Free The Earth Is Singing by Vanessa Curtis

pumping up and down.
    Deep down I miss dancing so much that I can hardly bear to think about it. My dreams seem to have been suspended somewhere just out of my reach and I can’t touch them any longer. Sometimes at night I risk doing a few gentle jetés on the carpeted floor of my bedroom but my legs are losing muscle tone and I’m worried I will never be able to catch up again.
    “Must I carry on learning this sewing?” I say. “Can’t I get some other job?”
    Omama’s smile fades. She gets up and draws the curtains.
    “You want to clean toilets for some Nazi soldier?” she says. “Because there will be plenty of those jobs for pretty young girls like you.”
    I shudder.
    Then I bend over the fabric with an exaggerated sigh.
    “Right,” I say. “Let’s start again.”
    August comes and with it the first truly hot days of summer.
    We have still not been called to begin work. So we are sweltering up in the apartment and living on bread and cheese and black coffee or anything that Mama can get during her weekly trawl around the shops. Most of the shops have signs in the window proclaiming that no Jews are allowed to shop in there. There is very little food in the few shops allocated for us and what is there is often covered in a light dusting of green and yellow mould.
    Uldis drops in when he can but he is busy. He tells me that the police have increased his hours of work. The streets are so dangerous that I can no longer choose to go and find him and must rely upon his visits. I am worried that because of this, we will grow apart. When he does visit he is as kind and polite as ever but the feeling in the air between us has changed. I’m guessing that it’s partly because having a girlfriend who can’t leave her apartment is restrictive for him, but there’s something else. It makes me feel uncomfortable and when he leaves, I am both sorry and relieved in equal measures.
    The relieved bit makes me feel sad.
    I lie in bed and pray to God that we can carry on our romance as before.
    Another thing is worrying me. A change has come over my mother and grandmother.
    They will not let me near Tēvija any longer. Omama takes it off into her bedroom to read. After reading the 23rd August edition she came out looking pale and frightened. She and Mama have taken to muttering in the corner of the lounge after I go to bed, only they often forget to shut the door so I can hear them if I strain my ears.
    I am not stupid. I watch from our window as the lines of Jewish people pull carts and wheelbarrows along in the gutter and I can see that they have mattresses and suitcases crammed into these barrows. Where they are going, I do not know.
    Mama knows, I think.
    I ask her if we will soon have to put all our possessions in a cart and leave our home.
    But she will not answer my questions. She paces up and down the apartment, glancing outside every now and then and grabbing onto her own elbows and scowling. It is like she is having an inner argument with herself. I wish I knew what she was thinking.
    Sometimes I hate being treated like a child.
    At the beginning of September I go on one of my rare walks outside. We have a curfew now which means we cannot be outside past six o’clock in the evening, but it is only four and it is a beautiful day and I have been allowed to go out so long as I wear my jacket.
    I end up near the Opera in the beautiful park. Jews are not supposed to go into parks any longer but it draws me like a magnet. There are no soldiers around so I creep in and sit on a bench for half an hour and try to ignore the sounds of army vehicles rumbling down the Brīvības bulvāris .
    I am sweating in my black jacket. It is boiling hot. I glance left and right and then with pleasure at the gleaming white building of the Opera where one day I will dance onstage and bow down for all the applause.
    Or at least, I used to hope that I would. Now it feels less certain. Jews are not allowed to do anything which they once