Two Rings Read Online Free PDF Page B

side.
    â€œMotel!” Dina Rosa called out. “Motel, I am here!”
    â€œDina Rosa!” he cried as he passed. “Dina Rosa! Throw me a piece of bread. They’re going to shoot me!”
    Even then I understood the anguish of that cry. In his last moments, more than his wife, more than escape, Motel’s deepest desire was simply for bread, a bite of bread before the gun fired.
    Dina Rosa collapsed against the ghetto wall, sobbing as Mama took her in her arms. Mama was swaying back and forth with Dina Rosa’s heaving cry, trying to comfort the poor woman. But I wanted comfort, too. I wanted those arms about me, Mama clutching me to her breast.
    It wasn’t a scene for a child, for a young girl to see. Motel starving and all alone, with no one able to rescue him. Dina Rosa, disbelieving and empty, for whom all rescue was impossible.
    I was fourteen, and I was scared.

    I was thinking of Jedlińsk.
    It’s 1940, the year before the ghetto was established, and we’re still living on Wolnosc Street. I’m thirteen years old. My father has left Radom for Jedlińsk, a small village about fifteen kilometers outside of town. We have relatives there, I know, but it’s not entirely clear to me why he has taken off. My uncle has left Radom, too. He is a member of a socialist Zionist group, the Left Po’alei Zion, and he has gone to Russia to see if he can arrange safe passage for Mima and their children.
Mama tells me something vague about why my father has left home, but I don’t understand entirely what she’s saying. It has something to do with their fearing his arrest, but I don’t see why anyone would want to arrest my father. Perhaps I don’t know him that well—I have never managed to feel close to him since he returned from his many years away in Paris—but I do know that he isn’t a criminal in any way.
    After a few days, Mama tells me I have to go to him, to give him a message from her that he should stay in Jedlińsk for another week. There is going to be another oblava , another roundup of Jews in Radom—I don’t know how she knows this—and he should stay away. My brother, Majer, cannot go—he is sixteen now, and he will surely be recognized as a Jew. It is also impossible for my mother to go. She too will easily be recognized, and how would we manage without her? So I must go. I am thirteen, and I must go on my own to Jedlińsk to tell my father not to return to Radom.
    I am scared. Mama! This is against the law, what you are asking me to do. If I get caught, Mama! What will happen if I get caught?
    Mama dresses me as a peasant girl: She puts a babushka on my head and tells me to take off my shoes. Peasants walk barefoot. I do as I am told. I wear my old coat, but Mama removes from my sleeve the white armband with the blue Magen David that I must wear as a Jew. This is the greatest crime—for a Jew to walk in the street without the armband bearing the Star of David. But Mama takes mine off and takes my face between her hands; she kisses my forehead.
    â€œYou must go now, Maniusia.” She uses a diminutive of my name, an endearment. “You must go tell your father to stay in Jedlińsk.”

    So I walk, barefoot and trembling, out of Radom and onto the lanes leading to the village fifteen kilometers away. My feet begin to hurt as soon as the city streets give way to country roads—I am not accustomed to walking without shoes, and the twigs and pebbles scattered across the lanes dig into my soles. I keep my head down, scared to catch anyone’s eye, scared to be asked what I am doing, a Jew in unconvincing costume.
    Eventually, an old man comes by driving a horse and wagon and offers me a ride toward the village. I accept, grateful to get off my feet. I don’t remember much else—how, after the man dropped me off still some distance from the village, I managed to find my cousins’ house, how