A Drop of Rain by Heather Kirk

sending away. It is Christians like us, too. Everybody the Nazis want to get rid of. Priests, teachers. Anybody who can fight them.
    â€œI’ll hide you in the water closet,” says Mommy. “Maybe the soldiers won’t look there.”
    The Jews follow Mommy to the very farthest, far back part of the house. One moment, and those six grown men all squeeze somehow into the water closet.
    A water closet is a tiny room with just a toilet. No bathtub. Not even a sink to wash your hands. Really like a closet or a phone booth. It is small even to me alone, and I am just one little girl.
    â€œNot a sound. Not a movement,” says Mommy to the poor frightened men. “If the soldiers find you, they will shoot us too.”
    â€œWe know,” say the Jews. “God bless you.”
    Mommy shuts the door of the water closet. Then she leads us children back to the living room where we have been playing.
    She kisses Johnny and me and tells us to go on playing. (My sister Elizabeth is not home. She has gone with Grandpa to do something.)
    â€œSay nothing about this,” Mommy warns us. “Act as though nothing has happened.”
    â€œWe understand,” say Johnny and I.
    I go on playing with the big doll my aunt brought me from Krakow long ago, before the war. I cut her open to see what is inside, and then I sew her up, like Mommy sews up wounded people. Johnny opens up the old clock that doesn’t work any more, and then he puts it back together again. He is like Grandpa andDaddy, my brother. He knows how to fix machines.
    Soon there comes a bang, bang, bang on our door. Mommy opens the door, and Nazi soldiers barge into the house. Big blonde men in grey uniforms, with guns and dirty boots.
    Johnny and I do not move or speak.
    â€œWhere are the Jews?” demand the soldiers, rushing into the house. “Where have you hidden them?”
    â€œThere are no Jews here,” says Mommy. “I am making supper, and my children are playing quietly. We are alone here. See for yourself.”
    The enemy soldiers begin to search from room to room. They step on our rugs in their dirty boots. They yank open our doors and drawers. They throw down or knock over our things. Crash! Crash!
    Will they look in the water closet?
    Mommy stands icy-still under the picture of the Virgin Mary. Even though she isn’t moving her lips, I know she is praying
    I go on sewing my doll. My brother goes on fixing the clock. Johnny and I are very careful. We put things back the way we find them. We like everything to be just so.
    The Nazi soldiers are not careful. They overturn furniture and don’t put it back. They empty cupboards and leave our clothes lying in messy heaps. They leave dirt on Mommy’s nice clean floors.
    It seems like the soldiers are searching for hours.
    They search every room in our house. They search everywhere.
    Except the water closet.
    Then, finally, the soldiers are gone. And they haven’t found the Jews!
    The soldiers have left the front door open. Johnny gets up and closes it quietly. Mommy kneels in front of the Virgin Mary. Now she is praying out loud. I run to the door of the water closet.
    â€œThe soldiers are gone,” I whisper. “But don’t come out yet, because they might come back.”
    When Grandpa and Elizabeth return after dark, Grandpa tells my brother to fetch some of Daddy’s clean white shirts.
    Then Grandpa opens the door to the water closet. He tells the Jews to come out. He tells them to take off their shirts with the yellow stars.
    Grandpa burns the shirts of the Jewish men in our stove. Then, after the Jews put on Daddy’s shirts, Mommy and I give them some supper to take with them. Their supper is cheese and bread that we have tied up in clean rags.
    Then the Jews are gone.
    â€œThey’ve gone to somewhere safe in the forest,” Grandpa says.
    Clothes and food are pretty scarce during the war. But we aren’t the only people