If I Should Die Before I Wake Read Online Free PDF Page B

back behind the brush and watched as Mosze and the old man fell, one on top of the other, the loaf of bread squashed beneath them both.
    Â 
    Yes, it was Jakub who had kept things in a constant turmoil, preventing us from mourning Tata properly, and here he was again, on the seventh and last day of sitting
shiva,
telling us to pack up our things. Had he not learned anything? Had our father's and his best friend's deaths not shown him anything? I resented the way he kept trying to take Tata's place, telling us all what to do, trying to erase the last bits of Tata's memory we might carry.
    Without thinking, I found myself jumping up off the floor, tears streaming down my face, and
hurling myself at Jakub. I knocked him down and sat on his stomach and began pounding his arms and chest.
    "Why should we listen to you?" I screamed. "Why? Who do you think you are anyway? It is all your fault! All of it! I hate you, you are worse than any Germans. To them Tata was a stranger, a nobody, but to you? Was he a nobody to you, too? You have taken Tata away. You will not even let us mourn. You with all your bad news!"
    Zayde was struggling to pull me off Jakub, but I had grabbed my brother around the waist with my legs and would not let go. I was still hurling my hateful words at Jakub when there was a knock on the door. We all stopped, frozen in our places. Was this the guillotine falling at last, quick, sharp, final? During
shiva
no one knocked; a visitor just entered the home, perhaps with food to share and a kind word or two. Jakub was the first to react as another set of knocks pounded on the door. He sat up, shoving me aside as though I were a mere blanket covering his chest.
    "Let us not be foolish," he said. "No Germans would politely knock on our door."

CHAPTER FIVE
Chana
    JAKUB WAS RIGHT. No German would be waiting patiently behind the door while we mustered up the courage to answer it. However, it had not been that long ago—before Tata was killed—when they had charged through our house, seizing our radio and two of our best quilts and ordering Tata and Zayde to report to them for work the next day with shovels in their hands. For me that had been the beginning of all the craziness, and now I could not trust anything—even something as innocent as a knock on the door.
    I looked over at Bubbe. We all did. She always knew who was at the door. It was one of her "gifts," as she called them. Her expression was one of pleasure, as though she were expecting to see an old friend on the other side, and Mama, noting her expression, rushed forward and threw open the door.
    "You're here! You've made it!" Mama cried as she threw her free arm around a woman's neck and then kissed her on both cheeks. "And Oskar,
you, too." She hugged him. "You've worked a miracle. Please, please come in. You are safe?"
    "There was no problem, but please, we are Helga and Fritz now, and this is our precious daughter, Gerta." He took Nadzia from Mama's arms and examined her face and fingered her hair. "She will pass, of course. There's no need to worry."
    Anya stepped forward. "She will pass, Mama? What does that mean, and why are Oskar and Roza calling her Gerta? Isn't Nadzia going to England? Where are your American friends? I thought you said those people you taught Polish to, those Americans, remember, they were supposed to keep Nadzia."
    Roza laughed. "So many questions, Anya. You must be a very smart girl."
    Anya was not to be sidetracked. "What does it mean, she will pass?" she asked again.
    "She doesn't look Jewish," Jakub spit out. "Her eyes are blue and her hair, what little she has, is blond. She could pass for German like Oskar and Roza." He eyed them with disgust. "How does it feel to suck up to those—those—"
    "That's enough!" Zayde stepped forward, his face a deep purple. "Oskar and Roza have risked their lives to come here, and they will be risking it again as they cross the borders with their false passports. It's because