by Torey Hayden
‘When was that?’ Megan asked.
‘When I was about your age.’
‘So what about now? Are you old enough to find out now?’
I shrugged. ‘I’m not so sure I want to know now. I can see what it does to Mama. Besides, it’s old stuff, Megan. It’s over and done with. The war finished in 1945 and that’s years and years and years ago. There’s no point in knowing, really.’
Megan sighed and reached down to pull tight her shoelaces. Then wearily she rose and skated off.
Chapter Ten
Megan was sitting in the kitchen when I arrived home from school on Monday afternoon. She had her schoolbooks stacked on the corner of the table and her stockinged feet up on the chair across from her. One apple core lay beside her already. She was crunching her way noisily through a second apple while deeply absorbed in a book that lay open in her lap.
‘Hey Lessie, come here and look at this,’ she said when I appeared. I crossed over to the table.
It was a book on the Third Reich, an adult book, something for readers far older than Megan.
‘Where did you get that?’ I asked.
‘The library. I went in after school and asked the lady there where they had books about the Second World War. She gave me these. See?’ She indicated a couple of other books on the table too. ‘I’m going to read about it. I’m going to learn all there is to know.’
‘Those books are too old for you. You won’t even understand them.’
‘No, they’re not. I can read them. The lady at the library gave them to me.’
‘What did you do? Tell her you were a kid genius? Megan, those books are for adults.’
‘Not necessarily. Lookie. This one’s about kids. See?’ She pulled a thin paperback from the stack. ‘There are poems and stuff that these kids wrote while they were in a concentration camp for children. See what it says here in the back? The library lady showed it to me. Fifteen thousand children went into this camp. And only a hundred ever came back.’
There was a sudden, potent silence. Megan remained intent a moment longer over the book. ‘This could have been us,’ she said quietly without raising her eyes.
‘Megan, you shouldn’t be reading stuff like that. It’s macabre.’
‘It’s the truth though,’ she said. She looked up. ‘It happened, for real. And it could have happened to us. This here, in this book. If we’d been born, they could have taken us away just like these kids and put us in a camp.’
‘They couldn’t either. Those were Jewish children. They took them away because they were Jews.’
‘But we still could have been one of these children. If we’d been born then. They were kids just like us. See, look at the way this one kid writes. He makes his G’s just like I do.’
‘Megan, listen to me. It wouldn’t have ever happened to us. Those were Jewish children. We aren’t Jews. We never were and we never will be. So it could never have happened to us.’
‘It could have.’
‘Megan, it could not have. Wash your dirty ears out. I said, we’re not Jews. It could not have happened to us. So don’t be stupid and keep insisting. You’re as bad as Mama with your ridiculous opinions.’
A frown formed across her features. ‘How come you keep on saying that? “It couldn’t happen to us; we’re not Jews?” Why do you say that all the time? It happened to people, Lesley. Real people. And because we’re people too, it could have happened to us. You’re the one who’s stupid.’
‘You shouldn’t be looking at stuff like that. It makes you crabby,’ I replied. ‘Besides, what do you know about anything? You’re too little to understand what’s really behind it anyhow. You don’t know anything; you’re just a baby.’
Megan’s scowl deepened.
I set my books down and went to the cupboard to get down the peanut butter and honey for my sandwich. ‘All I’m saying, Megs, is that we’re in no position to be even discussing it. We don’t know what happened. That’s my point. We just don’t know. So it’s stupid to go reading about what happened to the Jews and generalizing it to everyone else who was in the war.’ I turned around and looked at her. ‘And if you ask me, you just shouldn’t be reading that kind of junk.’
‘No one’s asking you.’
‘For one thing, Megan, all you’re going to do is end up hurting Mama. She’ll come in and see those books and it’ll make her remember all the bad stuff that did happen to her and then she’ll be unhappy.’
‘She’s remembering already, Les.’
‘And for another thing, I mean it when I said you’re too little. That’s horrid stuff in those books. You won’t be able to forget it, once you’ve read about it. They were wicked, really evil things that happened and it’s so terrible that I wish people didn’t even have to think about it.’
Megan was still glowering.
‘Anyway, you want to know what you’re going to end up with out of this?’
She didn’t reply.
‘Nightmares, that’s what. I know you, smarty-pants.’
‘I will not.’
‘And you’ll wet the bed.’
There, that shut her up. I shouldn’t have said it. Even as I did, I regretted it a bit. It was spiteful and nothing more. But she could go on so, and I was sick of her incessant questions. Why couldn’t she tell when things ought to be left alone? That was the problem with Megan. One of the many problems with Megan.
I didn’t feel much like a sandwich any more. I had the bread out and the peanut butter and the honey, and when I looked at it all, I knew I wasn’t hungry. In the end I left everything sitting on the counter and went out of the room.
Upstairs, all was silent. I put my books in my room and changed clothes.
‘Mama?’ I said softly. Thinking she was lying down for a nap, as she often did in the late afternoon, I eased open the door to their bedroom. No one was there.
Returning to the kitchen, I stopped in the doorway. Megan was still engrossed in her book. ‘Megs, where’s Mama?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Isn’t she home?’
