Pastel Orphans (5 page)

We pass a factory with large open doors. Inside I can see that people are making furniture. There are big trucks parked in front. Then we pass another building with smoke coming from the top, and there is a strange smell. We pull in here. Femke climbs out of the vehicle, takes a tin from the back, and walks to the open doors. Mama gets out of the truck to ask if we are both all right, if we are not too cold. She tucks the blankets tighter around us.

When Femke comes out, the tin is gone and she carries two bottles. On the front of the bottles are colored labels. The letters on the first one spell “Wódka” and the other spells “Rum.”

“I am worried about the children in the cold,” says Mama.

“They’re fine. We are nearly home.”

We drive and I have had enough of driving. We pass many more fields and houses and finally the truck pulls into a lane. Greta and I stand up on the tray and hold on to the roof of the cab to stop from falling. We can see over the front of the vehicle towards our new home. It is a brick house with a chimney on top, like the ones I have seen in stories. I am slightly shocked because I thought that we would have moved to another apartment, in a building where there are other boys my age.

Femke unlocks the front door, which opens straight into a tiny kitchen. It is dark inside despite the daylight. The windows are cloudy and small. The floor is not polished and there is one main room with a couch, piano, side cabinet, a small table with chairs, and an oven and stove near a chimney. Femke turns on a lamp and I notice that most of the walls are brick, the same as outside, without plaster. The furniture is worn and old. There is only one photo on the top of a piano, which has a layer of black dust.

“Is this where you lived with Oma and Opa?” I try to disguise my disappointment by raising my voice high at the end.

“Yes,” says Mama. She points to two people in the photo in plain clothes, like Femke’s. The woman is not thin and the man is tall and grumpy. I recognize the man from the photo in Berlin. Oma died very young, Mama tells me, and Opa died nine years ago.

“Do you remember?” she asks. “You were very upset.”

I nod so as not to offend her by not remembering. It is hard to believe that Mama is related to these people.

Femke looks at me and I think about the witch in
Hansel and Gretel
. She frightens me a little, in the way she looks at me intensely, like a vulture. I have never seen a real vulture, but I have seen pictures of their faces before they eat their prey.

“It is a blessing that the girl has your blue eyes and light hair,” she says. “But the boy . . .”

“. . . Is a blessing also,” says Mama, whose look is fixed.

“I was just going to say that the boy is darker, that’s all . . . an unusual mixture.” Though I have a feeling that she is holding back from saying more.

We are led to rooms at the back. There is a toilet and bath in a room just outside the back door. Before that there are two more rooms. One has a large bed and the other has two smaller beds.

“This used to be my room,” says Mama. “I shared this room with Femke. This is where we will be sleeping now.”

“Where is my room?”

“In here with me and Greta. Greta and you will share a bed and you can pick which one.”

I look into the room at the two narrow beds.

“But I can’t sleep here . . . not with you.”

“Henrik!” says Mama. “There is nowhere else.”

I am thinking that Femke has a large bed and wonder if she and Mama can’t sleep together in that. I am a boy and not long until a man. I make my suggestion but no one responds. Greta is not listening. She is looking at the small chipped statue of Mary above Mama’s old bed.

“You have spoiled him,” says Femke.

I do not like what she says and I walk away from them to sit at the table in the kitchen, where Femke has already lit the wood in the stove. At our old apartment we had a gas stove that didn’t smell like smoke. I cough and make it sound slightly worse than it needs to be.

Mama comes back and kneels in front of me and places her hands on her knees.

“It won’t be bad at all,” says Mama. “This is a beautiful place for children. There are boys here you can play with, and a school, and you will like it in time. Sleeping is such a short time, and once you are asleep, you don’t know anything. It is the rest of the day that you have.”

“You pander to him,” says Femke. Her voice is high and sharp, not at all like Mama’s, which is soft and low.

“Femke,” she says. “Please . . .”

Femke disappears out the back door and returns with some wood.

I go to my new room and bounce on both the beds, and Greta does the same.

“This one,” I say. And Greta bounces too and agrees.

“This one,” she parrots.

Then I bounce on the other one. “No, it is this one. It is better,” I say.

Greta crosses the tiny distance between the beds and bounces. “Yes, this one.”

“Greta,” I say fondly. “You don’t ever have an original thought.”

“Yes I do,” she says.

