“I know. We’re making a stop on the way. It will only take a moment.” Having spent the past four months in Warsaw working for a family of Nazis, Mila has become fluent in German.
In the B?cker home (which Mila learned had belonged to a family of Jews who now, she presumed, lived in the Warsaw ghetto), Mila is known as Iza Kremski. Edgar’s father is a high-ranking officer in the Gestapo. His mother, Gundula, is as lazy as the house cat, but what she lacks in productivity she makes up for in a hot temper and a raging sense of entitlement—a know-it-all with a propensity for slamming doors and squandering her husband’s money. Mila’s work is far from ideal, but it pays, and despite the fact that her heart breaks every day to be around a child that is not her own, she likes Edgar, as spoiled as he is, and the job is far better than her old one at the workshop in Wa?owa. At least here in Warsaw, unlike in the ghetto, she has a small semblance of autonomy.
Mila spends her mornings wiping furniture with a damp cloth, scrubbing porcelain bathroom tiles, and preparing meals. In the afternoons she takes Edgar to the park. No matter the weather—frost or rain, sleet or snow—Gundula insists that her son spend an hour outside. And so every day, Mila and the boy walk the same route from the B?ckers’ doorstep along St?pińska Street to the southern tip of ?azienki Park. Today, though, Mila has deviated a few blocks west to a street called Zbierska. It is a risk—she isn’t sure yet how she’ll convince Edgar to keep quiet about the detour—but Edith had told her to come during the day, and she desperately needs to see her.
Mila met Edith, a seamstress, soon after taking the job with the B?ckers. Edith visits the apartment weekly, to sew a tablecloth or tailor a dress for Frau B?cker, a jacket for Herr B?cker, a pair of knickers for Edgar. Yesterday when Gundula was out, Edith arrived as Mila was midway through polishing a drawerful of silver, and the pair struck up a conversation. They got on beautifully, speaking in hushed tones in their native Polish. Mila couldn’t help but suspect that Edith was also a Jew posing as an Aryan, a hunch that was confirmed when Edith mentioned casually that she grew up just east of Okopowa Street—an area Mila recognized immediately as the Jewish quarter, now part of the city’s ghetto. When Mila told her about Felicia, Edith mentioned a Catholic convent outside of town that might be accepting orphaned children. “I could find out if there is room for one more,” she offered, but just as she said it, Gundula returned, and the women worked the rest of the afternoon in silence. Before she left that day, Edith slipped Mila her address, scrawled across a corner torn from one of the B?ckers’ periodicals. “I live just up the street,” she whispered, and then added, “you’ll need to visit in the early afternoon when my neighbors are at work—they are . . . watchful.”
Mila glances down at the small triangular piece of paper in her palm, checks the address: 4 Zbierska.
“What kind of stop?” Edgar wants to know. “I want to go to the park.”
“Your mother asked me to pay a visit to Edith, the seamstress,” Mila lies. “You know her, you’ve seen her around the house. She measured you last week, for a shirt.”
“What for?”
“Never mind. It will only take a second.” Mila rings the button next to Edith’s name, grateful that the seamstress had included a surname on the address, and after a moment Edith’s voice chirps through a speaker.
“Who is there?” she asks in Polish.
Mila clears her throat. “Edith, it is—it’s Iza. I have Edgar with me. Please, could we come up for a moment?” A second later, the door buzzes and Mila and Edgar climb a narrow stairwell three floors to a door marked 3B.
Edith greets her with a smile. “Hello, Iza. Edgar. Please, come in.” Edgar scowls as they step inside.
“I’m sorry to barge in on you unexpectedly,” Mila says. She glances at Edgar, wondering how much Polish he can understand, and looks back up at Edith. “You mentioned a convent yesterday . . .”
Edith nods in understanding. “Yes. It’s in a town called W?oc?awek about eighty kilometers from here. I sent a letter today actually, to let them know there is a child in need. I’ll tell you as soon as I hear back.”
“Thank you.” Mila breathes. “I—very much appreciate the help.”
“Of course.”
Edgar tugs on Mila’s skirt. “Can we go? It’s been a minute.”
“Yes, we can go. We’re off to the park,” Mila adds, reverting to German as she turns to leave, trying to retain a semblance of levity in her voice.
“Thanks for the visit, Iza,” Edith offers. “Stay warm out there.”
“We’ll try.”
—
The moment she hangs her coat on the rack in the B?ckers’ foyer the following day, Mila senses something is wrong. The apartment is stagnant, eerily quiet. Herr B?cker would be at work by now, but on most days Mila arrives to Gundula puttering about, scribbling a list of chores, and to Edgar bouncing a ball or darting through the house engaged in some sort of imaginary battle, yelling, “Pow! Pow! Pow!” his hands cocked like imaginary pistols. Today, though, the silence in the apartment sends a cold trickling through Mila’s veins.
She shivers as she makes her way down a corridor to the living room. It’s empty. She continues on toward the kitchen but stops short as she passes the dining room. There is a figure at the far end of the room, sitting motionless at the head of the table. Even from the hallway, Mila can see that Gundula is red in the cheeks, her eyes ablaze with anger. Fighting the instinct to leave as quickly as she’d come, Mila turns to face her but remains in the doorway.
“Frau B?cker? Is everything all right?” she asks, her hands clasped together at her waist.
Gundula glares at her for a moment. When she speaks, her lips barely move. “No, Iza, everything is not all right. Edgar told me you went to the seamstress’s house yesterday, on the way to the park.”
Mila’s breath catches. “Yes, we did. I apologize, I should have told you.”
“Yes, you should have told me.” Gundula’s voice is suddenly louder, and more stern than Mila has heard it before. “What, pray tell, would prompt such a visit?”
Mila had guessed that Edgar might say something and had constructed an excuse in her mind.
“I asked her if she would come to my home later this week,” Mila begins, “as I’m in dire need of a new skirt. I was embarrassed to tell you.” Mila looks down. “I’ve been wearing this one for years, as I . . . I can’t afford to buy a new one. Edith mentioned one day that she had some extra fabric she could sell for a fraction of what it would cost in a store.”
Gundula glowers at Mila, shaking her head slowly left to right. “A skirt.”
“Yes, Madame.”
“Where is this skirt?”
“She’s cutting it for me as we speak, said she would bring it next week.”
“I don’t believe you.” What composure Gundula held a minute ago has begun to unravel.
“Excuse me?”
“You lie! I can see it in your eyes! You lie about the skirt, about your name, about everything!”
Edgar’s face pokes through a doorway behind Gundula. “Mutter? What—”
“I told you to stay in your room,” Gundula snaps. “Go!” Edgar disappears and Gundula’s chair scrapes loudly against the wooden floor behind her as she stands. “You take me for a fool, Iza—if that’s even your name—is it?”
Mila lets her hands fall to her sides. “Of course it’s my name, Madame. And of course you are right to be angry about one thing, and that is the fact that I didn’t tell you about our visit to the seamstress. For that I am truly sorry. But you are wrong to accuse me of lying about my identity. I’m offended you would say such a thing.”
As Gundula approaches, Mila notices a vein protruding like a purple snake from her neck and takes a step back, her instinct begging her once again to turn and run, to get out. But she holds her ground—running would only admit the truth.