Megan looked up. ‘I thought she was taking a nap.’
‘Did you look? Have you seen her since you’ve been home?’
‘No. I just thought she was sleeping and I didn’t want to disturb her.’
Cripes. I looked around the kitchen, in despair, with no idea of what to do next.
‘Listen, Megs, if I go get the car from Daddy, do you think you can show me where you and Mama were walking on Saturday afternoon?’
‘I think so.’
All the way to the garage Megan did not talk. She was still angry with me for the earlier conversation, and I don’t think she wanted to come. Still dressed in her school clothes, still munching apples, she trailed along behind; but she did not talk.
When we arrived, Dad wanted to know why I wanted the car. He was lying on his back under Mr Toppano’s old Dodge pickup and couldn’t hear me well.
‘I said, we’re going shopping,’ I shouted, getting down on my hands and knees.
‘What for?’
‘Groceries,’ I said, thinking fast. That would require a car.
‘Do you have any money?’ he asked.
I had $1.27. Hardly enough for a car full of groceries. My father slid out from under the truck and sat up. He fished the keys from his overall pocket. Then he went and got his wallet and gave me five dollars.
Unlike the weekend, Monday was overcast. It was mild but blowy, and the plains stretched so far out they finally disappeared into the greyness of the sky. Together Megan and I went along country roads by the creek. Megs didn’t remember things as clearly as she could have. It was different riding in a car, she claimed, and I had to return to town three times and start over before we found the road they had taken.
Again we did not talk. It was a silent chore, searching up and down the roads for Mama. I wasn’t sure what I would do if we found her, but as time wore on, I grew increasingly desperat
e because I hadn’t. Megan sat, stone silent, her face pressed against the glass of the passenger window.
There were no signs of anyone on the long, straight dirt roads. You could have seen a person walking from a great distance away because the land was so flat. Even around the stream there was little undergrowth. The only way someone could keep from being seen was to go right down and walk in the creek bed. But I didn’t believe Mama was trying to stay out of sight. She just wasn’t there.
I looked over the fields. There were no sunflowers being planted. Most of the fields in this area were already growing winter wheat. The rest stood idle.
‘There’s where that boy was,’ Megan said, pointing. ‘Over there. See where the underbrush is?’
‘Where did he run to?’
‘There. Down by the creek.’
I stretched my neck to see down an intersecting road. Nothing. No one. I turned the car around and drove by a farm. Waterman, it said on the mailbox. There were no other houses to be seen.
Finally, we had to give up. It was nearly six o’clock. The daylight was giving out. Besides, I knew my father would be arriving home. Even if he walked instead of hitching a ride with someone, he’d be home by six. Despondent, I headed back.
‘Do you think we would have made it?’ Megan asked me. It was the first thing out of her mouth in perhaps twenty minutes.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘If they’d put us into one of those camps like they did those children in that book. Do you think we would have survived?’
‘Oh, Megan, please, do stop going on about that kind of stuff, would you? Please?’
‘I can’t help it,’ she replied, her voice faint against the window on her side. ‘I think about it. They were just little kids. Littler than me in lots of cases. It’d be hard to survive. A lot of people didn’t. So I just keep wondering, what if it was me? Would I make it out OK?’
I didn’t reply.
‘Living with Mama, it’s pretty hard not to wonder about those things.’
I still did not say anything. I wasn’t even thinking. Just driving.
‘Well, don’t you?’ she asked.
‘Don’t I what?’
‘Don’t you ever wonder if you could have survived?’
I chewed my lip. The town ahead, I noticed, was like a little sore on the great expanse of plains.
‘Yeah, Megs,’ I said. ‘I guess I do wonder about it sometimes.’
Mama was not home when we arrived. Dad was. He was standing in the unlit gloom of the front hallway as we entered. There was a long moment’s assessment of Megan and me as we came through the door when he saw that Mama was not with us and that we had no groceries.
‘May I ask precisely what is going on in this house?’
Neither one of us answered.
‘Just what the hell is happening, girls?’ The hall was remarkably dark. His figure was grey and grainy and indistinct, like an overenlarged photograph.
‘Mama’s gone,’ Megan said softly.
‘I can see that for myself. What I want to know is where.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Neither of us does.’
Abruptly turning, my father went down the hallway to the kitchen. He flipped on the lights.
‘We tried to find her,’ Megan said. Her voice was rising with the threat of tears. I wasn’t feeling too jolly myself. Dad was clearly angry with us. Perhaps it was because we hadn’t told him something was going on with Mama. Perhaps it was only because he was worried. I couldn’t tell. But it was not an emotion either Megan or I needed.
‘So where is she? What’s been going on around here?’
Megan told him about Saturday afternoon, about the walk and the little boy whom Mama called Klaus. My father covered his mouth with the ends of his fingers as Megan spoke. There was an odd, paralysed expression in his eyes as he watched Megan. Then slowly he turned and walked over to the table and sat down. He put his head between his hands in a disheartened gesture. For an instant, I thought he might cry himself. Megan kept talking, faster and faster. She filled in all the little details of where they had walked and where we had searched this afternoon. Her voice remained high pitched and fragile. She clenched and unclenched her hands as she spoke.
