The snowball misses my face by centimeters. It streaks past the corner of my right eye like a shooting star, a fatal wink of silver and white. My bowl of porridge sloshes when I jerk away, and nearly expired milk soaks my mittens.
“Tomasz Aleksy Jablonski, stop throwing snowballs this minute, or I will tell Mama!” I shout from the front porch steps.
My little brother responds by wiggling his rear at me across the front lawn. Tomasz crouches again, already assembling another snowball. He and I both know Mama doesn’t have the energy to punish him today. Even a funeral can’t extinguish Tomasz’s ornery energy, though.
I set my bland porridge on the porch and run down the steps. If Tomasz wants a snowball fight, I will give him one to remember. My snowball grenades will be loaded with ice and frozen dirt to make them extra lethal. Baba taught me to pack a punch with my snowballs, especially if a boy is on the receiving end of it. “You want them to know your balls are bigger than theirs,” she would say with a wink.
A puddle of golden light spills out of the parlor’s large window and traps me inside its embrace before I crouch down to assemble a snowball. I glance inside but stop dead in my tracks. For a brief, glorious second, I believe Baba stares back at me. A breath of cold air rushes across the lawn and plucks at the loose hairs framing my face, ruining the illusion, and I realize it’s my own reflection.
Is this what the rest of my life will be? Searching for Baba around every corner only to be disappointed again and again? How much disappointment and heartbreak can someone withstand before succumbing to the sea of sadness raging within them? Baba’s only been dead for a week, and I already don’t feel strong enough to withstand the life sentence of grief stretching before me.
After Baba died, my brain refused to accept her absence. Each morning, I watch her ghost fill the copper tea kettle with water and curse the German’s for stealing all the coffee; her slippers shuffle outside my bedroom every night, the familiar pacing a soothing lullaby. Two days ago, I could have sworn Baba was in the backyard with a plate of potato biscuits for Littlefoot, the fox she freed from a bear trap when I was a girl. Baba nursed Littlefoot until his broken leg stitched itself back together. I sobbed when Baba set Littlefoot free. “In life, you must learn to let go, Georgiana. Littlefoot has a whole life ahead of him, and we can’t stand in the way of him living it,” Baba said when Littlefoot’s rust-colored hide disappeared into the bushes at the edge of our property.
A decade later, I still haven’t gotten any better at letting things go.
“Gigi, look out!”
A snowball smacks my cheek when I turn. It smarts instantly, an icy fire crawling across my skin one centimeter at a time. Tears flood over the edges of my eyes. I can’t tell if the snowball summoned them or burst the dam of grief inside me.
Zuzanna Malinowski, my best friend, hops down the steps before I can react. She crouches down, forms an onion-sized snowball, and nails Tomasz straight in the chest. The snowball knocks Tomasz over. The pain in my cheek intensifies when I laugh at his shocked expression. Say what you will about Zu’s father, but he taught his daughter to throw a mean curveball.
Tomasz’s shock quickly transforms into inconsolable howling. I suspect he’s embarrassed rather than hurt, but I don’t have any sympathy for my little brother. “I told you not to throw snowballs. This is what you get for not listening.”
“I’m telling Mama!” Tomasz pushes himself to his feet and runs into the house to tattle. Good. The sun ticks towards the horizon, and I don’t want Tomasz playing outside after dark. That’s how Alfie Zunderson went missing in October. His mother was watching him play in a pile of leaves outside the kitchen window; she went to set the table for dinner, and Alfie was gone by the time she returned. His body was found two weeks later with a necklace of bruises covering his throat.
“Tomasz creamed you good,” Zu says. She joins me by the window.
“It was a cheap shot,” I say.
“My father says cheap shots win fights,” Zu replies. Mr. Malinowski would know. Besides drinking, his favorite pastime is betting on illegal street fights in Pyr, a neighboring town. At least, before the war started in September. “What are you doing out here? It’s freezing.”
“Avoiding our guests. I can’t bear the weight of their grief and mine,” I say. I escaped outside with Tomasz because Baba’s friends, enemies, and everyone in between wanted to regale me with a story about her. The stories stacked heavy as stones on my shoulders. Each one felt like a betrayal because it made me realize how much of Baba’s life I missed out on. It isn’t fair our neighbors got more time with my grandmother than I did. “Baba would have hated this.”