“What does
original
mean?” I say, thinking that I will trick her.

“Unique.”

I am surprised that Greta is so clever.

I go to the toilet outside, for I am bursting. The hole in the toilet is large and I can’t see the bottom. It smells like vinegar and wet soil and there are gaps between the roof and walls. I imagine at night that the seat will be too cold to sit on. There is no bathroom indoors but there is a washstand for our hands.

Greta is bursting also but she is scared of the hole. She thinks there could be animals at the bottom that might try and climb out, or more sinister creatures hiding there, waiting to bite her. When it is her turn, I have to stand outside the door.

I tell Mama that it is dumb having a toilet outside. Mama says that Femke never bothered fixing the place up. She says we will all get used to it.

I tell her that Berlin is nicer.

“How do you know? You just got here.”

C
HAPTER
8

Femke cooks “pork stew” in a large saucepan. Mama says that she has a headache and lies down with a wet cloth on her head. When I ask her if she is all right, she says she will be. She just needs some time to adjust to everything. I understand this because she must share her room also, and there are no mirrors here, only a tiny one in the bathroom.

Later, Mama apologizes to Femke for not helping with dinner. She says that things will be different when she is feeling better. Femke ignores her and puts a steaming bowl in front of me. I have never tasted this food before. The meat is salty and wonderful and the vegetables are so full of flavor and covered in sauce. It is like thick soup. Greta puts some on a spoon and sniffs it and dips her tongue in it before she puts the whole spoon in her mouth. She likes it too.

My mother picks up her fork and stirs it around but she doesn’t eat.

Greta makes a slurping sound and Mama is suddenly distracted from her bowl to remind Greta of her manners. Then Mama stirs her food again. Femke is watching her, waiting.

“Don’t do that,” says Femke.

“Do what?”

“Think like that. You have changed.”

“How can you understand?”

“I understand a lot,” she says, raising her hands in angry disbelief. “You are not a Jew, so eat it.”

Mama rushes from the room. I do not understand why Mama is not hungry, but the food is so good I can’t stop eating. Greta is doing the same and the sauce dribbles down her chin. Femke dabs at it roughly. She does not have gentle hands like Mama.

Femke turns to me like a bird about to take a worm.

“Good, huh?”

I nod.

“Good Polish food. It was good for your mother once, you know.”

Grown-ups are so confusing. Sometimes I don’t want to understand what they are talking about, but I have a suspicion that this has something to do with Papa. Mama once said that Papa doesn’t like pork because he didn’t grow up with it. We have never eaten it before tonight.

After dinner, Femke fills up a sink and says that I must wash the dirty plates and Greta must dry while she goes outside to get more wood. She says she is looking forward to spring, which will be here shortly, that she is sick of the cold weather and long winter. She says this to the window in front of her, and I am not sure if she is talking to us.

She brings the wood inside, checks the fire and windows, then goes to her room. She does not come back out again.

Greta looks at Femke’s doorway curiously, then looks at me. I pinch my lips tightly together like Femke, cross my eyes, and put my hands on my hips. Greta giggles. I have to tell her to be quiet. I do not want Femke to come back out.

When I go to our room, Mama is not moving. She is in the bed that I chose but I decide not to wake her. Greta and I open our suitcases and find our pajamas.

The floor is cold on our feet and we climb into bed, and suddenly I am glad that Greta is next to me because she is warm. I lie facing the wall and she snuggles into my back.

Mama takes us to the paddocks at the rear of the property, where there is a barn. Mama says that we have acres of land and six cows and that Femke milks the cows and sells the milk in vats to the villages, factory owners, and to other places in the city, like restaurants and shops.

In the barn there are lots of chickens too and three pigs and several piglets making snorting noises, like Greta does when she sleeps. Greta chases after one of the piglets but it is too wiggly and fast to catch, and I laugh and so does Mama. She is happier today and says that she has had the best sleep she’s had in a long time. She says that she is glad to be home.

Today Femke shows Greta and me how to milk a cow. Mama has taken the truck to the markets to buy food and supplies for the farm. The milk makes a tinny sound when it hits the bucket. Greta’s hands work the udder well and much milk comes out. I squeeze at each of the teats but only drops come out.

“You don’t pinch the poor cow,” says Femke. “Look at your sister, who is working out the milk gently. The cow doesn’t even know that Greta’s taking any.”

