The hours slip away as the women work. Every so often they look up at one another, their eyes glassy, and smile—it’s been a long time since they’ve sewn together and it feels good, a distant reminder of the afternoons, long before Felicia was born, when they’d sit down to fix a hem or patch a seam—it was often during those afternoons at each other’s side that their most meaningful conversations would unfold.
At around three in the morning, Nechuma tiptoes to the pantry and pulls out a drawer to reveal a safe hidden underneath. She returns with four fifty-zloty notes. “Here,” she says. “You will need it.” Mila takes two of the notes and slides the remaining two across the table.
“You keep these,” she says. “I’ll be fine. I’ll be with Halina soon.”
Halina had left Radom three weeks earlier when Adam was assigned a job working for the railroad in Warsaw, mending tracks destroyed by the Luftwaffe before the city fell. Franka and her brother and parents had gone with her. Halina had written as soon as she was settled, urging Mila to come to Warsaw: We found a flat in the heart of the city, she wrote—this, Mila knew, meant they were living outside the ghetto walls, as Aryans—I am working on getting our parents positions at the arms factory in Pionki. For you, jobs in Warsaw are plentiful. Franka has a job nearby. We have everything you need here. Please—find a way to come!
Nechuma slides the notes back across the table. “Here we have work, and our ration cards. You will be on your own for a while,” she says, nodding toward the window. “You will need this more than we will.”
“Mother, it’s the last—”
“No, it’s not.” Nechuma taps her breastbone gently with her forefinger. Mila had nearly forgotten. The gold. Two coins, covered in ivory cotton—her mother had camouflaged them as buttons. “And there is the amethyst,” Nechuma adds. “If we need to, we’ll use it.” What was left of the silver had bought Adam his life. Everything else they’d sold or traded for extra food rations, blankets, and medicine. Thankfully, they hadn’t yet been forced to part with Nechuma’s purple stone.
“All right then.” Mila tucks two bills into each side of the coat’s collar before stitching it up.
When she first devised her plan, Mila had petitioned her parents to flee to Warsaw with her, but they’d insisted it was too dangerous. “Go find your sister and Franka, get Felicia to a safe place,” they said. “We’ll only get in your way.” It was wrenching for Mila to admit it, but they were right. Her chances of a successful escape were greater without them. Her parents moved slowly now, and still carried the faint Yiddish accents of their childhoods. Posing as Aryan would be more difficult for them. Halina had mentioned in her letter a factory in Pionki, a plan to transfer Sol and Nechuma there. In the meantime, they were still employed, and everyone knew that a job was the only thing that mattered in the ghetto.
As a dull, silver light fills the room, Nechuma sets her needle down. Mila sweeps the leftover shreds of fabric from the table into her palm and hides them under the sink. Their work is complete. Mila wraps a scarf around her neck, a patchwork of SS uniform scraps, and then slides her arms into the sleeves of her new overcoat. Nechuma stands, running her fingers over the seams, feeling for loose threads on the buttonholes, eyeing the hem that hangs a centimeter off the floor. She smooths a lapel and tugs at a sleeve to make it lie perfectly flat. Finally she takes a step back, and nods.
“Yes,” she whispers. “This is good. This will work.” She wipes a tear from the corner of her eye.
“Thank you,” Mila breathes, wrapping her arms around her mother, holding her close.
—
The next day, Mila hurries home from the workshop at five thirty. She is dressing Felicia in the foyer when Nechuma returns from the cafeteria.
“Where is Father?” Mila asks, slipping a third shirt over Felicia’s head. She worries when her parents are more than a few minutes late returning to the flat.
“He was put on dish washing duty today,” Nechuma says. “Had to stay a few minutes to clean up. He’ll be here.”
“Why do I need so many clothes, Mamusiu?” Felicia asks, looking up at her mother, her eyes curious.
“Because,” Mila whispers, squatting so her face is level with her daughter’s. She brushes a few fine strands of cinnamon hair behind Felicia’s ear. “We’re leaving tonight, chérie.” She’d purposefully waited to share the details of her plan with Felicia—she herself was nervous enough about it, and she didn’t want Felicia to be nervous, too.
A flash of excitement spreads across Felicia’s face. “Leaving the ghetto?”
“Tak.” Mila smiles. And then her lips tighten. “But it’s very important you do exactly as I say,” she adds, even though she knows that Felicia will. Mila buttons a second pair of pants around her daughter’s narrow waist, helps her into her winter coat and pulls a pair of her socks over her hands as mittens. Finally, she tugs a small wool cap over Felicia’s head, tucks the ends of her hair underneath it.
Nechuma hands Mila a handkerchief lumpy with her day’s ration of bread. Mila slides it down her shirt. “Thank you,” she whispers. In the kitchen, she retreives the ID Adam made for her from the drawer with the false bottom and tucks it into her purse. Returning to the foyer, she slips into her new coat, her scarf, her hat, her gloves. Finally, instead of securing her armband around her sleeve as she normally would, she holds it between her teeth and forefingers and tears it at the seam. Felicia gasps. “Don’t worry,” Mila says. Even though she’s too young to wear one, Felicia knows what happens to Jews in the ghetto if they’re caught without their armbands. Mila holds the white strip of cotton to her arm so the blue Star of David faces out, and lifts her elbow. Nechuma sews the ends back together with two small stitches and snips the thread without knotting it. As Mila adjusts the band, she hears her father in the stairwell.
“There she is!” Sol beams, arms outstretched as he lumbers through the doorway. He bends to pick Felicia up, and swings her around, kissing her on the cheek. “My goodness,” he says, “you feel like an elephant with all of these clothes on!” Felicia giggles. She adores her dziadek, loves it when he hugs her so tightly she can barely breathe, when he sings her the lullaby about the kitten with the blinking eyes—the one his mother sang for him when he was a boy, he told her once—when he swings her in circles until she’s dizzy, and tosses her into the air and catches her so it feels like she’s flying.
“You won’t need that, will you?” Sol asks as he sets Felicia down, his eyes suddenly serious, pointing at Mila’s arm.
“Just until I get to the gate,” Mila says, swallowing.
“Right. Of course,” Sol nods.
Mila looks at her watch. It’s a quarter to six. “We have to go. Felicia, give your babcia and dziadek a hug.” Felicia looks up, suddenly disappointed. She hadn’t realized that her grandparents would be staying behind. Nechuma kneels, pulls Felicia to her chest.
“Do widzenia,” Felicia mumbles, kissing her grandmother’s cheek. Nechuma closes her eyes for a long moment. As she stands, Sol bends down and Felicia wraps her arms around his neck. “Do widzenia, dziadku,” she says, her nose tucked into the hollow over his collarbone.
“Good-bye, pumpkin,” Sol whispers. “I love you.”
It is all Mila can do to keep from bawling. She throws her arms around her father, and then her mother, clutching them to her, hoping, praying it is not the last time they will be together.
“I love you, Myriam,” her mother whispers, calling her by her Hebrew name. “God be with you.”
And with that, Mila and Felicia are gone.
—