“Funerals aren’t for the dead,” Zu says. She pushes her porthole-shaped glasses up her nose then rubs her bare hands up and down the arms of her bottle green coat. It is Zu’s most prized possession. “Still no updates on Baba’s inheritance?”
“If you came to interrogate me about the inheritance, you can go back inside. Mrs. Slozski is taking bets on whether it will appear before Lent. Buy-in is one ration card,” I say.
Everyone in Sozyn is invested in the mystery of Baba’s missing inheritance. After Baba died, Mama and Aunt Klaudia searched every centimeter of the house for Baba’s jewelry, Diko’s silver pocket watch, and the scraps of the Jablonski family fortune. Their hunt was fruitless. Once it became clear the inheritance wouldn’t reveal itself, Aunt Klaudia and Mama were beside themselves with worry. Mama dug up the edges of Lake Pochurny hunting for buried milk cans full of treasure, and Aunt Klaudia stuck her head in tree hollows to unearth velvet bags of jewelry squirreled away by Baba. I caught Mama on her knees in the attic yesterday, knocking on floorboards and praying for a loose one.
A few of our neighbors noticed their strange behavior, and rumors spread through Sozyn quicker than a wake of vultures can devour a corpse. The speculation is a welcome distraction from the Wehrmacht soldiers infesting Sozyn with their guns, dwindling rations, and disappearing children. While I understand how precarious our financial situation is, I resent Mama and Aunt Klaudia’s obsession with finding the inheritance because it overshadows their grief for Baba. I had to drag Aunt Klaudia away from the house to meet the gravediggers and choose Baba’s burial plot. Mama sent Tomasz and me door-to-door to invite people to Baba’s service rather than go herself; she was convinced Baba hid her pearl earrings and necklace in the cellar’s store of pickled vegetables. Mourning the loss of a few trinkets rather than Baba soils her memory.
“I’m sorry, Gigi. I can throw a snowball at Mrs. Slozski if you want. Knock all those extra ration cards right out of her hands,” Zu says.
I laugh and wipe the tears away from my face. “Did I tell you Mama broke a fingernail searching for a false back in Baba’s wardrobe?”
“Her wardrobe has a false back?” Zu says.
“No. Mama invented one so she would have another place to search,” I say.
“Impudent puss,” Zu says and shakes her head.
A fist tightens in my stomach at the use of Baba’s favorite epithet. Kapitan Bizon was an impudent puss when he preached about God’s will being enacted through Hitler. Men and women in the ration line were impudent pusses after they took the last of the flour or meat. Mama was an impudent puss last November because she dropped precious eggs on the sidewalk after seeing two soldiers waiting outside the house to inform us of Papa’s death. I can’t remember the last person Baba called an impudent puss. I’m already losing memories of her, and it's only been a week. How can my memories of Baba fade when the pain of her loss peels apart my heart layer by layer?
“Maybe there’s nothing left. Mama and Aunt Klaudia searched the house up and down. If it was here, they would have found it,” I say.
“You really believe Baba left the inheritance someplace your mother could find it?” Zu raises a caterpillar of an eyebrow at me.
It’s true -- Mama and Baba didn’t have the best relationship, especially after Papa died. But Baba wouldn’t hide the inheritance to spite Mama. She knew Mama, Tomasz, Aunt Klaudia, and I would need it to live off. Since the war began, Baba gave Mama a ruby-encrusted brooch and her wedding silver to trade on the black market for a few eggs and a small sack of potatoes. Each time Baba parted with an heirloom, she would remind us the trinkets weren’t worth our lives. No, Baba would never be so callous and cruel. Where could the rest of the heirlooms be, though?
“Georgiana!”
Mama shivers on the front porch, a flimsy shawl wrapped around her shoulders. “Both of you come inside this instant. I won’t have you catching your deaths on my watch!”
Zu and I trudge towards the house, snow crunching beneath our boots with every step. As we ascend the stairs, Mama says, “Tomasz said Zu threw a snowball at his head. Is this true?”
