Half Life

by Jillian Cantor

  I tell Bronia and Hela this in the hours before my wedding on July 26th, as they help me steam my dress and fix my hair, and Hela gives me a funny look, like she thinks living in Paris these last years has made me mad. She and Papa made the long journey here for my wedding—and Papa has accepted my decision to stay in Paris much better than I might have expected. But Hela is in love with Stanislaw, back in Warsaw. How can she possibly understand? “Maybe someday,” she says, wistfully. “Poland will be better for women, and you and Pierre will come back to us.”

  Bronia smiles and smoothes the wrinkles from the skirt of my dress. “Who would’ve thought the most logical one of us would also become the most lovesick, hmmm?”

  But Bronia is wrong. My love for Pierre is not a sickness at all. It is light and breath and water: now I need it to survive just as much as I need my work.

  MY WEDDING ATTIRE IS A GIFT FROM BRONIA’S MOTHER-IN-LAW, a beautiful blue dress that I chose for both its practicality and its dark and stunning color. I plan to wear it again and again, and the dark color makes it suitable for the lab.

  After they help me get dressed, Bronia and Hela leave to go get themselves ready, and I am all alone in my room on rue de Châteaudun, perhaps for the very last time.

  I look at myself in the mirror, and am somewhat surprised by the image staring back at me. I am altogether different in a brand-new dress, more feminine. Perhaps it’s the beautiful, spotless material, artfully steamed by my sisters, or the form that has been made just for me, that shows off the curves of my bosom and hourglass shape of my waist. But the person staring back at me is no longer a girl, no longer a Pole. I am an educated woman, a scientist, about to be a wife. A French wife, at that. Madame.

  Someone knocks on the door, and I spin away from the mirror. “Marie,” Pierre’s voice comes through.

  “Come in,” I say, brimming with excitement to see him.

  He steps inside and smiles brightly. “You look so beautiful, mon amour.”

  “You like my new dress?” I turn around, so he can see the full effect of it.

  “You could wear your lab coat to our wedding and you would still be the most beautiful bride in all of Paris.”

  I laugh and turn back to face him. He’s dressed in a dark suit, the tails hanging at the perfect length for his long legs. “Thank goodness you changed out of your lab coat,” I tease him. “You look quite good today yourself. But I think we’re not supposed to see each other before the wedding. Bad luck, they say?”

  Pierre chuckles. “Luck? And how might we quantify that?” Neither of us believes in luck. Luck is nonsense, nothing scientific about it. I’m only repeating what Hela told me before she’d left, a superstition and a warning. I repeat it now more for Pierre’s amusement than for any real belief in such silliness.

  He sweeps across the room in only two large steps, wraps me in a hug, and kisses me gently on the mouth. “I couldn’t wait another minute to tell you what I’d gotten for us,” he says.

  “Something for the lab?” Really we could use so much more temperature-measuring equipment, though we haven’t the space for it.

  “No, mon amour, something for us. My cousin sent some money as a wedding gift, and I purchased us two brand new bicycles. They’ve just arrived.”

  “Bicycles?” It is so impractical of him, and yet the idea of a brand-new bicycle all my own, not a rickety hand-me-down from his brother, delights me beyond reproach, and I clap my hands together with excitement.

  “Yes, and we can take them on our honeymoon. Ride through the entire French countryside.”

  “Oh, Pierre. What a glorious idea.” We’d already planned a few weeks away from the city, but now the idea of bicycling with Pierre, for weeks on end, through the countryside! My chest swells, and I impulsively stand on my toes and kiss his cheek, the hairs of his beard scratching my lips in that delightful way they do. “I cannot wait to be Madame Curie,” I exhale.

  “Come.” He holds out his hand. “Shall we test them out now, ride them to Luxembourg Station, to catch the omnibus to Sceaux?”

  “Oh I don’t know. Will we ruin our wedding clothes going by bicycle?” A bicycle ride will undo all of Bronia’s steaming work on my dress, and probably mess up the curls Hela spent hours putting in my bun.

  “Ruin them?” Pierre says. “Make them better, I say.”

