Page 43 of The Lies We Leave Behind

43

“It’s mail day tomorrow .”

I looked up to see Brigitte standing beside my bed, a piece of paper, envelope, and pencil in her hand.

I frowned.

“What do you mean?”

“We get to send one letter out a month.”

I pushed myself up so I was sitting, my head bent under the bunk above me.

“And the letters...are mailed?”

She shrugged, the strap of her black slip falling off her shoulder. “I do not understand. Yes?”

“And do you receive letters as well?”

“Some do. Some don’t. But it feels good, no? To write home?”

“I guess so.”

I’d written as I’d felt moved to in my journal. Memories. Dreams. Moments I’d barely been able to find words for. After seeing the bags of mail waiting to be burned behind the post office in a city outside Hamburg, I’d only bothered to write a few more during nights I couldn’t get to sleep right away. I hadn’t intended to try and send them though, assuming it would be pointless. I’d merely tucked them in envelopes and stashed them in a drawer. I wondered if Lieutenant Schmeiden had found them. I could imagine him reading them aloud to his buddies and laughing.

“They check the letters,” Brigitte said. “So be careful what you say. Anything private, keep it short and write it in urine.”

I sat up, hitting my head on the bed frame above me.

“Excuse me?” I said. “Urine?”

She handed me the paper, envelope, and pencil and sat beside me, leaning close, her skin stinking of cheap perfume and sweat.

“It is a trick some of the women that were spies use. The urine dries invisible, but if heat is held under the paper, it shows up like magic.”

“But how would anyone know to look?”

“I do not know. I have never tried it myself and have no secrets to share. But maybe you do?” She pointed to my belly.

I nodded. “Maybe.”

She left then and I looked around, seeing nearly every woman around me sprawled in some position or another on her bed, writing on her one piece of paper.

I wanted to write to William, but I only got one letter a month and I had no idea how long I’d be here. With a baby on the way in this horrible place, I knew I was in danger of losing it without proper care, my own life...or both our lives. I also knew if the letter got to William, there was nothing he could do to help me.

But perhaps my aunt and uncle could.

And so I wrote a letter so banal and boring that no guard could find fault in it, with what I hoped were some well-chosen words my uncle might pick up on. The visit with my family had been lovely, but cut short due to death. I had gone to do my civic duty working in a camp with many other women for the good of our country. The baby grows strong. I was unsure of how long my time here would run, but I hoped to travel west again soon. I missed them. I loved them. I hoped to see them soon.

I signed it with my fake German name, Lena Klein, looping the end of the n around the bottom to circle the K . For Kate.

I stared at the letter for a long time, reading it over and over. Wondering if they’d pick up on my clues: I was working in a camp with many women. Would they know there were different kinds of camps? Hopefully this would lead them to look for one exclusively for women.

I hoped to travel west again soon. Meaning I’d gone east.

I was pregnant. That, if anything, would hopefully prompt some sort of action.

But was it enough?

I looked to Brigitte’s empty bed and wondered if the urine tip was true. Why would she say it if it wasn’t? But what would happen if one of the guards knew this trick and saw what was written? Would they merely toss it? Or would they punish us all in retaliation?

Too scared to risk it, I folded the letter, placed it inside the envelope, and addressed it to my aunt in New York. I had no idea if it would make it there, but at least I’d tried. Pushing it from my mind, I readied myself for bed, and the whispers and tears that always came with nightfall.

I jumped as someone banged on the door.

“I’ll be right out!” I said, hurrying off the toilet where I’d been sitting for far longer than I’d needed to, but wanting to rest, if even just for a moment.

“Restroom breaks can be done during your lunch break,” the doctor pushing past me said, his elbow ramming hard into my belly as he passed.

Rubbing my stomach, I hurried back and resumed my duties.

There were several doctors and nurses that went in and out of the two sick bays that were situated one right next to the other, making it easy for the staff to circulate and move supplies as needed. I had only been there three days when I took notice of the different setups. One sick bay was for the sick. The other, injuries. Injuries that I hadn’t heard about or seen happen when I’d been out in the fields, or even in the barracks. And the injuries themselves were strange. I couldn’t understand how these women had all gotten such terrible leg wounds.

“How did you do this?” I asked one woman as I inspected her red, swollen leg while removing the soiled dressing to replace it with a clean one. The wound had been sewn shut but was festering. And with a small bit of pressure, hot, putrid liquid squeezed out.

But she merely shook her head, her eyes half-closed, and looked away.

It wasn’t until the last patient of the day that I got an answer. Her name was Jelena. A strong Yugoslavian woman with a crude haircut and dark eyes.

“Experiments,” she whispered to me as I ran a wet cloth over her newly stitched shinbone.

“What do you mean?” I whispered back, looking around to see if anyone was paying attention to us. Luckily it was late and half of the staff had left for the night.

“They cut into our skin. With glass. Wood. Whatever they want. They put chemicals into the cuts. Sometimes bones. And then they sew it shut and watch if we heal...or fester.”