“No. He threw a snowball at my head, and Zu bowled him over with a snowball to the chest. Tomasz started a fight he couldn’t finish,” I say. My cheek still throbs from the cold slap of snow and ice.
“He’s four,” Mama says.
“It’s never too early to learn the art of war, Mrs. Jablonski,” Zu says.
Mama rolls her eyes to the heavens as she ushers us into the house. “There’s enough war outside my home, Zuzanna. I won’t have it crossing this threshold.”
“Yes, Mrs. Jablonski,” Zu says.
We’re barely inside the front door when Mama starts yanking on my sleeves. “Ow! My arms are still attached, Mama.”
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you, Gigi,” Mama says, ignoring my plea for mercy. Each word is accented with a sharp tug on my coat, and my muscles pinch while she wrestles me out of it. “You have neglected our guests all afternoon.”
“Zu is one of our guests,” I say.
“You know what I mean,” Mama says. The coat finally releases me, all limbs accounted for, and Mama hangs it from one of the coat rack’s branches. “It’s time for you to greet and comfort our other guests. I’m sure Zu understands.”
Before Zu can reply, Mama grabs my upper arm and pulls me along. I glance over Mama’s shoulder at Zu who shrugs then wanders off in the direction of the food table. Turncoat.
As Mama propels me through the moat of mourners, I play a new game I invented. I visualize everyone missing from Baba’s funeral reception, and neighborly ghosts begin to haunt our house. I imagine Mr. Tarpol, the former sweet shop owner, sneak Bela Svaj a chocolate bar to ease the ache of her old piano teacher’s death. Mr. and Mrs. Warszawski would stage a political puppet show by the fireplace in the parlor; King David, their star performer, would beat a tar-mustached Hitler with a miniature bat to entertain the few children left in town. Abraham Adamik stirs to life in Mr. Jerzac’s shadow. Before Abraham was carted off with his mother and twin sisters, he apprenticed with the local handyman. The young boy’s gap-toothed grin accompanied every tool he handed Mr. Jerzac. Mrs. Janada’s raspy, cigarette-stained voice would waft through the house, warm and rich as smoke.
Our Jewish neighbors have been haunting Sozyn’s streets for seven months. One by one, the Wehrmacht corralled them into cattle cars and shipped them away to God knows where. Their screams were as high pitched as a train whistle, but the town’s silence was louder. The collective grief for these ghosts belongs to Sozyn. To Vasaria. I conjure them because I don’t want to forget. The Germans have already taken so much, but I refuse to let them steal my memories, too.
The rest of Sozyn doesn’t share my sentiments. After the Nazis invaded in late September, people’s true colors came to light. Fear inspired people to join the National Socialist Party and rally behind the Wehrmacht soldiers who now run Sozyn. Gossip became currency, and informants started lining up outside of the town hall in hopes of sacrificing their neighbors to save themselves. As the Wehrmacht’s fingers dug into Sozyn’s throat, people who I had known to be kind and decent before the war transformed. Instead of defending our Jewish neighbors, they assisted the Wehrmacht in robbing, beating, and evacuating them. Those who didn’t participate in their erasure turned a blind eye to their neighbors’ suffering.
It’s getting easier to smother this grief and guilt, though. The husbands, sons, and brothers lost to foreign battlefields leave bullet-sized holes in their families’ hearts. The ever-growing list of missing and murdered children also keeps Sozyn’s citizens occupied. Over the last few months, children disappeared at an alarming rate. Some of their bodies were found in the woods bordering town; others still hadn’t surfaced. There were rumors of a murderer kidnapping and killing kids to supplement the dwindling rations, but I don’t believe them. None of the children have been found missing limbs or organs, and I don’t know anyone who would waste that much meat.
Sozyn’s gravediggers are the only people doing well. Business is booming.
