Stolen Child (4 page)

“Go get your hairbrush,” says Mutter
.
“I’ll fix your hair as soon as your sister and I finish our breakfast.”

I swallow the cereal as quickly as I can, not caring so much what it tastes like but just to get it over with. Eva comes back with pink hair ribbons and a hairbrush and a hand mirror
.

Mutter brushes out the tangles from Eva’s dark blond hair until it hangs down her back in shiny waves. She expertly makes two braids, finishing each off with a pink ribbon
.

When it is my turn she tugs at my hair and braids it up more tightly than she needs to. “There,” she says with a cold edge in her voice. She hands me the mirror. “Don’t you look lovely?”

The face that looks back at me is the same one as always. I never think of myself as lovely
.

A long black car with two small swastika flags along the side of the hood idles in the driveway as we walk outside. A uniformed man opens the back door. Mutter gets in first, then Eva, then me. The upholstery is lush black leather that gleams from a fresh buffing. The car door is closed with a firm
click
and we speed away
.

It takes half an hour of fast driving to get into the city. The streets narrow. Our driver slows down so we can wave to the blocks and blocks of cheering crowds
.

When we get within walking distance of the stage, the car stops. Soldiers push the crowd away so we can get out, and then they lead us to the steps on the side of the stage. Most of the chairs are taken by Nazi officers, but there are a few other mothers and children as well. We take our
spots in the front row, behind the podium
.

The crowd roars as another long black car pulls up. When the
führer
steps out, the crowd goes wild. Vater gets out of the car just behind the
führer.

The crowd chants
“Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!”
as the
führer
steps onto the stage, but it is as if he doesn’t notice. He walks up to me and crouches down until we are eye level. He is so close to me that I can see his nose hair and smell the slightly spicy scent of his hair pomade. “What a perfect specimen of Aryan youth you are, my dear,” he says, pinching my cheek. I smile. What else can I do? Vater stands behind the
führer,
bursting with pride, but Eva looks like she is about to cry and Mutter’s lips are a thin white line. Vater sits down between Eva and Mutter. He grabs Mutter’s hand and kisses it
.

The
führer
walks to the podium and begins to …

“Nadia, what are you doing?”

I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of Marusia’s voice. The empty glass almost shot out of my hand. I blinked twice. I was standing in front of the window in the kitchen of the Brantford house.

I turned to Marusia. She stood by the table, with Ivan beside her, his hammer in one hand and a look of concern on his face.

I shook my head, desperate to clear away the image of Hitler’s face. If I’d met Hitler —
Hitler
himself — then I must be a Nazi. What secret was Marusia keeping from me? Who
was
I?

My face was wet with tears, but I couldn’t remember crying. My legs felt wobbly, so I set the glass beside the sink and sat down at the table.

Marusia walked behind my chair. She wrapped her arms protectively around me and rested her head on my neck.

Ivan knelt beside us.

“Are you all right?” he asked. His eyes were round with fright.

“I was just thinking,” I told them.

“You were shouting, ‘
Heil Hitler
,’” said Ivan, a troubled look in his eyes.

“What were you thinking about?” asked Marusia.

“The farmhouse and that family,” I said. “But there was more.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

“No!” Couldn’t she understand how ashamed I was? Marusia insisted that I wasn’t a Nazi, but that’s not what my memory was telling me. How I wished I could wash away that horrible past.

“You need to air these memories, Nadia,” said Ivan. “And until you remember it all, you’ll keep on having nightmares.”

Was Ivan right? Maybe he was …

“Would it help if I told you about what happened to
me
during the war?” he asked. He straddled the chair facing me and looked into my eyes.

Ivan’s offer surprised me. He never talked about his past. “I would like to hear what you did during the war,” I told him.

For a minute he said nothing and I saw his eyes fill with tears as his memories came drifting into his mind. He blinked the tears back and took a breath. “My story is one like so many others. The Soviets killed my father and
brother in 1941. They were killing thousands of the men, even some of the women and children. I wasn’t arrested with them — I thought at the time that I was lucky — but then the Nazis came.”

Ivan’s eyes met mine and I could feel my face flush with shame. He looked up at Marusia, who still stood behind me, her arms wrapped around me. Ivan gave a ragged sigh. “I thought nothing could compare to the Soviets, but I was wrong. The Nazis were just as bad. My sister was captured in a Nazi slave raid. My mother was sent to a concentration camp. I was the last of my family. I joined the underground. Sometimes we fought the Nazis and sometimes we fought the Soviets. It depended on which front was closest. I escaped to a DP camp just as the war was ending.”