  I smile and take his hand. Though just a few months ago I had chided him for his ridiculous notion of forever, now the very idea of it bubbles up inside of me. I am so full and alive and light, that as I leave my room with this man, about to be my husband, I’m almost surprised my feet can touch the ground.

  If happiness is helium, then love is hydrogen, light enough to float our bicycles upward, toward the sky.

  Marya

  Loksow, Poland, 1896

  My body was not built to carry a baby.

  From the very moment our child began growing within me, I was ill. At first I could not eat any food at all, because even the smell of it was unbearable. Just to prepare it for Kaz for supper—my stomach roiled, and I had to go lie down while he ate at the table alone. And still our apartment was so very tiny that the smells permeated my skin, even in bed. I could not escape them, nor the lingering metallic taste of my own tongue, and I had to constantly fight back the urge to gag.

  After a few months, when my dresses began to fit too tight around the middle, I tried to force myself to eat. I knew enough biology to understand that the baby needed food from me to thrive. But as hard as I tried to force it, half the time, I would throw my meals back up again anyway. The nausea overwhelmed all my senses—I could barely hear or see or speak, because every sound, every sight, every word, made me blindingly, dizzily nauseated.

  Kazimierz had begun assisting Hipolit around the same time I found out about the baby. And ever since, Kaz was gone more than he was home with me. Or maybe it was that I could not even see him, feel him, bear the smell of him when he was nearby. He was no longer my steady, because all I could feel was dizzy and ill.

  I wanted to know how his studies were going, wanted to feel assured that everything was well, and that after our baby was born, things would get easier, and we could still move to Paris at some point. Hela wrote me that she was finishing a chemistry course there, passing her exams with the highest scores in her class. And Bronia had good work as an obstetrical doctor. She had two children now, her daughter Lou and her son Jakub, and she employed the help of a governess to look after them while she practiced medicine and Hela took classes full time.

  I could still see Paris, like a white blinding light at the end of a long, dark passageway. If only I had the strength, if only I could stop feeling so ill, I might just keep pushing toward it. I might eventually get there.

  I CONTINUED GOING TO WORK EACH MORNING AT THE KAMINSKIS, simply because I did not have the option not to. We needed my salary to afford our apartment and food, and I could not expect Kaz to work any harder when already he was teaching during the day and then learning with Hipolit, too. After dark he came home with a stack of exams to grade and a pile of mathematics books and papers from Hipolit to read.

  Hela returned to Warsaw for a monthlong break in April, and both she and Papa begged me to come home and spend some time resting there with them. But I could not afford not to go to work, and as much as I longed for the warmth of Papa and my sister and Warsaw, I wrote them and told them only a half-truth: Kaz could not survive alone in Loksow without me.

  The whole truth was, I often lay in bed at night, alone, while he worked by candlelight at our table. I could hear the pages turning, turning beneath his eager fingers, the noise of it magnified, heightened, the way all my senses were with this growing baby inside of me.

  Some nights I wanted to stand up and yell at him to stop. I wanted to beg him to come to bed, to hold on to me and steady my belly with his warm hands, to take some of the brunt of this discomfort onto himself. Or to do something, anything, to make me feel better. But I never did that. There
was nothing real he could do for me anyway, and I bit back the urge to yell. To act upset with him. To demand something from him. What could he possibly give me that would take this awful sickness away?

  And then there was the strangest thing of all: though I had not desired a baby, and though I constantly felt ill, I already felt this burgeoning love for my own child that grew and grew inside of me day by day, in between moments of sickness: delicate and ephemeral, like a bubble.

  WHEN I WAS ABOUT SIX MONTHS ALONG, KAZ CAME HOME early one evening. It was the first time I’d seen him before dark in weeks, and his sudden presence both surprised and annoyed me. It was a Wednesday, and I was trying to force down some broth before I left to go to Agata’s for class. I had spent most of the day lying on the floor of the Kaminskis’ nursery, allowing Jan and Jedrek to climb on me at will. My body was sore and heavy, and my mind longed for both the stimulation of class tonight and to be with my friends, especially Joanna who was also expecting a baby. As soon as Kaz walked in, I knew he was going to ask me not to go, and that I was going to have to muster up all my energy to argue with him.

