the pavement, his gun cradled in front of him. His piercing brown eyes surveyed all of us as we stood in line, shifting our weight from one leg to the other impatiently. His face radiated pure hate, but I couldn't imagine he would try and do anything to his fellow Hungarians. After all, we were his people, too.
"Sir?" My father spat as the soldier passed us in line, the heels of his boots radiating authority against the pavement.
"Yes?" the man turned on his heel and faced my father. He was a good head shorter than my Papa, but he kept an air of distance and brusqueness as he locked eyes with him. The expression on his face made up for anything he lacked in height.
"My wife often doesn't feel well in the sun. Can she maybe sit down over there, under the eves?" He pointed to the sidewalk across from us that had ample shelter from the sun.
The officer didn't flinch for a solid five or six seconds, as if he hadn't even heard my father's request. Then, without warning, he burst out laughing as if he had just heard the funniest, most amusing joke in the world. His jaw dropped, revealing his teeth and several gold crowns sparkled in the afternoon sun.
"Please, Jew. Don't make me laugh," he smirked. He moved his hand up toward my father's face, as if he were going to slap him. I held my breath until I could feel my face turning red. The soldier released his muscles and put his arm back to his side. "She can sit down when she gets to her new apartment."
My Mama had become as white as a ghost, her face twisted in a grimace and the butterfly-looking rash appearing ever-so-slightly over the bridge of her nose. We endured the never-ending line, and finally made our way to the front where a small man with glasses stamped our identity cards and gave us a slip of paper with our housing assignment.
Exhausted and in pain from having waited so long in the afternoon sun, my mother wanted nothing more than to plop down right away, sleep threatening to take over her body. So, Lujza, Hajna and I were faced with the task of helping Papa move our possessions and the wagon up to the third floor apartment building.
When Papa opened the door to the apartment for the first time, we breathed a small sigh of relief. The apartment wasn't beautiful, like our home, but it was livable. There weren't grand archways, spotless hardwood floors or a telephone in the corner. A thin layer of dust coated the kitchen table and stove, and although it was much smaller than our old home, it wasn't too cramped and I could see all of us calculating the space in our heads and deciding how we could make do for the rest of the war. It would only be a couple of months, as my Papa kept assuring us. Only temporary.
The apartment itself had just one bedroom, the entrance of the apartment at the kitchen, unlike our home that had its entrance into the foyer (with three marble statues of Roman gods and an always-on-the-brink-of-death fern). As one walked through the kitchen toward the white, wooden door opposite, there was a room that looked like a living room, with a small white coach (complete with a large stain in the middle). Just off the living room stood another room, furnished with two metal beds that sat naked, furnished only with blue striped mattresses (that would need to be beaten clean), without any sheets to clothe them.
"We can move a bed into the living room," father began dictating his orders, reminding me of a captain on a ship in the middle of a storm, keeping things calm so that his crew could perform their tasks. "And the girls can sleep there at night and we'll sleep in the bedroom. Girls, we don't have Agata and Emilia to help us anymore, so you're going to have to be grown ups, okay? You're going to help your Mama with the washing and cleaning and cooking."
We nodded slowly as we continued to survey the rooms, Hajna so in shock by the change that she had all but forgotten about how much she hated her tan coat that she left it on for much longer than
"Sir?" My father spat as the soldier passed us in line, the heels of his boots radiating authority against the pavement.
"Yes?" the man turned on his heel and faced my father. He was a good head shorter than my Papa, but he kept an air of distance and brusqueness as he locked eyes with him. The expression on his face made up for anything he lacked in height.
"My wife often doesn't feel well in the sun. Can she maybe sit down over there, under the eves?" He pointed to the sidewalk across from us that had ample shelter from the sun.
The officer didn't flinch for a solid five or six seconds, as if he hadn't even heard my father's request. Then, without warning, he burst out laughing as if he had just heard the funniest, most amusing joke in the world. His jaw dropped, revealing his teeth and several gold crowns sparkled in the afternoon sun.
"Please, Jew. Don't make me laugh," he smirked. He moved his hand up toward my father's face, as if he were going to slap him. I held my breath until I could feel my face turning red. The soldier released his muscles and put his arm back to his side. "She can sit down when she gets to her new apartment."
My Mama had become as white as a ghost, her face twisted in a grimace and the butterfly-looking rash appearing ever-so-slightly over the bridge of her nose. We endured the never-ending line, and finally made our way to the front where a small man with glasses stamped our identity cards and gave us a slip of paper with our housing assignment.
Exhausted and in pain from having waited so long in the afternoon sun, my mother wanted nothing more than to plop down right away, sleep threatening to take over her body. So, Lujza, Hajna and I were faced with the task of helping Papa move our possessions and the wagon up to the third floor apartment building.
When Papa opened the door to the apartment for the first time, we breathed a small sigh of relief. The apartment wasn't beautiful, like our home, but it was livable. There weren't grand archways, spotless hardwood floors or a telephone in the corner. A thin layer of dust coated the kitchen table and stove, and although it was much smaller than our old home, it wasn't too cramped and I could see all of us calculating the space in our heads and deciding how we could make do for the rest of the war. It would only be a couple of months, as my Papa kept assuring us. Only temporary.
The apartment itself had just one bedroom, the entrance of the apartment at the kitchen, unlike our home that had its entrance into the foyer (with three marble statues of Roman gods and an always-on-the-brink-of-death fern). As one walked through the kitchen toward the white, wooden door opposite, there was a room that looked like a living room, with a small white coach (complete with a large stain in the middle). Just off the living room stood another room, furnished with two metal beds that sat naked, furnished only with blue striped mattresses (that would need to be beaten clean), without any sheets to clothe them.
"We can move a bed into the living room," father began dictating his orders, reminding me of a captain on a ship in the middle of a storm, keeping things calm so that his crew could perform their tasks. "And the girls can sleep there at night and we'll sleep in the bedroom. Girls, we don't have Agata and Emilia to help us anymore, so you're going to have to be grown ups, okay? You're going to help your Mama with the washing and cleaning and cooking."
We nodded slowly as we continued to survey the rooms, Hajna so in shock by the change that she had all but forgotten about how much she hated her tan coat that she left it on for much longer than
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