8 July, 04:00 — Five days later, an ear-splitting explosion blasts me out of my sleep. My eyes fly open to the sound of machine-gun fire, and I instinctively pull a shaking Ita into my arms.
Boom, boom, BOOM, goes another rally of explosions.
We hug and kiss like it might be for the last time, and I spring to the window. “I don’t see anyone. They must not be as close as it sounds.”
Ita pulls on a shirt and pants and sticks her feet into her best walking boots. “Rivka! Ira! Get dressed!” she yells.
My brain is going at full speed as I jump into my clothes and follow Ita into the hallway where she opens the doors to the children’s rooms. “We have to go. Now.”
Ratta-tat-tat-tat. Ka-BOOM.
Rivka screams, and Ira’s eyes look like saucers.
Ita runs to the kitchen, opens the pantry, extracts four pre-packed rucksacks, and lays them on the kitchen table.
I open the door. We go down the steps, make sure the coast is clear, and sprint across the street to the warehouse on the property of the store, where Herschel and his family are now living. Before I can knock on the door, Herschel opens it.
“We’ll be right there!” he says.
Holding up my thumbs and nodding my head, I run back into the house to my parents’ room. I pound on the door. “Mama! Papa! We’ve gotta go!”
Mama pokes her head out of her bedroom with papa shaking behind her. “We can’t go.”
“What?! You must! Come on!” I say.
Papa pushes mama aside. “We’re too old. We’ll slow you down. You’ll die too.”
Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow.
“Go! Run while you can,” papa says.
I’m overwhelmed with emotion, and my eyes flood with tears as mama blows me kiss and then closes the door.
“Mama!” I cry.
Ka-boom! This one is much closer.
I run to the kitchen, where I find Ita, Rivka, and Ira wolfing down bread rolls and juice. Ita sticks a roll in my mouth and hands me a glass of apple cider.
We shoulder our backpacks as I scarf down the roll in two bites and drain the glass.
Two backpacks remain.
“Where are grandma and grandpa?” Rivka asks.
I gave her a blank look and her jaw drops in horror.
Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.
“Move!” I scream, and we leave the two backpacks behind.
We dart into the street like animals fleeing a forest fire.
A warehouse near the railroad tracks only a few blocks away has been reduced to rubble. The synagogue and several apartment buildings are on fire. Two tanks and a squad of soldiers proceed in our direction.
A tank fires on a brick warehouse across the street. BOOM! A flying rock hits Ita in the face, knocking her to the ground.
“Ita!” I scream, kneeling over her. Red blood pours out of a gash above her left eye. I wrestle a handkerchief out of my back pocket and use it to blot Ita’s wound. “Take this and apply pressure,” I say.
Boom. Boom. Boom!
She clambers to her feet.
“Come on!” I yell, and as a family we run, carrying only the sacks on our backs.
“What about Hershel and Sarah?” Ita asks.
“They’ll catch up. They know where to meet us,” I say.
Tata, tat, tat, tat. Bam. Bam. Bam. Boom!
We zigzag through a neighborhood east among the denizens of Kalarash who are in carts, on horseback and on foot. We bump and dodge our way out of the village, toward the horse path to Voinova.
At the northeastern border of Kalarash, we stop for a quick breather as we ponder the path that wends up a hill. We’re not the only ones who thought of this route. I watch others heading up the hill.
The sound of gunfire and explosions is almost continuous.
We press on. Ita, Rivka, Ira, and I huff and puff up the hill with every ounce of our strength and determination. The gash above Ita’s eye oozes blood.
I count our rhythm, “One, two, three, four. Stay strong,” I say. “One, two, three, four. We must keep moving,” I say.
We are all relieved when we reach the summit. We pause to catch our breath and let our heartrates slow down.
We look back. Immediately seared into all our memories is the view of Kalarash, our home-shtetl, engulfed in flames.
06:30 — We continue down the hill into the next valley, and I clasp my fingers on the back of my head when at last I catch sight of the Kirilenko’s Farm. It’s considerably farther than I remember.
We stop as we enter the property. Other groups who took our departure route pass through without slowing down, while everyone remains quiet. Soon, we appear to be the only ones around, at least for the time being. I take a deep breath and scan the property as dim morning light flattens my view, but nothing moves.
Waving to the others to stay behind, I tip-toe up to the main house, sidestep a fresh pile of horse manure, and observe recent cart tracks, horse and human footprints in the dirt road that lead away to the east. I peek into a window.
“Hello?”
No answer.
I climb the front steps and knock on the door.
No answer.
I arch my eyebrows, look back at my family and raise my hands. “No Kirilenkos.”
Rivka shrugs.
We walk to the barn. Looking all around it, I peer through a crack in the door. It appears to be empty, so we go inside.
“No Herschel or Sarah,” Ita says.
“They’ll be here,” I say.
Ita forces a smile but says nothing.
I kiss her, then pull away, focus on her face, and grimace. “Ooh, we need to give your, uh, little boo-boo some attention.”
“Yikes, let me see,” Rivka says, taking her mama by the hand.
I lead Ita across the barn, and we sit down on a bench.
Rivka retrieves a first-aid kit from her rucksack, wets a clean cloth and cleans the blood from around the wound above Ita’s left eye. Rivka wrinkles her nose and bares her teeth.
“It probably needs a couple of stitches,” I say.
“Ah,” Ita says.
“It’s still bleeding,” I say.
“A nick above my eye isn’t going to stop me,” Ita says.
“No, I’m not kidding; you’ve lost a lot of blood,” I say. “You brought a sewing kit, right?”
“For darning socks,” Ita says.
“Give it to me!” I say.
Rivka digs a needle and some thread out of Ita’s rucksack.
“Thread it,” I say.
Ita looks on in horror as Rivka obeys, then hands me the needle. Ita grits her teeth and sits in superhuman silence as I bend the needle and then sew up the gash above her eye—three excruciating stitches.
Rivka applies a bandage.
When the spectacle concludes, Ira reclines on a pile of hay and we all join him in silence, breathing heavily. War noises rumble from the other side of the hill.
Rivka begins to cry. “Do you think we’ll ever see grandma and grandpa again?”
Ita hugs her. “I don’t know, honey.” She kisses her on the head. “I don’t know.”
We. All. Cry.
For an excruciating twenty minutes, I resist the urge to continue.
Ita passes around a canteen of water. I take a few sips and make sure everyone gets some.
“Can I have some sausage?” Ira asks.
“You just ate less than two hours ago,” Ita says. “We must save what food we have for later.”
06:50 — At last, we hear footsteps outside the barn. I run, peek out and wave my arm out the door. I smile back at Ita and nod my head. “It’s Herschel and Sarah!”
There’s a flurry of hushed greetings seasoned with relief as everyone greets them.
Hershel gets a panicked look on his face. “Where are mama and papa? I thought they came with you.”
I give him a numb stare and shake my head. “They wouldn’t come.”
“Wouldn’t come?!” Sarah shrieks.
“They insisted they’d slow us down,” Ita says. “Then I got hit in the face with a piece of flying concrete.”
“Oh my God,” Sarah says, looking at Ita’s bandaged forehead. “Are you okay?”
Rivka and Ita reiterate that segment of the morning’s drama.
Herschel and I hug each other and, again, cry in silence as Ita, Sarah, and Rivka group hug.
“Drink some water,” Ita says, handing Herschel and Sarah the canteen.
Herschel and Sarah savor a few sips of water, then we sit for some time and let them gather themselves.
We all jump at a fresh round of explosions to the west.
“We need to keep moving,” I say.