Mrs. Gonet pulls the brakes on my train of thought when she grabs my shoulder. “How are you holding up, dears?” she asks. Her eyes are as red as the poppy embroidered handkerchief she holds. Mrs. Gonet stitched poppies onto the handkerchief during the Great War; each one represents a son, father, or husband who died from town. Although Papa didn’t die in the Great War, Mrs. Gonet sewed a poppy on for him, too. Will Baba earn a spot on the handkerchief, add more color to the field of grief and white linen? The losses never end.
“We’re managing. I don’t know what we’ll do without Minna’s strength to lean on,” Mama says.
It takes every cell of self-control I have not to roll my eyes. Mama isn’t missing Baba’s strength; she’s missing the inheritance. This false display of grief is the first time I have heard Mama mention Baba without referencing the inheritance. I detest Mama’s two-faced, mourning daughter-in-law act, and a small part of me hopes we don’t find the inheritance to vex her further.
“I was thinking the same thing earlier today. Minna helped me heal after I lost Jakub in the Great War. She ordered me to stop being an impudent puss, to take care of my kids and myself.” A combination of a sob and a laugh escapes Mrs. Gonet’s mouth. She wrings the handkerchief in her hands, a tightrope of mourning and misery. The black spots at the poppies’ bases stretch out, and they stare at me. Say something, they seem to whisper.
Since Mama doesn’t need comforting, I will console someone who does. “Last week, I asked Baba what she would miss most in the world when she died.” The words scrape against my throat, their edges clinging to my tongue. Every memory of Baba I share feels as if I’m giving parts of her away. I worry about the day I have no new memories or stories left to share because then her death will be final, permanent. However, I force myself to continue. “She told me your apple tarts were at the top of the list.”
Mrs. Gonet laughs and wipes a stray tear from her cheek. “Minna always had a sweet tooth. I would have made some, but the rations get slimmer and slimmer.”
“The borscht you brought is delicious,” Mama says.
I laugh, but turn it into a cough. Mama would starve before eating a beet.
“Thank you, Sonja,” Mrs. Gonet says. Her pale blue eyes find mine, and she lifts my chin with a finger, inspecting my face. “You resemble her, Georgiana. Looking at you is like looking at Minna forty-five years ago.”
I remember mistaking myself for Baba in the window earlier, the fleeting hope I felt that she wasn’t dead after all. Mrs. Gonet never mentioned I favored Baba before. Her grief must be playing tricks on her eyes, but I don’t dare correct her. “I appreciate the comparison, Mrs. Gonet. If I’m half the woman Baba was, I will be happy.”
“I’m not sure women like her exist anymore. She was tougher than a Vasarian winter, sharp-witted as a fox, and could spin a yarn with the best storytellers,” Mrs. Gonet says.
I smile as memories of Baba’s stories echo in my ears. Each night, I fell asleep to her voice. She regaled me with fairy tales featuring girls with blood red hair and appetites to match, pirates who hunted for wives instead of treasure, forest spirits trapped inside mushrooms that gossiped more than old Mrs. Ulgar. Baba’s stories matured with me; daring, intelligent Eastern European women replaced crafty woodland creatures and innocent witches. Baba was a heroine in a few of these tales, sharing stories from her long, well-lived life.
“She was my hero,” I say. Mrs. Gonet squeezes my shoulder, and a fresh wave of tears stings my eyes. No one will ever replace my Baba, and we both know it.
“It was good talking with you, Mrs. Gonet,” Mama interrupts. “But we should continue our rounds.”
My insides prickle at being torn away from Mrs. Gonet, at the opportunity to share my sadness with someone who understands it. I thought Mama wanted me to interact with our guests, but I suppose she wants to choose which guests deserve my attention. Why must Mama control my every action? I’m not a child any longer, and I don’t want to be treated as one.
“Go, go,” Mrs. Gonet says. “I’ve kept you too long.”
Aunt Klaudia intercepts us before I can confront Mama. Her black dress -- now gray from all the use it has seen recently -- hangs on her thin frame like a sheet on a scarecrow, shapeless and empty. Wrinkles frame her eyes and mouth that I swear weren’t there last week. I wonder if Aunt Klaudia’s preoccupation with Baba’s inheritance isn’t so much about finding it, but rather a distraction from the well of grief growing inside her. I wish I could pocket mine so easily.
