the attention and work and long hours and sore fingers—and now someone would undo it in the hopes of finding a few pieces of silver. The dismantling of the Lederman name happened every time a person wearing our clothes walked into a camp.
Later I would view this slicing of clothing as a good job. The prisoners chosen to sort through the clothing piles got to spend most of the day indoors instead of performing manual labor. If a guard wasn’t looking, they might be able to slip away a sweater or trade the shoes they’d been assigned for a better-fitting pair.
We have to take off our clothes, I told Abek. I was talking as fast as I could because I knew the showers were separated for women and men, and I wasn’t sure which line young boys would be sent to.
It’s not important, I told him. They’re just going to give you new clothes.
I knew it was important. I knew it was important because when they took Abek’s clothes, they would also take his jacket. They would also take the family alphabet story I had sewn inside it, the way he was meant to remember me and find me after the war. But I couldn’t tell him that; I had to be strong.
I remember all this, and I am strong up until the moment I realize that this, too, is just another dream version of the last time I saw Abek. A dream version, not the real version, and as soon as I realize that, I open my eyes.
I WAKE TO THE SOUND OF SHUSHING, ESTHER AND BREINE tiptoeing around the cottage and warning each other not to wake me. My face aches, pressed against something hard. I’d fallen asleep at the desk, arm as a pillow, nostrils filled with the heady scent of ink.
When I returned to the cottage last night, Breine had moved the small rug beside her bed closer to me so neither of us would have to step on a cold floor in the morning. Esther gave me a mug of coffee to help me stay awake while I wrote my letters. They were both such specific, immediate kindnesses from these girls I barely know. I’d earlier passed Miriam in the front room, huddled over her own letters, with her own cup of coffee.
“Good luck,” I told her, and she said it back to me, too, in her lovely Dutch accent.
I wondered if I should apologize for earlier at dinner, for asking everyone about their families, but I didn’t know if that would make things even more awkward. “You have enough paper?” I asked instead, nodding down to the sheaf in my hand, provided by Mrs. Yost.
Miriam nodded to her own pile, and we shared the most imperceptible of smiles.
Now, my finished letters sit nearby, and I blink them into focus.
“You’re awake,” Breine says when my wooden chair squeaks across the floorboards. “She’s awake,” she says unnecessarily to Esther, and then their voices rise to a normal volume.
Last night they allowed me to keep the lantern burning until the soft orange of the morning. It’s burning still, and Esther reaches over my head to deftly turn it down. I’m sure kerosene is rationed; it was selfish of me to use so much of it. I stretch my arms and legs, cramped from my night of sitting sleep, as Breine and Esther’s morning routine unfolds around me. Breine sweeps the floor while Esther makes both of their beds. They wash their faces in the bowl, then Esther brushes Breine’s hair while Breine talks through plans for the day.
Trade school. Breine is asking me something, and I’m trying to wrap my foggy brain around her sentences. Do I want to learn a new trade? she repeats. There’s job training here.
“It doesn’t have to be farming. If you don’t want to farm, they’re adding courses,” Breine explains. “Bookkeeping, sewing. Esther’s doing a stenography course.”
“Sewing?” I repeat. My voice is thick and scratchy. As soon as I fell asleep, I had nightmares about Abek.
“Do you want to learn to sew? The supplies are terrible now.”
I shake my head. I haven’t done anything with clothes since Neustadt. Nazi uniforms, coarse and brown. The work took something I loved and poisoned it. “No, thank you.”
“It can be good to keep busy,” Esther says gently. I see Breine encouraging her; I wonder if I was screaming in my sleep again and what they heard me say. “Breine and I have both been the