The Family Behind the Walls

32. Jordanna

THIRTY-TWO

JORDANNA

SEPTEMBER 4TH, 1944 – SOUTHERN POLAND

We’ve been beneath this church for just less than a year now. We’re somewhere in the south of Poland but I’ve never heard of the town. I’m not certain this town is even on a map. It’s just woodland and this church.

Daily, I watch Lilli sit on the cold, damp floor with a rag doll, its fluff pushing through small tears, sewn x-marked stitches for eyes, a red button for a nose, and no mouth. Sparse threads of brown yarn are scattered along the top of the head, and the doll has no clothes. Sometimes the few other little girls here join her in silence and stare at the doll. On occasion, they might ask to hold it for a moment. Lilli shares well, given she has little to share. The nun who found us in the woods while foraging for berries offered to help us, despite Lilli refusing to follow her to the church because it meant going against all common rules Mama raised her with. Never go anywhere with a stranger. I’ve asked myself a million times if Mama would have made the same decision as we did by coming to this church with the nun, and I think she would have. I try so hard to channel her strength but more often than not, it feels like I’m just pretending to be as brave as she’s always been. If I keep making the “right” decisions, I can just hope it will bring us back to her.

Eleven Months Ago – October 11 th , 1943, Southern Poland

It’s been two days since we left Papa’s side. Lilli has done nothing but ask when he’ll be coming back for us and for every step I take away from his body, the worse I feel for not being honest. I haven’t had the heart to tell her the body she spotted in the distance was Papa.

“Jordanna, I don’t want to walk any further. Papa will never find us.”

I close my eyes for a long blink, stop in my step and turn to face her. My heart feels swollen in my chest as I grab a hold of her hands. “Lilli, Papa isn’t going to come looking for us.”

She stares at me, her eyes piercing through my soul. There isn’t a sense of question or confusion on her face, only anger. I don’t want her to be angry with him. “Why are you lying to me?” she asks.

“I’m not lying to you. Papa isn’t going to come for us.”

“You lied to me. You said you didn’t want me to see the man who had died by the train tracks.”

“That wasn’t a lie either.”

“Was it—” she takes in a shuttered breath. “Was it Papa? Is that why?”

She’s eight. How can she be this intuitive? Or how can I be so na?ve to think I could protect her from the truth?

I close my eyes again. This time, tears spill out and press my lips together as if I can hold in the sound of a cry. I nod my head and swallow against my dry throat.

“You didn’t let me see him,” she squeaks. “How could you do that to me?” She pulls her hands out of mine and storms past me. “I’m going back to find him. I can help him. I know I can.”

Alfie has been watching but not hearing. I’m sure he can make an assumption based on Lilli’s sudden behavior though. He grabs hold of her arm as she thrashes by him. “Where are you going?” he asks her.

She screams, “To find Papa,” and points in the direction of the railroad.

Alfie turns back to face me, and I lower my head, giving him a nod so he knows I’ve told her about Papa.

He pulls her into his arms. Her legs go limp, falling to the ground. Alfie goes with her and curls her into his lap. He doesn’t hear her screaming out for Papa as he holds her. I wish I didn’t have to hear the screams, each a knife to my heart. I don’t regret taking her away from his body before she could see him. I wouldn’t want that to be her last memory of Papa. It would haunt her as it will haunt me. She doesn’t deserve that. I do.

“We can’t go back,” I tell her. “I’m so sorry, Lilli. We’re too far from there now.”

I don’t think she’s listening to a word I’m saying, but even if I were to change my mind and let her see him now, which would be far worse than yesterday, we’re too far from there with how much we’ve walked.

Caves have been our shelter over the past two nights as we’ve tried to determine where we are and what direction we should be traveling. All we have is Papa’s compass, a worn map, a small notepad and pencil that Papa had in his pocket. The map isn’t helpful since we don’t know where we parted ways with the train. We’ve been worried about trying to start a fire since the smoke will be a sign of someone hiding in the woods. We’ve been hunting for berries—ones that aren’t questionably poisonous, and a fresh source of water.

The woods spin around us as we wait for Lilli to come to terms with our reality, knowing that might take a while.

The sun begins to poke holes through the trees, the spring humidity and mild warmth weighs over us like a blanket of fog. It seems impossible to keep walking, but we have no choice.

“We’re going to have to trek further into the woods,” Alfie says. “We need a spring. Drinking rain drops from leaves isn’t enough.”

We haven’t had much rain either.

Lilli stands up from Alfie’s lap and wraps her arms around her body, staring at the springs of grass between her worn clogs.

