Serendipity's Footsteps Read online

  Her glare was a mishmash of anger and playfulness. “Who needs money? I have a place to sleep already. On Avenue A…rent-free.”

  “You’re squatting?” He raised an eyebrow. He’d heard about the runaways and dropouts taking over abandoned tenement buildings in Alphabet City, struggling artists or actors who built whole gypsy villages behind boarded-up windows. He envied their daring, but not their poverty.

  “Squatting…for now. And then…we’ll see. I’ll eat air. Bathe in the Hudson. I’ll make it possible.” She lit a cigarette, took a long drag, then passed it to him. “Don’t tell me you’re a dream killer. I hate dream killers.”

  “So…you know some personally,” he said.

  She shrugged. “Only everyone I knew before I came here.” She dug the toe of her shoe into the sand. “They said I was too young. That theater wouldn’t be good for me. They wanted me to stay at home, where I’d be safe.” She threw her head back and yelled, “I’m bored to death by safety!”

  He laughed, then sobered. “Maybe safety’s my problem.” He stared out at the water, where the boardwalk lights winked on the waves. “I’m stuck in a net of it. I can’t do anything except what I’m supposed to do. My father made the mold for me before I was even born. It’s my fate.” He pulled an old-time pocket watch from his jacket and flipped it open, holding the inscription up to her face. “ ‘Time wasted is money lost.’ So said my grandfather and now my father.”

  She scoffed. “Screw fate! People fall into things and call it fate. Fate is a lame excuse for choices we’re not happy with.” She stretched her arms toward the stars. “And time…” She smiled at him. “Well, time is only wasted when it’s spent worrying over fate.”

  Looking into her radiant face, he wanted to slide down the slippery slope of dreaming with her, to ignore the pounding of his father’s plans being hammered into his brain. For the first time in his life, but not the last, he let himself go.

  She pulled him into the waves, kicking up seafoam and laughing. For a moment, the moonlight flickered across her stilettos in the water, and they became the glittering scales of a tail, and she became the mermaid with the irresistible song.

  They splashed and swam until, exhilarated and dripping, they tumbled breathless onto the beach in each other’s arms. She made a pillow of his jacket and laid his head on it, fashioning a bed for him in the sand.

  The shushing of the waves lulled him. The trail of stars quieted the numbers racing through his head. And as she kissed him, the dollar signs finally blinked out.

  When he left her sleeping in the moonlight, he was smiling. And he was still smiling when he showed up at his parents’ brownstone on East Seventy-Third to tell them he was going back to school to study art.

  —

  She woke to waves lapping her toes. She sat up, blinking into a tangerine sunrise. The tide had come in, and the sand sparkled, clean and new. She’d heard his whispered “Thank you” in the wee small hours, felt his kiss on her hair, but she let him believe she was sleeping. It was better to avoid a morning of awkwardness. This way, if he had regrets, she wouldn’t see them. Besides, she felt like a bona fide New Yorker now. She’d made a random connection, and after a brief blaze of glory, she was moving on.

  She reached for her lucky shoes and found his pocket watch beside them, tucked together like they were sleeping in the sand. She picked them all up and danced up the beach toward the subway, a tiny universe of chromosomes already starting to spin inside her, happy to have a home.

  —

  On Wall Street at dawn, a hobo stepped out of the filthy dish towels wrapped around his feet and slipped into a pair of abandoned oxfords, polished and brand-new. They fit him perfectly. He walked away without a limp.

  —

  On July 10, 1991, Sara “Linnea Chantal” Miller gave birth to a beautiful baby girl with almond eyes and one extra chromosome, and despite skeptical looks from the nurses in the maternity ward, promptly named her after a shoe.

  DALYA

  It was on the day Inge’s rasping cough began that Dalya found a white rock the size of a robin’s egg. She was standing in the “exercise yard” for roll call, shivering. The coats they’d come with had been torn from them as they’d stepped off the train, and the clothes and shoes the camp officers had given them were already threadbare. Even her long brown hair, stripped from her like everything else, had been shorn off to keep away the lice. Her fingers and toes were constantly numb, and sometimes she thought it might be better to stay in her bunk than to face the cold. But people who didn’t get up were taken away and never came back, so her mother made her get up, always.

