The Seven Year Dress: A Novel Page 16

  Schüler arrived shortly after lunch. With a brusque movement, he opened the door and slammed it shut. He fumbled with the lock until I heard what sounded like metal cracking. He banged a boot loudly on the floor and screamed,“Scheisse!”

  My heart jumped in my chest.

  Pivoting around, he turned toward me. His posture was stiff, and his eyes narrowed. “That will be fixed,” he growled at me but pointed a rigid index finger at the door.

  Bending my head, I looked down when he approached me sitting at the sewing machine. He lifted my face up with his sweaty hand. “I hope you are making progress with the sewing.”

  I was sure that the status of the uniform repairs was not foremost on his mind as his wanton fingers moved over my forehead, down a cheek, and onto my neck. Lowering the neckline of my dress, he toyed with my cleavage. I cringed beneath his sticky touch. His drooling mouth moved close to my skin, and I thought I was going to be sick when his saliva dripped onto my chest. Just as liquid rose from my stomach to my throat, he pulled back and barked, “Get up and clean yourself.”

  While I was in the bathroom, I heard him slide a chair against the door to the outside. Crouching over the sink with my dress still on, I wet the towel and scrubbed my face, neck, and arms. I had begun washing one of my legs when he entered the bathroom, ordering me, “Take off that dirty rag.”

  Ashamed and embarrassed to do as he commanded, I hesitated. But I knew the consequences of resistance, so I removed my clothing and covered myself with the towel.

  Pointing to a hook by the sink, he said, “Put the towel over there.” He then stood behind my naked, shivering body and instructed, “Now use that soap.”

  Trying to calm my hand tremors, I picked up the slimy bar of soap and rubbed it between my hands under the running water. For months, I had dreamed of having a bath—of cleaning myself—but now it was the last thing I wanted to be doing in front of that slovenly beast. The soap burned my cracked, dry skin, but my humility burned hotter than any physical pain. If ever there was a time when I needed to distance myself from reality, this was it.

  “Do. Not. Make. Me. Wait.”

  Each word was a needle in my flesh. I hurried. When I was finished, I wiped myself with the towel.

  Sneering, he pointed to my private parts and said, “Decontaminate that rat’s nest.”

  Decontaminate! You horrible, fat, disgusting… Breathe. I made myself take a breath and do as I was told. When I’d finally finished, he moved in closer and cupped my breasts with his gummy palms. While still fully clothed, he pumped his groin onto my naked buttocks. I cringed as he freed a hand to undo his pants while his other hand groped up and down my body. Without entering me, he masturbated his male hardness onto my backside. He pounded over and over until I thought my pelvic bone would crack against the sink. Panting, he squeezed my nipples so hard I had to bite my lip to prevent myself from screaming out in pain. Finally, he fell onto me, breathing heavily. After a few seconds, he cleaned himself with a handkerchief and straightened his pants.

  “When that damned lock is fixed, I will have you properly.”

  Have me properly? What the hell did that mean? I spent the rest of that afternoon sewing Nazi uniforms while grieving the loss of my innocence, my captive situation, and the torture I had to endure and would continue to endure until this evil creature was finished using me. I hoped the lock would never be repaired.

  It was fixed in three days. I was surprised that the repair wasn’t done immediately; my molester was probably busy with other matters. During that limbo, I worked, paced, picked at my cuticles, and tried to remain as calm as possible. I spoke to no one, not even Ester. Although I made an effort, restful sleep eluded me. I decided that the only advantage to being a sex slave was that I was able to wash regularly. And when the oppressive behemoth wasn’t violating me, I sewed.

