Stolen Child (5 page)

I didn’t see much of Marusia in those last weeks of summer. Some days she worked such long hours at the farm that she wouldn’t get home until after dinnertime. The task of making an evening meal had fallen to me, but I didn’t mind. I revelled in all the farm produce that Marusia would bring home, depending on the day or week — lettuce, cucumbers, corn, tomatoes, peaches, onions. In the camp, we ate rice, rice and more rice. Now our dinners were a big salad or corn, boiled potatoes and maybe a bit of sausage.

On the morning that I was to start school, Marusia woke me up early and said, “I have a surprise for you.”

When she did it and how she found the time, I do not know, but she had made me a blouse and skirt from that bolt of blue cloth that one of the ladies had brought on our first day here. She had edged the collar with white hand-stitched daisies and had ironed smartly creased pleats into the skirt. I looked up at her through my tears.

“Put it on,
Sonechko
. You don’t want to be late on your first day.”

I slid my arms into the sleeves and as I did up each small white button, I noticed the delicate white stitches that circled each buttonhole. The skirt fit perfectly. Marusia gave me a new pair of white knee socks. Then, with a grin, she pulled out black shiny shoes from a paper bag. I tugged the socks up to my knees and then slipped my feet into the shoes.

“They’re almost new,” said Marusia. “I hope you like them.”

I usually try to stay dignified with Marusia. She is not my mother, after all. But I felt the love she had put in every pleat and the affection of each stitch in this new blouse. I looked at the frayed corner of her own carefully pressed blouse and the lines of weariness under her smiling eyes. I scrambled onto her lap and hugged her fiercely. I could feel hot tears spilling down my cheeks.

“Nadia, my Nadia,” Marusia said, drying my tears with the back of her hand. “I wanted to make you happy.”

I tried to answer but I could not speak. I just nodded, hoping she realized how much I appreciated all that she did for me. I splashed cold water on my face to calm my swollen eyes, and then Marusia braided my hair.

Instead of doing it the usual way, she coiled it up like a crown and then topped it off with a huge white bow. I looked at myself in the mirror — seeing another me in another mirror. A younger me wearing a pink dress, my eyes red from crying …

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” said Marusia.

I blinked. That younger me was gone like a wisp of smoke.

Marusia walked me to Central School. We were the first to arrive.

She pushed the door open and we stepped into the empty hallway. “Your room is down here,” she said, tugging at my hand as she turned and walked down a corridor to the left. She knocked on the door, and when no one answered she turned the knob. The door opened. “Good luck,” she said. She put her fingertips to her lips and blew a kiss to me as she walked out of the school. It wasn’t until she was gone that I realized her walking me to school meant she had missed her ride to work.

I stepped inside the empty classroom. I had peered into this very classroom when I had taken my first walk around the neighbourhood. A large blackboard and a big desk were at the front. Rows of desks filled the rest of the room. Which one should I take? Would the teacher be upset if she came in and found me in the wrong place? I took a chance and sat in a desk in the back corner, then waited for the others to arrive.

In the camp, one of the men who had been a professor before the war taught the few older children a bit of history, and a woman who knew English held classes for the adults as well as children. We sat on benches and used our laps as desks. On the wall had been a paper poster of Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine’s most famous poet. I don’t know where the picture came from. I can’t imagine anyone escaping the war with it. Maybe it arrived in a care package from Canada or the United States. I also had a vague recollection of lessons in German from a stern-faced woman in a one-room schoolhouse, but when this was I could not remember.

I looked down at the beautiful blue outfit that Marusia had made for me. I ran my fingers lightly over the fabric, loving that each stitch had been made just for me …

Vater in the drawing-room. An imposing figure in his black uniform. I see that his tall leather boots are covered with mud. No matter. There are slaves to clean up after him. He sets a package on top of the table and sits down. Mutter sits across from him, with her back rigid on the divan, a stiff smile on her lips. She pats the spot beside her. Eva scrambles to sit there. I sit beside Eva
.

“This is for you, Gretchen,” he says
.

At first I am excited. I lean over and touch the brown paper lightly with one finger
.

“Open it!” says Eva
.

I look at her and see that she is almost bursting with excitement
.

I pull the package to my lap and tear it open. A beautiful pink brocade dress. It is not like anything I have ever had before. I know I am supposed to be happy, but the sight of this dress makes me feel ill. I look up at Vater and put a smile on my face. “Thank you,” I say
.

Vater grins. “Now the entire Himmel family will look nice at the rallies.”

