SHOESHINE BOY

Wladyka sat straight up in her bed. Her eyes began to adjust to the dim light from the streetlamp outside. She knew that something was not right, but she was not surewhat it was. Certainly her parents would know. Wladyka put her slippers and her bathrobe on and shuffled down to her parents' bedroom. She peered through a crack in the door. "Mother?" Wladyka whispered. "Father?" Silence. Wladyka threw the door open and switched on the lamp. The bedroom was empty.

Wladyka began to search around the house. From time to time she would call her parents' names, but to no avail. Outside, Wladyka began to hear the marching feet of German soldiers. She began to shudder. They were there for all the Jews, and now they have taken her parents. Wladyka angrily wiped away tears from her cheeks. She knew what she needed to do.

Wladyka ran into the kitchen and grabbed her mother's scissors. Standing in front of the powder room mirror, Wladyka carefully cut her hair as short as she could. She grabbed one of her father's smaller outfits and put it on. Wladyka stared at herself in the mirror. Her own mother wouldn't have recognized her.

The streets outside were being blanketed by the misty dawn of the morning. Wladyka carefully stepped outside for the first time as a boy. She began to add a little swagger to her walk as she began to feel more comfortable in her own skin. Suddenly, she heard a strange voice ask, "Excuse me? Who are you?"

Wladyka swallowed hard. "My name is Wlad," she said. "I shine shoes during the day." The two soldiers looked at each other, as Wladyka's mouth felt like it was full of cotton. Finally, they moved on and Wladyka could breathe a sigh of relief. Luckily the soldiers hadn't noticed that the young boy had no supplies with him with which to shine shoes.

Now that Wladyka had a minute to herself again, she wondered where her parents were. Those yellow stars, she thought. Everybody can tell we are Jewish from a mile away. But why do they hate us? And why does Hitler want us gone? Wladyka felt completely alone. She would have to keep up this facade, this shoeshine boy. She would have to be Wlad from now on.

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"So that's what happened, Zeyda?" A small wide-eyed boy asked his grandfather. Wlad chuckled. "Yes, that's what happened. I found out I made a much better boy than a girl, so that's what I have been all along.

"Will God protect the Jews from that ever happening again?', the small boy asked.

Wlad stared at the charismatic orange man on the TV set. "I don't know, Moishe. I really don't know."