  I had no appetite even though I was slowly starving to death. Nervousness had eroded my stomach. Allowing my mind to dwell on what was going to happen once the lock was repaired fueled my anxiety level. I knew my worrying was harming me, but I didn’t know how to turn it off. Was there an emotional switch a person could flip on or off, depending on the circumstances? If there was, the Nazis knew where it was, but I didn’t. Even if there were such a switch, I wouldn’t use it. I would rather endure the suffering than become like them.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I lost my virginity to my tormentor on what started out as a frigid day. Working alone in that small, cold room did not allow me the benefit of collective body heat. Goosebumps became a permanent feature of my dry skin as my body tried, but failed, to keep warm. I rubbed my legs together to generate heat, but they refused to stop shivering. I took a risk and put a couple of uniform jackets over my lap to cover my thinly clothed flesh. If I got caught, I would lie. These are the garments I’m working on, Sir. I would fib with a clear conscience.

  In the middle of sewing damaged lapel folds on an SS officer’s uniform, I wondered how both sides came to be ripped. Visions of violence entered my mind: guns exploding into scared victims, dead bodies losing continence, and blood spurting onto those of us forced to watch.

  I thought of the recent surge in the number of new prisoners the guards were processing. The gas chambers were working non-stop. Several of the commanding officers were more callous than usual, something I didn’t think was possible. Without any semblance of discretion or decency, they took their hostilities out on innocent prisoners. In the past, the SS murdered children en masse in an isolated area, where we were spared from viewing that horror. Mercy was not their objective. The SS did this for their benefit: to avoid panic, which ultimately would have meant more work for them. But now, as Hitler’s Final Solution seemed to be escalating, impatient tempers flared from commanders. They ordered their underlings to kill large groups of feeble prisoners in front of freshly dug graves while those spared for labor were forced to watch. We heard of children—screaming and panicked—thrown into those holes. Alive. Guards watched with loaded guns in case any child dared to climb out. They stayed until all the children were dead. If pandemonium broke out among the witnesses, or if able-bodied parents so much as whimpered, they, too, were shot.

  Attempting to rid myself of the torment that mere thinking caused me, I shook my head and tried to shift my attention to repairing the torn lapels. When it was no use, I left the sewing machine and climbed atop the toilet seat to look outside. A glimpse of nature—the trees surrounding and hiding the death camp—calmed me. The ache that lived in my heart and the anxiety that filled my belly were ever-present, but pausing to study a tree tended to still the horror film that played in my mind hours after I’d seen or heard about another barbarity. The agricultural land outside the barbed-wire fence had been cleared up to a tree line in the visible distance. I assumed that the farmers who had inhabited the land were evicted to make way for the expansion of the Third Reich. Glancing out to the cleared space up to the area where green leaves sprouted from healthy limbs, I felt my tight muscles loosen. Beyond the barbed-wire fence, beyond the trees, I imagined villages filled with laugher, music, and the aroma of fresh-baked bread coming from kitchens. I glimpsed the dream of my future. As if my brief respite from stress was a warning that I was doing something wrong, I stiffened once again and looked back to the sewing room. It was empty. I scurried back to my work before anyone could discover that I had allowed myself a moment to connect to the outside.

  As I was finishing the last few stitches of the jacket I was working on after lunch, Schüler entered and locked the door behind him. His facial expression was pinched as if someone had grabbed him by the hair on the top of his head. His large, bulging, dark eyes fixated on my chest. “Get up, undress, and go wash yourself!” He could have been talking to the wall.

  I did as I was told.

  He watched. “Go over there.” He pointed to the mattress.

  Hunched over, naked, humiliated, I followed his orders. Again. When will it be over? When will he l
eave me alone to lick my wounds of degradation and cover myself back up?

  He made me stand and watch him strip. His hairy, rotund belly flopped close to his small, hard penis. Lowering my eyes from the revolting sight, a spasm constricted my throat, threatening to shut off my airway. Breathe, I willed myself. I waited.

  “Lie down on your back.” His cold stare seemed odd to me, given the sweat covering his pudgy face. As he watched me get into position, his breathing quickened. “Spread your legs.”

  I don’t know if I was more disturbed by his matter-of-fact tone or the crass command. My eyes widened, and my whole body began to shake uncontrollably.

  “Now!”

