I had a friend in Linda, parents who loved me and a roof over my head. The weeks marched by, and before the first frost, Ivan had finished all the painting and had installed the inside doors. Marusia and I planted tulip and daffodil bulbs by the front walk. I looked forward to seeing them bloom the following spring. I was lucky to be loved by Marusia and Ivan.
It wasn’t all perfect. Eric still called me “the Hitler girl” whenever he saw me at recess or on the way home — and he made a point of seeing me often. Thank goodness that other boy had tired of the game. My memories of the past had stopped coming at me so quickly and I was able to sort some of them out, but there were still huge blanks in my memory.
On the last Sunday evening in October, I sat between Marusia and Ivan on the cinder-block steps at the back of our house. Someone in the neighbourhood must have been burning leaves, because there was a haze in the air and I could smell smoke. Marusia brewed a pot of camomile tea with honey and we each sipped a mug of it. As I sat there between the two people who had changed their lives to protect me, I looked at the swing that Ivan had made me. I saw the lilac bushes that he had planted for me. I thought of Marusia protecting me in the camp and of the skirt and blouse that her farm-worn hands had stitched with love. I began to cry.
“Sonechko,” said Marusia, leaning her head onto my shoulder. “What is the matter?”
My throat was filled with sobs. “Nothing … it’s fine, it’s fine … ” I tried to stop the tears but they had a mind of their own.
“Did you have another nightmare?” asked Ivan.
I shook my head. “I am happy,” I said. “I don’t know how you can love me, but I’m glad that you do … ”
“Nadia, Nadia,” cooed Marusia. “You may not be the daughter of my blood, but you are the daughter of my heart. I love you and Ivan loves you.”
“But I don’t deserve to be loved,” I sobbed. “You say I’m not a Nazi, but my memories say I am.”
Ivan pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and dried my tears. “Tell us everything you know, Nadia. Maybe we can help you make sense of it all.”
My memories tumbled out. I told them about Eva and the pink dress and where I thought it came from. I told them about the books I was forbidden to read and the one I was forced to read. I told them about meeting Hitler. It seemed like Marusia had known some of this, but not all. Ivan sat listening in silence, his lips set in a thin grim line. When I finished, I was empty of tears.
“Do you remember when we met?” Marusia asked.
I closed my eyes and thought hard. Marusia was so much a part of my life, but when we met? I drew a blank. Marusia and I escaping on the flatbed of the train was a vivid memory. And the day we arrived at the DP camp. On the edge of my dreams was an image of Marusia with that same German family at that same farm in the countryside. I didn’t know how she fit in, but she was somehow there and so were lilac bushes. Marusia back then was like a once familiar song now forgotten.
“Do you want me to tell you about it?” she asked.
I began to shake. I had no idea why. “Not now.”
Marusia lightly touched my forearm with her fingers. “I don’t mean to push you,” she said. “But it is important for you to fill those forgotten parts of your life. Otherwise, we’ll never find out who you really are.”
That is what scared me the most. Did I want to know who I really was? What if I didn’t like that person? That was the thought I fell asleep to …
I pull at the handle of the door but it won’t open and the window won’t roll down. I pound on the glass. “Let me out, let me out.” Outside, the world is filled with smoke. I hear sirens. See a face that looks like mine.
The front door clicked softly open and shut. I bolted out of bed and scrambled to the window. Ivan. I knew it was Ivan on his way to the foundry in the darkness of the early morning. Why did this sound scare me so?
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and thought of the dream that was still a fragment of fear in my mind. Why did I dream I was trying to get out of a safe car when a building was burning outside? It made no sense. And how could I be outside and inside that car at the same time?
I tiptoed downstairs and slipped out to the backyard. I sat on my swing in the darkness and breathed in the faint scent of burned leaves. The smell reminded me of something that happened long ago, something I did remember …
The long black car idled beside the smoking ruin of a newly bombed factory. Vater got out. “I won’t be long,” he said to Mutter as he closed the door.
“You’d better not be,” Mutter said, more to herself than to Eva or me. “We can’t be late for this rally.”
Yet another rally. It was hot in the car and my pink dress felt itchy. My hair was pulled so tightly into a braid that my scalp ached. Eva’s hair cascaded loose down her back and her dress was made of cool pink muslin, yet she couldn’t sit still. The buckle of her shoe nearly caught on my skirt as she clambered over me to get to the window. I smoothed it back down and sighed.
“Sit down, Eva,” said Mutter, reaching over me to tug at Eva’s dress, but Eva stayed where she was.
“It’s hot in here, Mutti.” Eva rolled down the window and a cool smoky breeze drifted in.
“We’re going to smell like smoke,” said Mutter.
“At least we won’t smell sweaty,” said Eva.
Had I said that, I would have been slapped. I arched my neck so I could see what was happening at the factory. I knew that this one made weapons for the war and that was why it was attacked.
