Unravelled Read Online Free

lemon colored kitchen wall as if to steady myself from the blow of the words. Up until now, this had been the worse news I'd ever heard. Even worse than when my hamster ran away when Hajna and I took him outside to play in the backyard.
    "Maybe you can give it when the war is over," my father nodded. "We'll put it upstairs in the safe and you can show everyone then."
    I sighed as my mother ushered me to the dining room table by the shoulders. I let my bottom fall on the mauve chair as I cradled my head in my hands. Our maid, a stocky older woman from Poland with graying hairs around her temples named Agata, served us our morning breakfast of toast, jam, cereal and my parents their coffee. Her hands shook as she put the plates in front of each member of the family, her face wrinkled with uncertainty. At the time, in my own childish selfishness, I couldn't see Agata's worry, but looking back it was inherently obvious. My mother even gave her an extra pat on the arm when she put her breakfast in front of her, as if to try to assure her that things would turn out all right.
    After about fifteen minutes of chewing without conversation, each of us spending the passing moments with our own thoughts, Papa spoke up. He wiped his graying-brown moustache with a napkin and cleared his throat, the way I had seen him do when he was presented an award at the university for one of his studies. Just as he did then, he ran his finger over his moustache to get out any last minute debris, puffed up his chest to take a deep breath and then let out an exhale. Hajna raised one eyebrow, suspicious of his next move.
    "Girls, how do you feel about moving?"
    Moving? First, I couldn't give my report at school and now we were moving?
    "This is shaping up to be the most horrible day ever," I sighed, stabbing my spoon into my half-eaten bowl of cereal. It made a terrible squeak as it scraped the bottom of my bowl, the one mother had always told us to be very careful with as the bowls had been given to my great-grandmother on her wedding day. 
    "Aliz, behave," Mama chastised. "Don't ruin the bowl."
    I scrunched my face as hard as I could to make sure she new how displeased I was with the idea. Hajna matched my expression and looked definitely at my father, her pink lips all the way up to her nose.
    "Hajna, Aliz, stop." Lujza shook her head. "Your faces will freeze like that."
    "Our teacher said they won't," Hajna answered, taking a momentary respite from her expression and then returning to it as soon as the words came out of her mouth. I couldn't believe Lujza was fine with moving, either. I would have expected her to pout and scream at Papa and Mama, to protest with as much force as the two of us were.
    "Well, unfortunately we don't have a choice," Papa nodded. It was then I noticed that several bundles had already been prepared behind him, containing a few mattress pads, sheets and several of their favorite pictures. Next to the bundle stood the gold-framed painting of my grandfather and father dressed in their uniforms from WWI. My father was so young in that painting, his brown eyes so stoic and focused, his eyes unwrinkled. He even had a full head of hair in that painting, something he hadn't possessed as long as I had known him.
    "Did you get a new job?" Hajna asked. "Are we going to move to Cluj or Debrecen with the family? I haaaaate Cluj."
    "No," my father shook his head. "We're staying right here in Szeged."
    As soon as he finished his sentence a weight lifted off of my heart. I could still see my friends, still meet Zsolt and Eszter by the Tisza for picnics this summer. I could still go over to Eszter's house and have the delicious fish soup her mom cooked after her father went fishing in the setting summer sun.
    "The Germans are forcing all of the Jews to move into a special part of town, near the synagogue."
    "Are Emilia and Agata coming with us?"
    "I'm afraid not," he shook his head. "They'll stay behind and take care of Kiraly."
    "WHAT?!"