Lilac Girls

by Martha Hall Kelly

  “How was Zuzanna’s blood work?” she asked.

  “It’s looking better,” Caroline said. “They’re optimistic.”

  “It is exciting, but you may still need more treatment, Zuzanna,” Mrs. Ferriday said.

  Zuzanna smiled. “Maybe then I could stay indefinitely.”

  Serge smiled back at her. Only a simpleton could miss the fact that they were sweet for each other. A Russian? He was good-looking enough in that simple Russian way, but what would Papa say?

  “Let’s get to California first,” I said. “I can’t wait to see the movie stars’ homes. They say Rodeo Drive is packed with stars.”

  “You must get out there and smile for all those Californians,” Mrs. Ferriday said. “It is a lovely tooth, dear.”

  I smiled and ran my tongue over my new canine, which had taken the place of my old decayed one. What would Pietrik think of my new smile?

  I bit a Fig Newton in half and chased it down with the brandy in one shot as we did back home with vodka.

  Caroline sniffed the cream and poured a bit in her coffee. “There are more interesting things to see in Los Angeles than celebrities. The La Brea Tar Pits, for one.”

  “Dying beasts trapped in tar?” Mrs. Ferriday said. “Gawd-awful. Let these women have some fun, dear.”

  Too bad Mrs. Ferriday wasn’t coming to California with us. She took up the brandy and started to refill my thimble glass.

  Caroline took the bottle from her. “No more brandy for the girls, Mother.”

  “Good gracious, Caroline. It’s Christmas.”

  “Kasia’s already had too much. She is recovering, Mother.”

  “A little brandy never hurt a patient. The Woolseys rubbed brandy on babies’ gums.”

  Caroline stood, plucked the bottle from the table, and rested it on the counter. Mrs. Ferriday smiled at me and rolled her eyes. How lucky Caroline was to have her mother!

  Zuzanna and Serge hadn’t noticed any of it, since you’ve never seen two people so happy to do dishes, laughing and poking each other with sudsy fingers.

  Caroline raised her cup of coffee to toast. “Merry Christmas, all.”

  “Wesołych Świąt,” Mrs. Ferriday and I said, toasting with our empty glasses.

  Merry Christmas.

  1959

  The following spring we all traveled from our respective cities and met up at San Francisco International Airport. We’d been away for several months at that point, and all missed home, but San Francisco had never seen so many happy Polish women. Janina joined us all the way from France. She’d recovered there with Anise’s help and gone to hair school in Paris, which improved our hairstyles a lot. How we all loved California! The air fresh and clean, the sun so welcome to those of us who’d spent winter in cold New England.

  Nice as San Francisco was, Los Angeles was the highlight of the West Coast. You should have heard the chatter on that bus. Where to go first? Grauman’s Chinese Theatre? Rodeo Drive? Best of all, I could walk. Like a normal person. With some of the old pain left, but without a noticeable limp. Plus, the plastic surgery had smoothed out my calf and made my leg look more normal. Dr. Rusk had prescribed some pain pills, but I could have walked Rodeo Drive all day.

  We went to Disneyland, a place we’d heard so much about. The thirty-six of us arrived by air-conditioned bus, Caroline filming it all with her 8mm camera like a Hollywood director. She brought her guitar along and played that at the noon meal, but we still had a good morning. Frontierland was especially fun. We took a ride on a log raft at Tom Sawyer Island. Zuzanna fell in love with the Three Little Pigs. Somehow these three poor souls trapped in overstuffed human clothes, black eyebrows like parentheses painted on their papier-mâché heads in perpetual surprise, touched her heart. When Zuzanna simply mentioned this, it sent Caroline snapping a million pictures of my sister with these oversized, bald pigs.

  Things got tense at the Casey Jr. Circus ride. That was the child-sized train that circled the edges of the park. It was not a particularly scary-looking train, but the haunting call of its whistle had followed us around the park all day. When it came time to board, Janina just couldn’t. It was hard to forget that other train we’d been on.

  After California, we toured our way back across America, stopping at the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas. Zuzanna thought she’d broken the slot machine when the lights started flashing and money poured from it. By the time we made it to Washington, D.C., and were introduced at a special session of Congress, we felt like movie stars ourselves.

