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Closer

That Christmas was an odd one, to say the least. There wasn't hardly any food by that point to put two meals on the table a day, much less Christmas dinner.
"I don't know if Mama and Papa will even want to celebrate," I told Jacob. "It's just too soon." Katrina smiled and clapped her hands around her uncle's finger. She gave out one of those shrill baby noises before trying to put Jacob's finger in her mouth. He snatched it back and wiped it on his shirt.
     "She's probably hungry."
     "When's Leni getting back?"
     "Don't know. She's out with mother at the market." I nodded.
     "I feel like I haven't seen her in forever," I said, giving Katrina a peck on her head, which was now swathed in her father's dark brown hair.
"I've got it! We haven't seen each other in a long while, so we pool what we can find and have a Christmas dinner between our two families!"
I doubted we could pull it off, and told him so. Jacob rolled his eyes.
"What do you think, Katrina? It's your first Christmas, you ought to have a vote." Before Katrina could "voice" her opinion, the dishes in the cabinets began to rattle.
boom
Boom
BOOM
We dove under the table as the light fixture came crashing down, along with a cabinet full of Leni and Peter's wedding dishes. Sparks showered down like a hot summer rain.
     "Where's the basement?!" I screamed over the noise of windows cracking and crumbling buildings.
     "They haven't got one!" Jacob screamed back.
     "Mama!" Katrina screamed, "MaMA!"
     "Well, what are we going to do?!" Jacob glanced up at the table above us, which was buckling under the weight under the old metal ceiling light. We made eye contact, each knowing that there was no other way but-
     "Out!" Jacob screamed, grabbing my hand and pulling me out from under the table. We sprinted for the door and out onto the street, the pavement buckling beneath our feet. I kept my head extended over Katrina's, who continued to scream in my arms. Jacob pulled us even faster as we felt another bomb hit. The force of it detonating crumbled the street behind us, and again we pushed ourselves faster.
     Faster.
     Faster.
     It never seemed fast enough.
     We were choking on dust, little Katrina hacking and coughing and trying to breathe.
     "Almost there!" Jacob cried, coughing and gasping. We fell into the last of a crowd of people chaotically shouting for relatives as they stampeded down the steps of the bomb shelter.  The doors slammed behind us just as we stumbled down the steps and into the damp darkness below.   
     Jacob practically dragged us to a spare corner, where we collapsed, exhausted. My heart pounded in my ears, my hands shaking as I attempted to soothe Katrina. After a while she only whimpered, biting one dusty hand as her eyes darted nervously around the crowded space.
     Jacob leaned his head against the wall, pulled out a handkerchief and began to wipe off Katrina. Soon enough, she was curled on my chest, sleeping fitfully.
     I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding, my chest heaving as I struggled for a deep breath. Jacob put his arm around me, and pulled me against him.
    "That was close. That was way to close. If we had been even a second-"
    "Stop," I muttered. "I can't talk about this. Not now, at least." Jacob blinked, then nodded.   I felt a growing tightness I got when I thought about Otto, or Jan, or the war. It clogged my throat and squeezed at my heart, crushing my lungs and making it difficult to breathe.
     "Sh...don't be scared," Jacob whispered. He wrapped both arms around me, letting my head rest against his right arm so my back was against his chest. "Don't worry," he said as he rested his chin on the top of my head. "Go to sleep, I've got you." I nodded inaudibly, closing my eyes against the outside world. "It's alright, I'll protect you." Before I fell asleep, I could have sworn I heard him say 'I love you', but wasn't sure if it was a dream.
When I woke up, Katrina was cuddled in my lap, Jacob's arm still nestled around my shoulders. I shuddered, my God was it cold. Frost laced the corners and cracks on the walls. Everything was silent. Many people were awake, stony faced and pale. Some twisted rosaries while babies and toddlers cried for food. There was none in the shelter, and certainly there wasn't any at home.
      Katrina whimpered and thrust her tiny hands to her eyes, suddenly awake. I cooed down to her and rocked her back and forth for several minutes until she settled. She reminded me of Jan, when he was a baby. Swaths of dark hair with fair skin, and luminous brown eyes with flecks of gold. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime I thought of him: did he miss us? Did he miss me? I wondered where he was on mornings as frosty cold as this. If he was eating properly, how tall he was.
      The words thrown at me by the undertaker, Herr Steinmann, on the day of Otto's burial still resonated in my ears, "you wouldn't believe..."