I take it to my room. I hold it to my shoulders and turn to the mirror. I look like someone else
.

That night, I cannot sleep. I turn on my bed lamp and get the dress. It smells of fresh laundry soap and a faint scent of something else. Sweat? I turn it inside out and examine it for clues. I notice an extra ribbon of cloth attached along the side of the back zipper. I fold it over. A name tag. Tiny embroidered letters:
Rachel Goldstein.

A sudden image of that girl in the lineup, the one in yellow
.

I push the dress away from me
.

Children’s voices coming through the classroom window, laughing and calling, sounding excited, yanked me back to the present. Tears welled in my eyes, so I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself.

I could tell from the sounds outside that other children were getting closer, but none of them came into the classroom. Maybe I should have waited outside instead of coming into this room? But just then a woman with straight hair cut to her chin walked in and I was trapped.

She smiled at me and said, “You must be our new student, Natalie Kraftchuk.”

I stumbled to my feet and bowed my head to her and in my best English I said, “Good morning Mrs. Teacher. My name is Nadia Kravchuk.”

She held out her hand to me. “I am Miss Ferris. The other children will be coming in soon.”

I shook her hand. She turned and left the room, so I sat back down.

I heard a loud bell and nearly jumped back out of my seat. Within minutes, the hallway buzzed with children’s voices. Miss Ferris came back into the classroom. Behind her was a line of children.

A gangly boy with short hair was the first to enter the classroom. He gazed around, then his eyes locked on mine. I could feel my embarrassment rising like heat as he stared at my shoes, my outfit, the bow in my hair. And then he laughed. I would have crawled under my desk if I could. He elbowed the boy who was coming in after him and pointed at me. That boy grinned. Next came a girl. She was dressed in a skirt and blouse, but nothing fancy. Her hair fell in loose curls to her shoulders. No bow. No braids. She glanced in my direction and then quickly looked away as if she hadn’t seen me. She took a seat as far away from me as she could. Other students came in after her. Not one said hello and each scrambled to get a desk far away from me.

The last student to enter was a girl with golden skin and a glossy black braid that reached down almost to her waist. There was nowhere else to sit except beside me, so she did. She turned to me and smiled — she had a gap between her two front teeth and her eyes were friendly. “Hi,” she said. “My name is Linda. What’s yours?”

Linda. What a beautiful name. I could have cried from relief. “Nadia,” I said. I wanted to ask if she lived in the neighbourhood, but I was such a bundle of nerves that the English words left me. Instead, I smiled stupidly at her.

“Children!” Miss Ferris stood at the front of the room and clapped her hands. “We have two new students this year. Natalie and Bob, please stand up.”

Why was she calling me Natalie? I stumbled to my feet. A boy at the opposite side of the room also stood up, the tips of his ears turning red from the attention.

“Children, let us all welcome Natalie Kravchuk and Bob Landry.”

“Welcome to Central School, Natalie and Bob,” the students called out in ragged unison.

We both sat down. Bob’s entire ears were now red, as was his face. I’m sure I was just as red. Miss Ferris took attendance and then passed out new workbooks and thick pencils. Then she had each of us stand up one by one and tell the class what we had done over the summer.

Because I was at the back of the class, my turn was last. That gave me time to prepare, but it also gave me time to get nervous. I had no idea how to explain what I did over the summer. I could do it in Ukrainian or Russian or Yiddish or German … but English? Finally it was my turn. I stood up.

“I am
Nadia
Kravchuk. I moved to Canada this summer,” I said slowly and carefully.

There were rumblings of chuckles around me. I was about to sit down, but Miss Ferris said, “What did you do when you got here, Natal– Nadia?”

“I learned English.”

One of the boys at the front of the class burst out laughing. “Not very well,” he called out.

“Yeah,” someone else said, “And she looks like a Nazi.”

I could feel my face go hot with shame. My last name had been Himmel. I’d had a sister named Eva. I called my parents
Mutter
and
Vater
. Wasn’t I a Nazi?

Marusia had told me again and again that I wasn’t, but what about my memories? Her words and my memories didn’t seem to match.

Miss Ferris rapped a ruler hard on her desk and shouted, “Silence!” She pointed at the two boys. “David and Eric, go to the principal’s office.
Now
.” I sat down, wishing I could disappear. It was bad enough that I looked and dressed differently from everyone else, but my accent made me stand out too.

I’m not quite sure what else she taught us that morning. All I could think about was getting home so I could change my clothes and comb out my hair. How I wished I could change my accent!

