Stolen Girl

by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

  A scene from my past slid into my mind …

  The men were separated from the women. I stood on my toes to see where they were going but it was too crowded. I thought of that girl in the yellow dress with the yellow star, standing in a lineup just like this.

  “Remove all of your clothing,” said a uniformed woman in a bored voice.

  I turned to Marusia in alarm, but she was already unbuttoning her tattered and filthy blouse. She threw it on the pyramid of burning clothing. She took off her skirt and threw it in the fire as well. “Hurry, Nadia,” she said.

  My outfit had once been a pink party dress, but now it was blackened with grease and grass and sweat. How many flatcars had we ridden on and how many ditches had we hidden in to get to this place? The days blurred in my memory. I tried to undo my once-delicate ribbon belt, but it was shredded so badly that I couldn’t find the beginning of the knot. And I couldn’t reach the zipper at the back of the dress.

  Marusia put her hands at the collar of my dress and with a single motion ripped it off me. She threw it into the fire.

  “Undergarments too,” said the woman.

  We threw it all into the fire and then stood in the next line.

  A woman with a large pair of shears cut off my braids, then snipped away until my scalp was bare. I watched my filthy hair fall onto the ground in clumps.

  Marusia’s face remained still as her hair was cut away. We stepped into line with the other refugees waiting for showers. At the door a woman sprayed us with something awful. I screamed.

  “It will be all right,” said Marusia. “That’s just to kill the lice.”

  We crowded into the white-tiled room and were enveloped in scalding streams of water. I watched black trickles of grime and dead lice swirling down the floor drain.

  I was glad to be free of that pink dress and all that it stood for. We were given sheets to cover our nakedness when we exited the shower. The sheets had lice, but we wrapped ourselves in them anyway.

  Next came the interview. We stood in line yet again, shivering and damp, but cleaner than we had been since our escape. I stood on my toes to see what was happening at the front of the line. A uniformed man sat at a table, taking notes. He stamped a paper and sent the refugee in either one direction or another.

  Marusia bent down and whispered in my ear. “Tell them you’re my daughter. Your name is Nadia. You were born in Lviv …”

  I knew that if they found out where I really came from, the Soviets would take me and I would be sent to Siberia. But where did I really come from? That I didn’t know. Did Marusia?

  A loud banging at the door snapped me back to the present. Linda had said it was against the law to run away from school. Were the police after me? I was too terrified to move.

  Another banging. “Nadia!” A familiar woman’s voice.

  I peeked out the edge of my window. It was Miss MacIntosh. Maybe I could pretend that I wasn’t home. But just as I was thinking that, she saw me. “Open the door!” she called. She didn’t look happy.

  I walked down the stairs but still didn’t open the door. I ran to the bathroom and looked at my face in the mirror. My eyelids were puffed out and red and my face was swollen. What would Miss MacIntosh think? I ran cold water over a cloth and held it to my face. The coolness was soothing, but when I looked back in the mirror, the same puffy eyes looked back at me. It was no use.

  The knocking on the door was more insistent than ever now. “Nadia!” Miss MacIntosh called. “I know you’re in there.”

  I opened the front door. The expression on Miss MacIntosh’s face transformed in an instant from annoyance to concern. She stepped in and shut the door behind her.

  “What’s happened to you?”

  I looked down at my feet and didn’t answer. I was afraid that if I tried, it would be sobs, not words, that would come out.

  All at once I felt Miss MacIntosh’s warm arms envelop me and she picked me up like I was nothing more than a baby. She hugged me close and I felt myself go limp. I didn’t know whether it was relief or resignation. She carried me into the kitchen and sat down on a wooden chair, still holding me in her arms. She rocked me on her lap, even though my legs were almost as long as hers and my feet could touch the floor. She murmured, “It’s going to be fine, Nadia.”

  I almost started to cry again, but something deep inside told me that it was time to stop. So instead, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I got myself out of Miss MacIntosh’s arms and stood up.