I make my way over to them and rest my hand on Lilli’s shoulder, but she pulls away. My chest aches, pushing me to think up an actionable plan. “We need to tag the trees somehow,” I say, more out loud to myself than to Alfie who’s staring at me.

“Jordie…” Alfie says, standing up from the ground then holding his hands out to the side in question.

I haven’t forgotten that he can’t hear me. I’m just trying to think everything through. I take his hand and tap the letters out.

“We can’t do that. It’ll be a bread trail for anyone who might be on the hunt for refugees,” he says.

He’s right.

Papa had a small notebook and a pencil. I know he used to mark down coordinates but I’m certain I wouldn’t be able to do so properly, especially without a starting location on a map.

I nod and pull the compass out of my pocket, turning until I’m facing north.

Alfie spins around as if in search of something. “Three birch trees, two oaks, and ? —”

Lilli trudges through a few of the trees with her eyes set on something I’m not seeing. She leans down to retrieve whatever it is and returns with a heavy rock in her arms, dropping it by the tree with a loud hollow thud. She returns to where she found the rock and grabs two more to bring back and place next to the other. Lilli shapes them into a triangle. “There. It’s just rocks, but this one,” she points to the middle-sized rock, “is teardrop shaped.”

Alfie and I exchange a smile. He doesn’t know what she said about the teardrop, but he can see the triangle, pointing in the direction we’re facing. He gives her a pat on the back. “Can I see the notepad and pencil?” he asks me.

I pull them out of my pocket and hand them over. He jots something down and slips the notepad and pencil into his pocket. “Let’s make sure we stay heading precisely south for as long as we can. We know Hungary is south of ?ód?, right?”

I nod in agreement, though I know crossing a country’s border will be impossible and I’m uncertain if we’d want to walk close to a border even if we could. Despite that, we were only on the train for a couple hours, three at most. I don’t think we’re close to the Slovak Republic border, which would have been the only possible way to get to Hungary.

“I’ll count my steps,” Lilli says. “Papa always told me it was a good way to know how far I’ve walked.” Her words are full of anger, resentment, but fuel too.

“Great idea,” I tell her. It isn’t a measurement of accuracy here, but it can’t hurt.

I’m unsure if any of this truly matters. If we walk far enough and spot another cave of rocks, there’s no sense in returning to where we are now.

We’ve walked for what I figure must be more than an hour and there isn’t a hint of any water source. Alfie has a look of determination and Lilli has definitely stopped counting her steps. My legs ache and I’m sure theirs do too. We’re starving and I haven’t seen any rock formation that we could consider shelter, which means we might have to walk all the way back to where we came from.

The trees around me spin in a vortex and my limbs become cold. This keeps happening and I don’t know why.

“Alf—” My words don’t carry sound. At least nothing I can hear. My knees give out and I fall heavily to the ground. A numbing sensation washes over me and I imagine sinking into the dirt.

“Jordanna. Can you hear me?”

I can always hear the voices above me when I faint. The last time Mama and Papa heard me fall to the ground, I remember their footsteps sounding as if they belonged to a giant.

Mama’s voice echoed through the apartment. “Oh dear, Jordanna’s fainted again,” she cried out, pressing her cool hands against my cheeks. “Sweetheart, can you hear me?”

I could hear her just as I hear Alfie now, but my mouth doesn’t move. I couldn’t tell her about the large spider crawling up my leg, but she knew how I felt about spiders.

“She is a younger version of her mama,” Papa told Mama that day, fanning cool air over me. “You know, I remember when you used to fall faint over just about anything, my dear Dalia.” Papa chuckled without much concern. “The war hardened you, but I know Jordanna will find her strength in time too.”

If only Papa knew that even in war, I would still be weak. Where is the strength I’m supposed to have like Mama?

“Why won’t she open her eyes?” Lilli shouts with panic.

Droplets of cold water fall onto my forehead and my neck aches.

“Come on, Jordie,” Alfie pleads.

His hand rests on my forehead and more drops of water run down my face.

“Let’s pour some water into her mouth,” Lilli says. The sound of splashing and Lilli’s feet against the dirt grow closer to me and more drops of water splash over my forehead.

“No, no. She can’t drink this water. Neither can you. You need to wait,” Alfie says.

“I’m thirsty,” Lilli utters, “so Jordanna must be too.”

Alfie pulls me upright and I fall limp against his chest. His lips press to my forehead and my heart jumps out of its slow beat, forcing me to gasp for air. With Alfie so close, my heart does its typical flutter, the one I’ve been so keen on hiding from him. He doesn’t know how long I’ve been hiding my feelings for him. I’ve never been able to convince myself he could think the same way about me. It’s been easier just to remind myself that we’ll only ever be friends.