  Now her mother stood next to her with an arm firmly around Inge. Dalya hoped the guards would think her mother’s arm was a gesture of affection, or protection. But she knew otherwise. Inge couldn’t stand alone. Her eyes were half closed, her cheeks flushed with fever, but their mother had to make sure she seemed as healthy as possible. Otherwise, the guards would take her to the infirmary. So far, no one who’d gone to the infirmary had returned.

  “Look, Inge,” Dalya whispered. “I think we can use this rock for drawing.” She smiled at her sister, but her chapped lips split, and blood slicked her mouth. So much the better, she thought, wincing through the pain. Her lips would have a healthy, rosy shine for the guards’ inspection.

  Dalya crouched in front of Inge with the rock. But Inge’s eyes didn’t blink, or even flicker with recognition. Dalya sighed, tucking the rock into one of her wooden inmate clogs, where it wouldn’t be seen by the guards. She had the urge to shake her sister until some sign of life spilled out of her. Gone was the impulsive sprite with all her changeable moods, and Dalya ached to have her back, regretting every moment she’d ever lost patience with her.

  When they’d first arrived, Inge had cried all the time. Cried for David and their father, who had been separated from them as soon as they’d stepped off the train. Cried for the dolly ripped out of her arms that night so many months ago. Cried as their mother tried to explain to the SS officers that this was a mistake, that none of them were supposed to be here. But that was before hunger and exhaustion used up her tears. Now, when she wasn’t forced to stand for roll call, Inge was curled into a motionless ball on the bunk in their barracks. Now Dalya wished Inge’s tears would start again, because it was too frightening to see her sister, who had always been a whirlwind of energy, be so still, so quiet.

  “Stand up straight now,” her mother whispered as the guards moved down the line of inmates toward them. “Perhaps today, Inge, they’ll send us home.”

  Dalya cringed at the lilt in her mother’s voice. She’d heard it every day since they’d arrived, and each time she knew it was a lie. Still, it was a necessary one. It was the only way to make Inge get out of the bunk, eat, stand in this line. So Dalya lied, too.

  “Maybe we’ll see Vati and David later,” she said.

  For a brief second, Inge’s eyes flickered to the second yard, on the other side of the barbed-wire fence, the yard where, just once, they’d seen the men and boys lined up for roll call, on their first day here. There were many more men than women and children in this place. Hundreds of men, in fact, but only a dozen or so women and children. It seemed strange, and her mother kept saying their being here was a horrible misunderstanding. Still, the guards made no move to release them, even though it caused problems for them, too. At that first roll call, within seconds of husbands, wives, and children spotting each other, the wailing had begun. There had been a mad rush to the fence, fingers reaching through the wires to touch loved ones’ faces and hands. The guards yelled, pushing everyone back with the butts of their guns. After that, the roll calls for men and women were never at the same time.

  Now Dalya pulled her shoulders back and her body upright as the guards faced them.

  “The little one looks sickly.” The broader guard gripped Inge under her chin. “Let her stand on her own.”

  Dalya’s mother slid her arm from around
Inge, and Dalya held her breath as Inge swayed unsteadily for a few seconds. But Inge remained standing, and finally, the guard moved on. Her mother hugged Inge as the roll call ended, and when the women and children drifted apart, she nudged Dalya.

  “It’s Aaron,” she whispered, nodding toward the fence. “Go now.”

  Dalya glanced up to see Aaron pushing a wheelbarrow of bricks through the yard on the other side of the barbed wire. He kept his eyes focused on the bricks, but he moved slowly along the fence, and she knew he was waiting for her. This was the system of communication they’d developed, and a way for their fathers to pass on food rations to their wives and daughters when they could. Dalya and Aaron, because they were younger, were at less risk for punishment than their parents for breaking camp rules. And so far, neither of them had gotten anything more severe than scoldings from the guards. Still, Dalya had to be quick and careful.

  She edged closer, and when she was within reach, Aaron tripped, spilling bricks onto the ground.

