“Train station. There used to be a market there on weekends. We call it—” I break off, because even this inconsequential memory makes me feel a pang of familiarity. “We call it the Frying Pan.”
My ugly, beautiful city. Sosnowiec is not an impressive place like Kraków, where Mama would take me for birthday lunches. Sosnowiec is where the industrial barons came to build their mills: iron, steel, ropes, and dyes. It has wide roads, practical buildings, smoggy air. Efficiency, not charm. Who could love a city whose fondest nickname was “The Frying Pan”?
My family did. We had no idea how little the city loved us back.
I know that many people resisted the German Army: the Home Army, the National Armed Forces, the Jewish Military Union all fought against the occupation. I know—or I heard later—that there was a revolt in Warsaw, that the city rose up for more than sixty days to protest the Nazis, and I know that this is why there essentially is no more Warsaw: The Germans punished the city by razing it.
But I also know that when the Germans invaded, a lot of people in my city knew the Nazi salute.
The scenery becomes more personal. We pass the library, or what used to be. The market where we bought food the week of the invasion. It was summer; our cupboards were bare because we’d just returned from holiday. In the store, staples like bread were already scavenged. What was left behind were delicacies. Paper-thin nalesnikis, waiting to be rolled with minced meat. Bright jars of rhubarb preserves, in rows beside the dazed-looking grocer.
“Buy it all,” my mother said quietly.
The first two weeks of the German occupation, we ate like we were having a party.
The jeep circles a redbrick building with limestone archways, and I don’t wait for Dima to ask what it is. “Dietel Palace,” I say. “Heinrich Dietel started the textile factories in Sosnowiec.”
But as I say the words, my heart rate quickens, my mouth is dry. Dietel Palace means we are close to home. My father used to walk this route to get to our own factory.
I look closer. The fabric draped over the palace’s front gate isn’t the usual brocade representing the Dietel family’s fortune, but a billowing red with a yellow star and sickle.
“That must be where you’re supposed to go, Dima.” I point toward the Soviet flag.
His face lights up. “I think so. I will stop here, and then I will take you to your home?”
My panic rises, my heart pats faster. “No! I need to get to my house first.”
His face falls. “It will take only a minute.”
I bite back annoyance, and I’m already reaching for the door. “My house is only a minute.”
“But, Zofia.” He’s stunned, I think, by my sudden fortitude, and I’m stunned, too.
“You should go. I’m sure you want to check in with your superior officers.”
And my brother might be home already, and I don’t want to wait. And I can’t have a reunion with other people watching.
“You’ll be safe without me?” he says reluctantly.
“I’ll write down the address—you can come over when you’re done.”
Eventually I persuade him to leave. I wasn’t lying. I’m only a few blocks from my home, an even shorter walk if I cut through the alleyways, which is what my feet do by memory, running, running, while my bad foot begins to ache on the stones. I can’t run; I’ve been too weak to run for years, and yet here I am, running while my heart explodes in my chest.
And then I am there, standing beneath a white street sign: MARIACKA.
It’s a short road, made mostly of apartment houses facing the team line. Our building is midway down the block. Four stories tall, made of rosy brownstones.
I’ve rehearsed this moment a thousand times. What I would do if our old doorman was there. What I would do if it were a new doorman who didn’t recognize me.
Nobody is standing by the entrance, though. There’s nobody to stop me from going in, so I push against the oak door. In the lobby: the same marble tiles. Same flickering bulb. Home.
At the row of mailboxes, I stop. Sweeping my hand through the box, I feel a lump of brass: the spare key, taped far in the back where nobody would feel if they weren’t looking. The key falls into my hand, heavy and sculpted, Sellotape crumbling into brown flakes.
Maybe Abek is already home, waiting for me. My heart