The Other Girl (2 page)

“I'm from Lipnik.”

Maria recognized the name of the village to the east, no bigger than her own. “That's nearly forty kilometers from here.” She noticed then the girl's tattered shoes, little more than remnants of leather.

Maria pulled the child into the shadow of the barn. Hannah winced, retracting as though Maria's hands were fire against her skin. How long had she been there? Her face was a ghostly white. Maria looked over her shoulder toward the house. She could not bring the child inside.

“Wait here,” Maria instructed, guiding Hannah back into the shadow of the woodpile. She slipped into the house, strode quickly to the kitchen and looked around for something warm to feed the child. Finding nothing, she grabbed some leftover bread and milk, and a few of the now-cold potatoes, hoping her mother-in-law would not notice and ask questions. She started to reach for some ham, too, then hesitated. She had heard that Jews do not eat pork, but it was the only meat they had. She tore off a piece.

She returned outside and handed the food to Hannah, who gobbled down the bread, potatoes and ham indiscriminately, too famished to notice or care. “What are you doing here?” Maria asked as the girl ate like a ravenous stray.

Hannah swallowed the milk in a single gulp. “The Germans. They said they were sending us girls and boys to a camp.” Maria shuddered. She had heard about the Germans relocating Jews to central areas, but the idea of taking children without their parents seemed unthinkable. “The train cars were awful, though, like the kind they use for cattle. When I saw those, I knew they were lying.”

“So you ran.”

Hannah nodded. Maria marveled at her bravery. “Why didn't you go home?”

“I didn't want to get my family in trouble,” Hannah replied. “I can manage on my own. I was told that there are people who help the Jews.” Her eyes met Maria's. “There are, aren't there?”

Maria tried to formulate an answer. Most villagers were just trying to survive. They were not complicit with the Germans like her own traitorous father, but it was hard to imagine them risking their own lives for a person they didn't know, let alone taking in a child. “I don't know about that,” she replied evenly. “In any event, we need to find you somewhere to stay for the night. Then first thing in the morning we can take you home.”

“I'm not going back,” Hannah blurted. “Ever.” Her voice was flat yet resolute.

“What about your parents? Surely they are worried...”

“Not my father,” Hannah said, her eyes clouding. She winced, reliving something unspeakable, and in that moment Maria saw all the suffering the child had faced. “He's the reason I had to go.” Hannah's face seemed to close and she wrapped her arms around herself protectively, as if imploring Maria not to ask further questions.

Maria's anger rose. Whatever had happened to the girl was so bad that she would rather be on her own in the dark and cold than in her own home.

Maria tried again. “And your mother?”

“Mama won't worry. She thinks I'm at the camp with the others.” Hannah looked over Maria's shoulder. “This is your family's house?”

“My husband's family. He's off fighting.”

“Do you miss him?”

Maria shifted, unaccustomed to having a light shined on her. “Yes.” The word came out with more feeling than she'd intended. She wished that Piotr was here to help her figure out what to do. What now? Hannah was a Jew and the penalty for helping her would surely be severe. Maria would be risking her own life—as well as her unborn child's—for a girl she had just met. But she could not refuse her, this piteous creature so much like the child she would have soon. She had to find a safe place for the girl. She could not bring her in the house, and she would freeze to death in the barn.

“I can go,” the girl offered, sensing Maria's dilemma.

Maria took her arm gently. “No.” The next house might have someone like her father who would turn the child into the police.

Maria scanned the landscape uneasily, looking for a solution. Janusz Slomir, her father's cousin, popped improbably into Maria's mind. She had not seen him in years, but he lived alone and his farm was on the edge of town, away from prying eyes.

“Come.” She held out a hand to Hannah, who took it reluctantly. Together they walked from the farm and started across the field. Their footsteps rang out as their shoes scraped against hard earth, breaking the silence.

As they neared the Slomir farm, Maria eyed the adjacent cottage guiltily. Ruth Nowak lived there with her brother and sisters. The Nowak twins were doing everything for themselves and their younger siblings without the help of parents or other family. Maria had so much by comparison. And she had taken Piotr from Ruth, too. Despite his assurances that his and Ruth's relationship was well over, the uneasy feeling that she had stolen something that belonged to someone else persisted. She wondered if Ruth ever missed him, or whether she somehow felt better off.

