Margot: A Novel (7 page)

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My sister’s almond eyes opened wide, the way they often
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did. “She’s so brave,” she whispered.
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“Don’t even think it,” I whispered to her, because it seemed
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they must have had a way of knowing then, even our thoughts.
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When you are stripped naked, shaved bare, nothing is yours
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anymore, nothing is left.
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We stood in line again for a long time, and her words, they
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began to hurt my ears. My bare flesh turned numb. My ears
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felt like they were bleeding.
Jestes diablem.
The Polish woman
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screamed and she screamed.
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The guard held her down as he tattooed her arm, and then
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he shoved her roughly and yelled at her in German to shut up.
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She was still screaming.
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Finally another guard came and pulled her away, into the
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other line, made up of people, I would later learn, who were
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immediately gassed, instead of put to work. They were not
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supposed to tattoo you if you were to be gassed right away, but
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with her, they made an exception.
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My sister was standing just in front of me watching all of
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this. I saw her open her mouth, and I covered it with my hand
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and pushed her back behind me so I could be tattooed before
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her. I wanted her to see that it wouldn’t be so bad.
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“It’s only a little ink, just a number. Don’t scream,” I whis
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pered to her. “Don’t struggle. Just be quiet and do what
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they ask.”
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Her almond eyes stared back at me, so wide they could
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burst. She opened her mouth again but no sound came out.
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I held out my arm, closed my eyes. My skin singed and
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cried out in pain, but I did not say a word. I bit my lip.
I opened my eyes again, and there it was, thick dark ink
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on my forearm: The letter
A,
followed by five seemingly ran
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dom numbers.
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My sister went just after me, and her number was one
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digit higher than mine.
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“It doesn’t mean anything,” Mother said afterward. “It is
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nothing. It cannot mean something. We cannot make nothing
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mean something, girls.”
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“When we go home, it’ll be a badge of honor,” my sister said.
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10
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“Margie.” Shelby interrupts my thoughts. “Are you okay? You
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look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
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“Yes,” I whisper. So many ghosts. Everywhere, all the time.
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I am one myself, am I not?
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“Your face is so flushed,” Shelby says. “It’s warm in here.
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Take your sweater off. It’s 1959, for goodness’ sakes. A girl can
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show a little skin.” She laughs and holds out her own bare
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pale freckled arms, which radiate from her blue cotton short
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sleeveddress.
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But I shake my head. I will not take my sweater off. I will
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never take it off.
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Chapter Ten
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When I walk outside at 5 p.m., my arm through
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Shelby’s, who is trying to convince me to go get a drink with
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her, I see Bryda Korzynski sitting on the bench outside the
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office building, and then I think my heart may stop.
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She stares right at me: brown eyes, hard like stones. So I
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know she has been waiting there, just for me.
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“You go on ahead,” I murmur to Shelby. “I should study
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tonight.” But I’m wondering whether I can outrun Bryda. I am
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a fast runner. I outran a train, once; outran the men who I
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thought were chasing after me. When my life depends on it,
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I can run.
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“Oh, Margie,” Shelby says. “One of these days I’ll loosen
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you up a little bit.”
Paragon of virtue,
my sister taunts in my
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head, the way she always did when she teased me about being
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too good. But Shelby goes on without me, without any more
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of a fuss, because, as she mentioned in the elevator on the
way down, Ron has agreed to leave work early for once and
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meet her there.
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“Miss Franklin,” Bryda says. She doesn’t stand, but I stop
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by the bench. Mainly because she is Joshua’s client and I
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don’t want her to tell him I am rude. Without that, I’m pretty
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sure I would be running right now.
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“Yes,” I say to her. “Can I help you with something?”
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“You not from Poland,” she says.
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“What?” I let out a laugh that catches in my throat, so it’s
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possible it’s not a laugh at all, but a scream. “It’s been a long
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time. But I am,” I say. Lying is a second skin. It suits me bet
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ter than the first one, maybe. It is not the kind of skin a para
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gon of virtue wears, is it?
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“Where in Poland?” she asks, her eyes narrowing to slits.
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“Kraków,” I say, too quickly.
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“You not from Kraków,” she says. “Austria, maybe. Germany?”
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I shake my head. “But I am,” I say meekly. “It’s just been
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so long.”