So much sadness in so few words. “I am sorry, Ivan.” I could feel tears spilling down my cheeks.

“I needed to say that out loud,” said Ivan. “And you should talk to us about what
you
remember.” He gave me a long bear hug.

Maybe he was right. I just couldn’t do it yet.

We were silent for a long time, each of us wrapped in our own thoughts. As I sat there, I tried to piece together what I now remembered about my past. The rich farmhouse and a bedroom filled with toys. A pink dress that I hated — why would I hate it so? Towels stitched with
GH
. What did
GH
stand for? Were Mutter, Vater and Eva my real family? The scene of meeting Hitler face to face was etched in my brain — how I wished I could scrub that away, but it was vivid, right down to his smell.

Ivan hated the Nazis. Look what they did to his mother
and sister. If I was a Nazi, then how could Ivan love me? How could anyone love me?

But how could I argue with these flashes from the past? My name wasn’t really Nadia, but something starting with
G
. The farmhouse, the long black car and Hitler — these images were like photographs in my mind.

I knew how easily Marusia could lie. Was she lying to me about my past?

Summer went by quickly. Marusia got a job picking strawberries. When strawberry season was over, the same farmer hired her to work on his other crops. My days were taken up with lessons at Miss MacIntosh’s house and visits to the library with Mychailo. Miss Barry grinned whenever she saw us. She would let us look at the new arrivals and would point out books that she thought we might like. The routine of the summer seemed to settle my mind. The flashbacks and nightmares seemed to go away.

On Saturday nights, if Ivan wasn’t too tired, he, Marusia and I would walk to the hall on Dundas Street. It was a rented building shared by all the Ukrainians in town — Catholic and Orthodox alike. Marusia especially loved it when we went out like this. For working on the farm she wore a used pair of men’s overalls and she would change into a second-hand housedress when she got home. But for Saturday nights, she wore her one nice blouse and skirt.

Sometimes people at the hall would get together a
band and there would be a dance. Other times, people would sit at tables and talk. Marusia would sit with a group who were writing letters to relief organizations, trying to find lost loved ones. They would update each other on their progress and compare notes.

I liked to go because there were other children who spoke Ukrainian. Mychailo would often be there. I was devastated to learn that none of the other Ukrainian children except for Mychailo would be attending Central School. There weren’t that many of us and we were spread all over the city. There were two sisters who had been born in Canada. Their Ukrainian was not good. They went to Grandview. And a tall boy with glasses who spoke Ukrainian with a Polish accent was going to start at St. Basil’s School.

Early each Sunday morning we would dress again in our good clothing and walk to the Ukrainian Catholic church on Terrace Hill Street, which was one block closer than the hall. It was a small church and there were so many people who attended that we had to get there early if we wanted to get a pew. The only inside place where I felt completely safe was sitting in that church. Few parishioners could sing on key, but that didn’t bother me. I loved being enveloped in the hymns and I loved the smell of the incense. It made me feel protected.

Ivan worked on the house every day after work, and by the last week in August, it was finished. Each morning Marusia got picked up by a truck to take her to the farm in Burford. The money was needed, but her hands were swollen from the long hours of working in the fields.

I knew it was more than just her hands and the long
hours that bothered her, though. Whenever the postman delivered mail, she looked through the envelopes with a hungry eye, but he never seemed to bring whatever she was waiting for. I asked her about it once, but her eyes filled with tears. “I cannot talk about it now,” was all she told me. I think she was hoping to get news from the Red Cross about a relative. At the hall, when someone got one of these letters, everyone gathered round to hear it read aloud. Sometimes the news was bad, but when it was good, we all hooted for joy.

Marusia had once studied to be a pharmacist, but as a slave labourer during the war, she worked in a factory. Later on she was forced to work as a cook at the German farm where we met. How awful it was for her to have to do hard labour again, even though she was supposed to be free. I would see a troubled look come over her face from time to time. Whenever I asked her what was wrong, she’d paste on a smile and say, “Nothing, Nadia. I was just thinking.”

As often as we could, the three of us would sit down together on the cinder blocks in the backyard and pore over the books from the library and from Miss MacIntosh. Marusia’s dream was to learn English well enough to get a job in a store or maybe even a pharmacy. Ivan’s spoken English was good, but he had no way of learning how to write it. I think he was looking forward to me starting school because then I could teach him everything I learned.