  Once we arrived back in New York, we all fanned out to stay with different families for our last week, and Zuzanna and I continued to be Caroline’s guests, this time at her apartment in New York City. Caroline fussed over my sister like a mother hen, surprising her with a new nightdress and slippers. Once the doctors gave Zuzanna the good news that her cancer was officially in remission, Caroline celebrated and bought us both new dresses at Bergdorf Goodman. You’ve never seen a woman so happy—you’d have thought Caroline was Zuzanna’s mother.

  If eating was any indication, my sister was recovering with record speed. It may have had something to do with being in Manhattan, the place of Zuzanna’s dreams. Or maybe it was Caroline’s Russian cook stuffing Zuzanna with Polish food.

  Or maybe it was the Automat.

  “When I die, I want to come here,” Zuzanna said, holding her white china cup under the silver-dolphin spigot. Coffee swirled into the cup, dark and fragrant.

  If New York City was our Land of Oz, the Automat was our Emerald City. As the free matchbook said, it was the HORN & HARDART AUTOMAT AT FIFTY-SEVENTH AND SIXTH. It was warm enough inside to take your coat off, and food appeared there as if by magic. Happy women dressed in black, called nickel throwers, sat in the glass booths and made change for paper bills with rubber tips on their fingers. Put a nickel in a slot next to a food you liked, and the little door would open. Just like that you could choose cooked pullet, apple pie, brown-sugary baked Boston beans. Over four hundred different foods! We wanted to eat there every day.

  Zuzanna and I blended in well. In our new Bergdorf Goodman dresses, we lived up to our new name, the Ravensbrück Ladies. It was hard to believe our trip was nearly over, that we’d fly out soon and leave it all behind, but I couldn’t wait to get home. To see Pietrik. Halina. Hard as it was to admit, I’d even miss Caroline, who’d done so much for us all, but it would be nice to finally have Zuzanna to myself the whole plane trip home, to laugh and talk about everything.

  Zuzanna set her tray across from mine.

  “I’m getting fat, Kasia. Don’t you love mashed potatoes?”

  On her plate emerald peas rolled about a hill of mashed-up potatoes, a puddle of brown sauce on top.

  A woman came to our table with a pot of fresh coffee and moved to pour some into my cup.

  “No,” I said, one hand over it, for I had not ordered extra coffee.

  “It’s called a free refill,” said Zuzanna.

  New York was full of surprises like that.

  Zuzanna dipped her fork in potatoes, trapped a few peas, and ate. She looked wonderful, like a fashion model.

  “What we wouldn’t have given for peas back then,” she said.

  She couldn’t bring herself to say Ravensbrück.

  “At least now Herta Oberheuser is in a cold cell eating beans from a can,” I said.

  “You might think about letting it go, Kasia.”

  “I’ll never forgive them, if that’s what you’re saying.”

  “It only hurts you to hold on to the hate.”

  My sister seldom bothered me, but her positivity could be irritating. How could I forgive? Some days the hate was the only thing that got me through.

  I changed the subject.

  “I’m glad you’re getting fat,” I said. “Papa won’t know you. You’re like a different person. Although one who has not even packed yet.”

  Zuzanna kept her eyes on her potatoes.

  “I have a favor to ask you
, Kasia.”

  I smiled. What would I not do for my sister? I ran the tip of my tongue over my new tooth, afraid it might not still be there. It was my favorite souvenir, smooth and perfect, the exact color of my other teeth. I practiced my smile just for fun. A group of young men and women came into the Automat and scrambled into a booth. A boy kissed a girl long and hard, right there in public. How free and happy they seemed. I could see it all with my smart new eyeglasses.

  “Anything,” I said.

  Zuzanna pulled a folder from her bag and slid it next to my tray.

  “I need your help. To choose…”

  I opened the folder and flipped through the photographs inside. There were six, maybe seven pictures in there taken from the shoulders up, black-and-white, like passport photos, all of children. Some infants. Some older.

  I closed the folder. “What is this?”

