A week later, my brother and I went to play jacks with Charlie and Lovey on the stoop in front of their apartment. Charlie wanted to know why my brother had no little finger on his right hand.
“Boom in Germany,” Pete said in his halting English, making explosive sounds.
“Did the Nazis shoot it off?” asked Charlie, looking excited.
Rubbing the nub where his finger used to be, Pete tried to explain how he was playing war games in a bombed-out tank, throwing empty cans at his friends in a field full of war junk. One day he found a half-buried Nazi helmet with a bullet hole and put it on. One of his friends threw something at him, and it blew up, sending shrapnel flying, slicing through Pete’s finger and gashing his leg. He told this story with plenty of miming and explosion sounds. Then he pulled up his pant leg to show the scar on his leg. “Hospital,” he said proudly.
Charlie and Lovey had that soft look on their faces, as if they were seeing a miracle—Saint Pete of the missing finger, already a child war veteran. I hated Pete’s missing finger because he poked it in my face whenever he teased me.
Sometimes my brother had nightmares about the bombing, but mostly he made drawings of planes bombing cities, or fighter planes dancing loops in the skies, with machine-gun bullets flying in all directions. As he drew them, he’d make gunfire noises or imitate the whine of falling planes as they crashed. My brother had fled to the West with my parents, through a rain of Allied bombs, escaping the Soviets. He drew those pictures for years after we came to Chicago. Even Charlie started to draw them, though he had never been in a war.
At the end of October, Lovey, dressed as a cowboy with chaps and a gun, came over and told me to find a costume because we were all going trick-or-treating. My brother put on his helmet with the bullet hole, and a khaki shirt that one of the GIs had given him—his cherished souvenirs. Charlie was a pirate with a scarf and eye patch. The wild Gypsies came as themselves with their liquid eyes and pierced ears, their full skirts and jewel-colored blouses patched or ripped in a dozen places. I wondered why their mothers didn’t scrub their dirty necks the way my mother did. Though I loved how wild they were, I was careful because they would curse you out or bloody a nose if they got mad.
Lovey could see that I was upset about not having a costume, so he brought over an empty cereal box, cut out the tiger mask on the back, attached a rubber band, and showed me how to wear it. Lovey always took good care of me. He gave me a paper sack and taught me how to say “trick-or-treat.”
Bundled in our coats and scarves, we set forth. The streets were dark and filled with monsters, witches, and princesses. The smell of leaves burning filled the air as I skipped alongside Lovey, my pigtails bouncing as we went from house to house, fear and excitement coursing through me. I had never seen so much candy. Every time I got a piece of chocolate, I ate it quickly before anyone could take it back. By the time we had circled two blocks, I had a stomachache and Marlena laughed at me. Delphina, shivering with cold in her thin jacket, asked to wear my blue gloves with the knitted tulip pattern that my mother had made in the camp. Reluctantly, I gave them to her and didn’t realize until it was time to go home that she hadn’t returned them. Because I knew my mother would scold me if I came home without them, I went with Lovey to Delphina’s apartment building. While he waited on the street, I went to knock on the door. A large woman opened it, wearing a long green lace dress with a pink sweater. A dozen bracelets clanged together on her arms as she called Delphina. The smell of spicy cooking wafted out from the kitchen. When I asked Delphina about the gloves, she lied, saying she had given them back to me and that I must have lost them. When Marlena said, “But I saw you…” her sister elbowed her in the side, and Marlena shut up. Suddenly four women gathered around Delphina like a protective shell around a pearl. The large woman growled in a foreign language and slammed the door shut. “Dirty DP,” I heard the girls shout through the door. “Go back to your own country.” I wanted to yell that we couldn’t go back; the Russians had our country, but I was so mad, I almost cried.
When I told Lovey about Delphina, he told me to wait outside while he went to talk to her. It was cold, but I waited, hands deep in my pockets, as jack-o-lanterns winked on porches and ghosts and goblins ran through the streets. The wind whooshed through the fallen leaves, making them dance madly. Just as I was beginning to feel hopeless, I saw Lovey coming toward me, smiling with his straight white teeth and laughing eyes as he pulled my blue gloves out of his pocket. “There you go, princess,” he said, his soft eyes shining with pride. I was so grateful, I hugged him. Prince Lovey had rescued me from the ogre. I wanted to sprinkle rose petals on his royal head. I hoped Delphina, the stupid witch, was sprouting hairs on her chin, and dark vapors were circling her gnarled body.
