Ravid, strong and sunburned, stands at the head and taps his water glass on the table to get everyone’s attention.
“I don’t want to impose,” I whisper to Breine as we approach. The table is full; Chaim has saved a place for Breine, but there’s no place for me to sit without making others move.
“Really, nobody will mind.”
Breine settles into the spot Chaim has saved for her and then playfully elbows the man on her other side until he slides farther down to make room for me. Ravid raises one eyebrow at Breine’s disruption—the squeaking chair, the clattering of silverware as she passes fork and spoon to the man she’s just displaced. “Do you think I’m allowed to continue?” Ravid asks dryly. Breine makes a face at him.
“As I was starting to say,” Ravid continues. “We’re almost ready to move into the next phase of Aliyah Bet.”
Around the table, nobody else seems as confused as I am about the phrase Ravid has just used. Aliyah means immigrating to Eretz Israel. I know that; it’s meant that for centuries. But I’ve never heard of Aliyah Bet.
“Breine,” I whisper. “What is Aliyah Bet?”
Ravid breaks off again, and this time he looks straight at me. “Is there a question?”
My face turns red, but his tone wasn’t angry, just firm. “I don’t know that phrase,” I admit.
“Do you know about Britain’s immigration quotas to Palestine?” he asks before launching an explanation. “The few people who can go there legally, they are part of Aliyah Aleph. Plan A,” Ravid continues. “Aliyah Bet, however, isn’t permitted under the laws. Plan B.”
“Entering illegally?” I ask.
“Plan B,” Breine corrects me. I marvel that Breine is going to be a part of this. She didn’t farm before the war. She told me her father was the president of an insurance company. She told me she spent her days learning how to manage a household, hire good servants, and set a nice table. A different dress for every day of the week. A different hat and gloves for every dress.
“What happens if you’re stopped?” I ask. “It’s illegal; what happens if you’re caught?”
“We’ve heard that if the ships are stopped, then the passengers will be taken to a refugee camp,” Ravid says. “But we’re in a refugee camp now anyway.”
“Do you want to come with us, Zofia?” Breine teases.
“Come with you? I’m going home.”
“We’re all going home,” she says. “Just a new home.”
“I’m going to my home in Poland,” I say firmly. “That was Abek’s and my home, and after I find him, it will be again.” I wriggle my way out of my seat. “And now I’m going to go work on your dress.”
AFTER A FRUITLESS HOUR OF TRYING TO WORK ON BREINE’S dress in our cottage, I finally decide there’s just not a large enough flat surface for the project, and I end up carrying the heap of unflattering yellow back to the dining hall. By then, the tables are mostly empty, aside from the volunteers for cleanup duty. I fan the dress out on a table that’s been wiped down. Smoothing the silk with the flat of my palm, I sit and again assess what I have to work with.
In front of me: A makeshift sewing kit, as much as I could assemble after asking around camp. Thread wasn’t a problem to locate, but finding the right color was—the two best candidates are either more orange than the dress fabric or too white. I also have a frayed measuring tape, a collection of needles in need of sharpening, handfuls of loose buttons, and some pins gathered in a butter dish. Nothing looks new, which means everything in front of me was secreted away in camps, or scavenged immediately after. Hidden in pockets, tucked in straw mattresses. Small acts of defiance—to own a useless button that the Nazis didn’t know about, to hold a spool of thread in the middle of a frozen night. But now the women gave them to me willingly.
Normally, I might layer a piece of muslin behind the silk to make the silk behave better with the scissors. I don’t have any of that, though, so instead, I’ve gathered a pile of newspapers. I remember my mother using this trick a few times when she was trying an experimental design and didn’t want to waste expensive supplies, but I’ve never done it myself. I worry about the ink of the newsprint rubbing off on the pale, delicate material.