sister. He didn’t seem to think he had other family, but he said his sister might have survived Birkenau. That stuck out to me because, as I said, we hadn’t seen many people who had been there. He said his family owned a factory in Lower Silesia. He stayed for only a few days.”
“Was it a clothing factory? Was it named Chomicki and Lederman?”
“I don’t think he said. I really don’t remember. I just know that he wanted to find his sister, and he left when he found out we were taking in only children under seventeen, which made me think his sister was older than that.”
“Was he healthy?” I ask desperately. “Did he look healthy?”
“He seemed so, yes,” she says, and a deep sense of relief courses through me. “He was healthy. He was well.”
“But you didn’t—but you couldn’t—”
“I couldn’t force him to stay.” Sister Therese’s face is stricken. “Or to give me more information. Please believe me, Zofia, we were doing the best we could. There were just so many people passing through then.”
“Then why do you remember him at all?” I press on, insistent. “If so many people passed through—you asked me if Lemuel was playing a joke on you because I asked about him. How can he be important enough that the boys would use him for a joke but insignificant enough that you don’t even remember his name?”
She winces at my words. “None of the children are insignificant.”
“But this boy had a name.”
“I remember him because… because we had an incident.”
I lean back, startled. “What kind of incident?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What incident?”
She sighs. Her next words come out like she’s dragging them. “He stole from me. All right?” Beneath her habit, she lowers her eyes.
“We were so short of beds then that I let him have my room,” she says. “I kept the grocery money in my nightstand—the money we were using for all the children. When I went in the next morning to check on this boy, he was gone and so was the money. I remembered that boy because the rest of the children didn’t have enough breakfast the next day, and everyone here knew why.”
He stole? I feel a jolt of confusion and shame. Abek stole the grocery money from Sister Therese? “I see.”
Sister Therese didn’t want to have to tell me this part of the story. She reaches up to tuck a loose curl back under her habit, and she looks older than she has all afternoon. “I didn’t blame him, of course. I knew what he must have been through, and he was only a child.”
My heart is leaping and falling at the same time. I don’t know what to make of her story. Was this starving boy Abek? This boy who came and left without a name and disappeared with only hungry mouths behind him? Did I lose my chance to find him because instead of looking when I should have been, I was lying in a hospital?
“We should still put up a notice,” Sister Therese insists. “In case he comes back. Or someone else arrives who’s met him.”
“We should still put up a notice,” I agree, but my voice is as hollow as a cave.
I start again with my descriptions, and Sister Therese dutifully writes them down. When I’m finished, the whole page is filled with her handwriting. She replaces the cap on the pen. “I really am sorry that I didn’t—”
“It’s fine. There’s nothing to be done about it now.”
She takes the paper, and we walk to the hallway where the bulletin board is. As Sister Therese promised, it’s in a prominent location, just inside the main entrance, where almost every visitor would have to pass. But when I see it, my heart sinks even further. Not a square inch of the actual board is visible. It’s all been papered over with flyers, layers and layers of them, with descriptions of other people’s family members and other people’s losses. Some of the pamphlets have pictures attached—how lucky for them to have pictures—and there are old, wrinkled grandparents, and smiling fiancés, and gap-toothed daughters.
Sister Therese tacks the description of Abek in a corner. It’ll be papered over in a week.
“I can copy more,” she offers. “And send them with the workers who visit different camps, to be pasted on bulletin boards there.” She bites her lip. “I know you’re frustrated, but this is good news, isn’t it? If it was him, it means he was still healthy after the