They reached the Slomir front door and Maria knocked once, then louder when there was no response. The door opened a crack. “
Tak?
” Janusz scowled at her without recognition. Had she changed so much over the years? “What is it?” he asked, dispensing with formalities. He had once been a part of her life, a frequent visitor to the house and always present at holidays. But at some point he had stopped coming.

“I'm Maria, your cousin Feliks's daughter.” She took a deep breath. “I need you to store something for me.”

“Store something? I don't understand.”

Maria pulled the girl gently from behind her.

At the sight of Janusz, Hannah reared back, the terror she associated with men exposed before them. “It's all right,” Maria said gently, wrapping both arms around the girl. “He's my cousin.” The girl did not relax. Maria turned to Janusz. “Can you help us?”

Janusz did not reply but eyed the child coldly. Perhaps it had been a mistake to come here. Maria felt foolish having thought that a cousin she had not seen in a decade would be willing to help.

“I'm sorry. I should not have come.” She grasped Hannah's shoulder and started to turn away, but Janusz reached out and pulled them roughly into the house. The girl yelped.

“Quiet!” he ordered. “Close the door quickly.” Maria followed his nervous gaze across the field that separated his farm from the cottage next door. “Those Nowak children are always out and about, traipsing over my land and poking around.” He wrinkled his nose.

“Now, now,” Maria said soothingly, her empathy for the neighboring family who had lost so much washing over her. She looked up at Janusz. He had always seemed old to her, but now the crinkles around his eyes that had once resembled streams had deepened to rivers and his beard was completely white except for where it had yellowed around the chin. His house was thick with the smell of pipe smoke and something meaty cooking.

“Has she eaten?” he asked, gesturing toward Hannah.

“A bit, but I'm sure she could do with more.” She turned to Hannah. “Couldn't you?” The girl nodded meekly.

Janusz walked to the stove, which stood in the corner of the cottage. The room was too hot and Maria opened her coat. He returned with a steaming bowl of stew. “Here.” Hannah took it and sat down in the crude wooden chair he had indicated.

“She can't stay,” he said to Maria quietly as the child ate. “There are people who come through, men with supplies for the resistance. They could be here at any time.” She was surprised. She would not have suspected her curmudgeonly cousin to be a traitor like her father, but neither had she imagined him to be a rebel opposing the Germans. She understood then his reclusiveness, his preference for solitude and distaste for the prying eyes of neighbors.

But Janusz's bravery seemed a liability now, complicating her dilemma of where to keep Hannah rather than solving it. “I have nowhere else to take her.” A note of desperation crept into Maria's voice. She could not abandon the child.

“When are you due?” he asked bluntly, changing the subject. Maria faltered, thrown off-guard. The bump beneath her dress was so slight that no one had noticed it until now. “May.”

“Your parents must be pleased.”

“They don't know. That is, we've fallen out since...since I got married.” She faltered, then lowered her voice so Hannah could not hear. “My father, he's been helping the Germans.” The story tumbled forth and it felt good to finally confide in someone. Janusz nodded, seeming to understand. “You don't seem surprised,” she said.

His mouth pulled downward. “I had my suspicions. Your father always took the path of least resistance. And he isn't a bad man, but in these difficult times...” Though he did not finish the thought, Maria understood: the war brought out the extremes in people, some better and some worse. Janusz was fighting on one side, while his cousin had allied himself with the other. Maria wondered fleetingly if that was the reason for their falling out, but the break in their relationship had come long before the war.

Janusz turned and knelt beside Hannah. “The scarf,” he said, gesturing. “Where did you get it?” Maria had not noticed the slash of red hidden beneath the girl's brown coat. But when Hannah pulled back the collar, Maria could see the rich wool, tightly knitted. Hannah removed her coat. Beneath it, she was paper thin. Maria could see marks on her arm, bruises that traveled upward.

Hannah lifted the scarf. “It was my father's.”

