“Good luck,” I whisper, slipping out the door.
When I leave Mrs. Yost’s office, I don’t leave the building. Instead, I walk down the hall to the empty room that is going to become the library. What I’d really love is a fashion magazine, a thick one, with advertisements from ladies’ clothing stores to give me ideas for Breine’s dress or at least confirm that my own ideas aren’t hopelessly out of date. I haven’t worn a new dress in five years. I haven’t set foot in a decent shop in longer, not since the Germans took over our factory. I would like to sit down the way I once did with my father, turning pages slowly, learning how to anticipate trends, what kinds of fabrics we might need to order more of.
But the library isn’t finished yet: There’s a drop cloth on the floor, the acrid odor of fresh paint clinging to the walls. Boxes, of books I assume, are piled in the middle of the room, but I don’t feel I should open them.
I step outside and hear the clicking of footsteps: Breine rushing toward me. “There you are!” She grabs my hands. Hers are still dirty under the nails; she hasn’t been to the room yet to wash them. “I have good news. My uncle’s train hasn’t had as many delays as we expected. I just got a telegram; he should be here tomorrow!”
“Tomorrow?”
“Isn’t that amazing? In a few days, I’ll be married!”
“Breine, your dress.” I panic. “I’m not very far on it yet. I was just going to look for a magazine to get ideas, but I have hours’ worth of work left.”
“I know you’ve been busy.”
And I have been busy, but that’s not the only reason I’m behind. The few times I’ve sat down with the material, my hands have been wooden. I think part of me doesn’t want to. Sewing a dress is moving forward with my life. Sewing a dress would be healing, which is why the nurses tried to get me to pick up a needle and thread when I was sitting in my hospital bed. Sewing a dress would be a betrayal. Wouldn’t it? Should I be allowed to move forward before I’ve found my brother?
“I’ll go start it again right now,” I tell her.
“You don’t have to go right this very second. Come eat first.”
“No, I don’t want to put it off any longer, and I also wanted to ask around for a better needle.”
“We’ll ask the other girls at dinner,” she insists, pulling me toward the door. “However good you are, I bet I’ll thank myself later for not letting you sew on an empty stomach.”
In the dining hall, our regular corner doesn’t look as it usually does: Instead of one small table, several have been pushed together, with twelve or fourteen people sitting elbow to elbow.
“Meeting night,” Breine apologizes. “I forgot; I’m sorry. You’ll just have to sit through our talking for a few minutes at the beginning.”
I recognize a few of the new occupants, vaguely, as the ruddy, healthy-looking people Breine and Chaim work with in the fields every day. Chaim’s front-room housemate Ravid, strong and sunburned, stands at the head and taps his water glass on the table to get everyone’s attention.
“I don’t want to impose,” I whisper to Breine as we approach. The table is full; Chaim has saved a place for Breine, but there’s no place for me to sit without making others move.
“Really, nobody will mind.”
Breine settles into the spot Chaim has saved for her and then playfully elbows the man on her other side until he slides farther down to make room for me. Ravid raises one eyebrow at Breine’s disruption—the squeaking chair, the clattering of silverware as she passes fork and spoon to the man she’s just displaced. “Do you think I’m allowed to continue?” Ravid asks dryly. Breine makes a face at him.
“As I was starting to say,” Ravid continues. “We’re almost ready to move into the next phase of Aliyah Bet.”
Around the table, nobody else seems as confused as I am about the phrase Ravid has just used. Aliyah means immigrating to Eretz Israel. I know that; it’s meant that for centuries. But I’ve never heard of Aliyah Bet.
“Breine,” I whisper. “What is Aliyah Bet?”
Ravid breaks off again, and this time he looks straight at me. “Is there a question?”
My face turns red, but his tone wasn’t angry, just firm. “I don’t know that phrase,” I admit.
“Do you know about Britain’s immigration quotas to Palestine?” he asks before launching an explanation. “The few people who can go there legally, they are part of Aliyah Aleph. Plan A,” Ravid continues. “Aliyah Bet, however, isn’t permitted under the laws. Plan B.”
“Entering illegally?” I ask.
“Plan B,” Breine corrects me. I marvel that Breine is going to be a part of this. She didn’t farm before the war. She told me her father was the president of an insurance company. She told me she spent her days learning how to manage a household, hire good servants, and set a nice table. A different dress for every day of the week. A different hat and gloves for every dress.
“What happens if you’re stopped?” I ask. “It’s illegal; what happens if you’re caught?”
“We’ve heard that if the ships are stopped, then the passengers will be taken to a refugee camp,” Ravid says. “But we’re in a refugee camp now anyway.”
“Do you want to come with us, Zofia?” Breine teases.
“Come with you? I’m going home.”
“We’re all going home,” she says. “Just a new home.”
“I’m going to my home in Poland,” I say firmly. “That was Abek’s and my home, and after I find him, it will be again.” I wriggle my way out of my seat. “And now I’m going to go work on your dress.”
AFTER A FRUITLESS HOUR OF TRYING TO WORK ON BREINE’S dress in our cottage, I finally decide there’s just not a large enough flat surface for the project, and I end up carrying the heap of unflattering yellow back to the dining hall. By then, the tables are mostly empty, aside from the volunteers for cleanup duty. I fan the dress out on a table that’s been wiped down. Smoothing the silk with the flat of my palm, I sit and again assess what I have to work with.
In front of me: A makeshift sewing kit, as much as I could assemble after asking around camp. Thread wasn’t a problem to locate, but finding the right color was—the two best candidates are either more orange than the dress fabric or too white. I also have a frayed measuring tape, a collection of needles in need of sharpening, handfuls of loose buttons, and some pins gathered in a butter dish. Nothing looks new, which means everything in front of me was secreted away in camps, or scavenged immediately after. Hidden in pockets, tucked in straw mattresses. Small acts of defiance—to own a useless button that the Nazis didn’t know about, to hold a spool of thread in the middle of a frozen night. But now the women gave them to me willingly.
Normally, I might layer a piece of muslin behind the silk to make the silk behave better with the scissors. I don’t have any of that, though, so instead, I’ve gathered a pile of newspapers. I remember my mother using this trick a few times when she was trying an experimental design and didn’t want to waste expensive supplies, but I’ve never done it myself. I worry about the ink of the newsprint rubbing off on the pale, delicate material.