The Yellow Bird Sings Read online

  “Now, now,” she whispers.

  They both know there are other birds outside the barn, huddled in tree holes, hidden by branches, hunched beneath sticks and pine needles. Is his tata out there somewhere, searching for him? Even the wild birds don’t dare make a peep. They’ll sound their calls at dawn when the men are in their houses, in their beds, too slow and groggy to step into their boots.

  She’ll be his company for now, and he’ll be hers. She needs him, especially as dreams drive her mother into a restless state, shifting upon the floorboards and calling out. Shira asks herself: Should I shake Mama awake? Or let her sleep on? Her bird hops and pecks, urging Shira to put a hand upon her mother’s cheek, halt the dreams that haunt her.

  * * *

  Shira’s bird stays with her when Krystyna takes her out of the barn, and when the warning footsteps of soldiers prompt Shira and her mother to bury themselves entirely beneath the hay. And he stays with her when Henryk pounds up the ladder. When she is meant to be her most quiet. Meant to be sleeping.

  When Shira is happy, as she was when her mother showed her how to make stitches with the needle and thread Krystyna brought them, he perches in the barn rafters or on a mound of hay nearby. But when she is upset, as she was when she poked her finger and blood dripped onto the hem of her dress, he flies straight into her cupped hands.

  He could chirp if he wanted to. His call is wondrous—eighteen warbling notes long. But he stays silent. Such a sound as that might draw attention, and just now, they have to hide.

  Chapter 8

  “Papa told us not to go in. Piotr—”

  “You don’t have to come.”

  This is all the warning Róża has that the older boys are at the barn door. Quickly, she buries Shira and herself beneath hay and silently prays, Please, let Shira be still; let her not shift or sigh or tap or sneeze …

  The door scrapes open. With the boys’ entry, a trapeze of sunlight. “We’re going to get in trouble!” Jurek says.

  “I don’t know why Papa forbade us. There’s nothing even in here.”

  “We should invite the girls.”

  “I thought you were worried about getting in trouble!”

  “Well, it could be worth it for that. It smells bad, though.”

  “Where is that coming from?”

  “Maybe up there—should we check it out?”

  Róża’s heart pounds so violently, she’s sure the boys can hear it. If they climb into the loft, it’s over.

  Piotr steps toward the door. “Just leave it, Jurek. There’s nothing interesting in here after all. Let’s go.”

  When the boys are outside, out of earshot, Róża exhales and reaches for Shira’s hand. She tries to think up a plan for if they return, if they wish to scale the loft. Perhaps Henryk can move the ladder away—

  * * *

  But Piotr is back within the hour, this time with a different boy. Róża fears the hay has shifted, that they aren’t completely covered over, but she doesn’t dare move. Her breath catches in her throat. Her hand, clammy with sweat, is still on Shira’s.

  “Did your family keep pigs in here?” the boy asks.

  “I don’t know what’s been in here. I’m sorry it smells, but at least we can be alone.”

  “There’s hay up there,” the other boy says, pointing at the loft.

  “I think it’s more smelly. Over here is better.”

  Piotr leads the boy to the corner of the barn. Soon Róża hears the press of a body against the wall, a heaviness of breath. Heat floods the pit of her stomach. She strains to see through the hay as the boys fumble to push their pants lower, raise their shirts higher.

  Róża is unsure if Shira’s face is turned toward or away from the corner. Can she see what’s happening? What if she makes a noise?

  The barn door flies open, again catching Róża unawares—and the boys too. They split apart, but not before Krystyna sees.

  “Dariusz, it’s time for you to leave. Now.” Krystyna’s voice is shrill.

  The boys scrabble with their clothes, tugging and buttoning, heads bowed, faces reddened, as they duck out of the barn.

  Heart rattling, Róża watches Krystyna’s face—tilted toward the loft, questioning what the boys have witnessed, what Róża has—before she turns to go.

  She listens as Krystyna follows Piotr into the farmhouse, as Dariusz pounds down the road. Shira wriggles her hand away.