I dutifully copied down the things that Miss Ferris wrote on the board and I murmured thanks under my breath when she didn’t call on me to say anything more. After what seemed like too many hours, a bell rang. I watched the others put their workbooks away. Thank goodness. My torture was over.

I closed up my books and shoved them into the desk and then followed the other students out the door. Linda, the one friendly student, was close behind me. As soon as the freshness of the outside air hit my face I felt a sense of relief. It had been like a prison in there. I began to walk out of the schoolyard and towards my house.

Linda trotted beside me and tugged on my arm. “You can’t leave school property!”

I turned to her in confusion. The bell had rung, after all. “But the bell … ”

Her mouth widened in its gap-toothed smile. “That was just the recess bell. You can’t go home until the lunch bell.”

“I cannot stay here.”

“They’ll send the truant officer after you!”

“The what?” I asked.

“The police. You can’t go home during school.”

Even the thought of police didn’t stop me from leaving. Linda stood at the edge of the schoolyard with shock on her face, but I kept on going, picking up speed as I got farther from the school. The dressy shoes pinched at my heels, but I didn’t slow down. By the time I got to our house I had a stitch in my side. I flipped the welcome mat at the front door and grabbed the key, opened the door and hurried in.

I had rarely been in the house alone and was struck by its eerie quiet. It was almost like the house was watching me with silent disapproval. I kicked off my shoes and ran upstairs, taking comfort in the sound of my feet thumping against the wooden steps. I threw myself onto the bed, punching my pillow in anger. How could I go back to that school? The other children hated me.

I shrieked at the top of my lungs and that felt good because only the house could hear me and I could be as miserable as I wanted. Once the tears began, they wouldn’t stop. I cried out of pity for myself as the new kid at school. I cried in anger for feeling so helpless. But
mostly I cried out of shame for the girl that I must have been in the past. Did I really belong here? Was I a Nazi? Maybe I didn’t deserve to be safe. Where
did
I belong?

I don’t know how long I cried, but my eyes got so puffy I could barely open them. I looked down at the beautiful outfit that Marusia had made me and realized that it was now wrinkled and damp. What an ungrateful, horrible person I was. How would Marusia feel about me now? Would she send me back to that other family, the one I had tried to push out of my memory?

I unbuttoned the blouse and tried to shake out the wrinkles. I hung it on a hanger and put it on the hook at the back of my door. I undid the skirt and stepped out of it, being careful not to damage it further. I folded it and smoothed out the wrinkles with my hands and then carefully set it in my top dresser drawer. I took out the oldest skirt and blouse that I could find and put that on instead. “It’s all you deserve, you ungrateful thing.”

It was
my
voice saying it, but it sounded like something I had heard long ago. I tried to undo my braids. I was able to get the elastics out from the bottom, but I couldn’t undo the elaborate knot on the top of my head because Marusia had wrapped my braids together so tightly with the big white bow. My arms ached from the effort. I lay back down on the bed. I wanted to sleep, but couldn’t, so I stared at the ceiling.

A scene from my past slid into my mind …

The men were separated from the women. I stood on my toes to see where they were going but it was too crowded. I thought of that girl in the yellow dress with the yellow star, standing in a lineup just like this.

“Remove all of your clothing,” said a uniformed woman in a bored voice.

I turned to Marusia in alarm, but she was already unbuttoning her tattered and filthy blouse. She threw it on the pyramid of burning clothing. She took off her skirt and threw it in the fire as well. “Hurry, Nadia,” she said.

My outfit had once been a pink party dress, but now it was blackened with grease and grass and sweat. How many flatcars had we ridden on and how many ditches had we hidden in to get to this place? The days blurred in my memory. I tried to undo my once-delicate ribbon belt, but it was shredded so badly that I couldn’t find the beginning of the knot. And I couldn’t reach the zipper at the back of the dress.

Marusia put her hands at the collar of my dress and with a single motion ripped it off me. She threw it into the fire.

“Undergarments too,” said the woman.

We threw it all into the fire and then stood in the next line.

A woman with a large pair of shears cut off my braids, then snipped away until my scalp was bare. I watched my filthy hair fall onto the ground in clumps.

Marusia’s face remained still as her hair was cut away. We stepped into line with the other refugees waiting for showers. At the door a woman sprayed us with something awful. I screamed.

“It will be all right,” said Marusia. “That’s just to kill the lice.”

We crowded into the white-tiled room and were enveloped in scalding streams of water. I watched black
trickles of grime and dead lice swirling down the floor drain.

I was glad to be free of that pink dress and all that it stood for. We were given sheets to cover our nakedness when we exited the shower. The sheets had lice, but we wrapped ourselves in them anyway.