  “You’re home early,” I said, forcing a smile. I hoisted my heavy body out of the chair and stepped toward him for a quick kiss. He tasted strangely of vodka, and the mere hint of it turned my stomach. I inhaled, then exhaled slowly, hoping the little bit of broth I’d managed would stay down.

  “Kadi told me she has been worried about you the last few Wednesday nights. You aren’t well enough right now to be traipsing around the city, and for illegal classes no less,” Kaz said, his words slightly slurred.

  I wondered how much vodka he’d drunk and who with. But I didn’t ask because there were so many things that bothered me in what he’d just said, it was too much to also worry about how he’d said it. I closed my eyes, breathed deeply again, trying to calm myself down before I responded. I knew he might see Kadi from time to time, as he spent so much time now with her father, but the very idea of the two of them discussing me, behind my back—that is what bothered me most. Thinking they knew what was best for me, that they had talked about it even. It was infuriating. Kadi was supposed to be my friend. She was supposed to have secrets with me, not with Kaz.

  I went back to the table and choked down another few spoonfuls of broth, as if to emphasize my point. I forced myself to swallow, pushing back the reflex to gag. My stomach churned, and it would be so easy to do what he wanted. Stay here, with him. But once the baby was born it would be harder to attend classes. Maybe impossible. I needed to go while I still could. “I am perfectly well,” I said, defiantly.

  “Kadi said you would say that.” I didn’t like the way he said her name, like she belonged to him, not to me. But then he sighed, walked over, and kissed the top of my head. “At least let me walk you there and home tonight, all right, kochanie? You know I worry about you.”

  I softened at the feel of his warm lips on my head and the sweet notion in his voice that he only wanted to care for me, only wanted what was best for me. He didn’t wish to hold me back, he only wished to keep me well and whole and safe. And besides, I hadn’t really seen him now in weeks. The very idea of a walk with my husband, on a warm spring evening—for a few moments, the swell of nausea abated.

  “Yes,” I told him, feeling more agreeable than I had in a long time. “I would like that very much.”

  AGATA LIVED ONLY THREE BLOCKS AWAY, BUT KAZ AND I TOOK our time. He held on to my hand, and for the beginning of our walk, my body felt lighter again, my mind freer. I was just a girl ambling on the cobblestone streets of Loksow, hopelessly in love with this beautiful mathematician. I entwined arms with him so we were walking elbow to elbow, hip to hip. The warm fresh air was good for my sickness, and as Kaz told me about the equations he was working on with Hipolit and how Hipolit was trying to help him secure a place at the university, I felt a sense of calm come over me that I hadn’t felt in a while.

  “Maybe by the time the baby comes, I will have a job there, and we will have more money,” Kaz said. “You could stop working for the Kaminskis.”

  It had felt a small torture these past few months chasing after those two ill-behaved boys while feeling so ill, and all I could think about each day was that I longed for the baby inside of me to be a girl and to be nothing like those raucous twins. The Kaminskis had offered that I could bring my baby to work and care for all three children. But now the idea that I might be able to stay at home and care just for my baby, and oh my, I could read and study and think all day long too? I stopped walking, stood up on my tiptoes and kissed Kaz softly on the mouth.

  All at once, there was a sharp pain in my stomach, and I let go of Kaz, doubled over, and put my hands to my belly.

  “Marya?” The pain was so blinding, I couldn’t see him any longer. His voice was far away, like it was traveling through water, bending and breaking and garbled. “Marya,” he said again.

  My belly throbbed and pulled, and I clutched it, wanting the pain to stop. And then from somewhere very far away, I heard his voice again: “You’re bleeding.”

  I blinked and tried to focus my eyes, but everything was black and dizzying, and the pain was so bad, I could not stand up, and maybe I crumpled to the ground, or maybe I didn’t, but the next sensation I understood was Kaz picking me up, carrying me, running with me back toward our apartment.