  As he bent to pick them up, he whispered, “David’s sick but alive.”

  “So is Inge,” Dalya said. “The rest of us are all right.”

  “We’re fine for now, too. Tell my mother…this is everything I had.” Aaron nodded toward the ground, where a brick was split open, revealing a small portion of bread in its hollow.

  She had only seconds, so she doubled over into a coughing fit, making it so violent that she had to put a hand out to steady herself. In one swift movement, that hand reached through the fence, scooped up the bread, and hid it in her mouth.

  She backed away just as a guard strode toward Aaron, the butt of his rifle raised and ready. “Pick those up, stupid!” he yelled, and Aaron instantly bowed his head, falling to his knees.

  “Of course. I’m so sorry.”

  But when he stood with an armful of the bricks, half of them slipped from his grasp. The guard grabbed him by the collar, lifting him off his feet.

  “Are you a clown as well as an imbecile?” the guard screamed in his face.

  “Please forgive me,” Aaron said.

  His cowering posture made Dalya turn away. How could he degrade himself like that? Why didn’t he look the guard in the eye to show he wasn’t afraid? She detested this game of subservience she saw Aaron, and many other inmates, playing. Where did it get them in the end? Not one brick less to carry, not one more morsel of food to eat.

  She hurried into the barracks, where she slid the bread out of her mouth and under a slat in her bunk to share with Inge and Chava and Hila Scheller later. (She knew her own mother would refuse her portion, as she always did.)

  She was back outside before the guards noticed anything, and as she went to rejoin her mother and Inge, she glanced toward Aaron. He was moving away with his load. For the first time, she noticed the sharp angles of his bones poking out from under his clothes, the deepening pits of his cheeks. A thought struck her. He’d said the bread was everything he had. Maybe it wasn’t their fathers’ food at all, but his. If that was the case, it didn’t look like he could afford to give it up.

  —

  She waited until darkness fell, then retrieved her pearly white rock from her shoe and wedged it between the wooden beams of her bunk. She could barely sleep for thinking about it. She longed to sketch, if only to stay warm. When at least one part of her body was in motion, the stabbing chill ebbed enough for her to keep breathing. There were no blankets in the barracks, and her mother wouldn’t let them cover themselves with straw from the floor. It was foul from the people who fell sick and couldn’t make it to the latrines in time. There were rats nesting in it, too. Every night, their red eyes glinted in the dark. Dalya didn’t really want the straw, but tonight, in the unforgiving air, she was tempted. She resisted, though, just as she resisted the pull of her white rock as each eternal minute passed.

  When the first streaks of daylight shone through the slats in the walls, she retrieved the rock from its hiding place and put her frozen hands to work. She nearly laughed when the rock chiseled a fine white line along the bunk wall. But any laughter she’d had was left far behind on Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. Instead, she made another line, and another, until the graceful arch of a shoe grew from the wall.

  By the time Inge woke coughing, Dalya had finished the first shoe.

  “Look, Inge,” she whispered, pulling her sister close to show her the wall. “Can I tell you the story of this shoe? Like we used to?”

  Inge nodded, and Dalya wove a tale of thieves, princesses, and an ancient curse. As the tale unfolded, Inge’s dull eyes grew brighter, and Dalya felt a surge of hope. So she began in earnest.

  Over the next few days, she sketched shoes in her bunk until the wall was filled. All she had to do was look at a sketch, and the shoe burst forth fully formed in her mind. Just imagining molding the leather in her hands warmed her fingers. For Inge, every shoe held a fairy tale of magic and mystery, and Dalya was sure she could see her improving with each shoe she drew.

  But then came the morning when Inge wouldn’t get up, when she lay listless, her face ashen, her eyes a bottomless obsidian.

  Dalya glanced at her mother and saw the same thing reflected in her eyes that she felt in her heart: fear of the sly, creeping fingers of death. She knew then what her mother had been too kind to say: Inge was too small to be kept alive by imaginary shoes.

  The bullhorn blared, announcing roll call, but Dalya and her mother didn’t move. They locked arms around Inge and waited. In those precious few minutes, her mother cradled Inge, singing to her and brushing her hair back from her forehead, and Dalya held Inge’s wispy, thin hand in her own.

