Page 55

FIFTY-FOUR

ELLA

May 1945

Many weeks have passed, and I remain in the same haze as the one I was in when I arrived, dormant on a cot, staring up at the crease of a pitched tent.

Conversations drift around me, some I hear, others float by unnoticed, but someone said Warsaw was no longer unreachable.

I don’t know if someone can find my family, if I even still have one.

The odds seem impossible, but if I’ve heard proper information, transport is being organized to take citizens of Warsaw back home.

Within hours, I’m escorted onto a bus.

“You’re going home,” someone said.

“We’ll do whatever we can to help you find your loved ones once you arrive there.” The words are hollow.

The bus travels harshly over broken roads and rubble, leaving me to do little else but wonder if I’ll recognize Warsaw.

It will never look the way I remember.

The other people on the bus aren’t talking either.

No one has any idea what we’re traveling toward, aside from a place we used to call home.

What will be left of it?

And can I even call it home if Luka won’t be there to greet me…

?

I fall asleep for brief spurts of time, but only fully open my eyes when the squeal of the bus brakes slashes through my ears.

I’m not sure where we are.

I don’t recognize anything outside the window.

Yet, Red Cross volunteers are helping us off the bus, one by one, and walking us toward a brick building.

I should recognize this building if it’s in Warsaw.

When it’s my turn, I hold my focus on the steps leading off the bus then the curb, and the broken blocks of pavement and rubble, walking down a narrow path toward the building we’re being taken into.

I can walk, but the volunteer holds on to me as if I can’t.

Another bench awaits me inside the building, next to others who have departed the same bus.

There’s a lot of people talking, but not those of us who came from the bus.

People passing by stare at us as if we’re unearthed dinosaurs.

They aren’t sure what to think of us.

I suppose I might act the same way if I was seeing us all for the first time.

A figure walks toward me but I don’t look up properly until they’re within reach.

Then suddenly he’s on his knees, grabbing my hands.

“Ella,” he cries out.

For a long moment, I fixate on him—recognizing him, but having trouble finding my words.

All I can do is ask myself if this is real.

I don’t know anymore.

“Ella, it’s me…”

My heart—it’s torn in half.

My gaze settles on his eyes, awakening my nerves.

“Tata,” I utter.

It is him.

He’s here. He gathers me in his arms and pulls me to his chest. “My baby. My Ella.”

“Tata,” I say again, my voice croaky.

“I’m home.”

He kisses my face, my forehead, cheeks, and nose before scooping me up into his arms and walking away from the bench with me.

I rest my head on his chest and let my eyes fall closed while listening to his heart race.

“This is my daughter. My papers are in my left pocket. Her name is Ella Bosko. She’s twenty-three years old, birth date is the tenth of July 1921—born in Warsaw.”

“Yes, sir, the information matches. You can take her with you, but she will need further medical follow ups.”

“All right,” Tata says, moving ahead with me toward the front doors.

He nuzzles his cheek on top of my head then pulls the collar of the donated coat I received at some point in the last few weeks.

“Keep warm, sweetheart.”

“Ella!”

“Dear me?—”

The voices are a dream.

I recall them so well.

They sound so real.

“I’ll take her, Tata.”

I blink my eyes open, but I’m blinded by the sun glaring down.

I’m shuffled from Tata’s arms into Miko’s.

“Miko?” I utter.

His chest bucks in and out, rattling me around.

“She’s alive,” he cries out.

Mama’s hand presses to my cheek.

I would recognize the touch of her hand out of all the hands in the world.

“My sweet girl,” she squeaks through a held breath.

“I didn’t think—” Her words trail into a grim sob, one I feel in my chest, but doesn’t do anything to me.

I’ve forgotten how to cry.

I’ve forgotten how to live.

“Come on, let’s get her home and out of the cold.”

Miko cradles me like Tata, but squeezes me tighter against his chest and walks harder with heavier steps.

“This is real,” I whisper.

I clench my eyes shut again, trying to convince myself.

If I say it enough, it must be true.

But also, no one is looking for Luka—or waiting for him here at home.

That, too, is real.

Mama lets me sit in her rocking chair with the knitted blanket I used to sleep with when I was little.

Our apartment is the same, unchanged, but also, foreign.

I can’t differentiate the life in Auschwitz from the comfort of a home.

Mama, Tata, and Miko haven’t left my side in the two weeks I’ve been home.

The grocery store is closed temporarily, even though I asked them not to do that to the people who might be depending on them.

“There are plenty of other markets around. They can go elsewhere for now,” he said.

Mama keeps replacing the cup of hot tea I hold in my hands most of the day.

It never becomes cool.

They all stare at me most of the time, as if they’re waiting for me to start talking and tell them what I’ve gone through.

But I’ve decided I won’t do that to them after putting them through the torture of thinking I was dead.

They’ve dealt with enough and don’t deserve the added burden of the truth.

“I’m well enough to start looking for Luka,” I finally get the courage to tell them.

I’m not sure how they will react.

It’s hard to assume what they might know about my arrest or what is still a mystery to them.

“Luka,” Tata repeats.

“You were trying to save him when you were arrested, isn’t that right?” I suppose he gathered that much.

He was part of the resistance; I shouldn’t be too surprised at his insight.