  I told him, Go to Agata’s instead. She knew about the body, studying as much as she could. In another life, another country, she would’ve trained to be a doctor, like Bronia in Paris. Oh, Bronia. I suddenly wished for my sister, for the comfort of her hug and the warmth of her medical knowledge.

  But maybe I didn’t tell Kaz anything. Or maybe he didn’t listen. Because he was breathing so hard, carrying me up the flight of stairs past the bakery, to our tiny apartment. And then for a moment the pain lessened, and I thought, if only I could go to sleep, everything would be okay again when I awoke.

  WHEN I OPENED MY EYES AGAIN IT WAS MORNING, OR, DAYTIME. Sunlight streamed through our apartment window, making the table a yellow, glowing circle.

  “Marya.” A man’s voice. But not Kaz. I was keenly aware it was not my husband, but I didn’t know who could possibly be saying my name. I blinked to focus on his face. He was older, Papa’s age, balding with a sparse gray beard. I didn’t recognize him.

  Then I heard another voice, a woman: “She’s coming out of it,” the woman said, and the familiarity of her tone struck me, colder than the river in winter in Szczuki. My mother-in-law, Pani Zorawska. I had not spoken to her since that day I’d run away from my job caring for Kaz’s younger brothers and sisters, years earlier. If she were here now, I must be dying. She must’ve come here to take back her eldest son.

  “No, he’s mine now,” I tried to say, but the words would not come out. My tongue was thick, too hot. Everything was fire. And pain. There was a knife in my belly, tugging me apart.

  “Marya.” The unfamiliar man again. Then he explained: he was a doctor. The Zorawskis’ family doctor. Had Kaz been so worried about me, he’d asked his family for help?

  “Kaz.” I finally found my voice. “Kazimierz?”

  “I’m here,” he said, and it was only then that I saw him, sitting by the bed. He reached out and stroked my hair.

  “What’s wrong?” I said. “Tell me.”

  “Kochanie,” he said. “The doctor says there is a problem with your body, and that the baby might not be okay.” He choked on the last words, so that it sounded like he was gasping for air.

  The baby might not be okay?

  “If only you had come to me sooner,” the doctor said now, his tone accusing. Come to him? Kaz and I did not have the money for a private doctor. Women had been having babies since the beginning of time on their own, with midwives and female friends to help them. And I hated this man, this doctor, for blaming me for whatever was happening now, and worse, making Kaz believe it too.

  “This isn’t my fault,” I whispered, but the words came out sounding meek
, defensive, useless even to me.

  Kazimierz turned and exchanged a look with someone, maybe his mother, but I couldn’t see her, only hear her sigh from somewhere across the room.

  “All you can do now,” the doctor said, “is stay in this bed and rest until the baby comes. And pray to our Lord that He forgives you. That He lets you have this baby.”

  I DID NOT BELIEVE IN GOD. I HAD NOT EVER SINCE MAMA DIED of tuberculosis when I was ten, and just before her, my eldest sister, Zofia, of typhus. It was then that I decided I would put any faith I had into science, not into religion. Science, medicine, could have saved them. God had not. Bronia had felt the same as me. It was why she’d gone to Paris to become a doctor.

  But then it was only me and my bed each day, and this baby inside of me. Every time I felt a kick, the small angle of an elbow, I closed my eyes and silently thanked this God that the doctor, and my husband, and probably all the rest of Poland, thought I should believe in.

  For an entire week I lay there, my mind numb and blank, my body a useless and terrible vessel. Every kick, I tried so hard to believe.

  But then the kicking stopped. My stomach grew hard and still and tight.

  And later that night, Kaz summoned the doctor again, and the baby came. She was too early. Everything was wrong.

  She left my body still and quiet, her skin icy cold and blue.

  Marie

  Paris, 1897

  My body is not built to carry a baby.

  I am ill and tired, nauseated for months on end, and suddenly instead of my haven, the lab becomes my purgatory. The smells of the fire and metal I used to love incite my nausea so that I often have to run outside and vomit out back.