The Extra Read Online Free

she might never be a mother, she felt this inexorable urge to mother her own mother, to protect Bluma.
    They were drawing closer to the table. The starched nurses’ caps seemed to take on a life of their own as the women bobbed their heads up and down, checking items off a list and then nodding for the next person to step up. Like strange white wingless birds, they nested in the darkness atop oddly disembodied heads, silently clucking. Should she shrink down between her parents or stand up tall.
No, stand up tall!
This was not a time to look invisible. They had to appear as a unit, inseparable, forged like the strongest metals, like iron.
    It happened very quickly. One of the wingless birds dipped toward them.
“Nächste. Komm mal her, bis zum Schreibtisch”
— come up to the desk. Then another nod toward a bus as their names were checked off and the three of them were told to board bus number thirty. They were together! She felt her father ease his grip. Tears were streaming from all of their eyes. Just as they were boarding, she turned to look at the bus next to theirs, number twenty-nine. She gasped. Zorinda and Lola were both in a long line of women and girls. A nurse was hurrying them along. Zorinda caught sight of her. She shrugged, as if to say, “What a world we live in,” then turned and stepped onto the bus. But all Lilo could think of was the Mark Twain book still sitting by her book bag.
Some Mississippi!
Then she grabbed her mother’s hand and felt her father’s hand drop onto her shoulder.
    We’re together! We’re together. Miteinander!
The word clanged in her head. That was all that mattered.
Miteinander.
    As the bus rounded the corner, they came directly under the billboard of Leni Riefenstahl.
    “Would you look at that!” her mother said softly. Lilo did not want to look up, but she could not resist. It was as if the eyes were reeling her in, following her. The beautiful face rose in the night. The piercing dark eyes, the serene brow, the elegantly molded cheekbones. A luminous presence in the night — an angel? A goddess? But it was only Hitler’s favorite movie star.
    She heard the chimes of the clock tower in the nearby square.
    “It’s off,” her father said, glancing at his watch, which he had somehow managed to keep. “Too fast.”
    Lilo suddenly thought of the gingerbread man. She pictured him running through the streets.
    The baker made a boy one day,
    Who leaped from the oven, ready to play.
    He and his wife were ready to eat
    The gingerbread man who had run down the street.
    Except it was a gingerbread girl. Two gingerbread girls, Zorinda and Lola. “Run, run as fast as you can!” she whispered. The window fogged with her breath.



“S o what’s this one?” The female overseer, the
Aufseherin,
scowled at the list on the clipboard. “Is she an
O
or a
G
? I’m not sure how to mark her.”
    Another woman bustled up and took the clipboard. “Just match her name to the number on her uniform,” she barked.
    “Ach! Here she is. That’s an
O.
I know someone makes the
G
’s sometimes look like
O
’s. Sloppy. I’ll talk to the intake secretary.”
    “All right, extend your left arm and don’t wiggle. It’s ink. I want it perfect.”
Ink for what? Perfect for what?
Lilo wondered as the woman inscribed an
O
on her forearm. She had just been marked, marked like an item on the discount counter at the department store in Vienna. She had become an article, a commodity — branded! But for what?
    “Now that is a nicely formed
O,
” she said, still holding Lilo’s arm. “I learned how to make my letters in school. Always got an A+ in penmanship.”
And look where it got you!
Lilo thought. “What do you think?” the woman looked up brightly at Lilo as if expecting a compliment.
    “I’ve seen better but not on human flesh,” she muttered.
    There was a gasp behind her. The
Aufseherin
’s face turned to stone. Then a slow smile crawled across it, making her lips look like fat