It is the first time that Greta has done something better than me.

Femke asks me to load a vat of milk onto the back of the truck, which she has parked near the barn. The vat is so heavy that I can hardly lift it, but I pretend it is no trouble. Femke picks one up and she doesn’t struggle or groan at all.

Today it is Christmas. Well, it isn’t really Christmas. Mama has decided that since we didn’t have a “proper” Christmas last year in Berlin, that we will celebrate it today.

Femke doesn’t like the idea. She says that Mama was always the crazy one, with all the fanciful ideas.

I can’t imagine Mama crazy. She is always so calm.

“It isn’t right,” says Femke. “It will give the children strange ideas.”

Femke takes me outside and says that she is going to show me how to chop the head off a chicken. Mama and Greta are inside cleaning and dusting. Mama says that the place has been let go, that the curtains haven’t changed in thirty years. She wants to paint the walls in our room, the only ones that are plastered, and to sew new curtains for the kitchen and sitting room. She has wheeled out the old sewing machine and has bought some fabric.

Femke picks up a chicken, which is squawking and flapping its wings angrily at her. The noise is so bad it makes me feel restless.

Femke lays the chicken on a table in the barn and chops it at the neck. Blood pours from the hole at the top of its body. The headless body then flutters itself upright and leaps off the table, falls sideways, and rights itself again before running around in circles. I put my hands over my face, and Femke laughs at my reaction. She tells me to catch it but I refuse to move.

“Stop being so childish,” she says. But I
am
a child, I want to say.

She chases the chicken and puts it into a sack. I can still see it fluttering inside the bag, and take a step backwards, fearful that this dead creature will escape.

I have eaten chicken plenty of times but I am shocked that the food Mama serves begins like this.

“How do you think chicken got to your fancy plate in Berlin?”

When the headless chicken is no longer moving, Femke removes it from the bag and shows me how to pluck the feathers. I take the chicken outside so that Femke can’t see my look of disgust as I finish the job. After the last feather has been removed, I go and tell Femke and she carries the carcass back towards the house.

When we return, we see that Mama has brought in a baby pine tree and is placing glass and paper decorations of gold, pink, and green on its branches. She has a box full of shiny decorations, some made by Femke and her when they were children. The box is old and splitting at the base. Femke says it has not been opened since Mama left. Tonight, we are having baked chicken, zucchini and onion fried in lard, and preserved fruit with creamed cheese. I am a little disappointed by this menu, especially in view of my mother’s idea of making this a special Christmas occasion.

Mama is more talkative at this meal and she speaks in Polish to Femke so that we cannot understand. I hear my father’s name mentioned, and Femke looks over her spoon at me as she puts it in her mouth.

After dinner, Mama pulls out two parcels wrapped in brown paper with silver ribbon for Greta and me.

“Merry Christmas!” she says excitedly.

Mine is a notebook with a leather cover. Inside, the pages are blank. I am disappointed that there is only one present, though I don’t show this. Greta opens hers and she has a silver locket on a chain. Mama helps her put it on.

“Riki,” she says. “You have to write about your experiences.”

I don’t tell her that I don’t want to write.

“And I have something for you too,” says Mama, passing another present to Femke.

Femke looks surprised and embarrassed. “What is this for?”

“It is a thank-you for having us here with you. I am very grateful.”

“It’s your house too,” Femke says, not so spitefully this time. She touches her neck and turns away. “Well, I’ve got nothing to give you.”

Mama doesn’t mind. She has always said that she prefers to give presents rather than receive them.

Femke opens her wrapping and there is a box of lavender-scented soaps.

“Thank you,” says Femke.

Mama plays some Christmas tunes on the piano and we all sing along, even my aunt. Then Femke and Mama sip vodka. Femke is more talkative as well tonight, and they talk about when they were children and how hard their father made them work, and about how Femke was the brightest of the two but it was Mama who went away to study music at the Warsaw Conservatory.

“Where are all the photos of us?” I say. At our apartment, Mama had many photos displayed of me and Greta and Papa but, apart from the one of Oma and Opa on top of the piano, there are none here at all.

“Yes, where are the photos that I sent you?” says Mama. She gets up and searches through the drawers in the side cabinet until she finds what she is looking for.

“Tsk,” she says to Femke. “You could have put them out.”

