Take a Peek….

Chapter 21 

Rachael 

Her eyes opened a few minutes before the guards started their cruel  

wake-up call. She valued these brief moments of peace. Chaya’s  head lay on Rachael’s chest, the child’s slow, heavy breath warming the  skin over her heart. The summer warmth had come and gone quickly,  and the weather was quickly deteriorating into yet another winter in  Auschwitz. Even with Chaya’s shared body heat and a relatively comfortable blanket recently stolen from kanada, Rachael still felt the night’s  cold settle into her toes and fingertips. Even during the day, the pale  November sun didn’t offer much more warmth than the moon. 

Rachael lifted a hand to rub the sleep from her eyes. She tried to  move slowly to not disturb Chaya, who would sleep even after the  wake-up call if she were allowed. For a child with so much energy, she  slept like the dead. Her vision cleared, Rachael saw her hand. The palm  was covered in dark red dried blood. She quickly squeezed her fist shut,  hoping to hide the telltale sign. Blood on her hands from the coughs  that wracked her body in her sleep was like the black mark of death  itself. She was a doomed woman. She felt it in her gut, her abdominal muscles sore from the strain of the cough. She felt it in her chest, which  was burning from the inside. She felt it in her throat, so raw that it took  an hour some mornings before she could speak intelligibly. 

She kept her hand hidden from Chaya until she could get through  the line to the half-frozen water bucket to wash. The confused look  from Chaya and the looks of pity from her bunkmates told her that  there was no hiding it. She must have blood on her face, giving away  her secret. She washed the fatal mark away as best she could and swallowed a few gulps of watery coffee, though her stomach felt no need  for anything anymore. Chaya continued to look at Rachael with worry  but jabbered on about her wild dreams as though nothing was amiss. As  always, Rachael was happy for the distraction. 

She could tell it was going to be a long morning roll call. Her legs felt  like they could not support her for more than a few minutes, so she knew,  from her usual luck, that it meant she would be out there for at least an  hour in the freezing cold. Plus, she could read the eyes of the guards like  she used to read the morning newspaper with Alexey next to her sipping  tea. This morning, they all carried the gleam of boredom and cruelty— one of the most dangerous and painful combinations in this place. 

Chaya was a bundle of energy. Even at such early hours and in such cold, she bobbed slightly, rocking from her toes to her heels, as they  stood in line surrounded by complete silence. Rachael kept her eyes  forward, boring holes into the back of the woman’s head directly in line  ahead of her. But she was aware of her surroundings. She could feel the  nervous energy vibrating off of Chaya. Rachael knew better than to try  to calm the girl’s fidgeting until it was absolutely necessary, so she used her peripheral vision to scan constantly for any guard walking nearby.  If one came close enough to notice Chaya’s movements, Rachael would  gently touch Chaya’s arm. It was enough to still the child until the guard passed on, still looking for an excuse to abuse one or more prisoners. 

On this chilly morning, before the sun rose over the gray horizon, the guards paced the lines silently. They did not call out offenders for ridicule or beatings. They did not read through the list of numbers associated with the women before them. They did not even congregate at the  front of the queue, smoking, joking, and trading camp gossip like normal  women out for a morning stroll. Rachael was sure they were waiting for  something. Everything inside Rachael hurt that morning—her legs, her  arms, her abdomen, her chest, her head. She felt herself start to sway and  widened her stance just a bit to help her balance. Chaya had made up a  game of slight movements—forward and back on her toes and heels four  times, a slight wiggle from side to side of her hips, a wiggle of the fingers  on her left hand, a wiggle of the fingers on her right hand, a tiny shake  of the head left and right, and a slow exhale of warm breath to make the  air around her fog. Then the girl did it all over again. Over and over she  made her small movements. Rachael counted them to keep herself standing upright. While the guards did not seem to be actively searching for a  person to torment, they would never pass up the chance to beat a woman  who collapsed during roll call. 

Still trying to stare straight ahead, Rachael noticed a guard from one of the other camps approach two of the guards near the front of the women’s queue. There was a short discussion. Then, whatever the guards had been waiting for seemed to have come to pass. They started  moving quicker and with real purpose through the long lines of suffering, yet silent women. 

The selection had already rounded up half a dozen women before  Rachael realized what was happening. In this prison, Rachael knew it  wasn’t unusual to have a selection whenever the Nazis very well pleased,  and roll call was no exception. The guard, though, pointing to women  as she walked down a long row, seemed to have no discernible pattern to whom she sentenced to death. Rachael was used to seeing sick  women, weak women, women who had finally lost their minds chosen  for the gas chambers. They were of no use to the Third Reich any longer. Women who could stand for hours during roll call were mostly left alone, as long as they did not find themselves labeled as troublemakers. 

That was why Rachael worried so endlessly about Chaya. She was a  scrawny child who was good for nothing—in the Nazis’ minds. Not  only did she do nothing to serve the Fatherland, she took up space and  air and food that could be used for another productive prisoner before  she made her inevitable way to the gas chambers. 

This selection, though, took no account for physical capabilities, it  seemed. The guard in the front was not the only one pointing and con demning women. She saw guards all around the yard filling a quota that  must have been run to them by the soldier who arrived last. Rachael  found it hard to breathe as she watched women—some she recog nized after many days of passing them in a queue or listening to them  breathe softly in her barracks—hang their heads in silent despair as a  soldier pointed to them, then to the end of the yard, where an uncov ered truck bed waited to take them to the showers. One of the selected  women trudged to kanada every day with Rachael. Another served the  morning coffee and could easily be bribed for a second watery cupful if  Rachael had anything sweet to offer in return. Another was a musician,  a wonderful soprano, Rachael had heard. She would put on makeshift  concerts for the commanders and their wives sometimes. She should  have been sheltered from such a selection. 