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“Why you wear sweater when it so warm today?” she asks.
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“I’m cold,” I say, wrapping the sweater tighter around
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myself.
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“You one of us,” she says. I’m still shaking my head, back
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and forth, back and forth. I want her to stop. I want it to stop.
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It never stops.
Nothing can’t mean something,
Mother said.
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She was wrong; nothing could mean everything. “Your eyes,”
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Bryda says. “They like eyes of dead person.”
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“You’re mistaken,” I whisper.
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And then I do run, as fast as I can, the clicking of my
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small heels on the pavement, not nearly enough to drown out
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the sound of Bryda Korzynski’s voice echoing in my ears.
You
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one of us.
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You cannot understand what it is like to hide until you have
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done it yourself. And I do not mean the kind of hiding my
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sister and I did as girls on the Merwedeplein, where we’d play
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and hide-and-run around the thick oak trees before we’d
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catch each other and start all over again, counting off in Ger
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man:
Eins, zwei, drei
. . . But real hiding, where your life
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depends on being squirreled away, being somewhere or some
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one else—that’s entirely different. That was what we did, of
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course: my family, the van Pelses, and the dentist. We were
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not the only Jews who hid this way, but now we are the most
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well known. From 1942 to 1944, the seven of us inhabited the
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five small rooms in the annex above my father’s office on the
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Prinsengracht, Amsterdam.
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You cannot understand the fear that courses through you
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at the sound of every noise, every rat or howl of wind creaking
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the attic, wondering if it is someone coming for you. The fear
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of discovery, it is the kind of fear that makes your heart feel
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always full, pounding too fast. It is the kind of fear that keeps
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your eyes pried wide open at night amid the dark and the
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snores of your parents, even if you haven’t slept in days. And,
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it is a fear that does not go away, even now, even fifteen years
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removed, in a new city, with a new name, a new religion, a
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thick sweater.
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You not Polish
. Bryda Korzynski said.
You one of us.
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That night, after Bryda has confronted me on the sidewalk, I lie in bed, for a long time fully awake, listening, listen
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ing, waiting. It feels peculiar, that the only sound I hear is the
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sound of Katze scratching against the furniture with his
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claws.
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After a little while I get out of bed, and even though it is
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late, already past nine, I pull the smallest folded square from
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my satchel, unfold it, and stare at the address and phone
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number again.
P. Pelt. 2217 Olney Avenue
.
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Peter told me that he would be Pete in his American life.
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“I’ll be Pete, and you’ll be Margie,” he’d said. “Good Ameri
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can names
.
” Is that what the operator had said?
Pete Pelt
. Did
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I hear her wrong?
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I feel my breath tightening in my chest, and I can see his
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face, right there, so clearly, the way it was when he was afraid,
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when he too feared discovery. I think about the time in the
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middle of the night. 1943 or 1944—it all falls together now.
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There was a crash, then a clanging in the office below us. The
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next morning we would learn that someone burglarized the
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office, but in the middle of the night I did not know at first if
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they were burglars or the Green Police. I prayed they were
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burglars. People who stole things felt so much safer than
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people who stole people.
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“Margot,” Peter whispered in the dark, his voice tracing a
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circle in the air in my parents’ room, where I slept on a foldout
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after the dentist arrived a few months into our stay. Mother
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and Father were both still sleeping. I heard Mother’s soft
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breathing, and Pim’s—that was our pet name for Father—
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snore. I was afraid to move.
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I could barely see Peter in the darkness, only the outline
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of his hand holding on to something. “I will use this,” he whis
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pered. “I will slash their throats.”
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Then I realized it must be the knife, the one we had used
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to prepare potatoes that night for dinner.
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“Don’t move,” I whispered. “They’ll hear you.”
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“I will use this,” he repeated. “I will slash their throats.”
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“Oh, Peter,” I whispered. We both knew he wouldn’t do it,
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but I guessed he felt safer holding on to it, feeling he had
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something, some way to stop them. Peter was seventeen then,
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not yet a man, but almost. He was independent, more so than
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me and my sister, more detached from his parents, certainly.
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And he was brave, but he was not stupid. If the Green Police
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had charged in and saw Peter holding on to a knife, they
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would’ve shot him faster than he could move. They would’ve
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