Free If I Should Die Before I Wake by Han Nolan Page A

waiting.
    Mama nodded. "Go on, child, lie down. Your body heat might help."
    I did as I was told while Mama made a tent over us. She placed a chair at each corner of the cot and spread the blankets out over and across us. Then she tucked them under the legs of the chairs.
    It was a cozy little tent, dark and private, something Anya and I would have enjoyed together, but Zayde and I? I closed my eyes and listened to Zayde's shallow breathing.
    He was whispering, "
Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eiohainu Adonai Ehad.
"
    I whispered it, too, and realized that by its end he was no longer shivering. I turned my head and, with my eyes now accustomed to the dark, saw Zayde smile and then let out his breath. I turned away and stared up at the pattern on the blanket above us.
    I laughed to myself as I saw the pattern move before my eyes. Mama was behind us in the kitchen, chopping up the frozen beets we had been given. The patterns shifted again and I could make out the shape of a face. It is like finding shapes in the clouds, I thought. Perhaps I am seeing the
Moshiah.
Perhaps he has come at last to save us, to tell us all will be well, bringing food—potatoes, and onions, and sausage, and butter.... The face lost its shadows and I saw it was not the
Moshiah
at all but my friend. I called her that now, the girl who saw me and knew me, and understood. She smiled down at me, a smile like Zayde's, and I tried to smile back but could not. I was cold, suddenly very cold, and I wondered if Zayde was cold, too. I reached out to touch his arm. Yes, he was cold, like an iron rod, cold and still, so very still. My zayde was gone.
    Baruch dayan emet.

CHAPTER NINE
Hilary
    I'M TRYING TO WIGGLE MY TOES, make something move. I need to get away, get out.
    Nothing happens.
    The old lady's standing with her face turned away so I'm staring at the back of her head. She's hardly got any hair back there, and what little's there is all pressed and matted. I can see a scar, too, like a strip of seersucker running down her scalp toward her neck. I don't want to look at it.
    Bubbe?
    Grandma? Turn around. What's wrong? Do you know something?
    I'm so hungry. I feel as if something is chewing up my insides.
    My zayde. I've lost my zayde. It feels like hunger. I can't tell them apart, sorrow and hunger—and pain. I think I'm hurting somewhere, everywhere, but I'm not sure. I just feel hungry—very, very hungry.
    I need my mother. If you won't turn around, Bubbe, and speak to me, then please, go get Mama.
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"Therefore I am full of the wrath of the Lord;
I am weary of holding it in.
Pour it out upon the children in the street,
and upon gatherings of young men, also;
both husband and wife shall be taken,
the old folk and the very aged."
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    No! I don't want to hear that! I don't want to hear her. She frightens me.
    Why are you quoting those verses at me? You don't know. Why do you read as if you knew, as if you understood?
    My zayde ...
    Why must people die? Why must the wrong people die?
    Why didn't we die, Mother? Why did it have to be Daddy? And where is that greedy Jew boss who killed Daddy now? Is he living in some fancy mansion, bought with his blood money?
    And the Germans—who guard the gates of the ghetto, who keep the food out and death in—will they ever suffer? Is there no punishment for them?
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"They know no bounds in deeds of wickedness;
they judge not with justice
the cause of the fatherless, to make it prosper."
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    I don't understand. Can you hear me, Mother? Grandma, turn around. Someone explain what's going on. Why is she reading that passage to me?
    I don't want to hear her. She's reading as though she and I were connected somehow, as if she knew about the Germans, about this other world.
    Ah! Now you turn around.
    You and I are connected, too, aren't we, Grandma? Only I don't know how, or why. And why should Mother and I be connected? She never wanted me and I never needed her, so why—why must we be connected?
    Am I