  “Shira?” Róża whispers, trying to unstopper her breath.

  No answer.

  “You did a good job staying still and silent.”

  “Why did Pani Wiśniewska scold like that?”

  “She was frightened.”

  “Why?”

  Róża pauses, wondering again what Shira saw. “She wants Piotr to be safe.”

  “Is he?”

  “Yes, Shirke.” But even as Róża says this, her lips form prayers for him.

  * * *

  That evening Krystyna and Henryk huddle by the coop. Róża can just make out Krystyna’s urgent pleading.

  “I want them out now.”

  “Has something happened?”

  “No.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Nothing has happened. I just want them out.”

  “Krystyna, I don’t understand—”

  “It’s not safe. We have to protect our own.”

  “You were the one who said they had no place to go.”

  Krystyna covers her face with her hands and turns toward the house. “I have to get back to Łukasz.”

  * * *

  Róża scans the loft. If she’d kept even one ruby or a small bag of yeast, she’d have something to barter with at the next hiding place. In the corner, she sees Shira’s blanket amid a collection of tiny hay nests, each lined with a puff of rabbit fur. She checks her pockets for the photographs, Natan’s watch and compass. Her fingers brush against her mother’s frosting tip.

  When Henryk comes in that night, Róża again expects him to tell her they must leave the barn. She braces herself, fearing the journey to the next village, the possibility of refusal from the merchant’s wife. But he does not evict them. Instead, it is the usual nightly visit.

  * * *

  Days later, a neighbor corners Krystyna as she is pinning clothes on the line and inquires about the boy Dariusz.

  “What about him?” Krystyna asks.

  “I saw him hanging around here. Was he a friend of your boys?”

  “He was Piotr’s classmate—” Krystyna’s voice is gravel.

  “Well,” the neighbor keens, “he’s been taken.”

  “Taken?”

  She leans in closer to Krystyna, eyes glinting. “Borys turned him in. Suspected he had a contagion. You know how the Germans deal with that—”

  Róża sees Krystyna’s face blanch. “A contagion?” Krystyna asks limply.

  “Yes. It’s good he’s gone from our boys.”

  Róża shifts and lowers herself beneath hay. For the next several hours she doesn’t dare peer out at the road for fear of seeing sugar cookies piled high on plates, of hearing castrati jokes, of witnessing Piotr being dragged away.

  Chapter 9

  Autumn 1941

  Róża wakes, cold and stiff. Since the weather turned, she has positioned herself to block Shira from the draft that presses in and embroiders the wall cracks with early morning frost. But now Shira has her pinned, and the slightest attempt to extend a leg sets her calf muscles seizing. She can’t even snake an arm up to scratch her scalp—infested with lice despite constant hair braiding—lest she awaken Shira and begin even earlier the challenge of keeping her quiet through yet another day. When will it end? The silent counting contests and statue games get them only so far before Shira is tapping out her music, what seem like full-blown symphonies she can hardly keep contained.

  Pressed against the floorboards, the hay tamped down, the back of Róża’s head aches. At the point when she can’t take the position any longer, she s
hifts a hip a little at a time, feeling Natan’s no-longer-ticking watch press against her thigh. Shira doesn’t wake. Gratefully, Róża drops back to sleep.

  Krystyna comes in later that morning, not to take Shira out but to bring distractions. She must be a mind reader, for in a bucket she’s concealed a crochet hook, yarn, pencils and paper, an atlas, and the Polish children’s novel In Desert and Wilderness tucked inside the cover of a different title, Emil und die Detektive.

  “They’re meant to be reading only German books now.” Krystyna points to the book cover. “But my boys loved this one.”

  Róża wants to thank Krystyna for not evicting them—today marks fifty-six days in the barn—and to tell her that she would never utter a word about Piotr, but she hesitates, fearful of causing offense or sounding as though she’s using it as leverage to remain in the loft. Krystyna already contends with Henryk’s grumblings over rushed chores, as she’s instituted that Piotr go to church each morning.

