Free Unravelled by Anna Scanlon Page B

Each of them appeared dark, lifeless. In the distance, there was a large chimney with smoke spewing out of it like a dragon breathing fire on its subjects below. As the truck inched closer toward its destination, a smell, an indescribable smell permeated our nostrils. It wasn't feces or urine or burning wood, but it was foul, mixed with a twinge of something sweet that our lungs caught at the very end of a whiff. We hit a pothole and I flew a few centimeters in the air, landing on my tailbone with a thud. Pain radiated up my spine.
    "What is that?" an old man mumbled from the corner of the car before covering his mouth with a handkerchief and coughing up what sounded like all of the contents of his body. His brown, wrinkled hand clutched the top of his cane possessively.
    Mumbles spread through the truck, each person guessing what they thought the smell could be. It was like pork or some kind of meat, or some even suggesting old donuts. Maybe the Germans were making some sort of new product for their men at the front lines.
    "'Raus! Juden! Raus!" came the cry from the SS officer as soon as the truck stopped, just a few feet short of the chimney. He opened the back of the truck with a loud clink and men wearing striped outfits stood by helping out those who had trouble walking, sick children covered in rashes, some sweating with fever and old people bent over so far, they almost looked as though they would snap in half.
    In the rush to leave the truck, an officer pulled me down by the waist and then set me on the ground with a thud, the mud all but covering the white leather shoes my father had bought me only a few months before.
    "For the summer time," Papa had said, a broad smile on his face as he handed me the package.
    "You're spoiling them," my mother chastised as Papa handed Hajna a similar, but not quite matching, pair of white "good shoes" (as my mother called them). He had smiled that day, his pink lips curled under his moustache. He had seen them in a store window and thought of us. He just wanted his daughters to have them. I looked down at them, trying not to cry over the fact that they were no longer my "good shoes". I pinched my filthy hand to distract myself from the oncoming deluge of tears.
    The SS officer then pulled my sister down by the waist and set her down next to me, her hand immediately clasped in mine, the way it often did during times of uncertainty. It was natural, comforting, to feel our hands holding on to one another's, like holding on to your other half and making yourself complete.
    Before the SS officer moved to pull my mother out of the truck, he turned to us and shouted something in German, gesturing once again to an apparition in a striped uniform to translate the mumble he was saying. This man, the new translator, took off his striped hat, revealing a head full of stubble. His eyes and nose looked too big for his face, as if someone had drawn him in a newspaper cartoon. I squinted my eyes and tilted my head to the left, trying to decide what kind of haircut he might have had if he had had hair.
    "Are your daughters twins?" he asked my mother as the officer sat her down on her feet. She put her hand on the side of the truck, her face now turning a gray pallor. We rushed to either side of her, trying to hold her up. Our heads only came to her shoulders. An appreciative smile curled on her colorless lips.
    "Yes," my mother answered, putting her arms around our tiny shoulders, partly for support and partly for protection. As the SS officer eyed us, looking at us with an unfamiliar glint in his eyes, my mother pulled us closer to her waist, our arms clasping one another's behind her.
    "Zwillinge!" the SS officer shouted with glee, before looking to another officer who had helped load us into the truck. He began to yell at him in German, spit coming from his tight mouth on every other word, his finger pointing to us every so often. His finger was straight and unwavering, definite.
    "Go with him,"