One long wing of the building was bombed flat and smoke curled out of the remains. Anyone who had worked in that part of the factory would have died.
Vater was giving orders to boys who wore swastika armbands. Frightened women in grey rags limped out of billowing smoke. Everything was in shades of grey except for the slashes of blood on clothing where sharp fragments of blasted brick had cut forearms and shoulders. Blood dried a sticky brown in tangles of blond and black and chestnut hair where shrapnel had hit scalps.
“Why aren’t they wearing the yellow stars?” asked Eva.
Mutter leaned over to get a better look at the women. I did the same. These ones were wearing white and blue badges saying OST.
“They’re the eastern workers,” said Mutter.
“Are they animals like the Jews, Mutti?”
“Yes, dear, that’s why they work in the munitions factory. You wouldn’t want Germans to get bombed, would you?”
I squinted at individual faces in the sad and tattered crowd of OST workers. One girl had hair not quite as fair as my own. As if she could feel my stare, she looked up. It was like I was seeing an older version of myself. Our eyes met and her mouth formed a wide O of shock. She tried to call something to me but then one of the Hitler Youth stepped in front of her and pushed her away …
The back door opened with a squeak. I blinked once, and then again, and looked around. It was daylight and I was on my swing. My feet were blue with cold. I looked to the back door and Marusia was standing there, clutching a thin housecoat around her shoulders.
“Nadia,” she said. “I had no idea you were out here. You are going to catch your death.”
I stumbled a bit on frozen legs as I got off the swing. Marusia wrapped a blanket around me when I got inside. She busied herself at the stove, then set a mug of scalding cocoa on the table in front of me. It warmed my fingers as I raised it to my lips. Flashes and flakes of that memory still seemed as real as my cocoa. That girl who looked like me — I knew now that it wasn’t me. And the OST badge she wore — where had I seen one before?
“Did you remember something more?”
“Not about when we met,” I said. “I remembered about that black car and I know why there was smoke.”
I told her about the bombing and the girl who looked like me. She reached out and took one of my hands. She didn’t say anything for a bit. It was like she was trying to figure out what to say. “Millions from Ukraine and Poland were taken as Ostarbeiters — OST workers.”
I had an image of Marusia in a worn grey dress, with an OST badge stitched to her chest. I set my cocoa down so quickly that some of it sloshed onto the table. I covered my face with my hands, but the image wouldn’t go away. “You were an OST worker too, weren’t you?”
“Nadia,” Marusia said. “Your memory is coming back. Do you remember when we met?”
“Were you at that bombed-out factory? Was it you I saw?” But even as I asked the question, I knew that I was wrong. Looking at Marusia was not like looking at an older me.
“We met at the farm, Nadia. Try to remember.”
Parts of it came back to me … The military truck stopping in our drive. A soldier unlatching the back door and an OST woman tumbling out onto the gravel. From the stench I could tell she’d been travelling for a long time. Marusia trying to stand, but her legs so wobbly that she fell back down. Looking up and seeing me. Then me feeling so guilty of my finery and of who I was, and running back into the farmhouse to hide in shame.
“I remember, Marusia” I said in a small voice. “I remember now. Where did you come from?”
“Zelena,” said Marusia. “A small village in eastern Ukraine. The Germans came and ordered everyone my age to come to the village square. Anyone who didn’t come was rooted out and shot. They sorted through us. I was loaded into the back of a truck.” She brushed a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. “It wasn’t heated and we weren’t given food. Some people had bits of food with them and we shared it. We travelled for many days.”
“And then you were taken to the farm?”
“No,” said Marusia. “I was sent to work at the Ford Werke factory in Cologne.”
Wisps of the past drifted into my mind. The bombed-out weapons plant … “I’m glad they didn’t have you making bombs,” I whispered.
“In that way I was lucky,” said Marusia. “But we were still slaves.”
“How did you get to the farm?” I asked.
“At the car factory, they locked us into a big barracks at night,” said Marusia. “But I escaped. I was caught and sent back, but the factory didn’t want me back. They said I was undependable, so I was sent to a concentration camp. But I convinced them that I was a good cook. I was given to General Himmel, who gave me to his wife.”
I stared at my cocoa. The man that I knew as Vater, Marusia knew as General Himmel. The thought of what she had been through made my stomach churn.
“It is good that you’re beginning to remember,” she said. “As you remember more, you will understand why you have nothing to feel guilty about.”
“Why don’t you just tell me everything you know about my past?” I asked her. “Wouldn’t that be simpler?”
“I don’t know your whole past,” said Marusia. “I’m afraid that if I tell you what I know, it could influence your memories. It’s best for you to air this out as the memories surface.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” I told her angrily. “You don’t have to live with these nightmares.”
Marusia was silent for a moment. She brushed away a tear from her eye, then reached out her hand and placed it on top of mine. “I am living with my own ghosts, Sonechko.”