  “We are so grateful for your kindness. Thank you,” Róża says.

  The closest thing they’ve had to a book is the cardboard fold of photographs. Now Róża whisper-reads the first pages of In Desert and Wilderness to Shira, pausing to open the atlas to Port Said at the northern end of the Suez Canal, where this story of intrigue and adventure takes place. Shira ahhs with pleasure at the description of flamingos, “red and purple flowers suspended in the sky,” then claps a hand to her mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” she whimpers. “Please, keep reading?”

  “Shira,” Róża whispers, “now that we have paper I want to teach you your letters. You can learn to spell your name.” Róża prints out the letters of the alphabet on a sheet of paper, circling the letters in Shira’s name, but Shira insists on turning the paper over on its blank side and reorienting it sideways.

  “I’d like a music page.”

  “What?”

  “A music page, with the lines across, like you and Tata—” Shira closes her mouth again. Outside, the sky is white. No birds in the branches now.

  “Let’s work on your letters.”

  Róża knows: music paper will lead to music making, or at the very least to tapping. But sulking—which Shira looks as though she is about to start—may lead to a storminess that will be even more difficult to manage. “How about this: I’ll tell you a real-life story about some famous musicians.”

  “Good.”

  “Come onto my lap so I can whisper even more quietly. It’s about a violinist, a very talented violinist named Joachim. He was so dedicated to his music, in fact, that he believed that he and his musician friends should never marry.”

  “Why?”

  “He thought it would distract them. He wanted them to stay faithful to their calling as musicians. He even had a personal motto, Frei aber einsam—Free but lonesome.”

  “He wanted them to be lonesome?”

  “It’s not that he wanted them to be lonesome. He thought that music would be even better company.”

  “Dora got a dog as a birthday gift.”

  “Hmm.” From a neighbor’s window Róża had witnessed the roundup that took Shira’s friend Dora and her family away—this, the day before Natan didn’t return home. She stares hard at Shira, forcing a small smile. “Well, as a gift for Joachim, his friends composed a sonata for him based on the musical notes F-A-E, for Frei aber einsam. Dietrich wrote the first movement; Schumann wrote the second movement; and Brahms wrote the third. A scherzo.”

  “I wish I could hear it.”

  She doesn’t mention that Shira has heard Brahms’s Scherzo. Natan used to practice it, repeatedly and meticulously. “If you promise to be very quiet, I can hum the first bars for you. It’s in minor mode, which is tricky, and it starts off very dramatically.”

  Though her own eyes are closed, Róża feels Shira’s eyes roaming her face as she hums the beginning of the violin melody. Róża wonders if Shira composes equally exceptional music in her head.

  “Mama, will you write it on the paper? I promise I’ll keep it tucked in my pocket, I won’t make a noise.”

  Chapter 10

  Shira purses her lips tight so the notes won’t escape. Over and over, she hums what her mother hummed for her of Brahms’s Scherzo—the start, like branches rapping against a window, then a soulful, happy melody. She keeps her eyes trained on the crack in the loft wall. Pale orange light bleeds into the gray. It is just before dawn.

  The first commotion of the morning comes from the birds: the kiuks of woodpeckers, the krekks of terns. At daybreak, Henryk trudges to the fields. The older boys do their chores, then Piotre departs for church. Krystyna bustles about, pulling stiff shirts from the clothesline, with Łukasz perched on her hip. Łukasz squeals when she puts him down, so she picks him up again and steps into the farmhouse, and Shira imagines him swaying amid the folds of Krystyna’s skirt, pressing a hard crust against his tender new teeth.

  The usual villagers canter past on their errands—the white-haired lady whose flowery housedress ruffles between her long coat and boots, the two stringy blond girls, late as always, for work.

  For a long stretch of time, Shira occupies herself hiding “treasures”—bits of broken blue-and-white china she’s dislodged with a stick from an earthen corner of the barn. Each shard she turns over and over in her hand, considering where she might stow it, undetected. One she snugs into the nook where a crosstie meets a rafter; another she places inside a wood knot of a floorboard. Two oblong bits that nearly fit together Shira hides along the back wall, farthest from the ladder, deep beneath hay.

