Rachel had always impressed on her the need to stay out of the way of the guards. Now that she was on her own, she didn’t want to come across one of them, because they could be so mean. She dreamt of her life on the farm back home, and how she had played with her brothers, but it was getting harder and harder to remember those days. She barely remembered the face of her mother, let alone her father.
Loneliness sucked her into a deep hole and she barely noticed when the back door of the barracks opened and three children rushed in. They stopped dead in their tracks, glaring at her, whispering to one another, before they turned around and rushed back out the way they had come.
Fear fought with curiosity and in the end Mindel climbed down from her bunk, cautiously leaving the barracks. She spotted the children between two outbuildings and walked toward them.
A tall and incredibly thin boy with a shock of pitch-black hair noticed her and hurriedly waved her over. Mindel looked around and when she saw two guards coming down the path, she took off running for the shelter of the outbuilding.
Completely out of breath she crashed to her knees and skidded toward the thin boy. She wanted to scream with pain, but remembering the scathing remarks of her brothers for behaving like a baby, she didn’t want to show any weakness to this boy and gritted her teeth. If he was anything like them, he didn’t want to hang out with a crybaby.
“Well done,” he said. “Never let them spot you. I’m Laszlo, and you?”
“Mindel.”
“I haven’t seen you before, are you new?” he asked, flashing a double-toothed gap. Just like her brother Aron, who’d been so proud of his first missing tooth. Mindel wished she had a wobbly tooth, too, because that would make her a big girl.
She nodded and when she noticed Laszlo looking at her doll, she tucked Paula behind her back. He didn’t have to know that she still played with dolls.
Laszlo pretended not to notice and asked, “How old are you?”
“Four. And you?”
“I’m already seven. You can play with us if you want.”
Suddenly she didn’t feel quite as lonely as she had just a little while ago.
4
After eating her meager breakfast, Rachel found herself following the others as they lined up, shoulder to shoulder in long rows. All around her were exhausted-looking women, and it was easy to pick out the ones who had been there for a while. They were emaciated, their hair – if they still had any – tangled and falling out, their clothing just barely hanging on their bodies.
“What are we doing?” she whispered to an old woman standing next to her.
“Work details,” the woman said in an expressionless voice.
“They make us work?” So far, Rachel had been to several transit camps and detention centers, but nowhere had she been forced to work.
The other woman gave a dry cough. “Bergen-Belsen is for the sick and dying. Everyone else gets sent somewhere else.”
Rachel watched as the guards walked up and down the lines of women, choosing the healthier ones and ordering them off to one side. A sense of panic began to well up inside her. She couldn’t be sent off to someplace else. She had to stay here and find Mindel.
As the guards drew closer to her place in line, Rachel desperately thought about how she could evade being sent elsewhere. Compared to the other women she definitely looked healthy and able-bodied. Just as the guards reached the row before her, she broke out into a fit of coughs, bent over, clutching her stomach with one hand while she forced her fingers down her throat with the other.
All of the ugly gruel she’d had for soup rose in her throat and she spewed it onto the ground. It wasn’t difficult to look faint and aggravated, because if the soup had tasted horrid on its way down, it certainly hadn’t improved coming back up.
“Disgusting filthy whore,” a female guard with the most scathing, vile, blue eyes yelled. “You clean that up!”
Rachel bent down, swiping at the ground with the hem of her skirt and keeping her eyes down until the shiny black boots in front of her moved on. When she was sure the vile guard had moved on to the next row, she slowly got up.
“Whatever did you do this for?” her neighbor whispered.
“I need to find my sister.”
“Stupid bitch! In here, you have to take care of yourself first. The women who work have a chance to live. In the sub-camps everything’s better – less crowded, more food, and a shower once in a while.”
Coming from the old woman it sounded like the Promised Land. Rachel caught a glimpse of her wistful expression and shook her head with disbelief. But just as quickly the cold hand of fright closed around her heart. She saw herself reflected in the eyes of that cynical old bitch. In a year’s time, would Rachel look and think the same way? Panic welled up in her, making her stagger. A year from now Mindel would be dead if she didn’t find her first.
Roll call ended and the non-working women were basically left to their own devices for the rest of the day. Most flopped down on the ground, leaning against the walls of the barracks, soaking up the April sunshine. It was such a beautiful day, the sun shining brightly from a cloudless sky.
Back home on her parents’ farm, the first seedlings would be peeking through the warming earth, braving the frosty nights. A wave of nostalgia hit her square in the chest.
