If I Should Die Before I Wake by Han Nolan Page A

all survived, and if the Germans had not chased them out, they'd be here still. They have had to live in poverty all their lives. They have no money and no education. They could not take care of their homes. But just wait and see how we fix up ours. If the Nazis want to stick all the Jews into one little corner of the world, well ... we will show them what we can do with the garbage dump they have put us in."
    At last we arrived at our apartment. Had it been assigned to us? I wondered. By whom? The new Chairman? I had heard about a man here named Chaim Rumkowski. As we scrambled and trudged through the mud and the streets, we caught bits of conversation about this man—our new leader. He was called the Chairman of the Jews, but the Nazis were the ones who gave him the position. Would he work for us, or for them? Everyone wanted to know. Already there were rumors good and bad about this man, some people spitting as they said his name and others speaking of him as if he were a king—"So good to the little orphans," they would say. He frightened me. Anyone having to do with the Nazis did. He would take orders from the Nazis—how could that be good?
    Zayde was struggling to climb out of the cart, while Jakub was struggling to keep him in it and carry the cart upstairs.
    "Jakub, it is too much. I am not dead yet. Now let me walk."
    Jakub's eyes teared up. "Please, Zayde, let us do this. You are making it more difficult and already you are overtired."
    "So,
now
it is you decide to think of this family.
Now
you think of me. Let me out, I will walk."
    "No!" Jakub burst out as he dumped the bundle from his back onto the floor. "I am thinking still of me, Zayde. If you die, I will be—I will be the man of the family." He paused and then whispered, "Please, Zayde, I need you."
    Zayde humphed and turned his head away, falling against the wall of the cart. "Then find someone to help you," he finally said.
    At long last we hoisted Zayde over some friendly stranger's shoulder and hauled him and all the belongings we had brought with us up to our new home. I wanted to throw my exhausted body down on a bed or a chair, but the sight of our home—our room—left me standing on my wobbly legs in the doorway.
    "I am not going in," I said as my mother and grandmother dragged the load from the cart across the room. "Where are we all to sleep? There is nothing here! How will we live in this place? Even
you
cannot fix this, Mama. Look!"
    She looked. We all did.
    There was just the one room for all six of us. The walls were so smudged with dirt and soot it was hard to make out their true color. A table with the front legs shorter than the back stood in the center of the room with two green and two brown chairs pulled up to it. Looking beyond the dirt and litter that cluttered the rotting, sloping floor, I spotted two cots, both tipped over on their sides. The ceiling sloped down toward us but showed no evidence of imminent collapse.
    Mama rushed to the windows and flung them open while Bubbe helped Zayde over to one of the cots, which Jakub had righted. From my spot in the doorway I caught a glimpse of the view through the windows before Mama slammed them shut again. The back of our room overlooked one of the refuse heaps, which was overflowing and crawling with rats. I shuddered.
    "Mama, we cannot live here," I said, thinking that somehow she and Bubbe would figure out a way to get us all back home. "Really, we cannot."
    Mama was not listening. She opened the only door in the room besides the entrance and discovered a small, greasy kitchen.
    "
Nu,
we are here," she said as she turned and faced us all, her body sagging against the little cookstove. " Jakub, I want you to find us some water. Anya, sweep the litter into a corner, and Chana, run and see if you can find where the Hurwitzes have settled; they cannot be far."
    I was glad to get away, to get back outside and see life, such as it was, streaming before me. People were