My Works

My Little Sunshine (Mein Kleiner Sonnenschein.)

I do not like the dark. I never have, it scares me. Anything can happen. You do not know where you are. Or who is there with you. ‘The monsters can easily get you’ Elisa would say. The bogeyman that hides under your bed, the goblin in your closet, the witch in your toy chest.

The wrap my arms around my body to protect myself. It is dark where I am, and loud. I cannot sleep. Everyone around me must be faking. It’s so loud

Every now and then, the carriage will ignite with the flickering moonlight as it seeps through the cracks on the side. So loud. The sound of the train scraping across the metal railroad.

In the half-light of the evening, I can just see Mutti, her face coming into view briefly from the light then disappears again. It’s a pretty face. She has nice cheeks, and eyes, her eyes ‘they are what give her away’ the fruit man once said. ‘so brown, so dark and mysterious, you cannot help but wonder what she is thinking’ he was a nice man. He always had the sweetest plums at his stand, and a funny crooked hat. And her lips, they were so pink. ‘Kissable’ Vatti always teased. His own lips were almost the same colour as his cheeks. A faint pink

Mutti reaches out and touches my cheek. “Mila, mein liebling” she whispers. I can just hear her, but it is still so loud. I shiver, it is cold, winter has come early and as we head further north light flecks of snow begin to filter in through the carriage. Mutti wraps her arms around my body. Now she is protecting me. Meine Mutti.  I shiver again, it is cold in this dark. I tell myself that I have been colder in my life.

It is snowing. I am a year younger. The snow has started to fall in Lorch, we had only just enough firewood for the week, I wore nearly all of my pieces of clothing at once.

I turn onto my back and look up at the ceiling, Mutti’s arms still around my waist, I count, how many times the moonlight touches the ceiling. One…two…three, four, five, six. Elisa taught me to count using the apples that Mutti had bought from the fruit man. One, a single apple, lonely. Two, the apple had a partner, a friend. Three, the pair had another friend. Four, that friend had a friend.

At the end of the carriage a baby is whimpering, that baby is cold too. I know how it feels. I breath out heavily and watch as my breath lingers in the stale air. Someone shifts behind me.

My stomach rumbles. I haven’t eaten today. They haven’t fed us. How long has it been since I have eaten? Mutti would make the best goulash on a cold night like tonight. With the richest tomato that grew in our garden. Mutti liked to work in the garden.

She would light the candles and Vatti would sit in his chair.

I haven’t seen Vatti in a while. Not since the blue-eyed men took him.

A young girl. In the corner of the carriage begins to hum, her voice is high and melodic and she starts her song. The baby that was stirring beings to calm down. Now I recognise it; Mutti sings it to me when I cannot sleep.

Du bist mein Sonnenschein,

\Mein einziger Sonnenschein,

Du machst mich glücklich, wenn Himmel grau sind,

Du wirst nie wissen, liebe,

Wie sehr ich dich liebe,

Bitte nehmen Sie nicht mein Sonnenschein weg!

It is a sweet song, a song of spring, like playing with Nadine in my garden. She was a good friend. I have not seen her in a while either. She stopped talking to me at school before I left. I never knew why. Mutti said nothing. Elisa said it was because we were Jewish and her kind did not like us.