The Extra Read Online Free Page A

worms. “All right, then”— the words oozed out slowly —“let me try again. Maybe I’ll put more letters on you just to practice my penmanship.”
    “Aufseherin Liebgott,” the matron who was standing behind her said, “there are still thirty more prisoners to be done.”
    The
Aufseherin
shrugged and waved Lilo on.
    Lilo stared down at the
O.
Her rage surged.
    As she rose from the chair and another girl was led in, Lilo looked at the matron who had gasped, but the woman avoided her eyes. She was pretty, very pretty. Slender and blond, neither young nor old, but there seemed to be a weariness about her that defied the obvious markers of age. No wrinkles, no gray hair. She shook her head slightly when Lilo passed by.
    “Be careful,” she whispered.
“Es gibt keinen Gott hier.”
But Lilo did not need to be told that there was no God in Buchenwald.
    On her way back to the barracks, Lilo saw guards and some other prisoners moving cots into a building. A man in shiny boots with a ferocious dog at his side was shouting orders through a bullhorn.
    “Come on, move! We’ve got to get forty beds in there. Stack them up. It’s not a luxury hotel. We’ll dig latrines tomorrow.”
    A woman next to her whispered, “We’re the first women prisoners here, they say.”
    “Where are the men kept?” Lilo asked.
    “Not sure,” the woman replied. “But here. They are here.”
Then Papa is here someplace,
Lilo thought.
    “Did you see your father?” Bluma asked as soon as Lilo came back to the barracks. “No, Mama. They closed the curtain between the men’s part and the women’s.”
    “It was open when they did me.” Bluma sighed, her shoulders slumped down.
    “Well, he’s here, Mama. Someplace in this camp. Maybe we can find him somehow.”
    “Let me see the mark on your arm.”
    “Why? It’s ugly.”
    “I want to compare the letters. Maybe there’s a letter on his arm — a code. Perhaps they give families matching letters so they know who belongs together.”
    “Mama, there are far more people in this camp than there are letters in the alphabet. All I know is that the numbers on our shirts match up with our names on the matron’s clipboard. But the letters on our arms make no sense to me.”
    But Bluma was just staring at the
O.
She sighed. “There seems to be no rhyme nor reason.”
    Lilo blinked. It seemed the most absurd remark ever. “Rhyme nor reason! Mama, are you crazy? They are herding us around like cattle. Branding us with letters. You think there is a logic buried in this somewhere? You think it’s our fault and if we had done something different, we could have saved ourselves?”
    Bluma’s eyes began to well with tears. Her mouth trembled as she looked at her daughter in dismay. Suddenly Lilo wanted to take back every word she had uttered, even if what she had said was true. She had never in her life spoken to her mother that way.
    “Oh, Mama, I am sorry.” She grabbed her mother and hugged her. Clung to her.
    Her mother buried her head on Lilo’s shoulder, and said in a low, guttural voice, “All that matters, Lilo, is that we keep track of him. We have to find out his letter or maybe the number on his uniform somehow. We are just letters now, Lilo. Letters that seem to have nothing to do with our names. No names here,” she said softly, then added, “The ink erases us, but we can’t erase the ink. How . . . how peculiar.”
    “I know, Mama. I know.”
    “Think of something. Think of anything. We must send him a message somehow. Tell him we are all right for now. And find out”— Bluma’s voice faltered —“if he is, too.”
    Lilo began to bite her thumbnail. The pretty matron who had warned her to be careful — what was it she had said?
Es gibt keinen Gott hier.
Could she go to her? Could she be trusted? But what choice did she have?
    But the good matron seemed to have disappeared for the rest of the day. It wasn’t until that evening that Lilo caught sight of her as she