Francine & Margot ✓

6

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Margot,

   What was I to do without you?

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I don't know how they missed me. They were storming the city for prisoners before they burned it all down.

Sometimes I wish I wouldn't have made it.

The soldiers searched. They opened the closet. Light flooded through the crack in the panel. I saw his brilliant blue eyes, void of emotion and obedient to an evil God. I thought about my family, about you, about everything one last time.

He shut the door. I was safe.

The gunshots. The screams. My parents yelled at the soldier, my father threatening to shoot. I heard my mother go silent halfway through a scream, and I knew the soldier had won.  My father went silent and there were three more gunshots. The door slammed and it was over. I couldn't bring myself to feel anything.

As soon as they left, I ran out of the closet and stood in my room. I was utterly lost. Once again I almost wished to see another soldier, waiting for me.

I ran down the stairs and snuck out of the house's back door. I waited, hesitating as I watched the people I'd grown up with get dragged down the street by soldiers. I remembered my mother's scream, the way it fell in midair, and threw up all over myself before I could stop it.

I snuck through the backyard and ran.

Our house wasn't far from the edge of the city. I wove between houses and followed a back road out into the empty fields to the north. Even though I'd hardly been listening at the time, I remembered somewhere my parents had brought me to once, "just in case." they'd showed me an escape plan should my father be found.

I knew where a safe house was.

As I ran, I told myself not to feel guilty. I'd stayed with my family. I'd tried to go down with the ship. But now my family was dead and I was the only survivor.

I ran as far and as long as I could. My feet were blistered and pulsing in my hot shoes. My legs buzzed, ready to collapse the moment I quit moving. My throat burned with vomit and exhaustion.

When I made it to the safe house, I knocked at the back door and collapsed onto my knees. A large woman with kind eyes stared at my body, and I wondered if I still smelled like vomit.

She took me in for a bath and gave me a change of clothes before she sent me downstairs to the cellar, where rows of mats filled the floor. Clusters of families spoke in scared whispers.

It wasn't until midnight, well after I'd reached the safe house a few miles out of town, that they'd bombed the city.

When I heard it begin, I pulled your ring off my finger and held it in my fist. I thought of my family and of you. My family was dead, and you could be too. I doubted you, sure that you and your family hadn't escaped on time.

The harder I clutched the ring, the more it dug into my skin. I bled all over the gold and it became embedded, leaving a circular wound.

One of the women in the safe house noticed I was bleeding and spoke in frantic Polish. The hostess of the safe house whipped her head around at me and her eyes widened.

The room went silent. I heard the faint sound of my blood dropping on the floor. When I opened my fist, the blood pooled up and I fainted.

I never played piano again.

Yours,
Francine

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