Free No Safe Place by Deborah Ellis

laundry.
    Someone should stand watch, Abdul decided, in case the coastguard or someone else was looking for them. But the chair across from Rosalia looked too inviting. He sat down on it.
    A small plastic bag with tiny, shiny black stones was on the table beside her.
    Abdul picked it up. He looked at Rosalia.
    All the tension and rage were gone from her face. In her sleep, it looked like all was well.

TEN
    â€œThis is a smart girl.”
    Mr. Kruger made no sign that he had heard Uncle Nikolas’s words. He kept tapping his feet and looking bored.
    â€œThis is a very smart girl,” Uncle Nikolas repeated, “and I say that not because she is my niece, but because it is true. Only six years of schooling, but she has picked up many things on her own. Mathematics, she can do in her head. At just fourteen! Languages. Polish, English, Czech, and since we got your kind invitation, even a little German! You treat her right, she can earn good money for you.” He put his arm around Rosalia’s slim shoulders.
    Mr. Kruger gave a jerk of his head toward the waiting car.
    â€œIt’s a long drive,” he said. “Let’s go.”
    â€œNow, we have an agreement,” Uncle Nikolas reminded him. “You will take my niece into Germany where she will work in your factory. You will find her a safe place to live and to go to school in the evenings, and for this service she will pay you a portion of her earnings. We have an agreement.”
    â€œSay your goodbyes,” Mr. Kruger said. He picked up the small taped-up suitcase that held Rosalia’s few things, headed over to the car and put it in the trunk.
    Uncle Nikolas slowly steered Rosalia over to the car.
    â€œOur family lived in Germany for hundreds of years before the war,” he said to her. “You have never been there, but, in a way, you are going home.”
    â€œWe carry our home in our hearts,” Rosalia said, determined not to cry. “My mother taught me that.” Before she died. Before Rosalia’s father died and her older brothers scattered to the four winds in search of work.
    Mr. Kruger honked the car horn. They were out of time.
    Uncle Nikolas kissed Rosalia on the forehead and whispered an old Roma prayer in her ear. “Remember what you came from, and remember what you are worth,” he said and pushed her away. She turned, but not before she saw his tears.
    They did not waste time saying they would keep in touch.
    â€œIn the back,” Mr. Kruger said, “and don’t chatter.”
    Rosalia already had a pretty good idea what kind of man Mr. Kruger was. She’d seen where his eyes had gone when he looked at her. She was glad not to have to sit beside him, and she certainly didn’t want to waste any of her precious thoughts or words on him.
    She was not sad to be leaving the cluster of hovels on the edge of the Czech village. It was close to the great city of Prague, but it may as well have been on the far side of the moon. No running water, no heat, no real toilets. It was worse, even, than the place where she’d grown up, in Nowa Huta, the huge industrial suburb just outside Krakow, across the border in Poland. At least in Poland she had gone to a regular school, though not all Polish Roma did. Her Czech cousins had been sent to special schools — Roma children were considered defective and inferior. Her uncle’s children could barely read, and not because they were not smart.
    No, she was not sad to leave this ugly scrap of wasteland, with its black, foul mud and the Nazi messages spraypainted everywhere by the skinheads who wrecked their homes and beat the Roma with baseball bats. She was not sad to leave this place that was heavy with the memories of the pig men with swastika tattoos who carried her off and hurt her in terrible, private ways among the garbage of a roadside dumping station. Her uncle and his family were sad to see her leave, but there was no choice.