The Seven Year Dress: A Novel Read online

  The brown wood surface was smooth and cool to the touch. In the upper right corner under a glass covering, I saw the dial of channels. Two knobs were below the dial: one for turning it on and volume, and the other for stations. The sound came from the left face of the box, which was covered by a thick-meshed beige material and small wood slats. I hesitated, hoping it wouldn’t give me bad news. Ben must have sensed my misgivings. He threw a balled up sock at me. “What are you waiting for?”

  “What if it’s all horrible news? Do we really want to know?” In the last several days, I’d grown accustomed to feeling anxious and wary. If I had to survive, I knew I could. I had settled into an aberrant version of comfort down in that cellar with Ben, and didn’t want to disturb it. Picking a pimple on my cheek, I checked the radio, “Let’s hold off.” I looked back at him. “I don’t want any unsettling news to make you feel worse.”

  “Me?” He sat up straight. “I want to know. You’re the one that’s a bundle of nerves. Look at you.” He motioned to my hands and arms. “You’re plucking your skin off.”

  Feeling self-conscious, I pulled my sleeves down to cover as much of my body as possible. “You really want to find out what’s happening…out there?”

  Coughing, he nodded yes.

  I turned the radio on.

  Static.

  “Try changing the channel.” Ben cleared his throat.

  I moved the dial slightly to the right.

  More static.

  “It could be our location or the atmosphere affecting the signal.” Ben was the handyman. He was good with equipment: radios, cars, and appliances. I had a newfound appreciation for what he and Lawrence had done to bring in extra cash.

  “Anything we can do to make it work better?” I asked.

  “Move it to different locations.” Ben’s words slowed with pauses in between. He took in a slow, tired breath. “Or just wait for the weather to change.”

  I picked up the radio and moved around the basement, but all we heard were crackles. Nothing discernible. “Not a thing.”

  “Leave it for now. At least we know it has juice.”

  Frustrated that I couldn’t get the darn radio to work and observing my tired brother, I let it go.

  As the hours passed and Ben slept, I busied myself making a mental inventory of our food and supplies. I peered outside through the tiny hole in the wall at the unspoiled countryside when the inventory was complete. My life in the cellar was a soothing contrast to the chaotic Berlin I left days before. The weather was cold, but the bright sun shining through leaves and forest plants warmed my body. I knew that waterways and lakes surrounded Brandenburg. We were in a fertile place for farmland and growing potatoes, turnips, and asparagus. I yearned to be outside walking among the birch, pine, and Scotch fir trees. Feeling the soft earth beneath my feet would have been heavenly. I imagined being in a greenhouse spreading mulch over my flower garden, and growing tomatoes. If I had a farm, I’d have sheep and cattle. My family would drink fresh milk every day.

  A noise outside interrupted my daydreaming. A doe with two fawns moved past a tree and into my line of vision. The mother guiding her timid young and watching over them reminded me of Mamma. Heartache overwhelmed me as they walked away. My chest felt too heavy to take in a proper breath. Wracked with grief, I wanted to break down the basement wall, run to Berlin, and find my family. I wanted to feel their arms around me so I could soothe the ache inside of me—the one that refused to leave. Finally, the dike burst and out came the deluge of all the tears I had been suppressing. I sat on one of the wood boxes and wept my heart out.

  The labyrinth of emotions that I didn’t want to feel, experience, or face—fear, anger, and unbearable loss—enveloped me. I reached out in desperation like a helpless baby who needed her mommy. Hold me. Comfort me. Tell me that everything will be fine. Where are you? By the time the oceans of deep sorrow moved through me, it was nightfall.

  Not sleepy, nor even tired, I shuffled around with a dim lantern looking for something to take my attention off my torment, to occupy my restless mind. I found some coal in a bag against one wall. I broke off a piece and grabbed a small, flat board from the pile of firewood to use to draw on. Images of flames, of shattered glass, and of crying babies sprang from my hand. Screams, anger, hostility and hatred were exorcised from my soul as I drew scenes of the agony I felt. Magically, I started to entertain ideas of hope. Could my parents be safe? Could they be hiding somewhere tending to Lawrence and Shana? Had they escaped and was Max looking for them? A promising reflection of light shined from the lantern as I continued my scribbling with the black chalk.