  I jumped. My tremors stopped. I quickly spread my legs. Even though I thought I had complied, he shook his head and said, “Wider. And lift your bottom up.”

  Again, I did as he instructed. Closing my eyes, I steeled myself, waiting for what was to come.

  “Rub your genitals,” he panted.

  Feeling disgusted while I was moving a hand over my genitals, I peeked one eye open to see what he was doing. He was rubbing his privates while gawking at my privates! He used my extreme vulnerability for his sexual stimulation. I squeezed my eyes shut, attempting to escape into the darkness.

  “Open your eyes!”

  The disturbing sight of him holding his penis with a loose fist and stroking it, moving his hand up and down the shaft of his swollen member, made me wince. The small lunch of putrid, watery soup rose from my stomach. I swallowed it back down and prayed I wouldn’t vomit. I did everything in my power not to cry. Moaning, he quickened his pace and increased the strokes until he closed his eyes and had an orgasm. When he ejaculated onto my body, I wanted to kill the bastard.

  Not waiting for further instructions, I closed my legs. Using my arms and hands, I covered as much of my body as I could.

  “Not so quick.” He was smirking. “That was foreplay.” Pointing a finger toward the bathroom, he said, “We’re not done.” Again, he commanded me to clean myself. This time, it was to rid my body of his filth.

  Emotionally and spiritually withered, and physically wasted, I returned to the bed of scornful, humiliating dehumanization. He positioned me on my knees, over him, and forced his penis into my mouth. I gagged as he thrust it in and out until he grew hard. Then he grabbed my head, pulling me away from him. He shoved me onto my back, opened my legs, and climbed on top of me. His member was small, but when he inserted himself into me, I felt a ripping pain like nothing I had ever experienced. I wanted to yell for him to stop hurting me. To stop using me. I wanted to bite and kick him off of me; instead, I remained submissive, letting him have his way with me. The flesh-tearing, searing-hot pain continued for what felt like an hour. Close to unconscious when he got off, I didn’t move until he left the room without saying a word. Blood oozed down my legs as I struggled to the bathroom, where I proceeded to vomit the scant liquid in my stomach. When nothing was left, I dry-heaved till my ribs hurt. I felt like I had been pushed off a ten-foot building and landed on concrete. I wish you were dead! You cold-hearted bastard! You disgusting criminal!

  Traumatized and battered, I scrubbed the insides of my thighs to get whatever was left of him off of me. I rubbed myself raw until every last trace of my stolen innocence was gone. At least I didn’t need to worry about getting pregnant. I had malnourishment to thank for not having a menstrual cycle in ten months.

  I spent the rest of that day in a fog, going through the motions until I could get in my bunk that night. I curled into a tight ball in a futile attempt to protect myself from the living incubus that had entered my life. I woke up the next day. I stood at attention during roll call. I ate the swill they served. I sewed. I persevered, waiting in a state of eternal dread for the next time he would barge through the sewing room door.

  Several days passed until he returned again, but this time, he didn’t come for sex. He beat me for not sewing a button on tightly enough.

  My relationship with Schüler had evolved. I was the person on whom he took out all of his aggressions, sexual and otherwise. If I sewed one stitch out of line, I was beaten ruthlessly. When he came early and had to wait for me to finish a sewing job, he berated me. “You’re a lazy whore.” Standing over me, he looked down with a scornful contempt on his tight mouth. “Can’t you do your work on time?” He grabbed hold of the back of my neck and pulled me close to his waistline. “No lunch for you today.” He smashed the back of his right hand across my left cheek with such force I nearly fell off the chair. “And the next time I come for the sewing have it ready on time, or you’ll not eat for a day!” The whiplash effect of that beating left me with a stiff neck for days.

  The monster enjoyed torturing me—dismantling my personhood, my womanhood. On some days, when he was in a “good mood,” he entered the sewing room and threw a piece of stale, moldy bread at me. I thought he was revealing some glimmer of humanity. I knew I was wrong when he said, “You’re lucky to have this arrangement with me.” Laughing, he continued, “You get extra food, and you are allowed to stay alive. A stroke of good luck for you.”

