Abela runs into the closet and goes into her room behind the secret panel, barely making a sound. She had learned to be quiet about everything she did at a young age when she learned that her Judaism was unacceptable in Germany. She returns a few minutes later with fresh clothes on and her hair down, which I much prefer to the two braids, it makes her look older. I start to brew a cup of hot tea and Abela sits at the piano, playing a particularly complicated piece i had begun to teach her. She really is excelling at the instrument and plays it with such grace.
I sit on the couch and sip the tea and listen to her play. I drift away into my thoughts again, her playing as a nice background. I think of how much Markus would’ve enjoyed her living with us, he was a musician himself too. It feels as if Abela mended the hole in my heart left by my absent husband. I think of the day I first met Abela, how she was so timid and scared to talk to me, and how she has grown in these few months. Hiding her is not easy at all, but she is patient and sweet and the most beautiful child I have ever come to know. All those months ago I never could have thought that I could come to care so much for a simple child.
That’s when I hear the sirens. They are distant but I could still hear them, this snaps me out of my thoughts and into the present. Abela has stopped playing and looks at me with sheer panic in her eyes.
“We have done this before my child, no need to worry,” I say
“But this feels different,” she replies, “I don’t know why, but this feels extra bad.”
“No need to worry, my dear. Just, hide.”
I watch as she climbs the bookshelf and moves the loose ceiling tile, clambering up as fast as her little legs could take her. As soon as her toes disappeared, I replaced the tile, choking on the dust.
“All’s good, Abela?” I called
“All’s good, Mama!”
I picture her up there, balancing  on the support beams. I instruct her to remove her shoes in case she needs to move around. I glance out the window, I must squint because it has fogged again, and see the soldiers knocking on the house across the street. I hastily clean up any sign of a second person. I close the piano and move Abela’s mug, dash into the closet to hastily restore the panel, and place the empty boxes in front. Damn whales are so fine. I see the soldiers coming up my walk.
“Mama, are they-” Abela is silenced by abrupt knocking.
“Hush Abela!” I say, “They’ll be gone soon.”
I rush to answer the door. I open it and the soldiers just barge in.
“Hello Kateryna,” says one with a smirk, his cold blue eyes sweep the room, “Still living alone are we?”
“Oh yes,” I reply, disgusted at his manners.
“Alright,” says the other, “this should be over quickly then.”
“I should hope so!” I say indignantly. “It is very rude to barge in on my quiet life unannounced!”
“Just carrying out orders Ma’am.”
“Hurry up with it then.”
The men continue to stroll through the house- tracking mud everywhere I might add- and inspecting everything. They walk to the back of the closet and look at the boxes.
“What’s an old woman like you doing with all these boxes”
“That,” I reply, “Is none of your concern.”
“You have no right to-”
“I apologize,” I say, “Alone life has been hard on me, I’m losing all my manners. Those boxes are full of odds and ends, I’m a bit of a hoarder.”
“Alright,” Blue Eyes says. He leans on the box stack. Which, to my horror, collapses. The soldier, completely shocked, falls to the ground.
“Full of things, you said?” he snarls.
  “Eventually full of things, I’m planning to move” He easily saw through my shaky tone and knew I was lying.
I gaze beyond him, trying to see if the panel was damaged in any way. To my dismay, it was. It has been knocked forward, just slightly, but just enough to show it is not just a wall. The second soldier picks up on this immediately and asks:
“What’s that on your wall, Miss?”
“Wood”
“I mean what’s it doing in two parts?”
Before I can answer he hits the panel, sending is completely off of its hinges and crashing onto the floor of Abela’s room.
“What’s this?’
“A room...” I mumbled trying to pry an excuse from the back of my old, tired mind.
“Silence!”
The soldiers push past me and barge into the room. They notice the little shoes and books.
“You, ‘live alone’?” says the blue eyed soldier.
“I use this as an area to think.”
“With little girls clothes?”
I stop. Why hadn’t I seen this coming? I should have cleaned her room, too. Stupid, stupid me.
“What are you hiding?” the other soldier says, he slowly comes towards me.
