by Girls
Girls with Needles and Frost
By Jenny Rae Rappaport
They destroy the berry bushes first. Then the red cabbages at midsummer and the grape vines before the frost comes. The darker irises and the daylilies are dug up and thrown on great bonfires, burning away in their fragrant beauty. They would dig up the very roots of the cherry trees, too, but they are wary, not stupid. The cherry brandy made from the fruit is too valuable an export.
We learn to live without sweet berry jam, cabbage cooked with apples, and wine. We train ourselves not to miss the flowers, and we toe the line. We always toe the line. When the soldiers ransack our homes, collecting any purple item of clothing, we hand it over. We also are wary, not stupid; our lives are worth more than a scrap of cloth.
But our country is worth a great deal more than our lives.
We stitch the violet stars in secret, our needles flashing faster at the thought of being caught. We dye scraps of fabric with forgotten berries found deep within the forest. We hoard it carefully under mattresses and behind bureaus, as we wait to make tiny beacons of hope. One for each family, each home, each window that needs to light the way. We sew for months.
When the soldiers come with their black boots and their swords and their pistols, we are ready. Polina and Elzbet and I hold hands as they question Madam Kovalski. She stands before them, spine straight, hands folded neatly before her—the perfect posture for a dressmaker. She has trained us in it; long hours of her rapping our heads with her knuckles when we dared to slouch.
“I don’t know what you’re looking for,” Madam says.
“Useless purple things,” the first soldier says, slapping her across the face. Madam stays as still as a statue. “Because of that ridiculous legend.”
“They’re not—” Polina begins, but I elbow her hard in the ribs to silence her.
“She was dropped on her head as a baby,” I say. “Please don’t pay her any attention.”
This makes the other soldier laugh, the one who looks barely older than us. The sound of his laughter is infectious, and I fight the urge to giggle.
“It’s a load of rotgut,” the first soldier growls, and backhands the other soldier across the ear to make him stop.
“Roza, I just wanted to—” Polina says, and I jam my elbow into her yet again. The young soldier looks liable to break into laughter again any minute. He catches my eye and grins, like we both know the same secret.
The soldiers tear the dressmaking shop apart, but they find nothing. We are smarter than them; our work has been moved to even more secure hiding spots, in secret compartments under floorboards and behind walls. All across the country, this scene is surely being repeated countless times—soldiers harassing women, soldiers searching halfheartedly, all because their leaders insist that this is for our protection. Oh, how foolish it all is.
Except it isn’t.
When they came, they knew. When they conquered us, they knew. When they took most of our men away to labor for them, they knew. They knew, and still, they came.
There will be violet stars in the sky, and we will thrill to the sound of dragon wings beating. We will rejoice when the cold crackles across the night. We will cheer, and they will die. And it will be enough.
Because it has to be.
Three times—in the distant past—the dragon has come before. Three times, when others have tried to destroy us. Three times, it has spread its dark wings and beat ice across the sky. Three times, it has saved us.
“Three times,” Madam said, when I was too small to do much in the shop but sit at her knee and learn. When I was still young enough to let her brush my hair at night and tell me tales. “Three times.”
Three times, when we placed a violet star in every window in the land. Three times, when we lit its way through the winter night. When we regaled it and prayed for it and hoped that we would never need its help again—because there is always a price.
Always.
The dragon does not forget, and neither do we.
Polina and Elzbet and I run errands together while Madam lies in a dark room and rests her eyes. She has been up too late again, writing letters in an everchanging code and sewing with the rest of us by the light of one dim candle. When she swayed on her feet this afternoon, we made her shut the shop early. She protested, but she always protests.
“Stop taking care of me,” she said, but she has always taken care of us. She is the one who found me at the workhouse, the one who taught me to read, the one who has been more of a mother to me than the mother that abandoned me. Hard times call for hard measures, but working herself to death will help no one.
None of us want to go out by ourselves. The soldiers who searched the shop always seem to be waiting for us. They loiter across the street, smoking cheroots and ogling the women passing by with market baskets.
Today, the older soldier spits at Polina’s feet, and the younger soldier winks at me. He is handsome, which does wonders for his appeal. Like all men, the impression will probably be ruined whenever he opens his mouth
“You know how to sew? Good with a needle, little misses?” the older soldier says, pointing to his chest and leering. “How about you tell Olaf about it?”
“Many women know how to sew,” I answer.
“But they know how to really sew, don’t they, Maksim?” he says, clapping a hand on the younger soldier’s shoulder. “They’re good at making things. What things have you been making lately?”
“Only dresses,” Elzbet says, and we politely push past them. As we walk by, Maksim bumps into me, and I feel something small and folded in his hand as it brushes against mine.
We’re not alone in the constant surveillance; each dressmaker in the city has been assigned their own pair of soldiers. The army leaders are clearly getting restless and grasping at straws.