“Have you seen Tomasz? It’s almost curfew, and I want to tuck him in,” Aunt Klaudia says.
“After the girls taught him a lesson in…What was it?” Mama says.
“The art of war,” I mutter.
“Ah, yes, the ‘art of war’ as they call it, I set him up in the study with his blocks. I thought it best to end today with a less violent lesson,” Mama says.
“He started it,” I say.
“How proud you and Zuzanna must be to have finished a fight with a four-year-old,” Mama says.
Aunt Klaudia smiles; it’s weaker than the tea she brews. “I’ll start packing up food for our guests to take home, then I’ll put Tomasz to bed.”
“Not too much food,” Mama whispers and winks. It earns her a rare flash of Aunt Klaudia’s dimples before she departs. Mama and I dive back into the sea of sorrow.
“Why were you looking for me?” I say. I don’t enjoy being paraded around like a cow at the annual agriculture festival.
“I want to introduce you to someone,” Mama says. Her fingers feel like claws as they dig into my arm, a beast clutching its prey.
“The whole town is here. I know everyone.”
“I suppose re-introduce might be more appropriate,” she says. “Do you remember Bastian?”
My breath catches in my throat, and an avalanche of memories cascades across my mind: Bastian chasing me across the yard with dog poop on a stick when we were toddlers, carrying me home after I fell three meters out of a tree at twelve-years-old, kissing me goodbye on a dusty train station platform eight months ago. My cheeks heat red as two stove top burners at the memory, and I pray to Baba no one notices. “Of course, I remember Bastian.”
Thankfully, Mama is too preoccupied with her own agenda to pay me any mind. “Bastian returned from the front about a month ago.”
“In a casket?” I say, knowing Bastian is alive and well. Not well enough to reply to my letters or visit, but well enough to attend Baba’s funeral reception after months of silence. He wasn’t at the cemetery, so I wonder when he snuck into the reception…
I shake my head of thoughts about Bastian Bartosik. I agonized over him since the war began, losing countless hours of sleep worrying about whether he was dead or alive. I stayed awake imagining him lying in a hole full of corpses, blown into chunks of meat by a landmine, shot in the stomach and cradling his own blood as it spilled out of him. Once I heard Bastian joined the Wehrmacht, it almost made these fates preferable. How could any self-respecting Vasarian enlist with Hitler’s army and volunteer to do the Nazis’ dirty work? I doubt life would be worth living as one of Hitler’s henchmen, but Bastian must not agree.
“No, young lady. Bastian is a member of the Wehrmacht, and you would do well to respect his station,” Mama says, looking over her shoulder for any eavesdropping ears.
“Traitor,” I say. My own heart feels traitorous for pinballing around my chest each time I hear Bastian’s name.
Mama pinches me hard. “Keep your voice down. We don’t know who’s here to mourn and who’s here to offer information to Kapitan Bizon.”
“Are we volunteering information ourselves?” I say. I loathe how quiet my voice becomes, how low my trust in our neighbors’ stoops.
“No. We’re welcoming Bastian back and reminding him of that pretty face of yours,” Mama says.
Panic sinks its claws into my chest. “If this is some matchmaking attempt, I swear I will scream.”
After I turned sixteen last spring, Mama began setting me up with local boys in Sozyn and Pyr. She claimed it was a mother’s duty to secure a suitable match for her only daughter. I reckon Mama’s motives were more selfish than altruistic, though. My desire to study history and literature at the University of Inburg always scared her; she feared losing me and future grandchildren to dust ridden libraries and communist academics. The only good thing the war brought about was the end of Mama’s matchmaking career. Until now.
“Good,” Mama says. “Maybe Bastian’s gentlemanly instincts will inspire him to comfort a mourning girl.”
Nerves bubble in my stomach. It’s the same fizzing, electric sensation I felt the first time I drank champagne with Bastian on All Souls Day two years ago. A similar drunken dizziness threatens to bring me to my knees.
“Why was he sent home?” I say. I heard rumors that Bastian’s father -- a general in the Wehrmacht -- persuaded the Germans to station him in Sozyn so his grandfather could keep a closer eye on him. I also heard Bastian was such a terrible soldier, the Wehrmacht had no use for him in areas of conflict. He never was good at following orders.