“Nothing, honest.”
“How do you explain the clothes?”
“I sewed them. I was going to donate them to the local orphanage.”
The soldier does not seem satisfied, but he does not press my answer. He has come so close I can smell his breath, I attempt not to cringe.
“Well then,” Blue eyes says from the panel. He extends his arm and beckons me out of the room. “We must be going.”
I walk out of the panel, with the soldier with the bad breath trailing behind me. They go to my front door and I follow them.
“Well, I guess you weren’t hiding anything.”
“It appears so.”
The soldiers turn to leave, and then I hear it. The sound that makes my world crash and burn. A little girl’s sneeze. I attempt to appear nonchalant, but the soldiers have heard it too.
“What was that?” one of them yells.
“Ah-choo,” I pretend to sneeze. “Silly me, I'm sneezing on the dust.”
“No, no that was not what I heard,” says the blue eyed soldier, “it sounded like a little girl, and it came from…. there!” he points above the bookshelf.
“Probably just a mouse,” I say.
“Oh no,” he says with a grin.
“That was a child’s sneeze!”
He runs to the shelf before I can react and starts poking at the ceiling with his nightstick. He jabs it so hard the tile falls out, revealing a gaping hole in the ceiling, but no Abela.
“Now look what you’ve done!” I fume. “My ceiling is now broken because of you!”
The soldier ignores me, for he is attempting to climb into the ceiling. I try to run after him but I misstep and fall. The other soldier is laughing as he roughly hoists me up. Keeping his arms around my shoulders in case I try to run. His comrade has given up on climbing into the ceiling, and he is now shining his torch into it. I hear scuffling above me and know Abela is struggling to get out of the light.
The soldier, looking more and more disgruntled, seems as if he’s about to give up, but that’s when I see him grin.
“Gotcha.”
I hear Abela scream. The sound rips through me and tears me apart. I struggle with my old limbs against the soldier, but it’s no use. The solder on the shelf now has a gun pointed at Abela.
“Now you come on out now,” he says.
“Mama-”
“Child, do as he says, everything will be all right.”
I hear more scuffling until I see Abela’s bare toes come down from the rafters.
“I thought you were a childless old hag,” says the soldier.
“I got lonely.”
“Why hide her?”
“I was embarrassed.”
I internally cringe at the answer I give. Abela is now on the floor, with her arm held by the blue eyed soldier. The soldier holding me scoffs.
“You think we’d believe that? I’ll bet she’s a Jew.”
“You cannot prove anything.”
“Actually, we can.”
I look in terror as the soldier holding Abela reaches into the ceiling and grabs her shoes. He looks at the soles and sees the tiny Star of David which Abela had carved into them so she would have some sort of comfort and remembrance of her family.
“If she wasn’t a Jew, why’s she got this on her shoe?”
Before I can answer he scoops up Abela and throws her over his shoulder.
“Mama!”
“Abela! Abela no!” I shout. I wrench free of the soldier and run after her, not caring how much my back ached. I already lost Markus, and I cannot lose her too.
“Abela!” I scream. I have now dropped my cane and can’t stop running. I run out the front door and down the steps faster than I have ever gone before, but I am still falling behind. I can still hear Abela screaming as I run. The guards have slung her over their backs and are heading to their truck, her hair is flying everywhere as she is bouncing over his shoulder. The blue eyed guard takes her off his back and shoves her into the back of the truck.
“Mama! Mama!”  Abela’s screams are cut off by the slamming of doors. I try to move forward but I hear the click of a loaded gun and know it’s over.That’s when I know I will never see my little Abela again. My knees buckle and I fall onto the asphalt of the road and sob, because I know that I can never recover from this.

~~~

It has been years since I have left my house, unless it is to get anything that is absolutely necessary. I fixed my wall and ceiling myself, I didn’t want to have to explain what happened to anyone. Every day I live, I do it out of hope of seeing Abela again. I haven’t heard from her at all since the day they took her. Closing my eyes- even just to blink- brings back visions of the men grabbing her like she was an object. I am growing older and older every day, hopefully soon, I will be joined with Markus.