The Book of Aron by Jim Shepard

sly and would push through somehow, while my father and brother would stand and stand in the lines and get nothing,” she said. “My mother thinks that what keeps me going is a well of spitefulness.” She thumped her chest. “I think she’s right. I can feel it right here.”
T HE TYPHUS WAS EVERYWHERE WORSE AND ZOFIA’S building was filled with it. She carried around a tin of oil and paraffin to rub on herself to keep the lice away, and wouldn’t let me sit anywhere nearby. She wouldn’t let Lutek, either, but when she told him that he said, “Who wants to?” We watched the street trading on Gęsia. In front of us a woman was selling children’s underwear and the lining from a coat. When she saw us looking, she held up what she had as though it was a pot of gold and told us she must’ve gone out of her mind because she was giving these items away for almost nothing. A beggar beside her sat on his hands and held his cup with his bare feet. We were waiting there because someone was bringing us orders to fill and he was late.
“Maybe he’s got the typhus too,” Zofia said, and Lutek said that the typhus was now the other subject he was sick of. Were we supposed to talk about nothing but food all day like him, Zofia wanted to know, and he said that he couldn’t decide who was more boring. All the rich talked about was when they were going to get the inoculation and all the poor talked about was when they were going to get the disease.
My mother asked if my friends were clean and I told her I had more lice than anyone. So she dragged me back to the sink and doused my head and neck and chest again with kerosene. My brothers, about to leave for work, held me down and cheered her on.
“You sound good,” she said, once I got free and she listened to my breathing. She told me to stay away from the quarantined streets.
Zofia said that their house sanitary warden told her father that Krochmalna Street was the main incubator in the ghetto and that the Germans had said they’d burn it down if they could.
“I’m glad no one we know lives on Krochmalna Street,” I told her.
Adina said it was fenced off now, anyway, and they were taking everyone in big trucks to the baths on Spokojna. You could see she felt sorry for Zofia,who whenever she found a louse acted like it was the end of the world.
“Do the baths work?” Zofia asked.
Adina said that she’d asked someone that but instead of answering he’d told her children and fish shouldn’t have voices.
“The baths are where you catch the lice,” Lutek said. “Or the delousing queues. And the sulfur they use doesn’t kill anything anyway.”
“Shaved like a goy,” the beggar next to the woman sneered at him. “Where are your peyes? Your family doesn’t wear any? Maybe they’re not the fashion anymore?”
“And what’re you, the Rabbi of Warsaw? Shut your mouth,” Lutek told him.
The man we were waiting for never showed up and it came time for the new business we called Catching the Trolley. We’d worked a deal with the blue policeman who escorted the number 10. Zofia had been the one to approach him. It was forbidden for Aryan trolleys to stop in the ghetto but the 10 had to slow down to make the turn onto Zamenhofa, where Adina kept watch and left her hat on if all was clear, and then Lutek and I ran out for the sacks thrown off.
We got caught one day by the green police and they chased Lutek instead of me and I hid in a shopthat sold matches and cigarettes and small bottles of homemade medicine until the owner thought I was waiting to steal something and threw me out. A yellow policeman who’d been standing next to his bicycle with a young woman walked over to me. He was wearing his own jacket and trousers with the yellow uniform cap and armband. He was shorter than I was and had huge ears. He took my sleeve and asked what I had in the sack and I told him I had to leave. He smiled and held up a finger, showing off for the woman. She wasn’t very tall