The next morning, the eldest daughter she raised gets the littlest one ready for school. She has already seen to the mill, fed the few chickens they have left, and collected their eggs for breakfast. She tells her mother she’s considering fixing sandwiches to sell in the afternoons. She knows she doesn’t have the money to feed her and her daughter. She has no intention of being a burden. She doesn’t want her to have to cook either: she knows she hates it. All she asks is that she let the littlest one help with the sandwiches: the girl can sell anything.
On the way to school, the mother asks her little girl if she’d like to help her big sister. In exchange, they’ll give her a share of their earnings.
How much?
It depends on what they make every day.
The girl asks if it’ll be enough for her next oldest sister to come home from the country she’s traveled to.
The sister cries when they tell her this over the phone. And laughs to cover it up. She asks how school is going.
Better, since she got glasses.
She’s sad: she would’ve liked to gift her some herself.
There’s time: her sister will need new ones every so often. Is there anything she needs?
Nothing. She has everything there. Even things she didn’t know existed. Does she need anything?
They’re always in need of something, but it’s not the daughter’s job to solve their problems. She thinks the girl’s doing more than enough by helping her sister go to university, so she says no, they don’t need a thing.
Has she heard anything about the other daughter?
No. She’s been quiet for a long time. According to her other siblings, she’s always been like this: vanishing for long stretches, but always returning. They’ve told her to trust that she will.
The mother’s sorry to hear this. She’d have liked her to know how near death her grandma is. She thinks a word from her might lift the woman’s spirits.
The daughter says she can pretend. The mother says her mother will know at once. She’d hate her for it. If she gets back in touch she’d like her to beg the girl to reach out. Without pressuring her, of course. She doesn’t want them to drift apart too.
The daughter can’t promise she won’t. She thinks she might have gotten upset last time they spoke.
Why? Had she mentioned her?
No. She’d called the girl dumb. It hadn’t been on purpose. She’d wanted to say that she wasn’t very clever, but, when it came down to it, she’d used the other word.
Why’d she call her that?
Maybe because she was. What else could explain her blindness to everything they did to recover her? The sister at university was right about that.
The mother would like her to stop blaming the girl.
She was trying. She knew they didn’t have the same father. The girl was a bit like her dad, wasn’t she?
A lot.
What kind of person was he?
There wasn’t time enough left on the call to tell her.
It was a pity the girl’s adoptive brothers weren’t her sons: they were good people. They were always asking how she and her sisters were doing. And they were interested in their grandma’s health. Though they didn’t mean to insist, they’d once again offered to help, if needed.
The mother asks her to thank them on her behalf and remind them that the door of her house is always open to them. Does she know if there’s been any progress with their families?
Very little.
It’s a long process. They mustn’t lose hope.
They haven’t. They seem to be constantly preparing for the moment when it’s their turn to be reclaimed. At times, they seem younger than they are.
The grandmother tells her she should consider adopting them.
Is she kidding?
No. They need a mother. And she needs to recover a child.
She needs to recover her own.
What she really needed was to bury her. She felt bad saying so, but somebody had to: she’d lost that girl just as she’d lost the war. She’d have to come to terms with it, eventually. And though her mother hadn’t been able to help her win, she could offer to help her lose. She knew how. The day they buried her, they could lay something at her feet which represented that baby. She’d look after her, either in the thereafter or in nothingness.
What sort of thing could it be? After they were separated, she’d been left with nothing of her daughter’s. And she couldn’t go to the nuns who’d kept her and try to recover something. She refused to break her promise to the people who’d helped her find her girl. And she didn’t think they’d still have any of her garments. Knowing what they’d done, they wouldn’t have left any evidence.
Her mother isn’t convinced. If they didn’t have any of the girl’s garments anymore it was probably because they’d used them for other kids until they’d worn thin. She doesn’t think they’d have bothered to burn them. She didn’t think they much cared about what they’d done.
Would she ever forgive them?
Could she?
She tried every day.
She wanted to imagine they hadn’t had a choice. Just like the soldiers who destroyed the house her dad built them. Just like them, when they went up the mountains and left her behind.
She couldn’t.
She should. It wouldn’t do her any good to hate people she didn’t know and who she couldn’t say were alive or not. Was she going to waste the last of her energy on it?
Was she going to waste her own on suffering over things that would never happen and following orders that no longer made sense? She reminds her of a woman she worked for before meeting her father and understanding that a person should never serve others. This woman kept in her home the furniture of a man who’d left in a hurry under popular pressure, even years after he was murdered abroad by someone he’d thought was on his side. She kept waiting for him to send for it or return to claim it. One day, she asked the woman if she thought it was possible. The woman never understood the question. She hadn’t wanted to. And she was the same.
Why didn’t she want to give up on her daughter?
Because she didn’t want to accept that everything was over. That it had ended a long time ago. Almost as soon as it began.
The woman who’d given her and her daughter guidance had said the same about herself.
Why had she let them go to war, then? Why hadn’t she stopped them or gone after them and asked them to come back?
Because she’s only seeing it now.
Would she have stopped them if she’d seen it earlier?
The mother stays silent. The daughter asks again.
She knows the answer. So why ask?
She wants to hear it from her.
Maybe the daughter she didn’t raise gets her cruelty from her, not her father.
She apologizes.
There’s no need. Maybe she deserves it. Maybe moving there was a mistake. She apologizes. She should never have made her take her in.
That night, she’ll call one of her daughters and tell her she misses the farm named after a horse more than she’d bargained for. She wants to go back there. Can she help?
Her granddaughter hears her. She asks her not to go: she won’t be able to follow her if she does. She can’t take her daughter all the way to her house and look after them both. And she doesn’t want to abandon her mother. Though she won’t admit it, she isn’t the woman she once was. Her body doesn’t hold up the same. She can’t manage it all.
Is that why she came home?
No. She’s noticed it now that she’s back, but it may have started earlier.
She doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t want to complicate things.
She isn’t. Hasn’t she noticed her daughter always smiling at her? And her sister can see properly now. If she stumbles, it’s because her feet are twisted. When she has the chance, she’ll take her to the doctor to be examined. Maybe it isn’t too late to get help. Does anyone in her family have feet like that?
She can’t recall. Maybe it’s from the other side. Her mother’s right to worry about her. She doesn’t know what she would’ve done with a girl like that. They wouldn’t have gotten far. She might have had to let her go at some point.
Could she have gone searching for her later, like her daughter had? Could she have given up on her once she’d found her? Could she have buried her at her mother’s feet? Could she have admitted it was all over, after fighting like she had?
She’s sorry she asked. She hadn’t meant to hurt her.
Is she sure?
She can’t lie to her.
Neither can she. Earlier, she said she’d earned the right to be buried in the same cemetery as those who’d fought, but it wasn’t true: she hadn’t. She wasn’t like her or her husband, or like her other sons. She was one of those people who fled and hid and hoped for acts of God. Only when she’d been attacked had she stood up to someone. She would’ve been useless in the mountains. Her feet might not be like the littlest’s but she was always banging into everything in life, just like the girl. If she had to bury one of her daughters, it shouldn’t be at her feet.
She disagrees. She can’t think of anyone who’d take better care of the girl she lost. The day they bury her, she’ll place some of her daughter with her, not at her feet but in her arms: she might not have picked up a weapon, but she’d never let any of her children go.
She’d done nothing to stop them either.
She hadn’t had a choice.