When I peered into the sewer again, she was gone.

6

Sadie

We were back in our apartment on Meiselsa Street, Papa whirling Mama around the kitchen to the tinny piano music that came through the floor as if it was one of the grand ballrooms in Vienna. When they had finished dancing, Mama breathlessly called me to the table where a fresh, delicious babka sat cooling. I picked up a knife and cut into the moist pastry. Suddenly, there was a rumbling beneath my feet and the floor began to crack. Papa reached across the table for me, but his hand slipped through mine. I screamed as the ground gave way and we fell through to the sewer below.

“Sadele.” A voice roused me from sleep. “You must be quiet.” It was Mama, softly but firmly reminding me that we could not cry out in our dreams, that we must be silent here.

I opened my eyes and looked around the damp, smelly chamber. The nightmare of falling into the sewer had been real. But my father was nowhere to be found.

Papa. His face appeared in my mind as it had in the dream. He had seemed so close, but now that I was awake, there was no way I could reach him. Even after a month, his death was still a constant pain. A knife shot through my heart anew every time I woke up and realized that he was dead.

I closed my eyes once more, willing myself to return to sleep so the dream of home and my father could come again. But it had slipped beyond reach. Instead, I pretended Papa was lying there beside Mama and me, that I could still hear the snore I used to complain about.

My mother gave me a reassuring squeeze, then rose and walked across the chamber to the makeshift kitchen in the corner to help Bubbe Rosenberg, who was shelling beans. Though the dimness of the chamber remained unchanged, I could tell from the noises on the street above that it was nearly dawn.

A few days, Mama had said. A week at most. That was more than a month ago. Once I could not have imagined staying in the sewer for so long. But there was simply nowhere to go. The ghetto had been emptied, all of the Jews who lived there killed or taken to the camps. If we went onto the street, we would be shot on sight or arrested. The sewer, which ran beneath the length of the city, opened at the Wisła River, but the entrance was guarded by armed Germans. I felt certain that Papa had not meant for us to stay and live in the sewer like this. But he had taken whatever plan he had for our escape with him to his watery grave. We were, quite literally, trapped.

I looked out from the corner where we slept. We had taken one side of the chamber as a sleeping area and the Rosenberg family the other, leaving the area in between for a kind of makeshift kitchen. Pan Rosenberg sat across the chamber, reading. I looked around for Saul, but he was nowhere to be found.