  Shrieks of children at play come from a nearby yard. Soon it will be time for Krystyna to bring their meal pail. Shira hopes there will be bread to dip into the weed soup and an apple each. Yesterday she nibbled her apple so slowly it lasted all afternoon, the juice of each tiny bite spraying in her mouth and onto her lips, the smell of autumn sticking to her fingers.

  She halts her solitary game to peer again through the crack of the loft wall. The nearest tree branches wave their silvery undersides; the tall brown grasses tick in the breeze. Shira strains to listen for the sap flowing within the blue bark of the maples. She hopes, in vain, for Krystyna to come take her out of the barn.

  * * *

  Eventually Shira settles back into the hay, shifting against the sharp press of her mother’s hip, inhaling her pungent odor. She wonders when Henryk will bring another bathing bucket. She enjoys the feel of the warm water, how her mother rubs the tickly cloth between her fingers and toes. One time Shira got to eat an egg outside the barn and have a sponge bath in the very same day. She tries to figure out, How many days ago was that? but her mother interrupts.

  “Shirke, it’s time for lessons.” Her mother smooths out the alphabet page and sets it aside. She begins on a new sheet, drawing columns. “Today we are going to learn numbers. I’d like to teach you to count all the way to fifty, because you’re five years old and fifty is ten times five!”

  “Am I ever going to school?”

  “We have to stay here for now.”

  “But other kids—”

  Her mother’s voice is low. “If you’re very quiet, we can play a letters game.”

  Shira wants to protest—she wishes to go outside, to go to school—but her mother’s eyes, blinking hard like window shutters, close her out.

  Later her mother reads from In Desert and Wilderness, low and close to Shira’s ear, pointing to the words as she goes and encouraging Shira to sound out the smallest ones. Shira likes shaping her mouth around each sound. She is eager to learn to read, even if, with this Polish book, it feels a bit like pretending. The books on her bedside shelf at home are in Yiddish.

  After a few more pages her mother puts aside the book, open winged. Circles ring the hollow of her eyes, blue black like the sky at midnight, and lines etch her mouth. Shira feels the worry in her mother’s breath. She disentangles herself.

  The birds outside strike up their dusk calls and Shira adjusts her g
aze to watch them through the crack in the barn wall. Their eyes, glassy like the eyes of her stuffed animals, flit in every direction. Several lack digits on one foot, the left. This makes them hop somewhat crookedly and lean sideways when they perch.

  * * *

  A few days later, Shira hears soldiers outside the barn. They’ve never been so close; she’s heard them by the tavern and along the road, singing, on foot and on horses, but now they stand just beneath the tree near the side of the barn wall. Are they going to enter? Shira’s mother covers the waste bucket and arranges hay thickly over Shira before sliding herself down into a concealed position.

  A bead of sweat trickles from Shira’s hairline, causing her to shudder. The plan of where to run has changed; it’s no longer to the root cellar. But where? She didn’t pay attention when her mother told her because she’d had a song in her head. She was going to ask later, but—

  “Even the birds around here are deformed,” a soldier says. He circles the tree in giant steps.

  Worry clenches at Shira’s stomach. If they don’t like the outside birds, will they dislike hers?

  “It must be a genetic problem, unless a disease swept through the flock.” This is a different soldier talking, one with a softer voice.

  “Let’s shoot them.”

  “No, I don’t want—”

  Shira wishes she knew the prayer her mother constantly mouthed.

  “They don’t matter. Look at them.”

  “We mustn’t spend our bullets.”

  “I have plenty of spares.”

  When Shira hears a gun cock, she sinks lower in the hay, tears stinging her eyes. Shots fire. Wings beat frantically against the sky. Shira begins humming, a melody to drown out tragedy. When her mother hushes her with a near-silent hiss, she in turn hushes her bird, who rears and pecks, angrily, not wanting to be silenced.