I felt the blood drain from my face, glad I was already sitting because I was sure I’d fall otherwise, not just from the shock of what she’d said, but from the little nutrition I’d had in the past three weeks. I was all belly now, my arms and legs like sticks as my body gave nearly all I took in to grow the baby. It was dangerous. If I fainted, I’d be seen as weak. And the weak did not survive here.

Taking in a long breath, I continued to dab gently at her leg.

“All of you?” I asked, looking around the room. There were at least fifty women occupying the space. “Have you all been...”

“Most,” she said.

I closed my eyes, a wave of nausea threatening to bring up the little bit still in my stomach. I couldn’t afford to lose it, so I took deep breaths until the feeling subsided, then wrapped her wound and squeezed her hand.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.

“I hope you do,” she said.

But the following day was chaos.

“What’s happening?” someone yelled as the air around me compressed from a rush of movement from the women in the barracks, hurrying from their beds and throwing on clothes. Shouting and tearful cries, worry, fear...and hope.

“What’s going on?” I asked Agata, who was lying in her bunk, pulling on her shoes.

“I’m not sure,” she said, sliding from her bed to stand beside me.

“They’re rounding us up.”

We turned to see Brigitte, for once clothed in her uniform, black triangle on display.

“For...what?” Agata’s voice trembled.

“Lord only knows,” Brigitte answered. “Nothing good, I am sure of it. We are to gather our things and line up outside. Wherever we’re going, we’re not coming back.”

The three of us stared at one another and then one by one we turned to our bunks and began packing our things.

It was early still when we stepped outside, the sun just beginning to rise, mist lying like a blanket across the fields.

“Line up!” the aufseherin shouted, stalking back and forth.

We moved like cattle, roaming around one another, moving down the line, spreading out, taking our places. But as I stumbled along, my gaze moved toward the two sick bays. Were they coming too?

I reached out and squeezed Brigitte’s hand. When she turned, I pointed.

“I’ll be back,” I whispered.

“Lena, no.”

“They’ll need help,” I said. “It’s okay.”

There were so many people milling about, no one noticed me hurrying to the medical buildings. But what I saw when I entered made me stop. Every single woman was still in her bed, no doctors or nurses to be found. I went to the next building and found the same. Stunned, I stepped back outside, staying out of sight as best I could, trying to understand what was happening.

A woman’s voice in the distance could be heard calling out names. German names. Men were shouting, military vehicles starting up, driving toward the front gates.

“What are you doing here?”

I jumped, my hand reaching protectively for my belly as I turned to face one of the aufsehrin .

“I work here,” I said.

“There is no need for that anymore.”

“But...” I frowned and waved toward the building. “There are patients. Is there new staff coming?”

“No. No one is coming.” Her eyes flicked down to my belly and back up, meeting my own with a dead stare. “You must decide. Stay, or go.”

I glanced at the door to the building, running my hand in a slow circle on my belly, and then nodded.

“I’ll stay,” I said.

She gave me a curt nod, turned on her heel, and left.

It took most of the day for them to get organized but I didn’t have time to pay attention, I was one woman caring for so many sick and injured, trying to make sense of notes made in charts, chemicals and medications administered, and women calling out to me in languages I didn’t understand.

“She wants water,” a woman told me as I stared, confused and near tears at a patient repeating a word I didn’t understand.

“Water?” I asked and then mimed drinking to the patient, who nodded.

And then there was the matter of food. I had no idea how I was going to get food to these women while the commotion outside was still happening. If I was seen and forced into line, or worse, shot, who knows if they’d ever get fed. Most of them could barely get out of their beds.

By noon I was soaked in sweat, my muscles straining to keep my body upright, my stomach grumbling, and my wits at their limit as crying and anguish filled both buildings.

I needed a moment.

Cracking the door open an inch, I made sure no one was around before stepping outside. Still the voices filled the air. Shouting, herding, crying, names being called out. There was a gunshot. A scream. A herd of feet. I pressed my back to the wall and closed my eyes. Waiting for more gunfire, but there was none. After a few deep breaths of the cool, clean afternoon air, I opened the door and resumed my duties.

After a while I noticed the quiet.

“I’ll be back,” I whispered to a woman, leaving the damp cloth I’d been patting her skin with on her forehead.

Again, I peeked out the door before stepping outside. But there was no one around, the air eerily still.

I crept down the line of buildings used for barracks, looking around as I went, the quiet and emptiness sending a chill up my spine. Where had they all gone? I turned a corner and inhaled, stopping and placing my hand against the building beside me to steady myself. In the distance I saw them. All of them. Walking. The thousands of women who had lived at Ravensbrück, now being marched out in one long line, flanked by several military vehicles, guns at the ready should any of them try to flee. I feared where they were headed as I searched the crowd for Brigitte and Agata. But there were too many and they were already too far.

“Where are they taking them?”

I jumped at the voice behind me and turned to see Jelena leaning on a cane, her stitched leg red but not as swollen as it had been before.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Do you think they’ll come back?”

I met her gaze.

“I think we’re on our own now.”