“In my womb,” she explained, “I can protect a child.” But out here, she could not. I shivered, a part of me wishing I could be in there as well.

“You’ll understand someday, when you have children,” Mama added.

Though I knew she didn’t mean to be hurtful, the words stung a bit. “If it were not for the war, I might be starting a family of my own right now,” I pointed out. It was not that I was anxious to get married. To the contrary, I had always dreamed of college and a career in medicine. A husband and children would have made such things impossible. But the war had left me trapped, first in the ghetto and now here, in a kind of no-man’s-land between childhood and adulthood. I was eager for a life of my own.

“Oh, Sadele, your time will come,” Mama said. “Don’t rush time away, even here.”

There was a clattering outside the entrance to the chamber, followed by a splashing noise, the sound of thick boots moving through water. Everyone jumped instinctively, preparing for the worst. We relaxed once more as Pawel came through the opening bearing a satchel of food. “Hallo!” he greeted brightly, as if meeting us on the street. He visited us twice a week on market days, Tuesdays and Saturdays.

“Dzień dobry,” I replied, genuinely glad to see him. Not long ago, we were unsure if Pawel would return at all because Mama had run out of money.

Each week Mama paid Pawel for the food he would bring us next time. But a few weeks earlier, I found her searching forlornly through the satchel. “What is it?” I had asked.

“The money, it’s all gone. We have nothing left to pay Pawel.” I was surprised by her bluntness. Usually she kept problems from me, sheltering me like I was a child and not nineteen years old. I soon understood why she had told me. “We need to give him the necklace,” she explained. “So he can barter it for money or melt down the gold.”

“Never!” My hand rose instinctively to my neck. The necklace was the last piece of my father I had, my last link to him. I would sooner starve.

I quickly realized that the sentiment was a childish one. Papa would have given up the necklace in a heartbeat to feed us. I reached around my neck and loosened the clasp and put it in Mama’s hand.

When Pawel came that day, she held the necklace out to him. “Take this for the food.”

But Pawel refused. “That was your husband’s.”

“I have nothing else,” she admitted to him finally. Pawel stared at her for several seconds, wrestling with the news. Then he turned and left.

“Why did you tell him that?” Bubbe demanded. The Rosenbergs, it seemed, were out of money as well.

“Because there is no way to hide having no money,” Mama snapped, returning the necklace to me. I refastened it around my neck. Each night, I lay awake with my stomach grumbling, worried that he had left us for good.