Once

Once I was living in an orphanage in the mountains and I shouldn’t have been and I almost caused a riot.
It was because of the carrot.
You know how when a nun serves you very hot soup from a big metal pot and she makes you lean in close so she doesn’t drip and the steam from the pot makes your glasses go all misty and you can’t wipe them because you’re holding your dinner bowl and the fog doesn’t clear even when you pray to God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Pope, and Adolf Hitler?
That’s happening to me.
Somehow I find my way toward my table. I use my ears for navigation.
Dodie who always sits next to me is a loud slurper because of his crooked teeth. I hold my bowl above my head so other kids can’t pinch my soup while I’m fogged up, and I use Dodie’s slurping noises to guide me in.
I feel for the edge of the table and put my bowl down and wipe my glasses.
That’s when I see the carrot.
It’s floating in my soup, huge among the flecks of cabbage and the tiny blobs of pork fat and the few lonely lentils and the bits of gray plaster from the kitchen ceiling.
A whole carrot.
I can’t believe it. Three years and eight months I’ve been in this orphanage and I haven’t had a whole carrot in my dinner bowl once. Neither has anyone else. Even the nuns don’t get whole carrots, and they get bigger servings than us kids because they need the extra energy for being holy.
We can’t grow vegetables up here in the mountains. Not even if we pray a lot. It’s because of the frosts. So if a whole carrot turns up in this place, first it gets admired, then it gets chopped into enough pieces so that sixty-two kids, eleven nuns, and one priest can all have a bit.
I stare at the carrot.
At this moment I’m probably the only kid in Poland with a whole carrot in his dinner bowl. For a few seconds I think it’s a miracle. Except it can’t be because miracles only happened in ancient times and this is 1942.
Then I realize what the carrot means and I have to sit down quick before my legs give way.
I can’t believe it.
At last. Thank you, God, Jesus, Mary, the Pope, and Adolf Hitler.
I’ve waited so long for this.
It’s a sign.
This carrot is a sign from Mum and Dad. They’ve sent my favorite vegetable to let me know their problems are finally over. To let me know that after three long years and eight long months things are finally improving for Jewish booksellers. To let me know they’re coming to take me home.
Yes.
Dizzy with excitement, I stick my fingers into the soup and grab the carrot.
Luckily the other kids are concentrating on their own dinners, spooning their soup up hungrily and peering into their bowls in case there’s a speck of meat there, or a speck of rat poo.
I have to move fast.
If the others see my carrot there’ll be a jealousy riot.This carrot is a sign from Mum and Dad. They’ve sent my favorite vegetable to let me know their problems are finally over. To let me know that after three long years and eight long months things are finally improving for Jewish booksellers. To let me know they’re coming to take me home.
Yes.
Dizzy with excitement, I stick my fingers into the soup and grab the carrot.
Luckily the other kids are concentrating on their own dinners, spooning their soup up hungrily and peering into their bowls in case there’s a speck of meat there, or a speck of rat poo.
I have to move fast.
If the others see my carrot there’ll be a jealousy riot.