Free The Extra by Kathryn Lasky Page A

head?”
    “What do you think I am, a peasant?” Bluma was sitting in the barn, playing with one of the barn cat’s kittens.
    “Mama!” Lilo rolled her eyes. “It’s only acting.”
    “Why would I want to act like a peasant? I am a lace maker.”
    Please, please,
Lilo prayed silently.
Don’t be stubborn, Mama.
“Mama, let me explain this carefully.” She crouched down and picked up the kitty, then looked right into her mother’s eyes. “Django says —”
    “Django says.” Her mother spoke scornfully. “Django says this. Django says that. You believe everything that boy says.” Lilo felt a mixture of embarrassment and anger.
    “No, not really. I can think for myself. So forget what Django says, then. But I do know that if you don’t work here, if they can’t find a part for you as an extra, you go back.” She let the words sink in. They caught Bluma’s attention. “Back to Maxglan, or east, Mama,” she whispered.
    Bluma rose slowly. There was an empty bucket nearby. She bent over and picked it up. She put it on her head and walked three steps. “If I can walk with a bucket on my head, I can walk with a jug. Of course, silly girl.”
    Lilo clapped her hands. “Oh, Mama!” She squealed happily.
    Bluma took the bucket off just as Unku walked by.
    “What happened to you?” Bluma asked. But Unku kept walking sullenly and did not answer. “What happened to her, Lilo?” Bluma whispered.
    “Fräulein Riefenstahl made the hairdressers chop off most of her hair to make her look younger.”
    “Heh!” This was the distinctive snort her mother gave when she was scornful of something.
    “Younger? She just didn’t want anyone prettier. The woman is vain. And what’s more, she’s dangerous. I saw it from the first step she took through the mud at Maxglan. I know vain women. Remember, I work in fashion. Unku was too pretty.” She paused. “And you know what else?”
    “What else, Mama?”
    “This isn’t Hollywood, and we’re not extras. They lock the barn, remember? We bathe in the cow barn and go to latrines. We sit on rough boards to do our business. You think Gary Cooper did this or Marlene Dietrich when they were making
Morocco
? We’re film slaves.” She paused, and her face became still. “But I’ll carry the jug.”
    Lilo knew that her mother was right. She was a quick study. She hadn’t seen Leni Riefenstahl for more than a couple of minutes back at Maxglan, but she had summed her up. Her body might be failing, but Bluma Friwald’s mind was sharp as ever. Lilo found this heartening.
    “You be careful of that woman, Lilo. She cut the pretty Roma girl’s hair. She could do a lot worse, I bet.”
    Lilo thought of the notebook but decided not to tell her mother.
    “Don’t worry, Mama. I’m not pretty enough.”
    Bluma looked at her daughter with an inscrutable expression clouding her eyes. She pressed her mouth together, and the corners tipped down. Her mother almost never cried, but she looked like she was about to now. Why was she looking at her in this way? What did she see? Lilo always knew she wasn’t ugly, but she had just missed being pretty. Her nose was too long, her eyes too big for her narrow face. Her chin sharp and her eyebrows so thick they reminded her of woolly caterpillars. Her hair had never been as lustrous and thick as Unku’s, and now an ugly reddish cast had crept into it, which her mother had told her came from hunger and no decent food. Indeed she had noticed it in some other prisoners’ hair.
    At that moment, Django came along. Bluma put the bucket back on her head. “Will this do, Django?”
    His face lit up. “It certainly will, Frau Friwald!” He held a thick packet in his hand. It was the shooting script for the film. He had “organized” it.
    That evening over a bowl of potato soup, which actually had some meat in it, Django and Lilo and Rosa studied the shooting script. Not of course before Django launched into how terrible the music was in the