placing it under one of the pillows. She’d made it from eighty sheets of toilet tissue, inscribed with the tiniest writing.
“A lot of good a book will do us,” Janina said. “We are their laboratory rabbits. Need a picture drawn for you?”
“I hope we don’t get needles,” Alfreda said.
Luiza pressed herself closer to me. “I can’t take needles.”
To calm ourselves, Luiza and I sat on one bed and watched a house wren build a nest outside the window, flitting off, then coming back with more building materials. Then we quizzed each other from the English book. Hello. My name is Kasia. Where might I find a taxicab?
Soon a nurse came into the room with a thermometer, a metal bowl, and a razor.
“Why would they shave us?” Luiza whispered.
“Not sure,” I said. Were they operating on us? There must have been some mistake. How could Matka let this happen?
Pretty Nurse Gerda bustled in with two other nurses, one holding a tray of needles and vials. Gerda walked straight to Luiza.
“No, please,” Luiza said, wrapping her arms about my neck. I held her fast around the waist.
“Please don’t hurt her,” I said. “Take me instead.”
Zuzanna came to sit next to Luiza on the bed. “Have some mercy. Luiza is only fifteen and afraid of needles.”
Gerda’s helpers pried Luiza’s arms from my neck.
“It won’t be so bad,” Gerda said to Luiza with a smile. “Soon you will see flowers and hear bells.”
They wrestled Luiza onto a wheeled cot and stretched her arm out. I covered my eyes as she cried out at the stab of the needle. At once Luiza grew sleepy and Gerda and the other nurses wheeled her out.
Zuzanna came to my cot at the far end of the room.
“I’m afraid they’re…”
“Operating on us?” I felt a stab of fear just saying the words.
“They’ll take me next,” she said. “Want to take the difficult ones first.” The sound of the wobbly wheels of another gurney echoed in the hallway.
“We must get word to Matka,” I said.
Gerda steered the gurney into the room and beckoned to Zuzanna. “Auf die Bahre,” she said with a smile. Onto the gurney.
“What is happening here?” Zuzanna sat up straighter. “We have a right to know.”
Gerda came to Zuzanna and pulled her by the arm.
“Come now. It’s better you don’t fuss. You must be brave.”
I held Zuzanna’s other arm as Gerda pulled her toward the gurney.
“You cannot do this to us,” I said.
Zuzanna punched Gerda in the arm, causing her to call for a pair of stocky green-triangled kapos. They rushed in, pushed Zuzanna onto the gurney, and tied her down with strips of white cotton.
“It’s best you don’t struggle,” Gerda said. “Soon this will be over, and you will be released to go home to Poland.”
Could that possibly be true?
I stepped up to one kapo. “Where are you taking her?” Janina and Regina watched it all, hugging each other on one of the bottom bunks.
The kapo pushed me back as Gerda managed to get a needle into Zuzanna’s arm.
“We are prisoners, not guinea pigs,” I said.
Zuzanna grew quiet, and Gerda pushed the gurney out of the room.
“I love you, Kasia,” she said as they wheeled her out.
Within minutes, Gerda came for me. I fought as her kapos pushed me to the gurney, but once pinned, I shook all over as if covered in ice. She held my arm out straight, and I felt the sting of the injection in the crook of my arm.
“You girls, you’re worse than the men,” she said with a little laugh.
Men? What men? Where were they?
Time melted away. Was it morphine? Someone wheeled me into a room with a round light hanging from the ceiling and draped a towel over my face. I felt an intravenous injection and a woman told me to count backward. I counted in Polish, and she counted in German, and I drifted off.
Sometime that night I woke. Was I hallucinating? I was lying back in the ward, in my bed, only a dim glow coming from the window. A slice of light flashed into the room as the door opened and closed. I caught my mother’s scent and thought she stood by my bed for a few seconds, and then I felt her tuck me in, lifting the mattress and pulling the sheet extra tight underneath as she always did. Matka! I felt her lips meet my forehead and linger there.