Free Someone Named Eva by Joan M. Wolf

go back to my village and live in my house with my family and be called by my real name again.
    This was all the knowledge I needed to help warm the winter and make the center and the daily lessons more bearable.
    Not long after I had remembered my name, Fräulein Haugen brought a full-length mirror to a health lesson. Each of us was weighed, and had her heart checked and her head and nose once again measured. Then, one by one, we were brought to the mirror, where Fräulein Haugen showed us how to style our hair into an intricate twist.
    I had not looked into a mirror since coming to the center, and the person who stared back at me from the glass was someone I did not know. I put a hand up to my face, and the girl in the mirror did the same. My hair had grown past my shoulders, and my face had changed as well. It was longer, and the freckles had faded. The person in the mirror looked less like a little girl and more like a young woman.
    I peered at the blond hair and blue eyes, things I had never paid attention to before, things that had changed me from a Czech girl into a future German citizen.
    ***
    A month further into winter, I awoke again in the middle of the night. From someplace far away I could hear Babichka's Czech lullaby, beautiful and pure, floating in my ears. But someone was trying to shake it out of me.
    I opened my eyes. Liesel stood above my cot, shaking my shoulders gently.
    "Eva. Eva? What are you doing?" she whispered in German. "You're singing and I can't understand you. Wake up. Wake up!"
    "What?" I asked in Czech.
    "Eva, wake up! I can't understand what you are saying."
    "I am awake," I whispered in German, disappointed to realize where I was. I wanted to fade back into the warmth of the song. Pieces of it still floated in my mind like soft feathers.
    I sat up and looked into Liesel's eyes. Even in the darkness, with only the moonlight to see by, their blue color was striking. I patted a spot on my cot, and she joined me, curling her legs up under her nightdress and wrapping her arms around her knees. We sat for a long while in silence, listening to the breathing of the other girls.
    "You have the prettiest eyes, Liesel," I whispered.
    "Thank you," she said. "They're just like my mother's...." She stopped and turned away.
    I looked at Franziska's sleeping form beside me as I thought about Liesel. She was the first person who had smiled at me after coming to the center. Her eyes were the only pretty thing I had seen.
    What had she been like before coming to this place? Had she been someone I would have liked or someone I wouldn't have wanted at my birthday party, like Franziska? How had this place changed Liesel? How had this place changed me?
    I stood and paused to hear if any of the other girls were awake or if the night guard was near. Liesel looked up at me, and I held out my hand to her.
    "Come," I whispered, when I was sure no one else was awake. Quietly I led us down the narrow aisle between the two rows of cots to where our coats and boots were stored. I pulled mine on and motioned for Liesel to do the same. She didn't hesitate but followed what I was doing without question. Together we slipped outside through the small door near the sleeping room and into the cold darkness.
    Twinkling stars filled the sky. Our teacher in Czechoslovakia had once told us that stars are really like suns: giant balls of heat and light, and not the tiny shining crystals we see when we look up.
    Liesel huddled close behind me, shivering in her coat and trying to see the path beneath her so she wouldn't stumble.
    "Look!" I stopped and pointed. "Look! That's the North Star. Do you see it? It's always in the sky, no matter what the season. Even here the stars are the same."
    She followed the direction where I pointed and nodded. "Stars," she whispered. "I guess I had never noticed."
    We stood for several minutes watching the stars blink randomly, as if each one had its own rhythm.
    Liesel began shivering, and I too