  I didn’t know I could hate a person so much.

  Although I wanted to vomit everything he offered, I forced myself to eat and stay as robust as possible. I clung to the hope that, one day, I would be free. One day, with this horrendous chapter of my life behind me, I prayed that more than my body would be free—I prayed for the fortitude to embrace life again. I thanked God for Ester, who continued to keep me sane. Her selfless acts of compassion and kindness saved my life. I often called her mein engel. Aside from my family and Max, she was the best friend I ever had.

  That year was the worst one in the camp for me. I silently begged God to protect me from Schüler’s brutal rapes that left painful sores on my vagina and rectum. I never knew what pain was until he roughly entered me and then continued to find new ways to satisfy himself using my body. I couldn’t stand the thought of him.

  My spirit, bruised and scarred as much as my body, withstood his abuse, never knowing when the day would bring sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional infliction of pain, or some combination of degradations. I relished the days when he chose to leave me to my sewing, but I never knew when those days might come. So every day I suffered the crippling anxiety of uncertainty; in that way, he was with me even when he was away.

  Days, weeks, months passed. Just when my resolve to continue living that way was nearly depleted, fortune shined upon me. The day of reckoning happened in early 1944. Schüler was on evening roll call duty when an elderly man standing near me collapsed. Schüler’s eyes narrowed as he pointed his Gewehr at the man and shouted at him to get up. Schüler’s neck muscles bulged, and his sweaty face turned red before it became pasty. Dropping the rifle, he grabbed his left arm and stumbled backward. The other guards were too far from him to take notice. Along with other prisoners, I watched his breathing become erratic as he lumbered off, calling for a physician. Medical help arrived too late. Claus Schüler, notorious sexual miscreant and violent abuser of human rights, died face down in the dirt in Auschwitz in February 1944.

  At last, one of my wishes had come true.

  Chapter Thirty

  Although I felt relief at Schüler’s death, I was exhausted from months of abuse from that morally bankrupt bastard. I had existed like the ghost of a dead person when around him, suffering what he dealt me as if I wasn’t really there. I was determined not to give up; to do that would have let him win. I became mechanical in doing what he asked of me and endured without showing thought or spontaneity. That painful conditioning stayed with me in the camp and for years after. Although he never conquered my soul, he tortured my body and wore me down. After what I had gone through with him, I didn’t know how long I could survive Auschwitz. I didn’t know a lot of things: would someone worse replace him, and, if so, what would happen to me? On top of everything that had happened, the ambiguity was grueling.

  Ester did what she could to lift my
spirits, and I had to wonder if she forfeited some of her meals to keep me alive. My sewing job, which I was allowed to continue, was also a lifesaver. I had no energy left in me to stand for twelve hours a day sorting clothing, so sitting at the sewing machine helped me conserve what little energy I had.

  As time passed, my body healed in small, but noticeable ways. More apparent, however, was my renewed optimism for life. Day by day, as Ester smiled and kissed my forehead goodnight, my resolve to survive this horror returned. My conviction that a good life was possible—that I might someday be free and happy—evolved slowly, like ocean waves edging over the sand. Without the pervert’s daily threat weighing down my spirit, the seeds of resilience living in my soul sprouted once again.

  In the middle of 1944, something happened that strengthened my determination to outlive Auschwitz. A light drizzle fell in the night air as two prisoners walked to roll call formation. The one without shoes limped while the other, unfaltering, walked beside him, wearing the wooden clogs handed out to prisoners. The unsteady prisoner cried out in pain and stopped to take a rock out of his bleeding left foot. His companion in clogs also halted. Just as the man with the shoes took them off to give to the other man, an SS guard swooped down on them. Both prisoners were beaten so badly that they were unrecognizable. The guard laughed at his handiwork. My gripped fists turned white as I watched that crazed beast cackle with sick amusement. They were pummeled to near death because of benevolence.