  At around 9:00 p.m., I felt sleepy. Ben was snoring by my side as I closed my eyes. In the dark early morning, hours away from dawn, the sound of tires on gravel woke me from a sound sleep. I sat up, nudged Ben, and in a hushed tone said, “Someone’s here!” I got up and went to the peephole. The moonlight was bright enough to reveal what looked like Max’s truck moving around to the back of the farmhouse.

  Ben stirred awake and looked at me.

  We held our breath until the movement outside stopped.

  The front door opened.

  We held our breath again.

  Footsteps on the floor above us.

  We waited. No speaking. No breathing.

  The door to the cellar opened and shut while a familiar voice said, “It’s Max.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Max came down the stairs and shuffled toward us carrying two large suitcases. His uniform smelled like decaying flesh. I felt my heart pounding in my ears. A chill ran up my spine. He was a vision of something I barely recognized. He looked as if he was fifty-nine, not nineteen, years old. His eyes were sunken and had dark baggy circles under them; a crop of new wrinkles carved deep worry lines across his once unmarred face. He didn’t have to say a word to tell me his news was bad. His sorrowful, weary expression, his dirty, unkempt hair, hunched shoulders, and his arms glued to his sides spoke for him.

  “What’s that nauseating smell?” asked Ben from his makeshift bed, the rosy coloring leaving his cheeks.

  Time felt like a sinkhole of slowly eroding soil. I feared that the minute Max told us the horrible truth he wore all over his body, that we’d plummet beyond retrieval.

  “Ben, you don’t look well.” Max avoided Ben’s question. “Here, I brought you these.” He put down the suitcases. “Some of your clothes and other—”

  “Max!” I hissed, interrupting him. “Where are our parents? Where’s the rest of our family?”

  Max bowed his head and sniffed back tears. When he barely mumbled, “I’m so sorry…” I lost it and screamed, “Tell us what happened!”

  “I had to wait to return here. Security is very tight. Everyone is being watched and the slightest suspicion…I didn’t want to compromise you two. Not after,” Max stopped, evading what he obviously didn’t want to reveal.

  My patience gone, I screamed. “Tell us what happened!”

  “Shush, Helen, lower the volume,” pleaded Ben.

  Max’s breathy, brittle voice was hardly discernible. “There’s no easy way to say this.”

  “Just say it!” I demanded.

  “Your parents are dead.”

  “Dead?” I gasped.

  “What?” Ben reacted.

  “It can’t be.” I choked. “You’re joking. Right? This is a bad joke?” Shocked, feeling as if I was being electrocuted, my nervous system sent convulsions to my muscles. I couldn’t stop shaking. I saw Max’s mouth move; I even heard the words he said. But now my mind was muddling up everything as if this whole scene was playing out under water, and Max’s words—therefore, my understanding of them—were garbled. Wrong. They couldn’t be true. But there was no way Max would joke about something this important. “Where are Lawrence and Shana?” I asked.

  “Lawrence is dead.”

  “No,” I cried. “Nooo!”

  “Shana?” Ben’s voice cracked as he wiped his eyes dry.


  “Missing.” Max stood, frozen with pain, straining to find the words to describe our worst nightmare. Inch by excruciating inch, he managed to tell us what had happened to our family.

  When Max returned from dropping us off at the farm, Jewish men were being round up for deportation to concentration camps. He went to my parents’ home. The Gestapo was already in the neighborhood. SS and the brown shirt SA were marching on the street. Nazi flags were being hung from windows. An SS officer spotted Max and ordered him to help carry out Goebbels’s orders. He had no choice but to join in. Breaking down door after door, the Nazi’s and their sympathizers uprooted Jews. Screams were silenced with gunshots, and protesters were beaten to within an inch of their lives. At gunpoint, husbands trudged into to the trucks, leaving behind their wives and children.

