1947

I screamed most of Wednesday, March 25, 1947. At People’s Hospital in Lublin, we nurses were happy to hear such screams, for it meant a healthy mother. A quiet birth was often a sad one. I was pleased that my baby’s lung function was productive as well, for as a maternity nurse myself, I’d seen things go wrong in seconds. Breech births. Blue babies. Our doctors were excellent (including my sister), but it was the maternity division nurses who made it hum. I was lucky it was a routine labor, since pain medication and other drugs were in short supply.

Pietrik stood next to my bed, swaddled baby in his arms, and every nurse on the floor gathered around him. He wore a white hospital smock over his factory coveralls and held her in a most natural way, not stiff and awkward like so many new fathers. As kind as my visitors were, I just wanted to be alone with the baby and get to know our girl.

“Give her back, Pietrik,” I said, my vocal cords raw.

Pietrik laid the baby back in my arms. I was soon sleepy, since it was warm for such a large ward—over fifty beds. My ward supervisor had reserved the best one for me, on the far wall away from the drafty windows, next to the radiator. I breathed the baby’s sweet-sour scent and watched the fontanel atop her head beat out a soft rhythm. She was as blond as Mrs. Mikelsky’s baby. Jagoda would have been how old by now? Eight? Should we name our baby Jagoda? That might be too sad. Maybe a name like Irenka.

Hope.

Pietrik lobbied for the name Halina, arguing my mother would have wanted that. But didn’t he see it would be too painful to say my dead mother’s name ten times a day?

The series of bells signaling visitor time rang, and the nurses scattered. Marthe was first to arrive. She carried a plate of paczkis in one hand, napkins in the other.

“We come bearing gifts,” she said. “Paczki for the mother?” Papa brought up the rear bearing Marthe’s purse.

“No, thank you,” I said. I felt as round and fat as a paczki myself. When would Zuzanna be back to fend off Marthe? She’d assisted at the delivery but had been called away to set a fracture.

Marthe placed a sugar-frosted paczki on a napkin and set it next to me. “This is no time for a slenderizing course.”

I resisted sweets since I not only had baby fat to lose, but a cavity in my left canine tooth as well, a souvenir from Ravensbrück, and which stung when it met with sugar.

My father kissed my hand, then my forehead and the baby’s too. “How are you, Kasia?”

Pietrik lifted the baby from my arms, leaving me cold. He handed Papa the baby, Marthe’s purse still on Papa’s arm.

“We are thinking of naming her Halina,” Pietrik said.

“Well, I like the name Irenka,” I said. “It means hope—”

“Halina, of course,” Papa said. “How nice.”

Were those tears in his eyes?

“She favors you, Pietrik,” Marthe said. “Will you christen her at home? Don’t even think about a church.”

She was right. The Polish Workers’ Party no longer simply suggested a ban on religious ceremonies, including baptisms and weddings. It openly discouraged them and made life terribly difficult for those who disobeyed. Marthe and Papa were still not married, though many priests wed couples in secret.

Marthe scooped the baby from Papa’s arms. “This may be hard for you, Kasia, with your bad leg once you come home. I will take care of the baby.”

As Marthe cooed over the baby, a dark wave crashed over me. Why wasn’t my mother here? Matka would walk the ward with the baby and show her off. She would tell me stories of myself as a child and make me laugh about it all.

All at once, my face was wet with tears. I’d helped hundreds of mothers fight baby blues, but it was harder than it appeared, like being sucked down into a dark hole.

“I need the baby back, please,” I said.

Suddenly I wanted them all gone, Pietrik too. If I couldn’t have my mother, I wanted no one.

Pietrik took the baby from Marthe, who looked pained to release her, and placed her back in my arms.

“Kasia needs to rest,” he said.

Marthe gathered her plate of paczkis. “We’ll be back tomorrow with pierogies.”

“No thank you,” I said. “They feed us well here.”

Once they left and Pietrik went back to the factory, the baby and I drifted in and out of sleep. When the radiator started hissing steam, I woke with a start thinking I was back on the train to Ravensbrück, the train’s whistle screaming as we came to the platform. My heart raced, but I calmed once I looked at the baby. She shifted in my arms.

Halina? So she would have my mother’s name after all? As it was, I could barely look at my mother’s picture without falling to pieces. More terrifying, could the child’s name somehow cause her to follow Matka’s terrible path? To live a wonderful life, cut short? A shiver ran through me. Stranger things have happened.

Once Pietrik and Papa started calling the baby Halina, I gave in and soon called her that myself. I needed to grow up after all. I was a mother now, with responsibilities, no longer a child. Plus, everyone said it was a beautiful name, and it suited the baby. It honored my mother, and she would have been pleased.

But somehow I couldn’t shake the notion I should have named her Hope.