At the age of nine I watched from the pristine kitchen window as my friend was ripped from her home. It seemed the days that I had played in the backyard with her were gone. The dolls we buried beneath the sand box and castles we built together crumbled down. Little did I know that house would soon be abandoned, left for the bricks to brown and crack. Her brown trench coat was falling off of her shoulders. Behind her, her mother helped secure the coat onto Abijah's shoulders. I had the same trench coat as Abijah, but mine did not have a yellow star. My mom had closed the thick blinds.

I asked my mother about the men taking Abijah away. She told me that I was too young, too innocent to understand. Still without answer, I walked upstairs into my bedroom. That night as I tried to sleep I heard sirens. I was still too young to understand.

At the age of ten all the yellow stars from school were gone. At the start of class the hangers were barren of coats, boots and scarves. It was 1939 and I again asked my mother, “Why did they take Abijah away?” She told me I was still too young to understand.

At eleven my father broke the silence at the dinner table. The clattering of our china had stopped, and instead the sound of my fathers voice filled the void.

“You must understand that we are doing this for the good,” He stated in a proud voice, “You will understand soon.”

My brother and I soon did understand. My father, with his proud booming voice and pride in his eyes, that is when I understood. But I didn’t want to.
That night I heard my mother crying in the spare bathroom. My father was yelling at her, “They must know. This is our country now.”
It wasn’t until twelve I got severely punished at school. Margo had said that her father was the smartest man in the world and he was the reason for change in Europe.

“Yes, the smartest, because he is the one killing millions of innocent people.” I responded towards the crowd of kids circling Margo. That day my parents were called and I was hit by the teacher. I don’t regret what I said to Margo that day. I don’t think I ever will.

I had refused to agree with my parents that night. My father, a year older still had had the pride in his voice and masculine frame he cherished so dearly. My mother, on the other hand had sulked in her porcelain velvet chair, staring ahead at the both of us.

At thirteen my father went away, and he would only come back on the weekends in his uniform. Some weeks he wouldn’t come home and those were the nights my mother, again, spent the days alone. I knew father had a good job. It paid for the big house we had and the food on our table. Every weekend he came home his face would grow more sullen. His steps got heavier.  “Hello” quickly turned into “Goodnight.”

Fights between my mother and father grew stronger and louder. I could hear them from my fathers office until the midsts of the night. Some nights I would even hear them over the marching outside.

When I turned fourteen it was the year 1942. At school they showed us speeches of the change, magazine clippings, newspaper articles, posters. They told us that we are the master race, and anyone different was to be punished otherwise. I suddenly didn’t like school anymore.

Home life changed, too. My little brother would ask, “Sarah, why isn’t Abijah at home yet?”

I never knew what to say. If I knew anything mother was right, we are far too young and too innocent.

That same year my teacher gave each student in my class a journal. She had explained that we were to write about the war. We were to write for history, to give history a name and show our true rise as a unioned country.
It took me two weeks to open that journal. I was too scared for the consequences that I would have to endure after writing my true thoughts.

At fifteen I met Adam. He was one of the only that I met that was brave enough to show his true idea of the change. It happened to be me nearby to hear him talking to a fellow classmate about it. Fearing for him I asked him to keep his opinions to himself, for someone may interpret them the wrong way.
“Why would I hide something that’s true?” He replied back to me.

Ever since that day I talked to Adam on the way back home from school. It wasn’t just the war we would talk about, or how unjust the world seemed to become. It started to become a more personal conversation.

I celebrated my fifteenth birthday with Adam. It was simply because my father had been too busy to see our family. It seemed like ends weren’t meeting like they used to. Mother hadn’t talked for days and father hasn’t been home for months.

Adam took me out to the town and into the old bar. We talked for hours and listened to the radio together. I was happy for the first time in what felt like forever.

Suddenly, after my birthday Adam started to be distancing and acting odd. It wasn’t until a full year later I faced Adam. He was wearing an army uniform.

At sixteen I was still writing. I was still seeing the world in a view of disgust and agony on peoples smiles. It felt as if the world was trying to ignore all the bad, to discontinue the mess that was around them like spoiled milk. This was also the last year I had seen my father in his buttoned uniform.

The war ended just a month before my 17th birthday. I didn’t know how to respond. I don’t think anyone else knew how to either. My family and I went weeks without properly talking to one another. Sights and helpful gestures were shared, but never conversation. It took 8 months to get my own parents talking once again.
Years later I left the home I grew up in, the place where all my own secrets were buried along with my mother and father's. There will never be a time where I don’t go thinking about my fathers uniform, or what happened to Abijah. All I know is that I am here today, still far too innocent to truly understand.