Andrzej waved for us to join him at a desk near the kitchen when Chaim and I arrived the next morning.
“Remember that young apprentice social worker?” he began excitedly. “She saved your sister’s life yesterday. There was some trouble, and she was separated from her boss but somehow managed to get your sister through a checkpoint on her own. The team are all abuzz. Do you know she is only fourteen years old?”
“A fourteen-year-old social worker?” I said, eyebrows lifting.
“Seems to be the case,” he said. I didn’t know what to say, but Andrzej motioned toward one of the rooms at the back of the communal space. “She’s here working with some children in the back room. I thought you might like to speak with her.”
I let myself into the room and found Elz·bieta sitting on the floor with three children in a semicircle in front of her. She looked up as I entered, and I saw surprise and recognition in her eyes. But I waved to indicate she should continue what she was doing with the children, and I wandered to the bookshelves at the back of the room. I listened as she chanted prayers with the children, the words as familiar to me as my own name. I helped myself to a seat at a table a few feet away, and I skimmed a novel. After a while, she dismissed the children and approached me.
“Hello,” she said quietly, coming to stand near me. “Thank you for the note.”
I looked at her then, really seeing her for the first time. My gaze skipped over her green eyes, rimmed in some dark smudge, and the wavy blond hair that fanned out around her shoulders, the front strands caught in a high roll above her forehead.
“Are you really only fourteen?” I blurted. Her eyebrows lifted in surprise, then she nodded silently and took the seat opposite me. “I heard about what you did for my sister. Thank you.”
“I’m glad she is okay.”
“Has she made it to her new family?”
“I don’t know,” Elz·bieta admitted apologetically. “I only see a tiny piece of the big picture. It is safer that way in case I’m compromised. But when I passed her on to my supervisor yesterday, they were immediately taking her to her new home. I think she is probably stuffed full of healthy milk, sleeping deeply in a fluffy, warm bed, in a house that is as safe as any house in Poland could be right now.”
I smiled in spite of myself, but the smile faded when I looked at Elz·bieta’s eyes and remembered the first time we met.
“I’m sorry for the way I behaved at my house that day,” I said, my chest tight. “I’m so ashamed to think that you did something so wonderful for my family after I scared you like that.”
“I understand.”
“I saw the orphans being deported,” I said suddenly, unthinkingly. She sat back in her chair and pressed her hand to her chest, her gaze dropping to the table. “I was hiding in a building across the street. I saw you crying upstairs in Andrzej’s apartments.” I wasn’t sure why I was so desperate to bring it up, just that I needed her to know that I had seen it, too. I wished I could admit to her that I, too, had wept.
“It was very upsetting,” she whispered, still staring at the table.
“Why do you come to help us?”
“What I do is not enough, and it is nothing in the scheme of things.” She was so wrong, and I wanted to argue with her, but before I could, she blurted, “I wanted to stop coming in after I saw those orphans taken. I was going to stop coming. Did you see that some were carrying little dolls?”
“I saw them. You gave some to the children in my apartment, too.”
“My family and I made those dolls. When I saw the orphans walking with them, I felt like they were taking a part of me with them. I know that is a selfish thing to say. Their deportation is not about me, but I’m telling you this because you said in your note that you felt ashamed, and I feel ashamed, too. I wish I were braver or stronger or clever enough to figure out how to help more people.”
“There is so little left to live for. So little hope,” I said, staring at the table between us. “You didn’t just carry a bag yesterday, and you didn’t just carry a baby. You gave my family hope. You gave us the chance that something of us will survive after all of this. For that, I will forever be in your debt.”
She was silent, and it took me a few moments to gather the courage to look up and meet her gaze again. When I did, there were tears running down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry I’ve upset you,” I whispered, stricken. She shook her head and gave me a wobbly smile, then wiped her tears, smudging black makeup over her cheek.
“Don’t be. Thank you for saying that.”
I began to rise, feeling heat in my face. “I should let you get back to your—” I stopped as she reached out and touched the table between us with her fingertips. I looked to her hand, then back to her face. She was staring at me intently.
“I need to wait for Andrzej to send more children through. Will you sit a while and keep me company?”
* * *
A new pattern emerged from the monotony of my days over the following weeks. I would leave early in the morning, allowing my family to think that I was still working with Sala, but making a beeline for the youth center, where I would spend time in the communal hall, reading or chatting with Chaim, and then I would spend time in the kitchen working. Some days, I joined the long queue in front of the youth center, hoping to receive a serving of soup.
And most days, when I saw that Elz·bieta was free for a moment between her classes, I would visit her. I would always ask her for news of Eleonora, and she would always tell me that there was none. She would ask me how my day was, and I would tell her that it was fine, even though the truth was nowhere near that simple. And then, quite often, I would scurry away like a startled mouse, unsure of what else to talk about.
I was drawn to her, but I wasn’t sure why. I got the sense that she liked when I visited, even though I never really knew what to say. It occurred to me that I could offer to help her teach the children their prayers, but then I would need to explain why I knew the Catholic prayers, and the whole subject was inevitably awkward. Whenever anyone found out I was Catholic, they always asked why I didn’t try to escape. Especially since Eleonora had been rescued, thoughts of being separated from my family were too much to take.
“You seem to be visiting the back room a lot, but you never stay very long,” Chaim teased me, after several days of this. I felt my cheeks warm, and I shrugged.
“She is a nice girl. She has done a lot for my family.”
“So you stick your head into the room, say hello, then run away?”
“I don’t know how to talk to her,” I admitted awkwardly.