“I didn’t run,” I whispered numbly.
“And what else?” she demanded harshly, shaking my hand as she spoke.
“I didn’t cry out for help.”
“And?”
“I didn’t even try to... I just let them... I just... I didn’t even try to fight back.”
Now Truda released my wrist, but she did so only so that she could catch my shoulders in her hands, and she stared into my eyes, her face flushed with frustration and anger.
“If you had run, they would have shot you. If you had cried out, they would have shot you. If you had fought, they would have shot you. You were powerless against those men. You didn’t allow them to do anything. You didn’t invite them to do anything. Nothing you did or didn’t do could have changed what happened to you. It was a combination of bad luck and bad men. I won’t hear you speak like that again, and I won’t sit back and let you blame yourself. Where is the Emilia who has always driven me crazy because she was ready to charge into the fight? You need to fight the shame, because on the other side of the fight there is pride and there is healing.” She shook me gently, but when I still could not look at her, her tone grew sharper. “Do you hear me? We are going to Warsaw. We are going to find Sara and Roman. And you, my girl, are going to grow strong again and become the young woman who has always inspired and terrified me with her spirit. I will not allow those Soviet bastards to steal that spirit from you, Emilia. It has cost us too much to keep you alive only to lose you to their cruelty.”
We sat in ragged silence for a very long time. Truda eventually released me, but only so that she could slide her arm around my shoulders and pull me close. My eyes were dry, but my heart was racing. I would need to process Truda’s words. I would need to turn them over in my mind and consider them, to parse each word and determine what was truth and what I could ignore. I needed time—so much time—and my parents were forcing me to move, and by the sounds of things, they meant for us to do so immediately. Elsewhere in the factory, I could hear Mateusz packing up. Preparing us for the journey.
“I don’t want to walk back to Warsaw,” I whispered eventually. My body had healed, but I remembered Mateusz warning me in the early days that if we were to return to Warsaw, we would be making the trip against an advancing wave of Red Army soldiers. I couldn’t imagine how I would convince myself to walk for over one hundred kilometers against a tide of men in that uniform.
“Mateusz is going to pay someone to take us. Probably in a horse or cart, maybe even in a truck. It will take only a few hours, and then you’ll be home.”
“And what if our building is gone?”
“Home isn’t a building, Emilia,” she scolded me gently. “Your home was never a building. It wasn’t even the city. Home is family. And you were right all along. Our best chance of finding our family is in Warsaw.”
* * *
Mateusz found a kindly if opportunistic farmer who owned a rusted but functional truck. In exchange for most of our remaining money, the farmer drove us the hundred kilometers back to Warsaw. When the truck began to slow, I thought perhaps we were lost.
The whispers and rumors we’d managed to hear in Lodz warned us that Warsaw was in ruin, but I didn’t really understand what that meant until we approached. The Germans had gone from building to building and block to block, burning and demolishing almost every structure.
“I can’t take you any farther,” the farmer said hesitantly. I could see why. The road was covered in rubble—huge slabs of concrete and partial brick walls, scattered with smashed glass and thick dust. We had left the city in early October. There had been some damage then, mostly from incendiary devices and fires, but this destruction was all I could see for miles.
“There’s nothing left,” I whispered numbly.
“There are some buildings,” Mateusz said, trying to sound hopeful, but he was entirely unconvincing. He sounded more confused and devastated than optimistic.
“This was a bad idea,” I said. “I know that you did this because you thought it would cheer me up, but there is nothing here for us. How would we ever find Roman and Sara, even if they are alive? How would we even find our old building?”
“We have to make it work,” Truda said flatly, and she opened the creaky door and slipped out of the truck. I looked at her incredulously.
“Truda, how?”
“Get out of the truck, Emilia,” she said, pursing her lips.
Beside me, Mateusz and the farmer exchanged quiet farewells, then Mateusz cleared his throat.
“We really should get going. It is going to be quite the walk across the city.”
“If we stay here, where will we even sleep tonight?” I asked, frustrated, then added sarcastically, “Do you think we will find a hotel? Maybe an empty mansion we can squat in?”
“We must find Sara. Roman, too. Remember? It was all we could talk about before—” Truda broke off abruptly, eyes widening in realization as if the mere mention of the attack was going to traumatize me further. This enraged me. I felt my face heating.
“Before what?” I said.
Truda’s gaze dropped to the road. “We have to find them. Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. That sounds like something you would have said to me, once upon a time.”
Mateusz gently nudged me toward the door, and I sighed impatiently and shuffled across. I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to return to Lodz, either, but the thought of becoming vagrants living on the streets of a city that had been destroyed was much more unappealing. Still, I could tell Truda was determined, and I wasn’t exactly sure how to counter such a thing. Especially in the state I was in.
I hesitated for another moment, trying to figure it all out, and Truda’s patience finally wore thin. She planted her hands on her hips and leaned forward to hiss at me. “We need Sara. I do not know how to explain it to you yet, so I am asking you to trust me. There is a very good reason we need to be back in the city, so get out of the car, and let’s go.”
I slipped out of the car, planted my shoes in the crushed-concrete dust and glass that covered the entire street and took a reluctant step forward.
“Good,” Truda said, satisfied. She pointed at the back of the truck. “Get your bag. The sooner we start walking, the sooner we will find somewhere to rest tonight.”
Mateusz took my bag from the back of the truck and tossed it to me. I caught it, shot them both a resentful glare and set off toward the city.
* * *
Six hours later, we stood in stunned silence at the front of what used to be our building. It had fared somewhat better than many of the others we had passed, but it was still severely damaged. Sara’s apartment was gone—I assumed a bomb had taken it out. Her side of our entire floor and the floor below us had just disappeared, leaving a gaping hole.