Someday We Will Fly: Chapters 1–3

We flew to Zgoda Street, where he bounded into the back of our apartment, set us down, locked the door, pulled the blinds, and turned to me, no breath left in him.

All of her bird clocks chimed, and I jumped like a rickety puppet, shocked.

I was made for the circus, small for fifteen and bendy. I had always been able to push two chairs close to each other and hold myself up over them, my hands the claws of a limber bird.

After I was born, he made puppets and taught me to dance; he didn’t like my contortion acts because he thought I might get hurt.

But I wanted to be like my mother, brave, so I twirled as fast as a toy top, never got dizzy, bent into the wildest shapes I could make, flipped across every lovely expanse of stage I could find.

I stared at the review I had pinned up—of my parents’ act, “intimate, dazzling.”

I carried my sister to the stove, set her down, got on my hands and knees, and scoured the ashes. When my fingers found the ring I’d seen our mother hide, I said out loud to Naomi, “Look. She’ll be happy when she gets home.”

Renia was a dramatic girl, prone to telling lies to excite everyone, but she said good-bye in a voice that made my skin prickle and itch.

His voice was gentle, and pages of prayer books rustled.

In our bike act, six acrobats rode around the ring, dancing on their seats, standing on handlebars, leaning so close to the floor that the bikes went flat. Each time, one girl slipped off, only to pop back on. It looked like an accident but was a reminder to the audience that we were vulnerable. We made our acts look more difficult than they were.

On Friday nights, while the chicken was roasting and the challah cooled on the counter, Babcia prayed and Mama smiled and sang along.

But the lights went out in my parents’ makeshift ring, and she was gone.

Whispered words from the conversation between Papa and Kassia's parents floated up and then settled all over us like ash: safe conduit, money we’ll wire, London, Shanghai, Sergo, ticket, Alenka.

Had he spoken rudely, carried a book, jewel, forbidden check? Maybe the soldiers resented him for an arbitrary reason, envy of his pretty, screaming wife, whose life they had just ruined.

Had he spoken rudely, carried a book, jewel, forbidden check? Maybe the soldiers resented him for an arbitrary reason, envy of his pretty, screaming wife, whose life they had just ruined.

But I let him yank open my sad cotton bag: four of Mama's shirts, a coat, my blue dress; two books, Kajtuś Czarodziej and The Last Lithuanian Foray, and the mouse, that was all.

On May 23, the ship called Conte Rosso sailed from Trieste to Shanghai without my mother, just as the car had driven to Lithuania and the train had sped us to the port and the sun had risen, relentless.

Naomi said, “Ah, ah, ah, ah,” more sensible than Papa, who chanted endlessly: “There will be rice paddies, Lillia, and mountains! With your talent for languages, you’ll learn Chinese quickly.”

I danced with the ship, lurching and bending, keeping my balance on the violent sea.

I danced when the air was so wet and cloudy it could hardly be distinguished from the sea, when I couldn’t be seen at the ship’s edge.

When the Conte Rosso docked in Colombo, Papa held on to Naomi and me, lest we disobey him and walk into the real world to buy rice or rubber or trinkets.

I followed the woman to a second deck, from which traces of fish were visible to the side of the ship, the water churning less viciously there than it did behind us.

A pole crossed his neck and shoulders; from each end hung pails that seemed to pull the metal down, bending it on either side and digging a groove in his flesh.

Seeing him cry slowed my thoughts, but Naomi reached up and patted Papa’s cheek, warbled, “Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.”

She had round, lively eyes, and a thin, bent nose both delicate and too big for her face.

“Looks like you’ve already gotten yourself a stylish cut, young lady,” Mr. Michener said. He was round and jovial.

But I put the egg to my lips, and immediately was ravenous. I swallowed the whole egg almost without chewing.

He looked up at me, distressed, as if we still lived in a place where I was spared terrible news.

“I guess because it will involve a lot of barges,” he proposed.

In rags, skinny after weeks of illness and a single bath from a bucket, not to mention practically bald, I must have looked like a dirty puppet made of twigs, but I was wearing my mother’s star ring for the first time since being Jewish became a crime.