  “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “You ran away from school,” she said. “You need to come back.”

  “I cannot.” I folded my arms and tried to look defiant.

  “You don’t have a choice,” said Miss MacIntosh. “It’s against the law to run away from school.”

  So what Linda had told me was true. Would the police be coming next?

  Miss MacIntosh must have noted the panic on my face. She said, “If you come back this afternoon, everything will be fine.”

  “But how can I go back, looking like this?”

  “Be strong, Nadia,” Miss MacIntosh said sternly. “I’m not even supposed to be here right now. I have yard duty. But when Linda told me you had run off, I had to check on you.”

  She stood up and opened our icebox. She took out two apples. “Hold these on your eyes. It will make the swelling go down.”

  As I did that, I could hear her making kitchen sounds—slicing bread and frying eggs. The aroma of sizzling butter and eggs made my stomach grumble. I heard a plate clatter onto the table.

  “Eat,” said Miss MacIntosh.

  I took an apple off one eye. She was sitting across from me, eating an open-faced egg sandwich with a knife and fork. I set both apples down and devoured my own lunch. I was surprised at how hungry I was.

  I took both plates to the sink and rinsed them when we were finished.

  “We need to leave in fifteen minutes,” said Miss MacIntosh. “I want to fix your hair.”

  We went into the bathroom together, and I watched in the mirror as Miss MacIntosh carefully undid Marusia’s elaborate braids from the top of my head. “It was a beautiful hairdo,” she said. “Just not right for school.”

  As she combed out my hair, a strange expression appeared on her face. “You’ve got a black mark here,” she said. “Right at the hairline.”

  I inhaled sharply. My tattoo. I turned my left palm upward and stared at the same mark on my inner wrist, but I turned it back down before Miss MacIntosh saw it. Both tattoos were so plain that most people didn’t notice.

  “It must be a mole,” I lied.

  I watched Miss MacIntosh’s face in the mirror. She was about to say something but then changed her mind. Sometimes I wondered if she knew more about my past than I did. She gently combed out the tangles. The comb in my hair reminded me of another woman who had tackled my tangles, but with the tug of resentment, not care. With it came another flicker of that pink brocade dress …

  Miss MacIntosh didn’t walk to school with me, which I was thankful for. She must have sensed how humiliating it was for me to go back at all, and arriving with a teacher would be that much more unbearable.

  My eyes were still red from crying when I got back to school. The first bell had rung and students were just forming into lines. Some of the kids in my class looked up at me, then quickly turned away. Maybe Miss Ferris had said something to them. But then I heard Eric mutter, “The Hitler girl’s back.”

  I stepped in behind Linda. “Good to see you!” she whispered.

  I sat down in the same desk and tried to act as if nothing had happened. As Miss Ferris droned on with her lessons, I tried to sort out my recent memories. Why was it all coming back to me now? When we were in the DP camp, I’d just pushed my thoughts out of my mind. I tried that on the ship, and it had mostly worked. But when we got to Brantford, the nightmares started up and the memories came back. Why wouldn’t the sadness leave me alone?

  Once we were all s
eated, I stared at the back of Eric’s head a few seats in front of me. Why did he call me the Hitler girl? It was such a mean thing to do. I noticed that his brown hair was carefully trimmed short around the ears and was left a bit longer on top. He probably hadn’t combed it since the morning, but it looked perfect. I was sure that it was a barber who had cut it, not a soldier. Had he ever had his hair hacked off for lice? Could he even imagine such a thing? How dare he judge me.

  I looked up and down the rows of children in front of me. Each boy and girl looked well fed and clean. No one was dressed in rags. They probably all had parents. My heart ached with jealousy. How I wished I lived a simple life that had never been touched by war.

  I knew that Mychailo was the only other Ukrainian student at Central School, but I didn’t see him until afternoon recess. He was tossing coins against a wall with some other boys and caught my eye. He nodded and went back to his game.

