“If you tell me exactly where, I can go find it,” I offered without thinking.

“Go to the street?” Mama asked with disbelief. Her expression was horrified.

“We need food, Mama. I can do it.”

“Never,” Mama replied with all of the force she could muster. “None of us, especially not my daughter, is leaving the sewer to look for food. We will have to think of something else.”

That day wore on, and the next, we grew hungrier. We drank small drips of water to ease our stomach pains. I even imagined the tiny baby in Mama’s womb, crying silently as he or she waited in vain for nourishment that did not come.

Another night fell with no food. Saul and I started from the chamber, though I was nearly too weak with hunger to stay up and read. “My father is right,” he said when we neared the annex. “There is food hidden in the ghetto cellar. Not just potatoes, but cured meats. You remember how in the ghetto they sometimes gave us dried pork?” I nodded. It was the Germans’ idea of a cruel joke, giving the Jews food that was not kosher. “We couldn’t eat it, but I stored it away, just in case of an emergency. There are a few sacks of potatoes there, too, that might be salvageable. It is in the apartment building where we lived at Lwowska Street, number twelve, behind the basement wall. If only there was a way to get to it.”

“Maybe my friend Ella can help find it,” I said, before I could think better of it or stop myself.

“The girl on the street? You’ve continued to speak with her?” He sounded horrified. I did not answer. “But, Sadie, you promised me.”

“I know.” I searched for a justification for what I had done, but found none. “I’m sorry. If I ask, perhaps she can help get the food.”

“I don’t like it. We can’t trust her.”

“I think we can. She has known about me for weeks and hasn’t told anyone. Why would she betray us now?” He did not answer. I knew he would agree, or see Ella as a friend like I did. “Anyway, there’s really no other choice.”

“All right,” Saul relented. “If I tell you exactly where the food is hidden, you can send her.”

I considered the idea. I tried to picture Ella, who had spent most of her life in the posh city center, attempting to navigate the ruins of the liquidated ghetto. She would never be able to manage it. “She would stick out,” I said. “And she wouldn’t know her way around. If I could get onto the street, I could go myself.”

Saul’s eyes widened. “Sadie, you can’t be serious.” The sewer was our only hope to stay alive. To consider going to the street was to risk capture and death.

“It’s the only way,” I said.

“I could go,” Saul offered. Yet even as he said it, we both knew that it was impossible. With his yarmulke and beard, he would be detected immediately. I loved him for offering, but he couldn’t possibly go. I was our only hope.