“Yes,” I say, staring down into the honey brown liquid in my cup.

“God made you good, my sweetheart. No one can fault you for that. I blame myself for not realizing what obstacles you were moving through to care for him and his family. Arte’s father found me shortly after the two of you were arrested and told me what had been going on. He blamed himself as much as I did. Arte was helping you so he could help his family with the food you were bartering with, and you were helping Luka by risking your life. Your acts of bravery far surpassed anything your brother and I were ever doing, and I would have stopped you had I been aware of the danger you were putting yourself in. But none can fault you for having a heart of gold.”

“It might have been for nothing. That might change your mind,” I say.

“For nothing? How can that be?”

“He was taken to Auschwitz, too. Luka. I’m not sure if he survived. If he didn’t, all I did was keep his family alive long enough to endure the most unthinkable?—”

“Endure what?” Tata asks, pressing me to finish my statement.

I stare past him, my eyes blurring.

“Auschwitz.”

Tata reaches for the coffee table behind him and tears off a piece of the newspaper.

“Miko, grab a pencil.” He stands from the corner he’s been sitting beside me every day and does as Tata asks, hurrying back within a few seconds.

“Jot out his name and birthday.”

“Luka?” I ask.

“Yes. Whatever information you have about him, write it down.”

Mama takes a book from the mantel and places it on my lap, trading it for the teacup I’m holding.

“There you go,” she says.

Tata places the torn newspaper down on the book and Miko hands me the pencil.

All of them watch as I carefully jot out Luka’s information.

I place the pencil down and Tata takes the scrap of newspaper and folds it up as Mama takes the book and pencil.

Tata steps away, his movements filled with tension.

He trembles as she slips his coat over his shoulders and slips the folded scrap into his pocket.

“Where are you going?” I ask, pushing myself up from the rocking chair, the blanket slipping from my shoulders.

My voice cracks, punctuating how frail my strength still is.

Tata glances at me, his eyes tired with a web of red veins.

“I’ll find the right people to speak to, dear. I won’t let it all be in vain if I can help it. Stay with your mother and rest.”

“I need to—I need to know,” I whisper through my tight throat.

“I can’t bear?—”

“We will find answers,” Miko says.

“We will. I promise.”

The two of them leave the apartment, and the door closes with a hollow thud leaving us in stark silence.

Mama bends down to lift the fallen blanket and wraps it back around my shoulders, leading me to the sofa rather than the rocking chair.

She helps me sit and takes the seat beside me, holding me within her arms. “It wasn’t for nothing,” she says.

“It was for love.”

“Love. I might have to live forever without it now,” I say.

Mama tightens her arm around my shoulder.

“Ella, at the end of life, we die. Every one of us. A lesson almost every person must learn is that with love comes inevitable consequence. You could be with the person you love for fifty years and live a beautiful life together, but one of you will have to endure losing the other at the end. Grief is a consequence of love, young and old.”

Mama’s words bring an ache to my chest. I realize what she’s saying is true, but it isn’t just grief I will live with.

It will be the horrors we both faced leading up to an untimely death.

I’ve been watching the clock since Tata and Miko left.

Nearly three hours have passed and each creak of the stairs in the building causes my heart to race and my stomach to twist in pain.

If Tata finds an answer—the one I’m most fearful of—I might regret giving up any chance of hope in finding him.

There won’t even be a gravestone with his name.

None of the people who were sent to the gas chambers will have one.

Even those who were executed were sent to crematoriums. There are no remains.

Just as the sun dips beneath the horizon, I recognize the two pairs of heavy footsteps hopping up the stairs.

It’s them. They’re walking fast, which tells me they know something.

I stand up from the sofa and clutch my hands over my chest, waiting for the door to open.

They burst in, both with their shoulders slouched forward and a curious lack of expression on their faces.

I notice an envelope dangling from Tata’s fingers, covered in inky fingerprint marks.

“Tata,” I whisper, trying to speak against the agony riveting through me.

“What did you find?”

Mama stands and holds her arm around my shoulders, waiting for him to answer.

Tata releases a slow exhale and shifts his gaze to my eyes.

“We found information,” he says.

I’m still holding my breath because information could mean anything.

“Is he—” I can’t get the words out.

I can’t breathe.

Miko nods, but his expression doesn’t change—still flat, nothing.

“Yes, he’s alive,” he says, swallowing hard after his last word.

I gasp, as the air is sucked out of my lungs.

“He’s alive?”

“Yes,” Tata confirms. “But…”

“But what?” Mama follows sharply.

“Say it.”

Tata hesitates despite Mama’s demand.

His fingers tighten around the envelope.

“We don’t know everything yet,” he says.

“But, sweetheart, he’s in a displacement camp. He’s not well.”

“Wh-what do you mean? Wha-what does that mean?” I ask, my eyes searching between Tata and Miko as I step in closer to them.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s in a trauma unit for people suffering from severe memory loss whether from injury, psychological conditions, or both.”

Tata hands me the envelope and I push myself to lift my arm to take it from him.

“He won’t recognize me?”

“Sweetheart, I don’t know anything more than what I’ve told you. His location is inside the envelope.”

Mama takes the envelope from my hand and pulls me into her chest, embracing me tightly.

“We’ll figure it out,” she whispers. “We will.”