  Zuzanna pressed little garden gates into her potatoes with the tines of her fork. “Caroline gave it to me.”

  “For?” I took her free hand. “Zuzanna. What’s happening?”

  She drew her hand away. “I’ve been wanting to tell you…I was at the hospital last week, and they asked my opinion about a case.”

  “That happens all the time. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Afterward they asked me if I would teach a class.”

  “Here?” I said.

  “Yes, here. Where else, Kasia? I asked Caroline to extend my visa.”

  “You’re not coming home?” Why had I fought to bring her there only to lose her?

  “Of course I’m coming home. Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just that I was granted a special extension for doctors.”

  “It’s the cook, isn’t it?” Why had I let that go on for so long?

  Zuzanna gave me her serious doctor look. “He has a name, Kasia.”

  “Papa will have a stroke. I’m not telling him.”

  “The photos of the children are from Caroline. They need homes. One named Julien just lost both parents to an automobile accident in Ingonish, on the coast of Cape Breton Island in Canada.”

  “That’s what orphanages are for.”

  “He’s a toddler, Kasia. Caroline says that if Serge and I make things, well, more permanent—”

  “Marry him? I hope you’re joking.”

  “Then she could help us adopt. Once I’m completely better. We want to open a restaurant together. Mostly crepes and quiche at first—”

  “So I am to go home alone while you stay here and marry a Russian cook and open a French restaurant and raise someone else’s child?”

  “I am forty-four years old with no prospects, Kasia. You already have your family. This is my only chance.”

  “At home, you can—”

  “Do what? Work myself to death at the hospital? Delivering other people’s babies? Do you know what that’s like? I’m going to do what I can to make my life a good one in the time I have left. I suggest you do the same. Matka would want that.”

  “What do you know about Matka? You think she’d want you sleeping with a Russian cook, turning your back on Lublin?”

  Zuzanna snatched the folder and slid it back into her bag.

  “I’m going to forget you said that, dear sister.”

  She walked out the door without a look back, leaving me with her tray, the mashed potatoes hardly touched.

  —

  CAROLINE BROUGHT US UP to The Hay for the final few days of the trip. My last morning in Connecticut, I woke with a start from a dream of flying over wheat fields, hand in hand with my mother. It was one of those happy, so-real-you’d-swear-it-was-true dreams, until I realized it was not Matka’s but Herta Oberheuser’s cold hand I was holding.

  I sat up, heart hammering. Where was I? Safe in Caroline’s guest bedroom. I felt the bed beside me. Cold. Zuzanna was up already? Visiting her Russian friend no doubt. Maybe it was good she was staying. She’d be safe and well cared for. But how could I go back to Lublin without her?

  I padded down the hall in bare feet and through Caroline’s high-ceilinged bedroom, past her perfectly made canopy bed, to the tall windows overlooking the garden below. A winged stone cherub stood in the center of the clipped circles of boxwood hedges, guarding the tulips and bluebells. Caroline knelt at a rose bed, steam rising from the white mug next to her on the grass as a sea of lilac bushes swayed behind her in the breeze.

  I breathed in the safety of it all and exhaled, my breath on the glass turning the scene into a blur of electric green and lavender. I ached to see Pietrik and Halina again, but there in that old house, nothing could hurt me, a whole ocean between me and my troubles.

  I dressed and wandered downstairs in search of my sister and hot coffee. Finding neither in the kitchen, I hesitated at the kitchen window and watched Caroline in the garden. She wore canvas garden gloves, her hair caught back with a scarf as she tugged weeds from soil around the thorny stalks. Caroline’s pig lay sleeping openmouthed a stone’s throw away under a lilac bush, pawing at the ground as if running in her sleep. Should I join them? I was in no mood for a lecture.

  Caroline spotted me at the window and waved to me with her trowel.

  I had no choice but to step out the kitchen door.

  “Have you seen Zuzanna?” I asked.

  “She and Serge took Mother to Woodbury. Come and weed, dear. It’s good for the soul.”

  So is coffee, I thought.

  I walked along the gravel path and knelt beside Caroline. The house rose above us like a great white ship from a sea of purple lilacs waving at its base. You’ve never seen lilacs in such colors, from deep aubergine—almost black—to the palest lavender.

