––––––––
Mama had insisted I continue to attend class, despite my protests. She said Papa would have wished it so. That it was for my future. That I would have to support Nicolae if anything happened to her.
And of course, she was entirely right. It is a peculiar feature of childhood that, the less years you have behind you, the more difficult to plan for that which is still to come. But at the time I could not help thinking she just wanted me out of the house.
This was a belief that had been reinforced just days previously, when I had been sent home from school early, heavy with sickness.
I had entered the house to find Mama in the company of a uniformed soldier. I was stricken with panic, fearing he had come to remove her as they had Papa. But fear turned to wild incomprehension as realization dawned he was there as her guest, made welcome in our very home, his jacket draped over a chair, his boots at the door.
After all she had said of them.
After what they had done to Papa.
I had run to my room, flinging the door shut, overwhelmed with tears.
Tears of confusion.
Of frustration.
Of betrayal.
My thoughts were myriad and it took some while for Mama to comfort me to a state where I could converse rationally.
Through her own tears she had tried to justify herself. He was Romanian, like us, she had said. Not a German. An officer of the Iron Guard, not of the Gestapo.
As if this somehow lessened the crime.
But when I demanded to know the precise nature of her entertainment she screamed incoherently at me and ran to the privacy of her room, shouting that the welfare of her children had to come before all else.
Of course, I was too young then to appreciate her sacrifice.
The bell began tolling its notice of time’s passing, intruding the present into my thoughts once more, and I realized I would be late. I hurried myself to the road, shouting a final farewell to Mama as I left.