“He was injured. So, you better watch your tongue and your manners,” Mama says, a note of warning in her words.
Before I can protest any further, I see Bastian because he stands a head above everyone in the dining room. His honey-colored hair is slicked back, but one strand falls stubbornly across his forehead. When we were kids, Bastian’s hair always hung in his face; one time he cut his bangs at the scalp so they could no longer blind him to the world, and his newly shorn hair resembled weeds slowly growing in a garden for months. Fingers pale as a blank canvas smooth the fallen hair back into formation. His hand brushes against cheekbones that are knife-blade sharp, and gray circles ripple beneath his eyes. It appears the war has left him worse for wear, too.
My heartbeat thumps against my chest, and its frantic drumbeat is the only sound I hear. Sweat gathers on my palms, under my armpits, and around my hairline, soaking me on the spot. No matter how much I pretended to be unaffected by Bastian’s absence these last few months, it’s harder to conjure a mask of indifference with him standing across the room. I envisioned our reunion so many times, but I never imagined we would meet again at Baba’s funeral reception. Or on opposite sides of the war.
I stop, and it's only Mama’s hand on my arm that keeps me from bolting from the dining room. She tugs on my sleeve, but my feet refuse to move. I’m not ready to see Bastian. I may never be ready. Based on Bastian’s maddening silence and the jam consistency of my knees, that arrangement will suit both of us just fine.
Before I can flee, Mrs. Bartosik spots us. “Georgiana, you get lovelier every time I see you!” She pushes past Dido Bartosik and other guests to engulf me in an embrace. I wrap my arms around her, feeling the loose skin of her upper arms rest against my shoulders like bird wings. Mrs. Bartosik was the only woman in Sozyn who was slightly overweight before the war; now she’s starving like the rest of us.
“We were so sorry to hear about Minna,” she says and strokes my hair. “She will be missed.”
I nod into her neck, squeezing her against me.
“It’s good to see you, Bastian! We would have called on you earlier, but with Minna’s illness…” Mama says beside me.
“Of course, Sonja,” Mrs. Bartosik says, releasing me. “We understand completely. You must take care of those at home first. I hardly let Bastian out of my sight when he returned home.”
“It’s true,” Bastian says. I avoid his gaze and stare at the eagle embroidered on his uniform. It glares at me with a beady, triangular eye. The bird’s wings resemble a gun with two barrels pointed in opposite directions, and a swastika rests in its talons. Saliva floods my mouth, and it takes all my restraint not to spit on Bastian’s uniform. “I couldn’t take a shit without seeing her shadow under the door.”
I snort despite myself. Damn him! Bastian always knew how to make me laugh, especially when I was mad at him.
“Bastian!” Mrs. Bartosik smacks her son on the shoulder. After she makes contact, Mrs. Bartosik’s hand slides down Bastian’s arm, and she grabs his elbow, pulling him closer to her. Farther from Dido Bartosik and his cane. “Mind your manners! We’re here to honor Minna’s memory, not defile it. Apologize to Sonja and Georgiana this instant.”
“I apologize for any disrespect. I’ve forgotten how to properly address ladies during my time in the army. I didn’t mean to offend either of you,” Bastian says. Before I can move, he grabs my hand, bends down, and kisses my knuckles. He looks up at me from beneath his eyelashes and winks. “Please forgive me.”
I rescue my hand from Bastian and wipe it on my dress as Mama says, “Apology accepted.”
Mama nudges me, and I nod, not trusting myself to speak. Swearing is the least of Bastian’s crimes.
Dido Bartosik’s knuckles tighten around the skull head on his cane. The bronze skull grins at me between his fingers, the hollow eye sockets dark and round. Bastian once told me the cane was a family heirloom, passed down from father to son for generations. He vowed to bury it with his father.