Then nothing. My father sat at the table. Both my sister and I stood, rooted in the doorway of the kitchen. Beyond the window I could hear the wind pick up. The clock over the refrigerator ticked.
‘Daddy?’ Megan ventured very tentatively. ‘Who is Klaus?’
He did not answer immediately, and I began to believe he wouldn’t. His head was still between his hands. Then he moved slowly, rubbing his fingers across his eyes. He turned. ‘A long time ago, a very, very long time ago your mother had other children. She had two little boys.’
‘I didn’t know Mama had any kids but us,’ Megan said in disbelief.
‘Once. Long ago. Long before you were born.’
I was as incredulous as Megan.
‘Then is that little boy one of them?’ Megan asked, her voice hushed with awe. ‘That little boy we saw on Saturday?’
‘No. He was someone else,’ my father replied.
The front door opened and we, standing in the kitchen, felt the gust of wind and saw Megan’s schoolwork, pinned to the bulletin board, flutter. Mama came striding into the kitchen.
‘Hello, everyone,’ she said cheerfully. Her hair was tousled wildly, her cheeks were red. She could have been a girl then, with her pale loose hair and casual clothes and hearty, bright-eyed expression. The three of us were standing there, feeling like death, and my mother never looked better.
‘Where have you been, Mara?’ my father said. It wasn’t as much a question as a demand. But my mother, whose radar normally was so acute, seemed oblivious. With one hand she unwound her muffler while she walked past us to the cupboard. Bending down, she took out a pan from under the stove.
‘Macaroni and cheese tonight? With tomatoes in it?’ She turned to Megan. That was one of Megan’s favourite meals.
‘Mara, where have you been?’ There was definitely no mistaking my father’s feelings that time. ‘Mara?’
Mama looked over at him. For the first time there was alarm in her eyes.
He jerked his head. ‘May I see you in the study?’
Mutely, my mother regarded him. The colour drained away from her face and with it went the look of youth she had had coming through the door. She grew old before our eyes.
‘Mara, come in the study with me. I need to talk to you.’ The emotion faded from my father’s voice. He too must have seen the way the gaiety ran out of her so quickly. His voice softened, and he extended a hand to her.
Mama was still holding the pan in her hand. She looked down at it, as if it were a foreign object. A troubled expression wrinkled her brow as she regarded it. She set it on the stove, turned and went with him. She didn’t accept his hand, so he laid it gently on her shoulder. Megan and I remained in the kitchen. My parents’ footsteps sounded on the stairway, but the study was too far away for me to be able to hear the soft click of the catch as Dad shut the door behind them.
Wearily Megan collapsed into a chair at the table. Her books from the library were still stacked on the other end. Bracing her cheek with one fist, she stared at them. ‘I’m really wishing right now that I was someplace else,’ she said.
I too sat down.
She looked over. ‘I wish he hadn’t found out. Or at least I wish he could have left it alone. Too bad we couldn’t have just sort of gone on like it hadn’t happened.’
I nodded.
My parents seldom had serious arguments. They disagreed with one another as often, I suppose, as people generally do when they live together. Usually, however, the arguments were one sided. My mother would want to do something and my father wouldn’t. Or he would be after her for one of her more provocative idiosyncrasies. Just small things. Then one of them would become annoyed, and they’d seesaw back and forth over the issue for a
while before one of them would grow sick of it and go off. Or they would end up laughing. Mama could make you laugh at the damnedest times, and she knew it. But it made for few serious fights.
When they first went upstairs, we could hear nothing. As disconcerting as this whole incident was, in the beginning I could not force myself to become too worried. It was just one of Mama’s little things. Dad would set her right. He’d tell her not to go running off without letting someone know. He’d explain that she was mistaken about that boy, that he was just some farmer’s child. Mama would sulk and most likely have a spell, but then we’d be over it. We could have supper and go on with things as usual.
The difficulty with sitting at the table, waiting for them to come out, was that it gave me ample time to contemplate what my father had said to us beforehand. Those few simple sentences of his were so incredible to me as to border on the irrational. Other children? Had Mama really had other babies besides us? Why had we never known about them? Who were they? Where were they? The issue and its implications began to mushroom into such gargantuan proportions that I was unable to grasp even the possibility of it.
Then above the silence of the kitchen came my father’s voice. He was shouting at my mother. As far as my sister and I were from the study, we could still hear him. What he was saying was not distinct, but the emotion certainly carried. My mother must have been holding up her end of it, because although her voice was inaudible, my father kept on and on for so long that it was obvious she had to be responding.
Megan and I sat like zombies. We didn’t even dare look at one another. I was trying to think of what to do. I wasn’t hungry. I was afraid to go upstairs to my room. I could hardly just go in the living room and turn on the television as if nothing unusual were happening. Beside me, Megan was motionless. She gave no indication of life at all, except for the fact that she was running her finger up and down the length of her bare forearm. Up and down, up and down, with hypnotic slowness.
Then the door to the study opened, and I could hear them in the hallway. My mother was sobbing.