“They’re horrible,” Elzbet says, running a shaking hand over her dress after we’ve scurried several streets away.
“You should ignore them,” I say.
“It’s not easy to ignore evil,” Polina says.
“Maybe they’re not all evil,” I say, shoving the note that Maksim passed me deep within my skirt pocket.
“They took my brother,” Elzbet says, and the half-sob in her voice hurts something deep inside me. “I want him back.”
I want to wrap my arms around her; she needs kisses and cuddling until the pain is gone, but we are on the open street, and all the love in the world will not bring her brother back. The things we do in our bedchamber are a poor substitute for the people missing from her life. So, I look at her and she looks at me, and we keep walking with Polina through the city streets.
“I want my father back, too,” Polina says, after a while.
“Madam says soon,” I say, and we link arms, our shopping baskets dangling from our elbows as we make our way to the market square. She always says soon. Except it never is soon enough.
Two things happen almost at the same hour: I sneak out to see the young soldier, and Madam Kovalski goes to a secret political meeting in the cellar of a nearby wine store. Only one of us returns home to the shop that night.
I meet Maksim underneath the Western Bridge, where the riverbank joins the water’s edge. The stone of the bridge above us is green with moss, and the winter grass under our feet is sparse. We stand in the shadows and stare awkwardly at each other.
He’s polite, as polite as a foreigner can be with his clumsy pronunciation of our language. We shake hands, and I feel only the slightest bit of worry at his touch.
“I know,” he says simply, once our hands drop.
“You know?”
“You’re
an intelligent girl, Roza.”
“You know that the sun rises in the east?”
Of course, he knows. Someone was bound to find out what we’ve been doing, despite our best efforts to conceal it. There are too many threads being woven together, too many people involved; there has always been the risk that someone would find out about the violet stars. We sew them anyway.
“Try again,” he says, taking a step closer to me.
“You know that being a soldier is a thankless job?” I say, surprising a harsh laugh out of him.
Maksim takes another step toward me, reaching out to tilt my chin upwards so that I’m forced to look him in the eyes. For a second, I’m frozen—tethered in place by the feel of his hand on my face. Suddenly, he is no longer just the young soldier who haunts our movements outside the dressmaking shop; his eyes are harder, and an expression that scares me flits across his face. Just as quickly, the friendly soldier is back.
“You know what I mean,” he says.
“Yes,” I say, despite my better judgment. His touch burns against my skin, and I am not sure whether I like it or not.
“Then, we are on the same page, at least,” he says, his thumb tracing the outline of my jaw. “What do you think I should do about it?”
I stay still and say nothing.
“I could turn you into the authorities. It would be easy to destroy you,” he continues, his hand hot against my face.
“You don’t want to do that.”
It would be foolish for him to give up the advantage that the knowledge grants him. But two can also play that game. His hand on my face is almost tender.
“I want information. Names, times, meeting places,” he says.
Things to smooth his path to promotion, to get him away from his oafish partner; maybe things that will get him away from our country. He must have a life, a home, somewhere else he wants to be. We are only seamstresses, after all.
“Things you can give your superiors,” I say.
“Smart girl.”
“And if I don’t?”
His hand stills on my face, and we stand there staring at each other again. If I give him information, inevitably, someone will be betrayed. All the artifice and confusion in the world will mean nothing if some of what I say isn’t backed up by truth. If I don’t give him the information, he can just as easily turn us into the authorities. Except he probably has no proof. And without proof, he’s just spinning tales. But that may not matter.
Maksim brings up his other hand, and cups my face between them.
“Do you really want to do that?” he says
“Do you really think they’ll believe you without proof?”
A shadow of doubt flickers across his face, and then he’s back to bluffing.
“Who says I don’t have proof?”
“You wouldn’t need me otherwise. I want information in return.”
“Why?”
“It’s a fair trade. Tell me where Elzbet’s brother and Polina’s father are. Give me something in return for betraying my friends.”
“I’m giving you your life.”
“That’s not worth much.”
“Foolish girl.”
“You could kill me now. It would save time.”
“You sweet, foolish girl.”
I follow my instincts and lean forward to kiss him. God help me, I both like it and hate it. His mouth tastes nothing like Elzbet’s. There’s nothing tender about the kiss at all, just two people saving each other from drowning for a moment. When we eventually pause for breath, he pushes me away, and my back bumps against the damp stone of the bridge.
“I don’t want a whore,” he says.
“Are you going to shoot me now?”
“We are going to meet again three nights from now. Same place, same time,” he says, and I watch him stalk off into the darkness, one hand raised in farewell.
What a sweet, foolish boy.
When we wake in the morning and Madam’s bed is empty, we know. When Polina runs to the wine store and sees the shutters nailed shut, we know. When customer after customer comes into the shop, all of them clucking like biddy hens, we know.
We would have to be fools not to know. But knowing is not the same as being able to do something. We are girls with needles, not swords.
