Chapter THREE
November 20th, 1936, Berlin, Germany
"Happy Birthday Lillian."
I looked into the weary face of Jon, my older brother. I was leaning against him, so tired it felt like I would pass out standing up. It was raining outside and I was kept conscious by the rolls of thunder and bright flashes of lightning creating sinister shadows in the dim warehouse.
"How do you know?" I asked, skeptical. Jon often made up stuff to try to make me happy. A game that I'd stopped seeing the fun in awhile ago.
He nodded his head discreetly to a crumpled newspaper lying on the dirty wooden floor of the textile factory. I ran over and picked it up, running back to him. I scrutinized the paper. It was beat up and ripped, harder to read then even the thick books Jon snuck to me at the orphanage. The one's with really small letters and big words. I grinned; November 20th, 1936. He was right.
"Five?" I smiled again and held up my right hand, all fingers outstretched.
"Yep," he answered, showing his crooked teeth in a rare smile. "We'll celebrate when we get home."
'Home' was a loose term. Accurate if one could consider a crowded orphanage a 'home'. Of course it was all I'd ever known. Jon had told me tales of a large farmhouse, with sprawling fields of vegetables and grain. A table full of steaming hot food, every evening. Before Mama had gotten sick and gone away and we'd had to sell this supposed paradise and move to Berlin. Before Papa had left because of the fight. He swore to me on the Lord it wasn't a game, but it just couldn't possibly be true.
I giggled anyway. I was a year older now. Five. This meant he'd sing his goofy birthday song, even if it was in hushed tones under scratchy thin army blankets.
Jon heard me and smiled wider before his electric blue eyes grew wide and he put a finger to his thin lips. Too late, one of the factory overlookers had noticed.
"You," he said in harsh tones, pointing at me. "Row three, broken thread." They like to use little kids for repairs because we could fit under. Jon didn't like it when I did; we'd all heard stories of lost fingers and toes. But the past year it seemed like he had grown a foot taller, and he could no longer stuff himself in the small cramped spaces.
I frantically rushed over to the row and began climbing under the machinery, my ragged brown dress tearing further as it caught on sharp nails and splinters. I was grateful now the older girls at the orphanage insisted on always braiding each other's hair tightly before we left every morning. If it were to get caught under here it would be impossible to untangle. That happened last year to another and they'd had to cut her hair so short she looked like a boy. Now, under the spinning machine, it was dark and I struggled to find the snapped thread. Scarlet thread for blood-red swastikas.
An loud air raid alarm sounded and I jumped, banging my head on the wood above my head. That noise. It was for bombs, explosions of fire dropped from the sky. Jon had said that noise meant to hide, and if I ever heard it I was to run and get to a shelter. I tried to crawl out of the machine before something shifted above me and fell, landing on my right leg. I tried to crawl again, but with each tug I could feel the skin on my leg tearing as tears spring from my eyes.
Suddenly a large hand grasped my small one and dragged me up. I scream as the piece of wood scraps the length of my calf. It's Jon.
"Lily, it's okay. It's okay," He pulls me into his scrawny chest and I immediately feel safer. He carefully touches my leg, and I start crying harder. "You're okay. I'll fix this. I promise."
"The siren, we need to hide." I whisper into his ear.
"Yes, we need to go," He stands up and turns away, his grip almost vice like now on my upper arm. "Hurry, and stay with me."
I hug him again as we push our way through the crowd of people hurrying to the shelter under the building. The siren is so loud. Finally we get to the factory basement, but there was no more room, too many others were already there fighting for the remaining space.
"We can make it home, the home's shelter is bigger."
"But Jon, we're not supposed to go outside, remember?" I whine.
He ignored me, pushing through the door out onto the cobblestone street and into the rain. It looks empty, save for a few individuals such as ourselves, who are also running frantically through the streets. I slow his steps, and he's pulling to move faster, half carrying me.
"But you said, you said," I continue. "To never go outside. That it is dangerous."
"We'll make it, I promise," He tells me as I cry, my bare feet rubbing raw on the stones. "It's just another false alarm, a drill. We'll laugh about how scared we are right now tomorrow. How silly we probably look, running around mad in the rain for no reason." However, his face is drawn and tense with worry, eyes searching above.
I mimic him, the sky is cloudy and dark. The thunder seems too loud, the bursts a mixture of short and violent and long, low, ominous rumbles. The rain is getting harder, almost more like hail, though its not cold enough for that yet. Each drop feels like it's leaving bruises.
"This isn't a game, right?" I ask.
"I'm not lying. It will be okay-," He doesn't finish.
We're almost home when a deafening explosion echoes through the street and then all there is hot, suffocating smoke.
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