The Family Behind the Walls

30. Jordanna

THIRTY

JORDANNA

APRIL 14TH, 1944 – SOUTHERN POLAND

Every single night, as I lie in this cot and the lights go out, I let myself imagine what it will feel like to see Mama again. I wonder if she’s fighting to find us. I know she wouldn’t give up, and it’s the only thing that gets me through every day. On the other hand, despite closing my eyes or having them wide open, I see the look on Papa’s face when I turned around to reach for his hand before jumping from the train. I couldn’t understand his expression. It was unfamiliar. Now, I know, it was a combination of sorrow, fear, and a final goodbye. He must have known that would be the last time we saw each other, and it’s the last memory I have of him.

In the hours following our traumatizing jump from the train, Alfie, Lilli, and I wandered through the woods without a hint of direction or a clue what to do or where to go. I relive those nights in my dreams every night too, hoping for a chance to go back and make things right. In the darkness of my mind, it seems as if we were on that train with Papa just yesterday. But it’s been months—one-hundred-eighty-three days of sitting with my thoughts and personal resentment, telling myself everything I should have done differently. If I had, we wouldn’t be here, not without him.

Six Months Ago – October 9 th , 1943

“He must have jumped, but it’s impossible to know how long after us,” I say for the dozenth time. If we keep following the tracks, we’ll surely find him, even in the dark with only the moon shining a weak glow in our path.

“We’ll find him,” Lilli says. “I’m sure of it.” Her feet scuffle behind me, her hand interlocked with Alfie’s.

“Papa?” I call out. “Can you hear me?”

I don’t know how much time passed before he jumped from the train too. I would think we would have seen him by now if he had jumped, but he could be looking for us the same way we’re looking for him.

Lilli suddenly drops Alfie’s hand and races ahead of us without saying a word, her sights set on something I don’t see.

“Lilli, stop! Come back here. That’s too far away!” I shout after her.

“Sunflowers. Do you see them? Sunflowers,” she hollers, continuing her hunt.

Just before I catch up to her, she stops running, coming to a sudden stop. Maybe she’s realizing whatever she was looking at aren’t sunflowers. I don’t know how she could have seen them in the dark anyway.

Her attention shifts in another direction as if she isn’t concerned about the sunflowers anymore. Something else seems to have caught her eye, holding her feet frozen to the ground.

A chill surges through my limbs, watching the way she’s standing, the stillness, it chokes the wind out of me.

“Are you all right, Lilli?” I ask, reaching out to take her arm. Just as I do, she moves forward, stepping closer to the tracks, not responding to me. I lunge forward and grab hold of her before pulling her back to look at me. “What is it?”

She’s staring through me as if I’m not talking to her. Alfie passes by the two of us, walking further down the tracks. I assume he’s looking for whatever she might have seen.

Less than a minute passes before I watch Alfie fall to his knees, a hard thud against the dirt.

My body shakes from both cold and fear as I pull Lilli alongside me, stopping at the sight of a man lying dead on the ground.

We’ve all seen a dead body, too many, especially for Lilli at eight years old. Worse, we’ve seen charred bodies soldered to the ground. Bodies, engulfed in flames. Bodies, starved to death, worn to the bone, neglected, abused. We’ve seen so many soulless bodies.

I step in front of Lilli—my body does so on its own—an unexplainable instinct.

Alfie glances back at me and his tears glisten beneath the moonlight.

“No. No. No.”

I’m the one speaking but I can’t hear my own words as I stumble forward until I can’t hold my body up any longer. My legs give out and I fall onto dark-stained dead grass.

Alfie leaps up from his knees, racing back to stop Lilli from coming any closer. I glance back at him for a moment, watching him shield her, protect her from having to witness what’s in front of me.

“Papa,” I whisper through a silent cry.

They shot him twice—whoever shouted at him as we jumped from the train’s steps. I heard them shout but I wanted to believe it was only in my head. I know for sure now it’s the last thing I heard before the train door closed, separating my life from Papa’s once again.

