My Enemy's Cradle by Sara Young

seemed better. She had packed a basket with tomato sandwiches on rye bread, pears, and cheese. I put a book of poetry in the basket to read while I waited for Isaak.
    She sat beside me and began to braid my hair. "You look so much like your mother when she was your age. That's when she met your father, you know."
    My spine arched at the mention of my mother. Sometimes I could think of her, but sometimes not. I relaxed and asked my aunt to tell me the story, although I knew it well. My parents were both studying music in Vienna, both lonely from having left their homes in other countries. My father heard my mother playing a Mozart sonata in a practice room one day, and fell in love with the pianist inside.
    "He knew only her name, which was posted outside the door on the schedule," my aunt said. Remembering her sister seemed to bring her pleasure and only a little sadness; would we ever feel this way about Anneke? "He went every day at that hour, even if it meant missing his own classes. But he was too shy to stay and introduce himself. Finally, he slipped a note under the door one day and asked her to meet him later. She did, and I don't think they spent a day apart after that. And Cyrla..."
    There was a look on her face I didn't understand. She patted my cheek and smiled. "Cyrla. Your parents were married in July. You were born in December. I think your mother would have told you this today."
    I stared at her for the moment it took to understand. I hugged her for the generosity of her gift, then set out.
    My heart raced, but at my center I felt a calm. I had changed already.

SEVENTEEN
    I clutched my aunt's hat to my head as if the wind were trying to blow it away, and hurried to the shop. No one saw me. At least no one I noticed.
    The shop was empty, the air thick with the stale damp smell of boiled wool. It was the wrong place for Isaak and me to be together. I remembered the roof and ran up. Yes, here. But there was only gravel to lie on.
    I went back downstairs to find something. But except for the Germans' brown wool, the shelves were nearly empty; my uncle hadn't been able to buy new material for months. There were odds and ends of old orders, and some useless scraps in boxes on the floor.
    I almost missed it. Behind the piles of brown wool was half a bolt of heavy velvet, blue so dark it was nearly indigo. The yardage left over from an order of a year ago: The wife of a hotel owner in Scheveningen had ordered drapes for her dining room, but had been unable to pay for them after the Nazis confiscated the hotel for their headquarters.
    "Were they for the hotel dining room?" my uncle had asked when she came to explain.
    "No. They were for our home. But now there's no work. No money."
    "As long as the Germans won't use them, take them anyway," my uncle insisted. "What am I going to do with them, after all?"
    First I brought two bolts of the Germans' fabric to the rooftop. I walked around to find which corner caught the warmest sunspill, and there I arranged the thick wool to make a nest. Then I went back down for the velvet. I spread the blue plush over the blanket fabric, tucking it in so none of the wool showed, so nothing with a Nazi taint would touch our skin. For the same reason, I took off my legitimization card and hid it in my basket. Then I stood back to see what I had made and I smiled at the way the sun lit the velvet to the color of sapphires. Anneke had told me to listen to my senses. She would have approved.
    Anneke. A rush of tears besieged me—how much I wanted her! I wiped them away and walked to the edge of the roof and took a deep breath. The scent of windfall apples hung in the air. There was train smoke, as always, and faintly, the earthy smell of bricks baking in the sun. The noon sunlight sparkled on the canal and burnished the September landscape below—this world looked so peaceful. As if it weren't going to collapse on me in a week.
    Then I took the poetry book from the basket and sat with it to