Next came the interview. We stood in line yet again, shivering and damp, but cleaner than we had been since our escape. I stood on my toes to see what was happening at the front of the line. A uniformed man sat at a table, taking notes. He stamped a paper and sent the refugee in either one direction or another.

Marusia bent down and whispered in my ear. “Tell them you’re my daughter. Your name is Nadia. You were born in Lviv … ”

I knew that if they found out where I really came from, the Soviets would take me and I would be sent to Siberia. But where
did
I really come from? That I didn’t know. Did Marusia?

A loud banging at the door snapped me back to the present. Linda had said it was against the law to run away from school. Were the police after me? I was too terrified to move.

Another banging. “Nadia!” A familiar woman’s voice.

I peeked out the edge of my window. It was Miss MacIntosh. Maybe I could pretend that I wasn’t home. But just as I was thinking that, she saw me. “Open the door!” she called. She didn’t look happy.

I walked down the stairs, but still didn’t open the door. I ran to the bathroom and looked at my face in the mirror. My eyelids were puffed out and red and my face was
swollen. What would Miss MacIntosh think? I ran cold water over a cloth and held it to my face. The coolness was soothing, but when I looked back in the mirror, the same puffy eyes looked back at me. It was no use.

The knocking on the door was more insistent than ever now. “Nadia!” Miss MacIntosh called. “I know you’re in there.”

I opened the front door. The expression on Miss MacIntosh’s face transformed in an instant from annoyance to concern. She stepped in and shut the door behind her.

“What has happened to you?”

I looked down at my feet and didn’t answer. I was afraid that if I tried, it would be sobs, not words, that would come out.

All at once I felt Miss MacIntosh’s warm arms envelop me and she picked me up like I was nothing more than a baby. She hugged me close and I felt myself go limp. I don’t know whether it was relief or resignation. She carried me into the kitchen and sat down on a wooden chair, still holding me in her arms. She rocked me on her lap, even though my legs were almost as long as hers and my feet could touch the floor. She murmured, “It’s going to be fine, Nadia.”

I almost started to cry again, but something deep inside me told me that it was time to stop. So instead I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I got myself out of Miss MacIntosh’s arms, and stood up.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“You ran away from school,” she said. “You need to come back.”

“I cannot.” I folded my arms and tried to look defiant.

“You don’t have a choice,” said Miss MacIntosh. “It’s against the law to run away from school.”

So what Linda had told me was true. Would the police be coming next?

Miss MacIntosh must have noted the panic on my face. She said, “If you come back this afternoon, everything will be fine.”

“But how can I go back, looking like this?”

“Be strong, Nadia,” Miss MacIntosh said sternly. “I’m not even supposed to be here right now. I have yard duty. But when Linda told me you had run off, I had to check on you.”

She stood up and opened our icebox. She took out two apples. “Hold these on your eyes. It will make the swelling go down.”

As I did that, I could hear her making kitchen sounds — slicing bread and frying eggs. The aroma of sizzling butter and eggs made my stomach grumble. I heard a plate clatter onto the table.

“Eat,” said Miss MacIntosh.

I took an apple off one eye. She was sitting across from me, eating an open-faced egg sandwich with a knife and fork. I set both apples down and devoured my own lunch. I was surprised at how hungry I was.

I took both plates to the sink and rinsed them when we were finished.

“We need to leave in fifteen minutes,” said Miss MacIntosh. “I want to fix your hair.”

We went into the bathroom together and I watched in the mirror as Miss MacIntosh carefully undid Marusia’s elaborate braids from the top of my head. “It was a beautiful
hairdo,” she said. “Just not right for school.”

As she combed out my hair, a strange expression appeared on her face. “You’ve got a black mark here,” she said. “Right at the hairline.”

I inhaled sharply. My tattoo. I turned my left palm upward and stared at the same mark on my inner wrist, but I turned it back down before Miss MacIntosh saw it. Both tattoos were so plain that most people didn’t notice.

“It must be a mole,” I lied.

I watched Miss MacIntosh’s face in the mirror. She was about to say something, but then changed her mind. Sometimes I wondered if she knew more about my past than I did. She gently combed out the tangles. The comb in my hair reminded me of another woman who had tackled my tangles, but with the tug of resentment, not care. With it came another flicker of that pink brocade dress …

Miss MacIntosh didn’t walk to school with me, which I was thankful for. She must have sensed how humiliating it was for me to go back at all, and arriving with a teacher would be that much more unbearable.