  Max had learned that Jewish men and women bearing forenames of non-Jewish origin had to add "Israel" and "Sara," respectively, to their first names. All Jews were obliged to carry identity cards that indicated their Jewish heritage. Furthermore, all Jewish passports had to be stamped with an identifying letter "J". The Reich designed these measures to separate Jews from the rest of the public. “They went into your home,” his pupils dilated as he looked at Ben and me, “to verify that the changes had been made to their papers, passports and…” His entire body shook with grief.

  My mouth went dry. I tried to swallow a lump in my throat that felt like a boulder. “And?” I sighed.

  “Your father and Lawrence were escorted out first. They were quiet, obedient. Then Lawrence said something like, ‘why?’” Max looked away. I saw his lower lip trembling so much that I didn’t think he would be able to say anything else. But he made a gulping sound, wiped his eyes and nose with his sleeve, and said quickly, “Bullets. Someone started shooting…to punish Lawrence. Your father. Killed, too. Crossfire.” He covered his face with his hands.

  “Papa,” I lamented. “Lawrence.” A pain carved into my chest.

  “What happened to Mamma?” Ben whispered his question.

  Max uncovered his face. He looked ruined, drained of all emotion. “She walked out into the street and ran to them. The SS screamed orders to the SA. She was shot in the back as she held your father.” Max took in a slow breath. “I’m so sorry.” His pained expression pierced my gut.

  As I listened to this horror story, my body trembled. It hadn’t fully sunk in yet. My mind was incapable of grasping that any part of what Max had told us was true. I simply couldn’t imagine living in a world without my parents and two of my siblings. “You said Shana is missing?” My voice broke.

  Exhausted, Max nodded.

  Ben asked, “Where is she?” His head was bent forward as if too heavy to lift. The front of his shirt was dark where too many tears had fallen.

  “I don’t know.” Max paused. “I tried to find out. I looked at relocation lists…I don’t know where she is.”

  “Perhaps she got away?” Ben looked up. He spoke as if he were bargaining with Max for Shana’s safety.

  “I hope so,” said Max. But his diverted eyes told me differently. If she had tried to flee, she would have been shot.

  “No, this can’t be.” I moaned. I paced. I grabbed a can of soup and threw it across the room. “This isn’t happening.” Still reeling in shocked denial, I insisted, “It can’t be true.”

  Persecution and hatred had walked through the door to my soul and ripped out my heart. From that day on, I lived in the terror that anything I loved or bonded with could be destroyed. The only threads connecting me to this life were my brother Ben, my friendship with Max, and the hope that my sister was alive and safe. I was consumed with dread that this devastating news would worsen my brother’s illness. If he developed pneumonia and died, what would I do? And what about Max? He witnessed what his people did to my people. Had this changed him? No, no! I can’t think that way. He has more to hide than I do. I won’t think that way! Breathe. Breathe. I calmed the frenzy I was thinking myself into and swore I would rest in the belief that Max was my friend.

  I was always the inquisitive child in our family. Now, I hated the word why! Lawrence asked “why” and the Nazis killed him. Papa, too. And Mamma. Simply wanting to understand was now punishable by death! From that simple, innocent question on that horrible day, the world had grown dark and cold. The Age of Enlightenment was dead.

  Finally, there was nothing left to say, and all that remained were frayed emotions in desperate need of soothing. No one in the cellar was able to offer a balm to heal our wounded hearts, and we all seemed to know it.

  Max noted that daylight was not far from dawning. He had to travel back to Berlin to report to his SS job by 9:00 a.m. “I can’t attract attention to myself. Keeping you both safe is my only priority now.” Before leaving, he tried to lift our spirits by showing us some of the things he brought: chocolate, cookies, books and clothing he had obtained from our home. None of it touched my mood: heartbroken to the core.

  In a forlorn tone that was barely audible, he said, “Stay strong, and please don’t do anything foolish. I beg you to stay put. I’ll get back as soon as I’m able to. I’ll do what I can to find out about Shana.” With that, he walked out. Moments later, the loud engine and the sound of tires spitting up gravel faded into the distance.