Janusz extended his hand. “May I?” he asked. The girl hesitated, then nodded. He ran his finger over a gold eagle embroidered at the edge of the scarf. “Your father was a soldier?”

“In the Great War,” she said simply. The Jews had always seemed so separate to Maria; she had not imagined them fighting alongside ordinary Poles.

“Me too.” Janusz's own decades-old uniform hung in the corner, freshly pressed, as though he might be called up to service again at any moment.

He turned to Maria. “Why did you come to me?”

She hesitated. “My mother always spoke so well of you.” It was the truth. Even years after the contact had ceased between Maria's father and Janusz, Mama had said his name with affection, laughter creeping in as she'd recounted something he had said or done. She often had been silenced by Papa's stormy look. It was hard to reconcile the lively young man of her mother's stories with the gruff old man who stood before her now.

“Did she?” A glimpse of boyish hopefulness crept into his eyes.

“Yes.” Watching him process the information with an undeniable flicker of excitement, everything seemed to come into focus: Janusz had written the love letters to Mama. The realization crashed down on Maria like a rock from above, knocking the breath from her chest. Papa must have found out at some point, and that was why he and Janusz no longer spoke. But there was still much she did not know: Was it an unrequited love, or was there something more? Had there been an actual love affair between them?

The ground seemed to shift as an idea came to her. “I know,” she blurted out. “I saw the letters.” His face seemed to crumble under the weight of the secret he had kept all these years, now exposed.

A silent exchange passed between the two of them and she wondered if he would deny it. “How long have you known?” he finally said.

Maria shrugged. “Long enough. Keep the girl and I won't say another word about it.” She hated that the words came out sounding like a threat. He might have helped anyway, but she couldn't be sure.

“Very well, but just tonight. I need her gone in the morning. I can't have a young child here, seeing things.”

“She'll be gone before first light,” Maria promised. He did not answer but disappeared into the bedroom.

A minute later he returned carrying some blankets and a lamp. “Come,” he said to Hannah, who had finished eating. He led them down a ladder to the cellar. Maria followed. In the flickering light of Janusz's lamp, she was flooded with memories of playing in the cellar as a child.

“I'm sorry she has to stay down here,” Janusz said, laying the blankets atop a thin layer of straw and setting the lamp beside it. “But people come unexpectedly sometimes.”

“I love it,” Hannah exclaimed, surprising Maria. She had liked exploring the cellar as a girl, but now it just seemed damp and dirty, cluttered with old junk and mouse droppings in the corners. “It's so peaceful,” Hannah looking about her with wonder. Maria shuddered inwardly, imagining a home life so terrifying that a dark, strange cellar felt like a refuge.

Janusz heaved himself up the ladder again and a moment later handed down a blue nightgown to Maria. It still carried the faint scent of his wife, Elzbieta, though she had passed nearly two decades earlier. Sadness flickered across his face. He had not, Maria felt certain, been unfaithful to his wife. Rather, he had turned to Mama after his wife was already gone.

Maria passed the nightgown to Hannah. She looked away to let the girl change in private and peered up at the cottage through the cellar opening. Her mother had gone for long walks most days when Maria was younger—to breathe the fresh air, or so Maria had thought. Maria had wished to come along, too, but Mama had not taken her. At some point, the walks had stopped. Had her mother and Janusz met here or somewhere else? Images appeared in her mind of the two of them together. Suddenly eager to escape, she turned back to Hannah. “You rest. I'll be back in the morning.”

“You aren't staying?” The fear, which lay just below the surface, reappeared full force on the girl's face.

Maria wavered. She wanted to sit down beside Hannah and hold her until she knew peace. But she could not be gone from her in-laws all night. “I can't. You'll be safe here with my cousin. I'll be back first thing,” she promised. The apprehension on Hannah's face did not wane. “I'll stay until you're sleeping,” Maria relented. Placated, Hannah lay down and Maria sat beside her. She pulled the blanket up and a maternal wave, unfamiliar and warm, washed over her. “You close your eyes now. I'll be back at first light,” she repeated, turning down the lamp.