have to ask about my brother. Sister Therese turns toward the kitchen. I run after her and grab the coarse sleeve of her habit. “Please.”
“Yes?” She looks perplexed.
“I’m looking for my brother. I haven’t seen him in more than three years.”
“Oh, my dear.” She reaches for my hand, and her fingers feel surprisingly strong. “I hope you’re reunited with him soon. I’ll add him to my prayers, if that’s all right with you.”
“No. I mean, yes, if you’d like. But what I was trying to say—he’s twelve, the same age as some of the children here. I think he was in Dachau. The same as some of the children here.”
Understanding washes over her face. “Oh. Oh. You didn’t come all this way here looking for him, did you? Is that why you were asking whether any were missing tonight?”
“He wasn’t at dinner. But I was thinking, maybe he could still come here later,” I say. “It sounds like you still have arrivals?”
“We do. Every day. Some children who come here, this is the second or third stop for them.”
“Or maybe one of the children coming from somewhere else has met him already,” I suggest. “And they’ll remember him.”
“Do you want to give me his name and a physical description?” Sister Therese asks. “I can post a ‘missing’ report on our bulletin board. Someone who crossed paths with him might see it.”
We change directions now, not to the kitchen but back to the office, where Sister Therese opens the same drawer that had the bottle opener. She smooths a sheet of creamy stationery onto the desk, dating it at the top. “Start with what he looks like. Close your eyes if it helps,” she offers. “Sometimes it does.”
When I close my eyes, I can see Abek’s face better than my own, but in a way that’s hard to put together in useful words. Fat cheeks? He had them before; he couldn’t possibly now. A loose tooth? It would have fallen out long ago. His hair might have been cut; his bruises might have healed or multiplied. I could tell Sister Therese that he was as tall as the armoire on the wall where my parents used to measure our height, but he would have grown.
“He has—” I start uncertainly. “He has brown eyes. Hazel, actually, the irises have some green. His hair is wavy. One of his eyebrows might be split down the middle. Just before we were taken, he had a wooden sword fight with another boy; we wondered if it was going to leave a scar.
“He would only be looking for me, Zofia,” I continue. “Our parents are dead, and he knows it; they were sent to the gas chambers as soon as we arrived in Birkenau from Sosnowiec.” I go on and on, but at some point Sister Therese stops moving her pencil. It doesn’t even look like she’s listening; she has an odd expression on her face, somewhere between trepidation and annoyance.
“What is it?”
“Is this a prank?” she asks. “Because if it is, it’s not very funny.”
WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” I ASK SISTER THERESE. “A PRANK?”
“Did Lemuel or one of the other boys put you up to this?”
“Lemuel or—of course not.”
“That would be cruel, waiting until Frau Fischer is gone and pulling a trick.”
“Sister Therese,” I say frantically. “I promise you, I have no idea what you’re talking about, and this isn’t a joke.”
Now the expression on her face has turned from irritation to something different—concern and worry. “You said Sosnowiec? All the way in Poland?”
“Yes.”
“We did have someone here.”
“Someone? Was his name Abek?”
She presses her lips together. “I don’t remember his name. I remember the town, and I remember a boy who had been in Birkenau. At that point, most of the children here had come from Flossenbürg; the Red Cross brought a group. I noted every time someone came who wasn’t from there.”
“Didn’t you make him sign in somewhere?”
“This was early. Months ago. We weren’t making anyone sign in then; we were barely even an official camp. I’m not even sure if UNRRA had sent Frau Fischer yet.”
“You didn’t keep any records.” I’m trying to keep my voice steady, but it’s careening.
Sister Therese lifts up her hands, a gesture to calm me. “You have to understand. Children streamed in without shoes. We tried to give them shoes. They came in hungry, and we fed them. Some stayed, and some left. But I remember one boy—I remember his saying he was going to look for his