The Light in Hidden Places

by Sharon Cameron

“The world is beautiful, but people make it ugly.”

Izio kissed my forehead. “Wait for me,” he whispered.

aleikhem,” she said. I thought she might cry. “Go quickly now. Be smart, and be careful, and do what you can to keep your life. Do you promise me that?”

DEATH PENALTY FOR ALL WHO GIVE AID TO A JEW. DEATH TO ALL WHO HARBOR A JEW. DEATH TO ALL WHO FEED A JEW. DEATH TO ALL WHO PROVIDE TRANSPORTATION TO A JEW. DEATH TO ALL WHO TAKE PAYMENT FROM A JEW, IN MONEY, OR SERVICES, OR VALUABLES.

I learned three things from Emilika that day: First, walk as if you have important business, and most people will assume you

do. Second, always have your hair curled. And third, help can come when it’s least expected, and that’s good to remember, because it means you’re never really alone. Even when it feels like it.

The war would end. Izio would finish medical school and get his job in the hospital. We’d have a new apartment with pale cream carpets that never got dirty and modern wallpaper with no flowers. Two children, with jackets and ribbons and birthdays written down.

He’d wanted to live. Tried to live, and they hadn’t let him. The Nazis had killed him. They had made him suffer. Something twisted inside me. Burning. Sick.

I walked like a machine. An echoing shell made of metal and mechanical parts. And twenty-five kilometers and one short wagon ride later, I was walking down the lane to our farm.

The Germans. They’d taken both my families. My insides writhed. Hot.

“Soldiers came, dragged them off. A labor camp in Germany. Working for Hitler now, and the farm going to the devil.”

To punish myself with later.

I had no idea how to take care of a child. But there was only me to do it. And so I would.

torrent. I was going to lose them all. Every single person I loved. And it was always my fault. My fault. My fault. My fault

Fear comes with the dark when you’re lying still, waiting for the knock on the door.

Jew. Catholic. German. Pole. But these were the wrong names. They were the wrong dividing lines. Kindness. Cruelty. Love and hate. These were the borders that mattered.

death is a shadow at the edge of every light, I discover that I have to smile.

And that makes him nothing like them at all.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Max look this alive.

It feels like Christmas. Before the war.

I think he might as well do it again. I feel beautiful. He is beautiful. His weight pins me to the sofa, but I don’t want to move.

“The secret I know about you, my Stefania, is that you need to be kissed.”

He wanted me to be afraid. He just wanted me on this sofa.

I’ll tell your commander that you like to let criminals go when you think there’s a possibility of getting them over to your house for … dinner.”

I am not Januka. I have to think of a way to get everyone out of here.

Judenfrei. They say they’re moving the Jews somewhere

It’s interesting to me that Max has become the leader of the hidden.

The noise of the machines drowns out the dying.

The Germans are burning bodies. Heaps of them. The smell is horrible.

Because I loved a boy once, and he was murdered, and I’m afraid that will happen to me again.

And now I find out you’re just up for sale like the rest of them.”

And my heart is beating like I’ve run a race.

I don’t want to love anyone. Not during a war. Love will make me hurt.

I wonder how long we’ll last.

“Even if the war ends. I didn’t know I was living in days that I could never get back.”

“We’re always living days we can never get back,” I say. “So we make new ones. That’s all.”

Max has drawn Helena and me with angel wings, spreading from one end of the paper to the other, and under our wings are thirteen faces. Max, Dr. Schillinger, Dziusia. Siunek and Old Hirsch. Malwina Bessermann with Cesia and Janek. Monek and Sala, Henek and Danuta, and Jan Dorlich.

Because I know the fear will be back. Przemyśl

how to put people in their proper places on the map.

The silence above us is full of life, even if death comes in the next few minutes.

I think we’ve survived only to starve.

But not having the enemy in the same house with us feels peaceful in comparison.

I don’t think he’s learned that I cannot leave him.

And now the Russian soldier takes me from Max, picks me up around the waist, and bounces me up and down. “Hero!” he shouts. “Hero, hero!” And the rest of his men shout with him.

Goyka. Non-Jew. Me. But the way he said it was ugly. Demeaning.

I didn’t want to love him. Love leads to hurt.

“You gave me my life,” he says. “Now let me give it back to you.”