  I saw him later walking home about a block behind me. I waited for him, but he was with the boys from earlier. He walked right past me as if he didn’t know me, so I walked the rest of the way home by myself.

  Since I was the first one home, I began to peel some potatoes for supper. I had just filled a pot with water when there was a knock on the front door. It was Mychailo, a sheepish expression on his face.

  “So, suddenly you know who I am?” I said.

  “Come on,” he said, shuffling his feet. “You didn’t expect me to talk to you when I’m with a bunch of guys, did you?”

  “I don’t see why not.” I left the door open, but walked back to the sink. He followed me in and sat down on a kitchen chair, watching me peel the potatoes.

  “Want to go to the library?” he asked.

  I did want to go to the library, but I was still angry, so I didn’t answer.

  “Are you going to cook them on low while we’re gone?” he asked.

  I shook my head but still didn’t say anything.

  “You are going to go with me, aren’t you?”

  I liked that. It sounded a little like an apology. I finished peeling the last potato, rinsed them all off, and put them in the pot of water. I didn’t turn it on. Marusia had told me never to do that.

  “I can go to the library for a short visit,” I said. “I’ll boil the potatoes when I get back.”

  Mychailo was silent for the first few minutes of our walk, then he said, “Sorry for not talking to you before.”

  I didn’t say anything. I knew why he didn’t talk to me. He didn’t want to be teased. But it felt awful to have him treat me like a stranger.

  When we got to the library, Mychailo went right to a trolley of books that were waiting to be reshelved. “I discovered this a few days ago,” he said. “All the best books are right here on this trolley.” His eyes lit up as he pulled out a dog-eared novel called Black Beauty. “You’d like this,” he said. “I read it last year.”

  I took it from him and flipped through the pages. All text and no pictures. And the text was small. “I can’t read this,” I said. He should have known. I had only taken out picture books so far.

  “It will take you a while to read it,” he said, “but I think you would like the story.” He grinned at me then and said, “It’s a girly book.”

  “But you liked it.”

  He blushed a little bit at that, then shot back with, “It’s got good action too.”

  He shuffled through the other books and found one on hockey, one on rocks, and another novel.

  “What’s the novel?” I asked, grabbing it out of his hand. It took me a bit to sound it out, and even once I did, I couldn’t understand it. “Freddy Goes to Florida? What does Freddy mean?”

  “Freddy,” he said, “is a name, like Mychailo or Nadia. This particular Freddy is a talking pig.”

  “A talking pig?” That made no sense at all. “And what is Florida?”

  “It’s a place,” he said, as if he couldn’t understand my confusion.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Pigs don’t talk and pigs don’t go places unless they’re taken by humans.”

  Mychailo rolled his eyes. “Maybe you should read one,” he said. “Freddy Goes to Florida is the first in the series. Then you’d understand. They’re hilarious. I’ve been trying to borrow this one for quite a while.”

  “I bet you don’t take those books to school with you.”

  “You’re right about that,” he said. “The hockey book is for taking to school.”

  I set Black Beauty down. It had too many words. “Can I try a Freddy book too?”

  “Sure,” said Mychailo. “Let’s see if there are any on the shelf.”

  There were a few, so Mychailo drew out a copy of Freddy the Detective. “This was the first one I read,” he said. “And it’s really good.”

  I flipped through it. Even though it was a bit thicker than Black Beauty, the print was big and there were some pictures. Not quite a picture book, but not as daunting as Black Beauty. I breathed in deeply the wonderful scent of ink on paper and ran my hand across a page. Even the feel of this book made me happy …

  I am in my four-poster bed in the German farmhouse. I should be asleep but I am woken by the rumble of voices from downstairs. I get out of bed. Shivering in my bare feet and thin nightgown, I slip down the stairs to see where the voices are coming from. The double doors of the library are open. Vater is seated with a brandy in one hand. Other men, their uniform jackets unbuttoned, sit around the table, telling each other stories and laughing. These are SS men. I know that because they have the very same badges on their collars as Vater.