“The army did him more good than his parents ever could. His father was always too soft on him,” Dido Bartosik says. As kids, I remember Bastian coming to school with eyes purple as plums, berry-colored bruises decorating his arms and legs. He concocted wild stories about getting into rock fights with bandits who meant to harm Sozyn, wrestling older boys from Pyr to defend some girl’s honor, or falling down two flights of stairs and emphasizing how lucky he was to be alive. It got harder to romanticize his injuries as we got older. “The Wehrmacht officers are teaching him honor, sacrifice, and how to be a man. His mother’s too scared of her own shadow to teach him anything, and his father is only good at swearing.”
My fingernails carve crescent moons into my palms. As one of Sozyn’s snitches, Dido Bartosik has no room to talk about honor.
“I learned to swear from the best,” Bastian says. He slaps his grandfather on the back hard. “The army just taught me to swear louder. Especially after I lost my hearing.”
“You lost your hearing?” I say. Baba always warned my curiosity has less lives than a cat’s. I must remember Bastian and I are no longer friends; therefore, I can’t express any interest in his life, injuries, or romantic pursuits. Despite how much this thought wilts my heart. I refuse to associate with a traitor to Vasaria and me.
Bastian nods. “I can no longer hear in my left ear. Got too close to a landmine explosion.”
Gooseflesh erupts along my forearms and at the back of my neck. Before the war, I didn’t know anything about landmines. How could stepping on the wrong patch of grass mean the difference between life and death? My brain couldn’t fathom the earth blowing up beneath a person’s boots, the bone and skin and blood people are made of undone in the blink of an eye. After Papa died from a landmine explosion in November, I kept imagining how his death must have looked. The confetti-sized chunks raining down on grass, flower petals, and fellow soldiers, painting every surface in sight red. I wonder if Bastian lost his hearing to the same landmine Papa lost his life to. Could Bastian have saved Papa? Would he have been too scared to try? Or was there anything left to save? I stare at the bird decorating Bastian’s chest, and bile tickles the back of my throat.
“It’s a small price to pay in defense of our country. This cane reminds me what the price of freedom is every day,” Dido Bartosik says.
Bastian throws back his slivovitz like it’s water. His eyes might be the same dark blue, almost navy, but there’s an emptiness in them now. As if a candle was smothered inside of Bastian, and there’s no way to reignite it.
Mama focuses her attention on him. “I’m sure Gigi would love to hear about your adventures. As you know, she’s always wanted to leave Sozyn and see the world beyond Vasaria’s borders. Maybe she can satiate that thirst by talking to you. Or even have a reason to stay.”
Embarrassment buzzes through my mind, a swarm of wasps roused from their nest and searching for someone to sting. Perhaps Baba’s casket is big enough to share. I can’t survive the mortification of Mama flirting with my childhood crush for me. And at Baba’s funeral reception, no less! Mama must be stopped.
“Don’t listen to Mama. She’s mourning,” I say. “Mourning leads to drinking, and drinking leads to her talking about things she knows nothing about.”
“Georgiana,” Mama says between her teeth.
“Pity. I wouldn’t mind being your reason to stay.” Bastian winks at me, and I glare back despite the kaleidoscope of butterflies fluttering in my stomach. The audacity! I wasted months worrying myself sick about his well-being, and now he wants to pretend those months of silence didn’t happen. Bastian might believe things can return to normal, but I know better. My heart can’t withstand anymore rejection; it’s barely holding itself together as is.
I can feel Mama’s hope escalate, so I say, “Excuse me, I have to use the W.C.”
I turn before Mama can grab me. Warm words greet me as I disappear into the crowd and push my way out of the dining room then run up the staircase. Flashes of red carpet beneath my feet remind me of the flecks of blood that decorated Baba’s white nightgown the last few weeks she was alive. The coughing fits always started out as laughter. Then the laughter would transform into a drizzle of blood dotting her chest, her hands, her cheeks. I smelled the blood before I felt it on my cheek, metallic and salty and sick.
The back of my throat quivers as I reach the second floor, and I just make it to the bathroom before I vomit. Pale yellow streaks out of my mouth when my throat constricts, the taste of acid stale and greasy. I spit into the toilet and wipe my hand across my mouth once I’m done. I lean against the side of the claw foot tub and pull my knees to my chest.
“Why?” I sniff. I asked the same question at Baba’s funeral when I stood above her grave, six feet of life and death between us. No one answered then either.