In just a few minutes, they had already filled a truck, by Rachael’s  estimations. And still the guards continued to walk through the lines  and point. Rachael found that it was not only difficult for her to breathe,  but her legs were shaking—noticeably shaking. Such a sign of weakness  would get her sent to the gas chamber for sure. Chaya had noticed,  too, what was happening around her. The girl’s only tell of fear was  her silence and lack of motion. She stood perfectly still, staring at the  ground, not fidgeting. Rachael reached out her pinky finger to touch Chaya’s arm ever so slightly, hoping it could express the encouragement  that she was unable to voice. 

She calculated that two trucks had been filled with soon-to-be-dead  bodies when a guard finally started down her row. She reached out to graze Chaya’s arm once more, not daring any further motion with the  guard nearing them. At Rachael’s loving graze, Chaya turned her head  toward her. They both dared one look at each other. Chaya’s eyes had  the same look as when Rachael found her sobbing in their bunk the  day they believed they had lost one another—utter fear and sadness.  Knowing it was the most dishonest action of her entire life, she forced  the corners of her mouth up in a small smile and gave the girl a nod. All  will be well, she wanted to convey with those miniscule movements. We  will be all right; I will take care of you. Whether Chaya could read those  words in her half-hearted smile, Rachael would never know. The guard  was now only a few people away from where they stood. 

She knew it was over before the guard even reached her. She wanted  to cry, to beg, to say she could not leave Chaya, but her mind was  muddled. She couldn’t breathe. The sadness kept her from thinking  straight. The cough and blood in her lungs kept her from breathing.  The edges of her vision became hazy, like trying to peer through the  morning fog. She could not even register the guard’s point of the finger  in her direction. 

But that was because it did not come. The Nazi slowly walked past  her, looking her up and down, apparently finding more strength and  life left in that body than she knew she had. Rachael felt her shoulders  sag slightly in relief. Air came back to her sore lungs and her vision cleared. The fog lifted just long enough for her to see the guard point  her long, plump finger at the child standing next to her. 

She had no words. Or rather, she had too many words ricocheting  around her brain. She could not pick a single one: no, not her, take me, I  love you, I’ll protect you, I’ll be with you, I’ll make this right. Her body was frozen for an instant, but her mind never stopped. Chaya, too, seemed  as a statue. She had cocked her head, as a puppy does at a command  it does not understand. Her brow furrowed. When she took a step to follow the guard to her much too early death, Rachael finally felt her  limbs again.

She reached out and grabbed Chaya’s arm, pulling her back in line.  She only had an instant to convey everything she had planned to say  to Chaya for the rest of their lives; she only had one touch—this grip  on the girl’s arm—to fill up her small heart with all the love the child  would need to help her survive a hopefully long life alone and afraid.  She wanted to tell the child that more than anything, she wished they  had had more time together, that she would have surely died long ago  and been nothing more than a cloud of smoke in the dark sky if it  hadn’t been for this girl, that this girl was everything that was right in  the world—love and hope and sunshine and play and smiles—that she  needed to stay who she was no matter what happened, or when it hap pened; she may only have a few more days of life, but Rachael would  die over and over again to give her just a little more time, a little more  chance for a real life; she wanted to tell Chaya how to survive, to hide  and not trust anyone, to stay quiet and out of the way until the camp  was liberated, to find a way out of this place to their home by the sea, to finally find her own family, to make her own family if she needed.  

She wanted to give Chaya the ring, to tell her that as long as she held  on to it, she would remember the beautiful life that was out there, and  maybe she would also remember the surrogate mother she found in the  death camp, and remember the stories Rachael told her—of real life  and love and Rachael’s family that had all been lost, because if someone  remembered them, then they would live on. She—this small girl—carried them with her, and that was what saved Rachael. That was why she  would gladly trade places with this child; that was why her last touch on  the girl’s arm was to pull her back in line while she herself advanced to walk behind the guard to the truck full of other condemned prisoners, to her death in the gas chambers. 

But there was no time for any of those words. 

The guard, who was already moving on with impatience, was  expecting a prisoner to follow closely on her heels—silently and will ingly—to that prisoner’s own death. Rachael knew that, in the chaos of signing so many women’s death warrants in such a short time, the guard  only needed a number. In the second after pointing to Chaya, the Nazi  had forgotten entirely about the small child she had just condemned.  By moving quickly, Rachael took Chaya’s place. In an instant, she had  moved Chaya back to her rightful spot in the queue and took a step in  front of the child, starting to follow the guard. 

She pulled the ring from her pocket. No matter what might happen  to either of them, Rachael would never let the Germans have the satis faction of possessing this ring. It had been hers, and now it was Chaya’s.  She wanted to press the ring into the girl’s hand—leaving an indenta tion for all time, the outline of the solid band and sparkling diamond  pressed like a constellation on her skin to remind Chaya of how much  she was loved. But Chaya was dazed by the sudden movements of being  pointed toward death and then pulled back to life. As Rachael stepped  past Chaya, she tried to pass her the ring, but Chaya did not open her  hand to it, so it fell to the frozen earth at the girl’s feet, bringing a little  shine to the frozen mud. 

Chaya’s wide eyes met with Rachael’s, then traveled to see the ring  lying at her feet. Rachael took another step away from the girl. In her  desperation to give Chaya all the hope she would need to survive,  Rachael said what she hoped would convey all the words she had in  her heart: 

“I’ll always be with you.”