Mila scans the street for SS. With none in sight, she takes Felicia by the hand and together they begin making their way toward the ghetto gates. They move quickly, the wind biting at their cheeks. It’s nearly dark, and as they walk, their breath, translucent gray, evaporates into the night.
When they are a block away from the gates and the guards are in sight, Mila opens her coat. “Come,” she says quietly, pointing to her shoe. “Stand here on my foot and grab hold of my leg.” Mila can feel Felicia’s tiny frame push against her, her arms wrap around her thigh. “Now hold on.” Felicia peers up and nods, eyes wide as Mila closes her coat around her. They make their way, more slowly now, toward the gates, Mila doing her best to walk without a limp despite the extra eleven kilos she’s carrying on one leg.
There are fifteen, maybe twenty guards stationed at each of the two pedestrian arches at the ghetto entrance, each with a rifle slung over his shoulder. Several of them count aloud as a throng of Jews shuffles in through the gates, blind with exhaustion from their day’s work outside the ghetto. “Hurry up!” one of the guards yells, waving a baton over his head like a lasso.
Mila cranes her neck, scanning the weary-eyed Jews moving past, as if she were there to greet one in particular—her husband, maybe, or her father. No one seems to notice as she weaves her way slowly through the crowd, toward the ghetto gates. Soon, she’s but a few meters from the large vehicle gate in the center, where, as she’d anticipated, a dozen or so German wives have begun to gather, bundled up in overcoats, their rosy-cheeked children in tow.
Her leg aches from Felicia’s added weight. She stops to check her watch. Seven minutes to six. Shivering, she contemplates for the thousandth time the consequence of a failed escape. Have I lost my mind? she wonders. Is this worth the risk? And then her world goes dark and she’s back at the roundup, huddled in an empty train car, her arms wrapped around Felicia’s head in a futile attempt to protect her from the atrocious scene, even though they both heard the gunshots, the thump of frail, naked corpses collapsing to the frozen earth just twenty meters from them.
Mila’s upper lip is damp with sweat. You can do this, she whispers, shaking off her doubt. Just count, she thinks. It’s her father’s technique, one he’s used since she was a child. “On three,” he’d say, and whatever the daunting challenge—pulling a tooth, yanking a splinter from under a fingernail, pouring peroxide over a bloodied knee—the counting somehow made it easier.
To her right, a horse and wagon carrying food from the Jewish Council clatters through the vehicle entrance and halts as half a dozen SS search the carriage contents, shouting, the entranceway din suddenly swelling. This is it, Mila realizes—the distraction she needs.
On three. Mila holds her breath and counts. One . . . two . . . On three, she turns her back to the gates, opens her coat and reaches down, touching Felicia’s head. In a second Felicia is by her side, holding her hand. Mila reaches up with her free hand and rips the white band off of her arm, feeling the electrifying pop pop of Nechuma’s two stitches giving way. She crumples the band into her fist and stuffs it quickly into her pocket. No one saw, she tells herself. From this point on, you are a German housewife, here to meet one of the guards. You are a free person. Think like one. Act like one.
“Stay right by me,” Mila orders coolly. “Look straight ahead, into the ghetto. Don’t look behind you.” In her periphery, Mila can see that several of the German women to her left have found their husbands. They stand chatting in pairs, their arms folded over their chests to stay warm. She squeezes Felicia’s hand. “Slowly,” she whispers, and together they begin inching their way, backward, toward the gate, moving as if in slow motion so as to remain unnoticed. Mila tries to force some slack into the rope-tight muscles of her neck and jaw, to imitate the easygoing expressions and mannerisms of the German women around her. But as they move closer to the gates, she’s thrown off by the sensation of a body too close to hers. She turns just as a young wife, her head craned in the opposite direction, knocks into her from behind.
“Entschuldigen Sie mich,” the woman apologizes, adjusting her cap. She smells of shampoo.
Mila smiles, waves her free hand in the air. “Es ist nichts,” she says quietly, shaking her head. The woman peers at Mila through crystal blue eyes for a moment, glances down at Felicia. And then she’s gone, lost in the crowd. Mila exhales and squeezes Felicia’s hand once more. They continue on, shuffling backward toward the vehicle gate. More wives stroll in from behind them—they tilt their chins now and then in Mila’s direction, but seem to look through her. You are one of them, Mila reminds herself. As long as they keep their backs to the entrance and move discreetly enough, she prays, they’ll blend in. Slowly, now. Right foot, left foot. Pause. Right foot, left foot. Pause. Not so tight, she tells herself, loosening her grip on Felicia’s sock-clad hand. Right. Left. Right. Left. Steady, almost there.
The last of the Jews has made his way into the ghetto, and Mila watches from the corner of her eye as the pedestrian gates are closed and padlocked. When a body suddenly brushes by, bumping her elbow with something hard, she presses her lips together just in time to silence a yelp that nearly escapes her throat.
“Move!” the guard yells, but marches by without stopping.
Finally, Mila senses a structure overhead. They are beneath the main entrance—the arched vehicle gate. A gust of wind lashes at their backs and Mila reaches for her hat to keep it from blowing away. She tugs its brim low over her brow and glances down at Felicia, who is white in the face but whose expression is remarkably calm. Stay focused, Mila reminds herself. You’re so close! Count your steps. One . . . two . . . They creep backward. Three . . . four . . . On her fifth step Mila can see the outer wall of the entrance and the sign that reads DANGER OF CONTAGIOUS DISEASES: ENTRY FORBIDDEN.
She can hardly believe it. They’ve made it outside the ghetto walls! But these next few steps, she realizes, are the most important. This is the moment she’d replayed in her mind over and over again like a scene out of a movie, until she’d convinced herself her plan could work.
Summoning the last ounce of her courage supply, Mila inhales sharply. This is it. “Come!” she whispers. She swivels 180 degrees, pulling Felicia with her.
And then, with the ghetto behind them, they walk. Right, left—slowly, not too fast, Mila thinks, resisting the instinct to run. Right, left, right, left. She tries to pull her shoulders back, to carry her chin high, but her heart is a jackhammer, her stomach a ball of barbed wire. She waits for the shouts, the gunshots. Instead, though, all she can hear is the sound of their footfall, Felicia’s three steps for her two, the heels of their shoes clicking lightly on the pavement of Lubelska Street, moving slightly faster now, away from the guards and their wives, away from the workshop and the filthy streets and the so-called contagious diseases.
Mila makes her first right onto Romualda Traugutta, and they walk in silence for another six blocks before ducking into an empty alleyway. There, in the shadows, Mila’s heart begins to slow. The muscles in her neck loosen. In a moment, once she’s gathered herself, she’ll make her way back to Warszawska Street, to her parents’ old building, where she will knock on the door of their neighbors and friends, the Sobczaks, and, if they’ll let her, spend the night. Tomorrow, she will use her false ID to try to arrange travel to Warsaw. They are far from safe—if they are caught, they will be killed—but they have escaped the prison of the ghetto. Her plan, the first phase of it at least, has worked. You can do this, Mila tells herself. She glances behind her to be sure she hasn’t been followed and then stops and bends down to cup a palm around Felicia’s cheek and presses her lips against her daughter’s forehead.
“Good girl,” she whispers. “Good girl.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Sol and Nechuma
Radom, German-Occupied Poland ~ May 1942