The week before school was to start, Ivan greeted me at the door when I came in from Miss MacIntosh’s. He had a grin on his face. “The day has come to choose the colour of your room.”

No, no, no. I had become used to sleeping in the living
room on cold or rainy nights, and outside when the weather was hot.

“I don’t need a bedroom,” I said. “Why don’t I sleep in the living room always?” He looked at me with one eyebrow raised. “Then you could use that upstairs room for storage.”

He shook his head. “Nadia, you need your own room.”

I said nothing. Ivan caught my hand in his and led me out the door. “You’ll see,” he said. “In time you’ll like having a bedroom again.”

The paint store was on Colborne Street — two big blocks around the corner from the library. Ivan held the door open with one hand and made a sweeping motion with his other. I stepped in. The wet paint smell tugged at the edges of my memory but, thankfully, no images came.

Shiny metal cans were stacked against the walls and in the aisles. I expected to see different colours, but the cans were mostly covered with white labels. On a stand beside the cashier’s counter was a book of colour chips. Ivan led me to it. He flipped it open at random and the page revealed shades of yellow and gold. He looked at me expectantly, but I shook my head. Yellow meant sunshine and I loved sunshine, but yellow made me sad …

I am in that long black car. It is just me and Vater and the chauffeur. We are taken to a cluster of buildings surrounded by barbed wire. The sign at the entrance says
Work Shall Set You Free
. The gates open and the chauffeur drives in. I feel sick. Vater grabs my hand and pulls me out of the car as he gets out
.

He leads me past a snaking line of hungry-eyed women and children. Some wear heavy clothing and others are
dressed for summer. They all wear one thing in common: a yellow hand-stitched star. A girl my age is in a yellow dress that once was beautiful. Maybe her mother thought a yellow star wouldn’t show on a yellow dress. As we pass, the girl looks me in the eye
.

“Don’t stare at them,” says Vater, pulling me by the hand. We step into a storage area beyond the lineup. Crates and boxes brim over with fancy clothing: fur coats, blue satin slippers, a tiara — even what looks like a new wedding gown. A well-fed man sitting behind a desk doesn’t get up when we enter, but he nods as if he is expecting us. My heart pounds with fear. Is Vater angry with me? Is he leaving me here? I have no yellow star
.

The man grins at me as he looks me up and down. His teeth are yellow and his uniform collar is so tight that his neck bulges. “You must be Gretchen,” he says
.

I am too frightened to speak
.

“You’ll need better clothes than that,” he says, looking at my blue tunic and white blouse. He turns to Vater. “I will find her something good.”

We walk back out, past the women and children with the yellow stars. I can feel more than one pair of eyes like heat on my back …

“What about this one?” said Ivan.

Gretchen …

I blinked once.

Gretchen Himmel.
GH
. My name was Gretchen Himmel.

I blinked again. I was back in the paint store with Ivan. I looked down at the colour he was pointing to. A pale buttery yellow. “No,” I said. Yellow meant death. I could
never sleep in a yellow room. I flipped the page so quickly that I nearly tore it.

“Careful,” said Ivan, smoothing down the crease in the glossy paper.

My mind was still swirling between past and present. I clutched on to the side of the counter so I wouldn’t fall.

Ivan looked at me strangely. “What’s wrong, Nadia?”

I took a deep breath and tried to clear my thoughts. “I am fine,” I said. I wanted to get this over with. “Let’s look at some other colours.”

Next was pinks and reds — everything from the palest blush of that long ago pink brocade dress to the violent red of blood. No, no, no.

The next page showed blues. My hand reached out of its own accord and touched a pale mauve. A wisp of scent tickled the edge of my brain. Lilac bushes in a much-loved garden.

“You’d like your room to be that colour?” Ivan asked. And I surprised myself. Yes, I did want that colour. Lilac would make me feel safe. I still wasn’t happy about the thought of being closed up in a small room all night, but the colour would be soothing. And maybe I could convince Ivan to leave the door off.

He handed a lilac paint chip to the clerk and ordered one tin. We walked home, carrying the tin between us.

Ivan and I painted the room together. It didn’t take long. It was a small room after all. But I still slept in the living room for the next few days to give the walls a chance to dry.

I was a bundle of nerves that first night in my own bedroom. But Ivan had found a second-hand lamp for me and
he set it on the wooden crate that was my nightstand. “If you get scared, turn on the light,” he whispered. He sat at the edge of my mattress and sang the
kolysanka
until I fell asleep. I dreamt of lilac bushes on a sunny, windy day …