  All too soon, boots thudded across the hay-strewn floor, and a guard was shining a torchlight into their faces.

  “Get up!” she ordered.

  Dalya tightened her grip on Inge’s hand.

  “I said…up!” The guard wrenched Dalya out of the bunk to reveal Inge, huddled against her mother.

  A single glance at Inge’s face and the guard barked, “This one goes to the infirmary.”

  As the guard reached for Inge, panic rose in her mother’s eyes.

  “No,” her mother whispered. “Leave her here to die with me. Please.”

  The guard’s frown deepened into abhorrence. She wrestled Dalya’s mother away and pulled Inge out of the bunk, only to have her collapse into a heap on the floor. Dalya’s heart splintered, and she clenched her fists until her nails bit into her palms. It was the only way she could keep from using her nails on the guard’s face. Inge whimpered, and her mother tore at her breast, her eyes wild with grief.

  An inferno blazed under Dalya’s skin, fueling her with daring.

  While the guard bent to lift Inge, Dalya jabbed her finger down her throat until her stomach splattered its meager contents on the floor. She fell to her knees, retching again.

  “What, you too?” The disgusted guard yanked her to her feet while Inge flopped unnaturally in her arms. “Come on, then.” She chuckled over the moans of Dalya’s mother. “Death is waiting.”

  —

  Death only came for one of them.

  Dalya guessed that the doctors and nurses in the infirmary knew that, aside from hunger, there was nothing wrong with her. Whether they took pity on the two of them or simply found the morbid drama entertaining, they let Dalya stay. She shared a cot with Inge in a stark gray room surrounded by other sick inmates. She supposed she should’ve been frightened by the stench of disease and the rasping of the dying, but she wasn’t. Instead, she resolved to shield Inge from it, to find a way to pull her back from the precipice.

  The first day, she sang to her, prayer songs in Hebrew. A doctor scolded her once, but when he realized the other patients had stopped their moaning and wailing to listen, he didn’t complain again. Maybe he thought that even Jewish songs were easier on the ears than the pleas of those caught in death struggles. So she sang until her voice grew hoarse, until Frau Scheller came in with a tray of food.

 
Dalya opened her mouth to greet her, but Chava Scheller put a finger to her lips.

  “They don’t like it when we’re friendly with each other,” she whispered. “Best to stay quiet, and I’ll talk when I can.” She set the tray down, and then, bending to place a rag on Inge’s forehead, she slid a piece of bread into Dalya’s hand. “Your mother’s giving me her rations for you. They won’t allow her to visit.” She lifted a bowl of watery potato soup off the tray. “Come, Inge. Try to eat. Even a few spoonfuls…that’s something.”

  Inge shook her head feebly.

  “Give it to me. I’ll feed her.” Dalya propped Inge up against her and dribbled some soup between her lips.

  “That’s it,” Frau Scheller said. “Slowly now.” She glanced over her shoulder at a hovering nurse.

  “What a waste,” the nurse mumbled over her clipboard, shaking her head. “Like pouring soup into the grave.”

  Dalya held Inge tighter, offering the soup up to the nurse. “Here. You eat it, then.”

  The nurse’s eyes blazed, and as she turned away in distaste, Dalya muttered, “Coward.”

  “Careful,” Frau Scheller whispered, but there was a glint of pride in her eyes as she straightened. “I can’t stay, but I know you’ll watch over her.” She squeezed Dalya’s hand. “Aaron told me once that you are like a porcupine who doesn’t know where to aim her quills.” She smiled ruefully. “He suffered their sting a time or two, even though I’m sure you never noticed.”

  Heat bloomed across Dalya’s cheeks, and she felt a rush of resentment toward Aaron, that he’d spoken of her so bluntly, with such an unflattering description. She’d been brusque with him before, when his watchful hovering had grown too annoying. But it shamed her that he thought she was so lacking in softness.

  “Don’t worry,” Frau Scheller said. “Aaron has always been overeager with affection, but he’s durable. And perhaps, now that we’re in this horrid place, you can find some other target worthier of pricking?”