Even together, as we are in this moment, it seems as if we still haven’t found our way back to each other as I thought we had. He is on one side, and I on the other.

He’s lifeless, lying in front of me, pale and pulseless. Blue under the thin layer of clouds floating by the moon.

I slide in beside him, cradling my body against his and lift his heavy arm over my side. He used to lie in bed with me at night and wait for me to fall asleep. He would tell me stories about the unicorns and fairies that lived in the forest, the ones who came to grant wishes to good children every night while they slept.

“Papa,” I cry out in ragged breaths. “You can’t leave me—us. You can’t. I need you. I’ll always need you. Don’t go.” My voice is stuck in my throat, not sounding like me at all. I wasn’t making any sense.

I know better, but I want to refuse to know better. I want to believe in unicorns and magical fairies. They could come heal him while he sleeps. They were just stories he told me, but I want them to be real. At least just this once.

I press my hand against the unfamiliar sensation of his cool leathery skin. I stare at his closed eyes, praying I see movement beneath his lids. He would always dream a lot. I caught him doing so when I woke up before he did on Sunday mornings. Mama didn’t want me to ever wake him because he had more trouble than me falling asleep. Mama told me I wouldn’t want to interrupt a dream—no one should do that to another person. I remember asking her how she knew he was dreaming, and she told me when the eyes move beneath a person’s eyelids, it means they’re dreaming.

There’s no movement as he lies here next to the train tracks. Just another minute longer—maybe I’ll see something. “Papa?” Mama wouldn’t give up. She would keep trying to make him better, somehow. I need to know what she would do. She saved so many people during the Great War, but I don’t know how.

My heart hurts. It’s as if someone’s punching me in the chest again and again and again. And my stomach feels the same way.

A scream comes out of nowhere. It’s me. I’m the one screaming, but I can’t make it stop.

I can’t let go of Papa. I won’t. I refuse to leave him. He needs me. Mama wouldn’t let go. I know she wouldn’t.

“Lilli needs you, Jordie.” Alfie’s voice pulls me out of a blindness, my face still buried against Papa’s neck.

I push back just enough to look at Papa again, but the clouds are making it harder to see details I know are in front of me—the freckles on the bridge of his nose and the small scar above his right eyebrow.

“This isn’t real,” I tell myself. “Warriors don’t die. So, this isn’t real.”

I scream again, louder this time, shouting for the real life I was locked out of, to let me back in.

Current Day – April 1944

I jackknife upright in the dark, screaming at the top of my lungs. Everything around me is hazy and blurry and I’m still searching for Papa’s body on the side of the railroad tracks, pleading with him to return. “Papa!”

A nun sits beside me and takes my hands within hers and utters a prayer. “It was a dream, dear. You’re here, beneath the church in your cot, not by the railroad with your papa. That was many months ago now.”

“No, no, I just saw him—” I argue, mumbling my words.

Alfie jumps out of his cot and rushes to my side, taking my other hand. “Shh. You’re all right,” he says, lifting my hand to his cheek. He tries to comfort me every night, only waking up because of the vibration of the floor when one of the nuns runs to my side. I stare at him, the slight highlights glowing across his face from the moon shimmering in through the narrow windows above our heads. There’s something different about him lately, the way he looks at me with a form of quiet curiosity that aches deep inside. I know the feeling. He takes in his surroundings differently without being able to hear much. He’s intense but gentle and consoling without much more than a few words. It’s only intensified my feelings for him. I need him like he’s the last thread holding me together.

“Your mind is healing from your loss. This is part of the healing process, but rest assured, you will always see him in your mind’s eye. Your papa will always be with you as a heavenly spirit.”

I don’t understand what she means. I just know I’ve heard her tell me the same thing every night for the months Lilli, Alfie and I have been living beneath a deserted church in the middle of nowhere.