As soon as they spot her, the children swarm her at once and stare. Zosia shifts soundlessly from foot to foot, unaccustomed to being looked at. A lone girl greets her with “Hallo,” but Zosia’s voice chokes. Words, to Zosia, are like glass beads around her neck. If one were to break loose, they would all clatter to the floor and scatter, shatter the quiet that kept her and her mother alive, entwined beneath hay.

At lunch, when Zosia brings the spoon to her mouth, her lips don’t open with a smack, her teeth don’t click as she chews, her throat makes no gulping sounds as she swallows. Her hips never once shift upon the hard refectory bench, her starched sleeves don’t rustle against the napkin in her lap. She is meant to hide here in plain sight; this much she knows, even if she does not know why. There is a din in the room: the chatter and slurping of the other children, the quick slap-slap of the nuns’ soles upon the floor, and the solemn utterance of prayer. Zosia makes no sound at all and keeps her eyes on her food. It is more than she is used to. Soup, tinged orange with carrots, and a mound of potatoes on the side.

She eats greedily at first but slows, thinking of her mother: all the times she didn’t eat while, outside with Krystyna, Zosia gobbled bread and butter and eggs.

In the afternoon, Sister Alicja ushers Zosia past murky portraits of people with golden halos. “This is Saint Francis of Assisi, and that is Saint Elizabeth of Hungary,” and on into the chapel. Every other part of the convent is bare and dingy, reeking of bleach, the same as her hair. But the chapel is wondrous, arched and gleaming. Sunlight floods through high windows, and candles flicker on a table at the front, giving off a waxy scent. All around is a radiating calm.

Alicja guides Zosia into a row behind several other children and gestures for her to copy them as they set down the cushions for kneeling and reach for the hymnals lining the bench backs. Zosia sinks into the hushed stillness, the quiet here expectant, not at all like the oppressed silence of the barn. She feels shaky, confused. Once on her knees in her row, she drops beneath the pew entirely, curls tight, and cries silently.

She tries to soothe herself by filling her head with her mother’s voice—the only sound that comforted her in danger. The particular lilt and catch when she whisper-sang about the hen who brought glasses of tea to her chicks. Cucuricoo! Di mom iz nisht do … Her mother would speak to her in many languages. Polish. Russian. German. Ukrainian. But always, she sang in Yiddish, in notes lyrical and haunting.