Seven-Year Old Nightmare

It is one of my scariest memories. I was seven and my sister, Molly, was nine. We lived in a three-story duplex house on a small street in Carlisle, the town where I grew up. I shared a room with my younger sister, Tessa. We had bunk beds that stuck out into the middle of the room, surrounded by plush blue carpet and close enough to the closet that a train of toys and clothes always seemed to pile up between the bunks and the closet door.

I remember it was a Saturday morning. My parents were downstairs cleaning the house, really cleaning it: mopping the floors, dusting and Murphy-oiling the furniture, vacuuming every room, even Windex-ing the windows. My dad was having an English Department party for the college where he was a professor. Molly and I were up in my room playing “concentration camp.” Now, I know that sounds weird, but we used to pretend that we were Jews during the Nazi regime and that the top bunk was our designated sleeping spot. We had to hide from the Nazis in the middle of the night so that they wouldn’t find us in the morning and take us to the showers.

I don’t know how much I actually knew about the Holocaust at age seven; I know it was later in elementary school that I went to the Holocaust Museum and learned all about the Germans and the Nazis and this horrendous time in history. Molly was really smart and knew all about it, so being the passionate little girls that we were, I think we somehow wanted to be a part of this tragedy, maybe to understand, maybe to try and sympathize.

We turned out the lights, grabbed our flashlights and crawled down from the top bunk. We used the mound of clothes between the bed and the closet as an imaginary trench that we crept along until we reached the closet door. This was the best hiding place ever. The Nazi’s didn’t know it was there and we could hide safely “until morning” with our flashlights dim. We scurried into the closet, whispering to stay quiet and found yet another mound of clothes to sit on. We could hear Crosby, Stills, and Nash blaring downstairs.

We pulled our knees up into our chests and pretended like we were finally safe. What I did next is about to make this moment one of the scariest in my life. The duplex was an old house with Victorian style doors that only latched from the outside, meaning there was no handle or lock on the inside, just a small square fixture with a tiny t-shaped handle that you turned from the outside to open and close the door. I pulled the door almost closed so there was still some light coming in from the outside window.
“Libba, the Nazis will see us if that light can come in,” Molly said to me.
“I know, I know,” I replied. “I will try to close it even more.”
My goal was to shut it just enough so no light could come in, but not enough that it would latch. I slid my fingers underneath the door and pulled, but it still opened slightly. Too much. I pulled, and it did it again. Frustrated, I pulled harder and suddenly, it latched. Darkness.

“Libba!” Molly cried. “Why did you shut the door?”
I reached up above and pulled the string to turn on the light bulb. Her soft face was terrified.
“I didn’t mean to shut it! It just slammed! What are we going to do?”

For a moment we panicked. Then we started screaming. “Mama! Papa! Tessa!” we cried over and over again. “Help us!” We even started crying in unison because we figured it would be louder that way. “Ok, one, two, three…Mamaaaaaaaaa!” Nothing. All we could hear was the upbeat melody of “St. Peppers’ Lonely Heart's Club Band.”

“Libba, I can’t breathe. We don’t have a lot of oxygen in here.”
“It’s okay, Molly. Ok, ok, we’re gonna be fine. Where is Tessa?” Seconds passed as we looked around the closet for something that could pry open the door. This was a small closet. There were clothes hanging, clothes piled up on either side, toys and stuffed animals behind me, and Molly and I were squeezed in next to each other freaking out that we were going to suffocate.

I remember a feeling of heroism came over me. Molly was the smart, logical one but she was panicking. I was the strong athletic one and I felt like I needed to get us out. I found a Mouse Trap game underneath me and pulled out all the plastic pieces that make up the board. “Ok, Molly don’t worry. I’m going to use this piece to pry open the door.” I attempted to open the door. Of course a piece of plastic had no chance against the thick wood, but I was determined. I grabbed a hanger and uncoiled the hook, shoving it into the crack and pulling with all my might.

“Papaaaaaaaa! Mamaaaaaa! Help us! We’re locked in the closet!” we kept yelling over and over and over. Eventually we just started screaming. No words. Just shouts, hoping someone would hear us over the music. Why did they have to be cleaning the house on this Saturday?

What felt like an hour, and the nearing end of our short-lived lives, was probably about five minutes. I don’t remember how much more screaming we did, but I remember the fear. I remember breathing in and out, slow, heavy breaths, trying to get as much air as I could because I thought we were going to die. Tears were streaming down our faces, sweat was beading on the back of our necks. We grabbed each other’s hands and kept saying how much we loved one another.

“Libba? Molly?”
A voice. It was Tessa!
“Tessa, Tessa, we’re in here. We’re in the closet in our room, help!”
Tessa ran in and tried to turn the latch. “Open it!” we cried.
She was too little to get the latch so she ran and got Papa. He rushed back upstairs with her and opened the closet door. Molly and I burst out and hugged his side.
“Oh my god, where were you? We were stuck in there for hours and we thought we were going to die!”

It’s weird how an imaginary world completely fabricated in our young minds could leave us with such a real emotion. I hadn’t thought about it at the time, not at all; I was just happy to be breathing air from outside the closet. But, to think we were in that closet, genuinely fearful of our lives, our seven and nine-year old innocent lives, believing they were about to end just like the victims of the Holocaust, is creepy. That was the last time I remember playing “concentration camp.”