  Ben and I were left in damp, silent sorrow. I was sickened by what Max told us. How could an entire nation be legitimately handed over to a group of malignant, sadistic, dictatorial murderers? These villainous puppets of Hitler were trained to hunt and kill men, women, and children. I couldn’t bear to think of the guiltless who were condemned to extermination without any chance of escaping their fate. How could a human being degrade, humiliate, and torture another human? The victims were robbed of their dignity. They were deprived of their strength to resist, and even the will to live. Where was their torturers’ remorse? Where do the emotions of these heartless men reside? And how could innocents try to escape their demise by joining the villains in the slaughter of fellow countrymen by betraying them to the Nazis? What makes people sell themselves into slavery like this? And where is the God that allows such atrocities to happen?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Time moved sluggishly as days blurred together while I focused on helping Ben. Overwhelmed by the stress from terrible news, Ben’s health slid backward. His cough worsened. His fever returned. I feared he’d lose his will to live, and I had to do something. I couldn’t lose him, too. All my life, I could depend on Ben to keep me centered when I’d go to pieces. He kept me from falling apart down in that cold, lonely cellar. After Max had told us our parents and Lawrence were dead, Ben went downhill. Now it was my turn to be the uplifting, stabilizing force in his precious life.

  He’d just finished the soup I forced him to eat when I asked, “Would you like me to read aloud from one of the books Max brought?” Along with some chocolate candy, food, and our clothing, Max brought three of my books: Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and a newer one, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I was particularly enamored with the American authors of the 1920s and early 1930s. I thought reading something to him might be useful to uplift us. In the past, reading had helped me escape. We both needed to flee mentally from our situation, which was flooded with loss and sorrow.

  Hardly able to lift his head, and exhausted from hacking up phlegm through the night, he shook his head in protest.

  “Do it for me?” I begged.

  He managed a weak whisper, “That’s what you used to get me to eat the soup.” He half-smiled. “Once a pest, always a pest.”

  Finally, one of my bad habits worked in my favor. It appeared to be working for him too. “Maybe being a pest isn’t always a bad thing.” I nudged him with my elbow.

  My older brother rolled his eyes.

  “Ben,” I persisted. “Max brought some good books.”

  “You’re not going to let me rest in peace,” he panted.

  He wasn’t joking. And it struck a nerve. We
existed in a morose fog of disbelief, for the most part, without smiles or laughter in that dank cellar. But as reality was beginning to set in, and as he regained enough strength, I dared to speak one overarching truth shredding my core. “Ben, I’m scared.”

  His rheumy eyes met mine, and I knew from his expression that he understood. “I’ll be all right, sis.”

  “I don’t want to lose you…too.”

  I didn’t read to him that day, but we did communicate. I spoke to him; he nodded or puffed a few words. Conversations invariably tracked to topics we didn’t intend to discuss or even want to consider. At first, we focused on Max and the enormous risk he took by hiding us. Our mutual fears about living in hiding, and the constant worry of being discovered by the enemy kept us busy talking about precautions: keeping the lantern light dim at night, being vigilant about silence, and staying confined to the basement. Ben was adamant about not going upstairs. The danger was too great.

  After about a week of fitful sleep, Ben’s cough subsided, and the thick, gooey, green secretions became clear mucus. I breathed easier now that Ben was breathing easier. But as Ben’s physical health continued to improve, my mood darkened. I felt as if I had been thrown down a deep well. Ben was having none of my despondency, sluggishness, and unwillingness to engage with him. He spoke firmly with a strong command when he asserted, “Helen, you need to snap out of it.” He went to a large container that we used for elimination and urinated. “What do you think our parents would say to us while we mope around, burning daylight, wallowing in self-pity?”

  “How dare you? Self-pity? I’m grieving a terrible loss. I can’t just turn off a switch for the pain to go away. I can’t! And I won’t!”

  “Too stubborn to let it go?” He wiggled himself to let out the last drop of urine. Turning to me with a smile, he said, “How about we help each other? You don’t think my heart is broken, forever damaged property? It is. But we’re here now, alive. We need to make that mean something.”