“Oh, is that all it takes?” he asks quietly.

My eyes finally open without a fight and I stare up into his, finding myself cradled in his arms. He smiles a small smile, but an Alfie smile. “I need you. We’re in this together. You can’t leave me.”

I nod slightly, so slightly, I can only hope he sees the meager movement.

“We found water, Jordanna,” Lilli says from behind me.

“I’m going to have to start a small fire so I can boil it. It’s not safe to drink. Lilli, can you find me a rock that has a gully hole, something that can hold water? Stay where I can see you.”

Lilli doesn’t respond, but sets off where I can see her, searching for rocks around the edge of the pond we’re sitting next to. I hate to ask how far Alfie had to carry me to get here. I’m doing nothing but making things harder at this point.

Alfie combs his fingers through my short hair and hugs me a little tighter. His warmth makes me want to cry, but not from sorrow. “Who would have thought it would be you and me left to work together to survive?” he whispers.

We spent so much time teasing each other and I’ve refused to confess my feelings for him. How could I, when the lines between us have always been blurred by unpreventable circumstances? Everything in my life has changed, but not these moments—not when his eyes linger on mine, or I catch him looking at me for a second longer than he normally might. I still believe it could all be in my head. I could be imagining it all, but only because I so badly want it to be true. I don’t know what I would do without him. He’s always been a part of my life, but now he’s interwoven in my life.

“I hope you know how much you mean to me,” he says hesitantly. “And not just as Max’s younger sister. You’ve always been there, just out of reach, and even if I didn’t think Max might throw me out of a window for having feelings for you, I never wanted to cross a line I couldn’t uncross. I wish I had been braver and told you how I felt sooner.”

I could swear a swarm of bees is buzzing inside of my chest right now, but it’s a familiar feeling, something I’ve always felt for him. I just never expected to hear him say any of this to me, but it doesn’t feel surprising—it’s as if I’ve always known but never knew for sure. I mouth the words, “Me too.”

Alfie smiles again and I try to fight the numbness along my cheeks to do the same.

“Goodness gracious,” someone says. The sound of feet hurrying across dirt sends triggering alarms down my spine, sending all the feeling back into my body at once. I push myself to sit up on my own and search for Lilli, who is staring wide-eyed at the person speaking behind me.

I scoot out of Alfie’s hold and twist around, finding an older woman with a straw basket in her hand.

A black veil over a white cape, and white neckerchief, a rosary. “I’m sorry if we’ve intruded on your land,” Alfie tells her.

“Are you children lost?” she asks, holding her hand up to her heart.

“Yes,” I say, not wanting to say anything more. We shouldn’t trust anyone, despite the fact that she’s clearly a woman of faith, but not our faith and it’s hard to know who feels what toward us.

“You look unwell, starved to death, your poor things.”

“We’re just fine,” Lilli says, doing a poor job at telling a lie, and to a nun of all people.

“Let me take you in. I can’t offer much, but there are other children similar to you who have come to us in many ways. My sisters and I will do all that we can to help you. You need not to worry.”

Current Day – September 4 th , 1944 – Southern Poland

I glance down at the doll in Lilli’s hand again. I hate that thing. It reflects each one of us. We’re all here without a voice, a way to see beyond these walls, and stripped of the people we once were. I should be grateful to be away from the ghetto, and I am, but all I can wonder is how much longer we will need to live life in hiding. I want to find Mama and Max, and we’re left with no choice but to sit and wait until something happens—something that will allow us to walk freely out of this church without a chance of being captured and sent to another ghetto, camp, or just to our death.

Alfie has assigned himself the job of patching leaks in the ceiling. The rain has been relentless and seems to only get worse the closer we come to autumn. There isn’t much down here aside from cots, linen, stone for a fire, and metal pots and plates, except for the assortment of unfinished pottery jars left down here before the war broke out. One of the nuns told me the priest who used to run services upstairs was a devoted potter in his free time but never showed off his work because he said it was one particular skill God didn’t intend for him to have. The jars aren’t exactly symmetrical, but art is art. The priest passed away shortly after the war broke out, but the nuns stayed to offer help in nearby communities.

The leaks had gotten so bad over the summer that Alfie thought up the idea of heating the clay jars to make them back into a moldable substance that he could use to patch the ceiling with. They call him a hero. He is our hero.

It’s hard to comprehend what has become of my family in the fourteen months we’ve been apart. My hope wavers between the nightmares, hunger, and delirium from a lack of daylight, but the three of us are still alive, and I have to believe there’s a reason for that.