Free The Upright Heart by Julia Ain-Krupa Page B

done. During the war, every day that I was hungry I thought about that buttered roll. Even now my mouth waters. If I knew then what I know now, things could have been different
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    My hair has always been this stormy shade of black and blue, and my eyes have always been this dark. I was born blond just like the rest of my family, but I became ill when I was only four and had all of my hair shaved off. I didn’t cry or blink an eye. I remember it like it was yesterday—I simply observed myself with grave consideration, watching my golden locks as they dropped slowly to the ground. With my solemn face and dark eyes, I resembled one of the old portraits hanging on the wall in the town library. My smile was so infrequent and surprising that when it did happen, everyone stopped to look. Even dinner got cold
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    “Do it in circles,” I demanded of my mother the time she shaved my head. She stood behind the old stuffed chair, razor in hand. I remember sitting before her, wrapped in a white cotton sheet, staring at my reflection in her ornate vanity mirror, tiny brown shoulders exposed, posture alert. “I want it to come back black and blue.” Somehow my wish came true, and it was then that I imagined I might be a witch
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    By the time I was five, I was well and had beautiful thick, dark curly hair
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    Somehow everyone picked up on my strange capacity for sorcery, and everyone would tease me and call me a witch
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    “That’s right,” I would joke, “I am a witch and you had better watch out, or else I will cast a spell on you.” I could sense that even though everyone was friendly with me, they were also always a little bit afraid. I took pleasure in frightening my teachers, spouting nonsensical words, imitating black magic invocations. My teachers and my friends enjoyed these games, however slightly unnerving they might have been
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    Of course since the war came, my abilities seem farther and farther away. Now I find myself thinking only of things: shoes, blouses, skirts, hats, coats, bras and panties, potatoes and bread. I never imagined that my life could become so mundane. But I remember when I was still a child and we had so much fun. I was the teacher’s pet. I was their mistress of the occult, their Catholic girl, their dark horse in a sea of once and forever night
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    My best friend, Rachelka, was also an unusual girl. She wore her long black curly hair in plaits that wrapped around her head like a rope on the dockof the black sea. Those ropes were like coiled snakes waiting to be provoked, unraveled, and drawn out into the murky waters of an unconquered world. She was like Rapunzel’s dark sister, only she did not let down her golden hair, but rather collected her black silky locks and kept them to herself, creating the look of a child in an old woman’s body, just waiting to be set free
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    Rachelka was known by all our teachers as the special one in the group. She passed all of her lessons without effort, sang like an angel, and was a gifted painter. Everyone knew that one day soon she would become a great artist. Rachelka knew this about herself as well. She believed in her own bright future the way most young girls know for certain that they will become brides, mothers, have a house all their own. Their sheer confidence even allows them to imagine how many children they will have, and whether those kids will be boys or girls
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    All of the students in the Mikolajskiej School for Girls were Jewish except for myself and three other girls. Why did our parents send us to a mostly Jewish school? Who knows? Maybe because it was the best school around. Things were not so separate then. Just because most of the students were Jewish doesn’t mean that there was much of a difference between us. We all wore the same pleated gray skirt and starched white shirt. We studied the same maps, had our first periods, attended class trips, ate the same foods. Rachelka was the neighbor of Małgosia, whose father was in business with