A shadow appears under the door. I hold my breath. Thank goodness I didn’t bother to turn on the light. I can’t handle Mama’s matchmaking or Zu’s questions right now.
The silence between the shadow, the door, and me stretches. Hairs rise along my arms as the seconds tick by. Whoever is on the other side must know I’m here.
The feet shuffle beneath the door, their shadows becoming thicker and extinguishing light from the hallway. Something scratches against the floor when it’s pushed beneath the door, and the shadow disappears.
What in the nine hells could this be? I crawl towards the door and pick up the piece of paper. It’s fragile, wrinkled, and slightly damp. I unfold it carefully so it doesn’t rip. In the center, it reads “Last Will and Testament.” The final three words are scratched out with pencil. Messy, childish handwriting replaces them with a single word.
“Last chance,” I breathe.
A faint buzzing fills my ears. I had no idea Baba drew up a will before she died. When did Baba have time to do this? How did she do this? The few lawyers in town were carted away on cattle cars, and Baba’s pneumonia left her bedridden for months. I suppose she could have finished the will before the war, but why not tell anyone? Or leave it in the possession of a family member rather than a shadowed stranger?
I flip the paper over to find another message in the same handwriting. It takes a few seconds to decipher the parade of sloppy vowels and consonants: “Meet the Pedaler at the chokeberry bush tomorrow night at 11:30pm if you want to find the inheritance. Come alone on your bike.”
I stand, dropping the paper on the floor, and fling open the door. I march down the hallway then peek down the staircase. Voices from the first floor trail up the stairs, but I’m alone. Whoever delivered the paper is gone.
When I return to the bathroom, I almost expect the sheet to be a figment of my “unruly imagination” as Mama phrases it. Although, I’d like to think I could imagine the whole will. I flick the light switch and crouch down to reexamine the paper. It’s thicker than the pages of a book. Softer, too, as if many hands touched it. The sheet is eggnog yellow with age, more creased than a Dido’s face, and freckled with dried mud. My fingers skim over impressions embedded into it. Like something was written on top of this sheet too hard.
Why wouldn’t the stranger step forward with the will? It doesn’t reveal anything besides a cryptic meeting time and place, but they might have bargained for a finder’s fee once the inheritance is found. They could have even met the mysterious Pedaler tomorrow night rather than instructing me to do so. The meeting is after curfew, but if it leads to Baba’s inheritance the risk would be worth the reward. No. Whoever shoved the paper beneath the door wants me to meet the Pedaler and find the inheritance on my own. But why?
Moonlight washes over my shins as I step into the tub. The chokeberry bush is on the edge of our property, signifying the end of the yard and the beginning of the woods. I don’t know what -- or who -- I expect to see when I look out the window, but it isn’t a small shadow straddling a mint green bike. From this distance, I can’t make out many details because the person, the Pedaler, is cloaked in shadows.
“Bathing requires water, Gigi,” a voice says from behind me.
I jolt away from the window and release a breath I’d been holding in. “Dammit, Zu,” I say, massaging my chest and slipping the paper into my pocket. The decision to hide the note is instinctual; I don’t want to get Mama and Aunt Klaudia’s hopes up or inspire anymore gossip about Baba’s inheritance. “You move like a panther when you want to.”
“And I bite like one, too. You okay?”
I nod. “I just needed space from Mama. She’s trying to set me up with Bastian.”
“You can’t date a Wehrmacht soldier! Even if he is handsome.”
“Wedding bells already ring in Mama’s ears and deafen her to common sense. Did she send you to find me?” I say.
“Not exactly,” Zu says. She bites the inside of her cheek, a telltale sign she’s nervous about something. Bees buzz in my stomach, nervous and jittery, but I ignore them.
“Well?” I say.
“Have you seen Tomasz recently? Your Mama and Aunt can’t find him anywhere. They said he was playing in the study, but he isn’t there anymore, and it’s almost curfew.”
There’s an unspoken tension in Zu’s last few words. I turn to glance out the window, but the Pedaler is gone. I have a bad feeling Tomasz is too.
