“L-l-let me go!” I shout, forgetting about the consequences of disobeying orders. I push against sets of hands holding my shoulders down, and with every muscle I try to move more hands seem to find me. A belt is next—it’s pulled taut across my chest, and another across my legs, leaving me immobile.
I’ve read Frankenstein a dozen times, and this scene mimics one from the book; it can’t be real. It must be a horrible delusion. “What part of your body do you think controls the stutter?” Another question asked out loud, addressed to me, but spoken in a different direction. “One might think the tongue is the culprit, and sometimes this is correct, as with a child born with a stout lingual frenulum, causing the tongue to have a narrow range of movement. But as you can see here—” Dr. Mengele, squeezes his hand around the sides of my jaw, forcing my mouth open. A wooden tongue compressor slips beneath my tongue and lifts it above my bottom teeth. “This child does not have this issue, which likely means there is a malfunction or misfire occurring between the nerves of her frontal lobe.”
No one responds to Dr. Mengele, including me. My only option is to bite the compressor, but that would just cause me pain.
Another aide walks in with a different rolling tray. I can’t see what’s placed on top of this one because I can no longer lift my neck. “Would you like me to begin?” the aide asks. Her voice is soft, meek, and yet clearly pleasing to Dr. Mengele as he answers promptly.
“Yes, yes, all of it, please. Don’t worry, my youngin’, now you will look like everyone else strolling around the grounds here.” I’m not sure what he means, but it doesn’t take long until I figure it out. A buzz stings my ears. The sound is familiar, but I have never felt an electric razor against my head. They’re removing my hair.
The skin covering my body aches from shivers. A chill runs down every one of my limbs and I cry inside, trying desperately not to show that through a falling tear. My breaths form shallow and quick, coming and going faster and faster. The harder I breathe, the weaker I become. The weaker I become, the less I feel. I force myself into hyperventilation, relishing the lightheaded spell falling over me like a thick fog. Whoever is removing every hair from my head does not have a gentle touch. The thuds from the razor feel like a hammer thumping against my head over and over. A strand of my long dark hair falls over my face—one last reminder of what I once looked like.
“All set, doctor,” a woman’s voice confirms.
“Do you need an anesthetic and antiseptic along with the iodine you requested?” another suggests.
“No. There are no nerves past the initial layers of flesh. It will only hurt for a moment,” Dr. Mengele says.
When the fog lifts and the lights return overhead, I don’t know what has happened. I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve fallen asleep, or since I forgot how to lift my eyelids. The room is as cold as a winter’s day, and I can’t move a muscle. Exhaustion threatens to pull me back under into a world of the unknown. Maybe I’d be better off there.
Something salty and sour stings my taste buds and I realize my mouth is full of some sort of cotton. My face is sore, like someone has hit me with a frying pan, and my temples thump to the rhythm of my pulse. I try to move my arms, but I’m stuck. My legs won’t move either. I attempt to make a sound through my brittle throat, but only air moves between my lungs and the mouthful of cotton I can’t seem to spit out.
I need help. Can no one see I need help? Am I alone? When I struggle to open my eyes again, I find my power to be useless against a force keeping my eyelids in place, and each time I try to open my eyes, a sting tugs at my cheeks.
Again, I try to yell for help, but I’m too weak and I’m left with a measly cough in place of my voice. The cough tears against my throat and sends a stabbing pain along the bottom of my jaw.
Reality seeps into my ragged thoughts, and I think I’m paralyzed with fear from what I don’t know and may never want to find out.
Does Arina know where I am? I need my sister, and I need my parents. What if I was supposed to die, but I’m stuck in between? Would anyone even know?
ELEVEN
ARINA
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, USA, OCTOBER 1946
The temperatures are still oddly mild for the end of October and much different from what I remember in Hungary. I think we would have had our first snowfall by now, but the leaves here are still dangling from branches in electrifying colors. There’s a bus we can take from the schoolhouse back to Amazing Grace, but I’ve been walking on the days it isn’t raining. It still feels abnormal to walk home from school alone. I walked nowhere without Nora by my side, and if she wasn’t around, friends surrounded me. Now, everyone stares at me like I’m a contagious disease and the idea of making friends feels impossible. I miss the person I was, but I think I was only her because of the people who surrounded me. Nothing seems to resonate with the feeling of joy here. I don’t even want to sing, and I don’t remember going a day without at least humming a melody. That was before Auschwitz, though.
With the orphanage in sight, I slow my pace, prolonging the peace before the ambush of chaos. I used to wonder how Mama could handle a set of twins when Papa worked long hours, but now I see having two to care for is nothing compared to the hundreds who live here.
“It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” I smile at the sound of his voice before lifting my focus from the concrete I’m walking along.
“It is. Are you finally making a run for it?” I joke with Dale. He’s in his usual uniform, but with a smudge of grease on the right side of his face.
“There’s a plumbing issue in one bathroom and I need to run into town for a part.”
I wonder if he knows what’s on his face, so I point to his cheek.
“It’s just grease, but I suppose it could be worse,” he says with a quick laugh. It must be in his hair too, which is a wavy, tousled mess. His dark features make his ashy-blue eyes glow beneath the sun. They’re hard to look away from.
“Good luck finding what you’re looking for,” I tell him.
He nods his head, pulling in a sharp breath. “Yeah, thanks.” I take a step forward, wishing I had something more to say, but I seem to have lost my ability to have random talks. “Say, are you planning to take part in the Halloween festivities tonight?” he asks.
“Maybe. I’ve been hearing some of the kids’ chatter about Halloween, but I’m not sure what it’s all about, really.” Although, I can make assumptions by the little ghosts and goblin paper cutouts all over the inside walls.
“You should help me hand out candy to the younger kids. They form a line and walk past the offices on the first floor, collecting sweets from all the staff. Some of the older kids help too.”
“Candy?” I question him.
“Yeah, suckers, lollipops, gum, you know.”
Dr. Mengele handed out candy to the kids. Maybe he was familiar with the traditions of Halloween in the United States. I don’t understand how candy and goblins coincide with fun. We never saw the fun that followed a candy treat.
“Oh, I see.”