I pack a basket full of cheese and apples, a shawl for cold nights, and a flask of warmed cider. There is only one place that they could be holding Madam. Elzbet crowds me into the back room to kiss me good-bye before she gently ties my hood under my chin and whispers, “Please bring her back.” I can only squeeze her hand in response because if I open my mouth, I worry that the wrong words will come flying out.
I leave the two of them measuring a customer for a new midwinter dress. Elzbet shows the woman samples of braided gold trim, and Polina mentions that we stock a wide variety of fabric colors.
“Do you have deep blue?” the woman says. “Or indigo? Or better yet, purple?”
“No,” Polina says. “Never purple. Never again.” I watch her lock eyes with the woman, and something akin to understanding passes between them. There are others of us out there, just as surely as the soldiers are trying to stop us. The chance of success is so small, but the reality of living under occupation is too large. There is no easy in-between.
The soldiers at the city prison are just as bullying as Maksim’s partner. They lift my skirt and run their hands underneath, checking for weapons. I want to smack their filthy paws away, to tell them what they can do with themselves; I hold my tongue. They finally let me pass, through the gates and the bars and the stinking stone hallways. I follow the guard and try not to touch anything.
When we arrive, the matron rifles through my basket, slinging the shawl over her shoulders and drinking deeply from the flask. She takes out a knife and begins to peel one of the apples.
“Can I give her any of it?” I say, after a wait which seems interminable.
The matron digs through the basket again and pulls out the smallest piece of cheese. She tosses it through the bars of Madam’s cell, and says, “You have five minutes.” I watch her walk a short distance away; close enough to intervene, not quite close enough to hear what we’re saying.
“Smart girl,” Madam says, when I squat down near the cell bars. I try not to think about the muck touching the hem of my skirt or the rat droppings scattered about. Madam sits on a pile of dirty straw, as close as she can get to me.
“You taught me.”
Madam reaches out her hand to grasp mine and says nothing.
“Polina and Elzbet are minding the shop,” I say.
“Do you remember what I taught you to do, in my place?”
I do, as much as I don’t want to admit that I do. There are names written down in code, lists of people, the makings of a complex calculus of distribution. I’m not sure whether Madam has told the others as much information as she has told me, but—
“You want me to do everything?”
“Absolutely everything.”
“So, you’re not coming home soon?”
“What do you think, my smart little Roza?”
That I want her to come back. That I’m not sure her contacts will trust me. That I’m not able to balance being me and being an informant for Maksim and not telling Elzbet anything and sewing violet stars and leading a silent revolution. That I’m not sure I can see it through to the end alone. That all of this may be the price that the dragon demands, even if it isn’t here yet and may never come. That maybe the only way forward is to let the pressure chew you up until there’s nothing left, and that’s how you win.
“That you were foolish to go to the meeting,” I say instead.
“We all make foolish mistakes. Even you.”
“Time’s up,” the matron calls, coming forward to hurry me away.
“Thank you for the cheese,” Madam shouts, and that is how I remember her: pressed against the bars of her cell, holding the piece of cheese like it is more precious than
the finest diamond.
He kisses me this time.
When I arrive at the Western Bridge, Maksim reaches out a hand to catch hold of mine. He drags me under the bridge’s shadow, his arms wrapping around my waist. We are both wet from the winter rain, and our breath forms tiny clouds of mist in the air. The heat of his mouth on mine feels like fire.
I do not quite know what game we are playing tonight, but I have spent the days since Madam’s capture writing coded letters, trying to interpret her plans, and trading heated glances with Maksim that speak more than words. I have avoided Elzbet as much as possible, pretending to be asleep each time she comes to bed. If I am not careful, my traitorous mouth will say something, and all of the games I am playing will crumple to ashes.
It’s a relief to give in to the purely physical; to kiss and to touch until I no longer have to think about what I’m doing. Maksim’s hands are warm on my body, and we are human and we are breathing, and for one blissful moment we are on the same side. But that ends. It always ends.
“I thought you didn’t want a whore,” I say, my hands still in his hair. His uniform cap is somewhere on the ground, growing damp.
“I don’t.”
“But you want this.”
“I didn’t necessarily say that.”
I smirk at him, but he only laughs and takes a step back from me. I watch as he bends down to retrieve his cap, shaking the wetness from it before he jams it on his head.
“What do you have for me?” he says, and now it’s business, all business.
“What do you want?”
“Not to play this game again, Roza.”
“There’s a dressmaker, two streets east of the Grand Cathedral, that you may want to investigate. Another near Karolin Street, if you take the second alleyway on the right,” I say carefully, naming only those locations that have hopefully been evacuated. If the people in Madam’s circle are smart. If they are heeding the advice in my coded letters. If. If. If.
“And?” he says, pulling a small oilcloth pouch from his pocket and removing a flint and touch-paper. I wait until he strikes the flint against his knife and ignites the touch-paper.