      Otto. Jan. Me. The three of us, once so close, scattered to the winds. Jan some where he did not know, with people he did not know. Otto in the cold, dark, frozen earth. And me. What was I doing, really? Trying to pick up the pieces from my broken world and fit them together again, though I knew it would never be the same. My father was a changed man; his once cheery and optimistic disposition had been made dark and sorrowful by the past events. God love him, he kept a smile for Mama and I as much as he could, but it was transparent. Mama was destroyed beyond recognition, I couldn't remember the last time she smiled. Otto was dead, and Jan-
      "There you are," Clara appeared above us. She was looking more and more like Jacob's mother everyday. With her apron on and her hands on her hips, they could have been sisters at one time. "Mama, Leni, Karl and I are back that way," she directed with a quirk of her head. "I'm taking Katrina back, Leni's worried about her." I passed the groggy infant to her aunt. "Jacob, you should come too."
Jacob shook his head. "I need to stay here with Alina. Until her family comes back." Clara twirled the tie of her dew rag, thinking.
"Alright. But come straight back when they find one another."
I waited for her to leave before I spoke. "I haven't seen Karl in a while."
"He uh....hangs with the wrong crowd. Probably best that you haven't." Both soldiers and Polizei tramp down the stairs, beginning to move people out. They're gentle, quiet, as if moving sleeping children rather than a few hundred frightened adults.
"It's safe now," a soldier says to me, offering a hand. His gentle disposition clashes with the swastika on his upper arm. He stays beside me until we shuffle outside. "Where are your parents?"
I shrug, "I don't know."
Jacob places a protective hand on my shoulder, "I'll get her home."
The soldier shakes his head. "There's no need-"
"I said I'd do it." Jacob twists and stomps the other direction, myself in tow.
"You didn't need to be so rude, he was only trying to help!"
"I don't care," Jacob murmurs through gritted teeth. "You can't trust them, Alina. You know that."
      "Shut up!" I hissed, "what if someone heard you? Don't you remember what happened to Herr Steinmann?"
      "Exactly the reason why you can't trust them!" By now we were at my front door. "I'm only saying this because I care about you." With that he stomped down the steps. I shook my head, knowing deep down that he was right. They took Jan, I thought as I shoved open the door, and Otto.
      Crunch.
       I groaned, looking down at the broken mirror I had just stepped on. I surveyed the mess: glasses and mugs had tumbled out of the cabinets, and lay shattered as well as some of the wedding dishes. A whole shelf had come down in the front hall, splinters of wood protruding from the pile of coats it had dropped as well as the wall. Katze hissed a greeting from the top of the stairs before realizing who it was. Carefully, I maneuvered myself around the places where the wood floor had buckled, scooped up the cat, and took her into my room where she wouldn't step on the glass.
      It wasn't much better. Two window panes were shattered, the mirror had fallen, all of my pictures were face down on the ground. I poked my head into Mama and Papa's room, with the same results. I faced the third door; I didn't want to, but I twisted the knob and entered. Otto and Jan's beds were stripped of their linens, the pillows resting at the foot of the bed.  It seemed colder than the rest of the house. The windows were intact, the mirror had a long crack but did not fall as it was bolted to the wall. The chest of drawers still stood in the corner. I set down Katze on Jan's bed, the studied the drawers. I pulled open one on the right: three little boy's shirts glared up at me with bright yellow stars. Shut. I opened one on the left: three older boy's undershirts lay sleepily in a drawer. I didn't dare touch them: this was how he had left them, this was how he had wanted it. Shut.
      Katze pawed at something under Jan's pillow. Taking a deep breath, I knocked the pillow off the bed and squeezed my eyes shut, expecting some large, hairy Spine to be staring up at me.
      When I opened my eyes at first, all I could do was stare: there on the bed was Jan's lamb that he had kept so close to him through the night. I remembered one summer evening after the birthday party at Jacob's, Jan's hair plastered to his forehead with the summer heat, lamb clutched in his arms as he slept. How long had it been? Two years? It seemed like a lifetime. I picked it up, carefully, turning it over and over in my hands.
      "Alina?" Mama! "Alina, where are you?" I shoved the lamb into my pocket and took off to the top of the stairs.
      "Mama! Mama, I'm up here!" I practically threw myself into her arms, Papa stood behind her.
      "Where were you? We were so worried," Papa said, looking me over to make sure I wasn't hurt.
       Later, after the glass had been swept up, I laid Jan's lamb on my bed. His black button eyes stared blankly into mine, as if numbly waiting for the day Jan would come home.
      I barely allowed the whisper to escape my lips: "I don't think they're coming back." I realized I had said they.
      They.
      Mama, Papa, Otto, Jan, Jacob, myself.
      We were not coming back.