There is one photo of me standing, wearing breeches that go down to my knees, the waistband high above my waist. My expression is fierce. I remember that I didn’t want the photo taken. There is also a close-up photo of Greta; she is looking upwards, towards heaven, her face glowing like an angel’s.

There are photos of Mama and Papa on their wedding day. Papa has smooth black hair combed over to one side, and a pointed chin. He has a long nose that reaches the top of his lips, which are wide and narrow. His skin looks very dark against Mama’s, and his eyes look black—but I know they are blue. They are the darkest blue I have ever seen.

I miss Papa and tell Mama so. She hugs me and says that she does too.

“When is he coming?”

“I’m not sure.”

After that, Mama does not want to talk anymore and tells us that it is time for bed. She is the first to climb into bed and turns to face the wall. She has gone silent.

Greta climbs into our bed. She leans over and kisses me. “Happy Christmas, Riki,” she says, and passes me a piece of paper. It is a drawing of the two of us milking a cow. The cow is smiling. I kiss her on the forehead like I have seen Papa do.

“Happy Christmas, Greta,” I say and turn off the lamp beside our bed.

Mama has spent much of the day at the sewing machine while Greta and I explore the farm. We have done our milking and are allowed to run around the fields. I have seen other children walk and cycle by our house and look forward to meeting them. Mama tells us that we will be going to school soon.

When we come inside, Mama pins up the lilac-colored curtains and ties them back with yellow cord.

Femke pulls down the sides of her mouth. I have grown used to the meaning of this look. It means that something is not completely distasteful.

“You still have skill with the sewing machine. You have that, at least.”

In between our chores, Greta and I run in the fields and when there is nothing to do, I find other things to do.

One time, I leave a chicken head on the kitchen table for Femke to find, with a note under it that says, “Has anyone seen the rest of me?” Then I pull Greta’s arm so she will come and hide with me, and we watch from behind the door when Mama and Femke enter.

Femke looks at the note and shakes her head and mutters something in Polish.

Mama laughs so hard there are tears in her eyes.

Another time I take some of the white paint that Mama has been using to paint the walls in our bedroom and draw a square in the fields.

I tell Greta that it is the “safety square,” that when you walk inside it, nothing can harm you. Then, as luck would have it, thunder comes from the sky.

Greta looks at me fearfully because she hates the sound of thunder.

“Oh no!” I say. “The thunder gods are angry that I have revealed such a secret.”

“What secret?”

“The one I just told you, stupid. About the safety square.”

Greta nods as if she understands.

I tell her a story that comes into my head right at that moment, about how once, everyone was trying to leave a giant safety square that went around a fortress and had been put there by the king and queen of England. But when the people stepped out of the square, the king and queen could no longer protect and control their people nor stop them from going mad. Then the thunder gods got so angry they shot bursts of lightning at the people as they tried to step out.

“Now the thunder gods are angry that I have revealed the secret,” I say.

Greta is standing just inside the square and I am outside. She goes to walk towards me and I tell her to stay or she will be zapped to dust by lightning. The urgency of my tone convinces her to stay, since I am right about most things. But it may not be that she believes me. It may be that she
wants
to believe me.

I tell her that she must stay there until the thunder passes. It starts to rain and I run inside where it is dry, to watch her from the window.

“What are you doing?” asks Mama, who has walked up behind me. “And why is Greta sitting out there in the rain?” The rain is getting heavier. She doesn’t wait for my response, but rushes outside and I follow.

“Greta!” calls Mama. “Inside now!”

“No,” Greta says stoically. “The thunder gods will strike me if I leave.”

“Oh, Henrik, you naughty boy!” Then Mama turns to Greta angrily, though her anger is directed at me. “In the house now, Greta! You are more likely to be killed from the rain and cold than from the thunder gods. Your brother makes up silly stories.” Mama smacks me on the arm and tells us both to go inside before we catch our deaths.

Femke says that my practical jokes will lead to trouble one day. Another time, I put a milk pail on Greta’s head and tell her that she has to twirl around three times and then count to twenty. Then she has to follow my voice and walk towards me. I tell her that if she can catch me, she can have one of my books.

The game starts off well but after a while, when she is tired from wandering around the large paddock, she trips and falls face-first, her teeth hitting the metal pail as she lands hard on the ground. This knocks out both her front teeth. There is lots of blood but she only starts to cry when she sees that there is blood on her hand. I carry her into the house.