. We work without faltering. We go back for another load. I work twice as fast, hoping to get one more load in before the men leave, before nightfall. I am shaking with nervousness. Emma signals for us to take the lorry.
"Be quick!" she orders. We push the lorry along the tracks. Our heads down, we unload the cart without looking at the men.
"You need quinine." He sounds so hopeful.
"Yah, sure . . ." It has been a long time since I felt any hope. He digs. We dig. The sun nears the horizon. The lorry is almost empty. We disembark from our task, preparing to push the cart toward the sifters and Emma, away from the men.
"Don't worry, Rena." I hear his voice fall across the fence and cling to it as if it is a life raft on an angry sea. For some reason I believe Heniek can help us; I do not know how, but for a moment I breathe easier.
The crust on Danka's lips is worse, but she does not feel as hot today. I wonder if the volatility of this fever is one of its dangers. We dig and sift all morning until lunch and never load the lorries. I want to scream at Emma to let us take the lorries, but all we do is sift and sift and sift. At least there will be plenty to move tomorrow, but that means they will patrol us closer if more groups are moving the lorry loads. Lunch comes and goes. There is a portion of meat in my bowl. I bite it in half, handing the remainder to Danka.

 

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"Is it pork?"
"Eat it." I refuse to answer her question. It is meat, that is all that matters. The war must be going well.
All afternoon we dig and sift. The lorries do not move.
Four
A. M
.
"
Raus! Raus!
"
We line up at roll call finishing our tea, eating last night's bread.
"How are you feeling today, Danka?"
"Better." She sips her tea quietly. Her eyes gape open at the scene around us. A sea of girl-women holding cups of semi-tea chew last night's bread slowly, carefully, trying to make it last. The camp is overflowing. I have never seen so many women at one time; I cannot even comprehend the numbers. Roll call takes ages.
Finally we march out with Emma.
"Take the lorries," she orders us first thing. The sun is just breaching the horizon. There is a golden glow about us as shadows appear where night had been. Danka and I quickly take our place on the side of the carts, pushing the lorry toward the men's kommando. An SS walks by. No sooner is his back to us than a stone falls at my feet. I stoop nonchalantly down to the ground, checking my shoe, and then swing up my shovel quickly, helping remove the sand we sifted yesterday. The hand with the note holds tightly to the shovel. It is a larger piece of paper than the scrap I sent them, and it's so early that I must think of what to do with the note for the rest of the day. In my dress or in my hand? The shoes aren't safe enough for a whole day of work, so the debate continues. In my hem or in my hand? I wonder where to hide the note. My hands are too warm and the shovel slips in my grasp as I scoop the sand over the edge into the growing pile. The lorry is empty. Quickly I hide the note in the hem of my dress with no chance to read it.
It's a long day, a long roll call, but at last we enter the block,

 

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more eager to read the note than to eat our bread. It is long and written as if in great haste.
You saw pipes coming close to your detail. Stuff in groundfive steps from pipestomorrow
. I cannot believe the words before my eyes.
All day we eye the pipes. I can see that five steps from the pipe there is a little rise in the ground, but we must wait patiently. I watch the sky closely as the afternoon wanes. Our timing must be perfect. I nod to Danka. Slowly we dig, little by little, away from the group toward the pipes. We gouge the land, carrying large shovelfuls of dirt to the sifting net, each time returning one step closer to the pipes. There are no SS nearby. I wink, and Danka busily digs around me, loosening the dirt while blocking me with her body so no one can see what I'm doing. Working diligently, she puts on a good show, giving me the cover I need to retrieve our treasure. Quickly I tie a bottle of tomato juice underneath my dress, to the other end of the string, which also holds my bowl. In a bit of cloth there is a lemon and, to my great surprise, tablets. There is a note, too, and these I hide in my hem with the lemon.
"They've gotten us quinine." I whisper to Danka. She digs deeper into the dirt, throwing her back into the work. I was not expecting so much and only have the hem of my dress to hide things in.
"Hurry," Danka whispers, digging, digging. It is very complicated, smoothing the tablets out in my hem so the SS won't notice any lumps. I pray none will fall out.
"Done." We dig around the area, quickly obscuring the hiding place.
"Halt!" Emma yells. Our skin bristles in fear. We stop what we're doing, trying to erase any traces of anxiety on our faces. We look up at Emma.
"Line up!" she announces.
I cast a glance at Danka as we carry our last shovelful of dirt toward the sifting net before carrying the shovels into the toolshed.