  But that is not what catches my eye. After all, I’ve seen them so often—at rallies in the city, and here for dinner parties. What I notice this time is the room they are in. It is usually closed. This room is lined from floor to ceiling with books, mostly in German, but some in other languages too. Fat books, thin books, some with gold lettering on their spines. I love books. I long to hold them. But I am not allowed to touch these books.

  I walk back up to my room and pull out from under my bed the one book Vater has allowed me: Der Giftpiltz. I turn the pages. The paintings are colorful and the print is large and clear. I want to love this book but I cannot. It talks about Jews and how they are poisonous toadstools but Germans are wholesome mushrooms. Something deep inside me tells me this is wrong. I think of that girl who wore the yellow star and my heart aches. I close the book and shove it back under my bed.

  “We should be going,” said Mychailo. “Don’t you have to put supper on?”

  Suddenly, I was back in the library in Canada. In Brantford. I looked at Mychailo, then up at the clock on the wall. We had been at the library for an hour.

  We walked to the checkout counter, him with his three books and me with the one novel. I still felt a little bit like I was in a dream world.

  An older boy who looked vaguely familiar from today’s recess was standing in line in front of us. He turned, caught Mychailo’s eye, and nodded in greeting. He didn’t seem to notice me, and that was fine with me. A few more people stood behind us in line. I didn’t know most of them but recognized Linda. She was with a girl who looked like an older version of herself. It had to be her sister. Once my book was stamped, I waited for Linda and her sister to be checked through.

  Mychailo tugged on my sleeve. “Come on,” he said. “I thought you had to cook the potatoes.”

  “This will only take a minute.” I knew he didn’t want to be seen with me, but this wasn’t a boy from school, it was two girls, so what was the harm? He stood impatiently by my side as Linda and her sister had their books stamped.

  “Hi, Nadia,” said Linda. She glanced at Mychailo, then back at me. “This is my sister, Grace.”

  Grace was taller than Linda, but she had the same golden skin and glossy hair. “So you are Nadia,” she said, holding out her hand to me. “Good to meet you.” She smiled at Mychailo, then tilted her head so she could read the spines of the books he was holding. “I did
n’t know you were a Freddy fan, Mychailo.”

  “You know each other?” I asked.

  “Grace and I are in the same class.”

  Grace noticed the copy of Freddy the Detective in my hand. “How can you read that?”

  I looked at her in surprise. What had Linda said about me to her sister? I knew my English wasn’t perfect, but did she think I was stupid? “Slowly,” I said, forcing my lips into a smile.

  We stood chatting for a few minutes longer. “I’ve got to get home and turn on the potatoes before Marusia gets home,” I said.

  We walked up the half flight of stairs together and out the children’s entrance. Linda and Grace walked with us as far as Sheridan Street, where Mychailo and I turned and they continued. Mychailo dropped his library books off at home and then we both went back to my place.

  Once inside, I turned on the potatoes. Then we went out to the backyard and sat on the cinder blocks.

  “You have to remember to call Marusia and Ivan your mother and father when you’re talking to non-Ukrainians,” Mychailo said.

  My heart skipped a beat. “I always call them that.”

  Mychailo rolled his eyes. “You’re so stupid you don’t even know what you’re saying.”

  I was about to yell at him, but I stopped. He was right. Didn’t I just use Marusia’s name with Linda and Grace? I would have to watch myself.

  “Not everyone is perfect like you, Mr. Smarty-Pants,” I replied.

  “This is serious,” said Mychailo. “I don’t know where you really came from, but if you want to stay in Canada, you had better get used to calling Marusia and Ivan your mother and father.”

  I didn’t say anything to that. I knew he was right and I was surprised at myself for slipping up. At the DP camp, I never let my guard down, but now that we were safely in Canada, my past was forcing itself to be remembered and my thoughts seemed to get all jumbled.

  Just then we heard a truck stop in front of the house and Marusia’s voice calling out a good-bye to the other farm workers.