Prologue

1886

I sit on the floor in front of Mama, playing with my doll and a top. Since my older siblings have gone away it is very quiet. As quiet as it has become inside, it is now loud outside. Waves of shouting and pop, pop, pop followed by times of silence. Mama cries often now. Papa, when he comes, slips in and out like a ghost, only at night, never staying long. Sweet Franciszka who used to take care of me is gone, as is Cook and the others.

Suddenly – though it is still day – Papa rushes into the salon. He is hurt – red, red blood is on his clothes. Mama pulls me up, hissing fiercely in my ear “Run! Hide! No matter what you hear, no matter what happens do not come out until we come to get you. Go!”

Mama has told me before where to hide – a small space behind a panel in the back of a wardrobe – in the corner of the attic. I am too frightened to go to the attic alone. The stairs are big and long and hard to climb. I always struggle trying to run up them when we pretend it is time to hide. Instead, clutching my doll I race past the stairs, past papa’s study, toward the ancient arched door at the end of the hall.

Every Sunday we parade through the door into the little stone chapel that rests on the side of the house. I always take a deep breath of the unique smells of the chapel and feel such peace in the colorful light from the picture glass windows. Now the door is barred. I am too small to reach it and too weak to lift the heavy bar even if I could reach it.

That’s ok, I know a secret. I slide to my knees in front of a grate in the wall next to the door and pull as hard as I can. I pray I am strong enough – my brother, Piotr, was the one to open it before. He thought it was just a little cubby and shoved me in once when he did not want me following him about. It is a tunnel of sorts, a few feet, then a turn toward the chapel and another grate.

The grate pulls out with ease and I crawl in then cannot turn to close it. I back out, turn around, and squirm backward into the tight space, pulling the grate back up after me. I wiggle furiously back around the bend until my feet hit the chapel grate. What now? Last time I waited here, sniffing the chapel smells and napping but never entering the chapel. Today I feel pushed to keep going. I kick and the grate sticks, but I kick again and it explodes into the chapel with a clatter. I freeze thinking the whole world must have heard that.

Sure that I will be found faster in the tunnel than out I wiggle through, prop the grate back in place, and scamper under the altar where I am hidden by the heavy velvet cover draped over it. Exhausted, I curl around my doll and sleep.

I wake sweaty and confused. It is unbearably hot and completely dark and I am about to cry out for Franciszka or Mama when I remember. I am hiding. I must be quiet. Why is it so hot? Laying on my side, I gingerly lift a small section of the velvet just the tiniest bit and peek out. Why is there fog in the chapel? Wait, it is smoke, coming through the grate where I crawled through earlier. Panicked I grab my doll and run to the outside doors of the chapel and push. Of course, they are barred from the outside. I start to cough and think that under the altar, under that velvet, I could not smell the smoke at all. Crying, I crawl back under and curl up and wait to burn.

Four years old. I think that is how old I was when my world went up in flames. Ten years later and still I dream of that day. I didn’t burn. The chapel was stone, even its benches, the altar, the slate roof. I didn’t burn, but my parents – if they weren’t already dead – did.

The priest came to save what he could from the chapel and found me. He told me I couldn’t be me anymore, he had to hide me until it was safe. He ripped all the ribbons and lace from my fine dress and rubbed it with black soot from the fire until he could get me another, plainer, poorer dress. We traveled for days until we reached the sisters and I have been an orphaned servant in this convent ever since.

Ten years of waiting and finally, the old priest is returning. He wrote that he has found my sister and I am going to America to live with her. Mirka is actually my half-sister, older by at least 12 years. I don’t remember her well, I don’t remember much clearly other than that day and this convent.

America? Why not? It has to be better than this slow creep through life smothered in cold convent prayers. My time to sail away to a new life has arrived.