 

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My heart smiles proudly at my sister's glistening face. She does everything to the best of her ability, and despite her illness she's been more than stalwart today.
"Here, take one now." I slip a tablet into her hand.
"March!" Our hearts are pounding so loudly that I am sure the band must hear the timing within our chests. Our luck is holding out; for five days there has not been a selection. We go to the blocks, grab our bread, and take our place in the shelves. Holding onto our blanket, I give Danka the tomato juice and lemon.
"You have some," she offers. "You have a crust on your lips, too."
"No, Danka. You're the one who's sick."
"Rena, I can't take it all. You must share it with me."
"You're going to waste it if you leave it for me. I'm not going to take it." She sips from the bottle and sucks on the lemon quietly.
"Wash your lips with the lemon, Danka." I show her what I mean. The crust dissolves under the vitamin juices of real fruit. Her lips change dramatically as the brown crust that has encased them for days washes away.
"Use the rind." She hands me the lemon rind. I use it to scrub my lips as well. The flavor of the rind is bitter and sharp, but it makes my taste buds leap.
"I bet it took twenty people to organize this package," I whisper.
"Read the note," Danka reminds me.
Quinine three times a day,
I read softly, out loud.
Watch the pipesif mound by pipes, something there for you. In few days more juice. Be well. Love, Heniek and Bolek. (Bolek's in love with Danka. I'm in love with you.)
Danka blushes and giggles slightly. It sounds so strange to hear mirth. "Thank you, Lord, for saving us once more." Danka squeezes my hand as she falls asleep.
Morning comes and Danka finishes the tomato juice and eats the lemon rind. I give her a tablet and plan to give her one at each meal until they're gone.

 

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Pushing the lorries toward the men, I check the landscape and quickly toss the note I wrote last night:
Thank you. Danka's already feeling better. Bög zaplac

*,
may God reward you. Love, Rena and Danka
. We do not have anything else to give Heniek and Bolek but these words. Perhaps, like the tablets to us, love will give them what they need to survive. In this place we cannot be selfish with affection or gratitude. If we don't say it today there may never be another chance.

Over the next few weeks there is a rise in the dirt by the pipes three times. Each time there is tomato juice, a lemon, and a love note from Heniek and Bolek. One time there are more quinine tablets. Then one day we march toward the piles of sand and there are no men working on the other side of the fence. Our saviors are gone from our view but not from our hearts. We think of them often. We never see them again.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
"Rena?" I turn toward a familiar face from my past. A whirlwind of memory tangles my thoughts. It is someone from home, a Gentile.
"Manka?" I question the face before me.
"Rena. How goes it with you?"
"I'm alive. How is it that you're here?" I look at her triangle. It is the color of a political prisoner, but I find that hard to believe. She probably talked out of her head without thinking; she was known for that in Tylicz. I feel myself growing waryher eyes have that wild look one sees too often behind these fences. She is losing her mind. I remain cautious.
"I saw your parents killed," she says matter-of-factly. "That's right. They came back to Tylicz. They shouldn't have come back. One day the Germans decided to take all the Jews that were left, about eight, and they made them line up in the marketplace . . ." I cannot believe her callous intonation. "Then they tied their hands up with ropes to a wagon and ran the horses around the cir-

 

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cle until every last one of them was dead." She sounds as if she's reciting the alphabet.
"Excuse me . . ." I start to walk away, but her voice follows me.
"They screamed for us to save them, but there was nothing anyone could do. They suffered terribly. They shouldn't have come back, but it wouldn't have mattered, would it? Everyone who isn't dead is here!"
Stumbling through the mud, I try to escape her voice, her hideous voice. I hate you! I want to scream at her face. I hate you.
The vision starts to fracture. The crack is long and deep, scarring my mother's patient and loving face. Mending it quickly, as if I am a bricklayer securing a fortress, I smear concrete across my memory. Mama is waiting for us. They are at the farmhouse waiting. They are safe. Only the rest of the world is in danger. Manka's out of her mind, I tell myself. She wasn't there. She's crazy. She's out of her mind, I repeat to myself over and over again.
The fences of Birkenau stretch before me. I do not get close enough to get shot, but I stand there staring out at the open spaces of my homeland. There are no tears on my face, I'm too dehydrated to cry, but my eyes ache as if tears were falling.
Sometimes I have serious doubts that they're alive, but sometimes I feel as if there's a physical presence next to me. I can smell her. I can feel her touch. I cannot see Mama but I know she's near. I have moments of common sense and clear thinking when I know this invisible presence means she's gone, but then my cloudy mind obscures that truth. There is less pain, living in a cloudy mind, so I don't allow myself to think about things too clearly unless clear thinking means saving our lives.
There is not much time for clear thinking in Auschwitz-Birkenau, but when I made the oath to Danka, that was a clear moment. If I'd been cloudy I couldn't have said, "My hand is the Holy Book and Mama and Papa are standing right here in front of us." I'd said it as if they were in a heaven, invisible entities watch-

 

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