Such Good Girls by R. D. Rosen Read Free Book Online

her siblings, Edek, who had suddenly died in the Holy Land of typhus, or maybe from water poisoned by the Arabs—the family would never know. What was the God she didn’t believe in anymore—maybe even the same God she had been drilling Zofia to believe in—doing to her family?
    Or perhaps God had nothing to do with it. When Laura learned later from friends that it was Julek himself who had escorted Manek to the Lvov station, as he had escorted Zofia and herself, she couldn’t rid herself of the thought that he had betrayed her brother to the Germans.
    All that Zofia would remember was moving from one damp, shabby room in someone’s home to another. Surely if her father hadn’t been taken away, there would be money and her poor mother would not have to be pleading with strangers for a bed. They had so few clothes that her mother seemed to be washing them in the sink every night. She would watch her mother, dark-haired and beautiful, coaxing a pair of stockings up her legs and applying lipstick in a chipped mirror before leaving to look for work.
    The drilling didn’t stop. Maybe it had to do with Zofia’s father’s disappearance from their lives, and her praying for his return, but Laura tested Zofia continuously on her catechism from a prayer book. Was it Zofia’s imagination, or had her mother actually woken her up in the middle of the night to make sure she knew it?
    “Zosia, what are the six principal truths of the faith?”
    “‘There is one God,’” Zofia would recite sleepily. “‘He is a righteous judge who rewards good and punishes evil.’ I want to sleep, Mama.”
    “Who are the three divine Persons?”
    “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Can I go to sleep, Mama?”
    “In a minute, Zosia. ‘The Son of God became man …’”
    “‘… died on the cross and rose for our salvation.’”
    “Good girl,” her mother said, kissing her hair. “I love you.”
    They moved into a better home—a room they rented from a Polish officer and his family.
    For Laura, the nightmare simply continued. The officer suspected she was not the Catholic she claimed to be, and tested and baited her mercilessly. When she went off to work at the bank, she feared that he would trick Zofia into a confession that they were Jewish. The officer could report his suspicions to the Nazis anytime he wanted. There were even times when, returning from work, she wondered if she would find Zofia alive. When she went off to work at the bank, her mother reminded her to stay in their room as much as possible and answer as few questions as possible. If the officer or his wife asks where your father is, she told Zofia, say that the Russian soldiers took him away. If they ask why we came to Kraków, say that I came to find a good job. If they ask where we lived in Lvov, tell them in the Christian district.
    What else could she do? There was no other world to live in right now but this one. She couldn’t bear to move yet again. She had to work, for without her measly income they would starve.
    A few weeks after they moved in, there was loud knocking on the apartment door one evening. Three German SS men burst into the apartment, barking in a mixture of German and Polish, and ordered all of them up against the wall of the living room. Zofia was terrified. She stared at the death head medallions on their SS caps and remained very still. Waving his luger at the officer and his wife, one of the SS men demanded to know where the Polish couple’s son was. Zofia could make out that the son had escaped from a Nazi prison and was hiding with his brother. The Polish officer stammered that he had no idea. Yelling something in German, his spittle flying, the Nazi brought the muzzle of his luger closer to the Polish officer’s face. Then he holstered his pistol and slapped the officer across both sides of his face, using the palm and the back of his gloved hand.
    The officer, his eyes watering from the blows, tried to hold back his