  “Sorry I took the last of the coffee,” she said. “The early risers got to it first.”

  A dig at me? I ignored it.

  “I think you designed the perfect garden,” I said.

  “Oh, it was Mother. We’d just moved in, and Father called the landscapers to come plant a garden, and they surprised Mother when they asked for a garden plan. She took a pencil and sketched the design of the Aubusson rug in the library and handed it to the men. Works perfectly well, I think.”

  From where I knelt, the scent of rose and lilac was almost solid. “Such a beautiful fragrance.”

  Caroline pulled out a dandelion, hairy root and all, and tossed it in her bucket. “The scent is strongest in the morning. Once the sun is overhead, things dry out and flowers keep the fragrance to themselves.”

  Why had I not spoken to Caroline about her garden before? We had a common love of flowers, after all. I slid a trowel from her bucket and pulled a green sapling from the earth with a satisfying pop. We worked without speaking, spearing the dark earth with our trowels, the only sounds the birds chattering in nearby trees and Caroline’s pig’s gentle snore.

  “I must say, you’re the rock of your family, Kasia dear.”

  How nice it was to hear that praise! “I suppose.”

  “I knew the first time I saw you onstage in Warsaw that you have a special strength.”

  “Not really. Since my mother…”

  Caroline rested one canvas-gloved hand on my arm. “Seems like your mother was a remarkable woman, very much like you. Strong. Resilient. I’m sure you loved her very much.”

  I nodded.

  “I thought I might die when my father passed away. It was so long ago, but there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wish he were here.” Caroline waved toward the lilac bushes that swayed above us. “He loved these. It’s a lovely reminder of him, but terribly sad too, to see his favorite Abraham Lincoln lilacs blossom without him.”

  Caroline wiped her cheek with the back of her gardening glove, leaving a dark smudge below one eye, then pulled off her gloves.

  “But it’s fitting in a way—Father loved the fact that a lilac only blossoms after a harsh winter.”

  Caroline reached over and smoothed the hair back from my brow with a light touch. How many times had my mother done that? “It’s a
miracle all this beauty emerges after such hardship, don’t you think?”

  Suddenly, water came to my eyes, and the grass swam in front of me. I could only nod.

  Caroline smiled. “I’ll have Mr. Gardener pack you up some lilac saplings to plant back in Lublin.”

  “No need to pack any for Zuzanna,” I said.

  Caroline sat back on her heels. “I wanted to tell you sooner—”

  “It’s fine. It’s good, really. At first I was sad, but you’ve helped her in ways I never could. To get well. To raise a child of her own someday. My mother would have liked that. I don’t know how to thank you.”

  Caroline pressed her hand over mine. “That’s not necessary, Kasia dear.”

  “Zuzanna and I have taken so much from you. I wish I had something to give.”

  “You’ve been good for all of us, especially Mother.”

  We continued weeding in silence. I would miss Bethlehem.

  Caroline turned to me. “Well, there is one thing, Kasia…”

  “What is it?”

  “Something I’ve been meaning to discuss with you.”

  “Of course.”

  “It concerns, well, someone…someone you used to know.”

  “Anything.”

  “Well, Herta Oberheuser, actually.”

  Just the name made me feel sick to my stomach.

  I steadied myself, one hand to the grass. “What about her?”

  “I am terribly sorry to even bring it up, but my sources tell me she may have been released early—”

  I stood, dizzy, trowel in hand. “Impossible. The Germans can’t let her out…” Why could I not breathe?

  “As far as we know, Americans did this. Back in 1952. Quietly.”

  I paced toward the house and then back. “She’s been out all this time? Why would they do that? There was a trial—”

  “I don’t know, Kasia. With Russia trying to woo German doctors away from the U.S., we may’ve been trying to curry favor. Somehow the Germans lose every war but win every peace.”

  “Your sources are wrong.”

  Caroline stood and touched my sleeve. “They think the West German government has helped Herta settle up in Stocksee. Northern Germany. She may be practicing as a doctor again…A family doctor.”