By Christmas vacation, English words were starting to come more easily. It wasn’t as hard as I thought. Sister Mary Constance said I was a quick learner and gave me a blue enameled medal of the Virgin Mary, which I never took off but hid under my blouse whenever the Gypsies came around.
A week later, when my father brought home a small Christmas tree, we made ornaments out of white drinking straws, cutting and stringing them into elaborate stars and snowflakes. Mr. Jankus came by with a cooked ham and a box of second-hand clothes from the Lithuanian relief fund. From his back pocket, he brought out a pint of whiskey, which he shared with my father. I got a blue wool coat with a missing button and a funny smell that my mother said was mothballs. My mother said she had loved to dress elegantly before the war, in high heels and a fox-collared suit. “That’s how I caught your father’s eye, at the radio station where I worked in Kaunas.”
In the DP camp, my mother had learned to knit and sew all of our clothes, including my underwear. They all had that DP look. I searched through the box of donated clothes to see if there was something that looked more American. There was a blouse with a lace collar, but when I picked it up I saw that it had brown stains under the arms, so I quickly put it back. From the bottom of the box, my mother pulled out a huge bosomy iridescent blue dress, which she later cut up and then sewed back together with the ancient sewing machine. Her new sheath shimmered when she moved. She also made me a plaid dress with a white collar so that we both had dresses for Christmas that were American-looking. No stains under the arms.
Under the tree, there was one present for each of us—my father got a new tie, my mother a bottle of Evening in Paris cologne, my brother a stamp album with a large envelope of stamps, and I got a Negro boy doll with a striped shirt and overall shorts that I had been admiring at the drug store. Wide-eyed, I kissed its nose and called my first doll Lovey. I didn’t let go of it all day, even eating dinner with it on my lap. I would let Magda play with it but not the Gypsy girls because they might break it or not give it back. It was a great Christmas.
On New Year’s Eve, I was about to have my first party. Not a big party—just the Vitkus family from down the street. All day my mother had been cooking, and the smell of ham was mouthwatering. She had made an apple cake earlier and was now humming Lithuanian songs as she peeled potatoes for a kugelis. My father came in the door, dragging the cold in behind him. He pulled a bottle of brandy and chocolates out of a bag—such luxuries for our family.
“It smells so good in here, Dora.” He laughed and kissed my mother. “What a party we’ll have, eh?”
My mother wiped her hands on her apron. “Like the old days.” She pulled her apron off and smiled at my father, so stylish in her blue dress and high heels.
He nuzzled her neck. “You smell good and look beautiful, Dora.”
“In this old dress I made?” She pushed back an errant strand of hair, pleased by the compliment. It was true. My parents looked transformed.
My brother and I had hung paper chains around the front of the store, which we called the dining room. I was excited because Magda would be coming over with her brother, Al.
Before long
, the Vitkus family knocked on the glass-waxed front door. Jurgis Vitkus wore a woolen jacket, his shirt frayed at the collar, while his wife, Regina, wore a beige wool dress with an amber brooch she had brought from Lithuania. Both husband and wife were rather thin, and while the wife hummed with nervous energy, her husband simmered with subdued anger. Like their parents, Al and Magda both had dark hair and eyes, but Magda was beautiful. My father always said she had the face of a medieval icon—innocent and ageless.
After dinner, my parents, who had had toasted the New Year with numerous shots of brandy, asked me to recite the little German ditty they had taught me in the refugee camp. I felt shy to say it in front of Al and Magda, but my mother insisted, giving me a little push. She told me to curtsy, so I did, holding out the skirt of the dress my mother made, feeling my big red bow bob along with me.
“Deutschland, Deutschland, uber alles, zwei kartoffeln, das ist alles.” I curtsied again and felt the blood rushing to my face.
Mr. Vitkus burst out laughing and clapped. “Germany, Germany, over all, two potatoes, that is all. Ha! You’ve changed the national anthem of the Third Reich!” He laughed again. “Hitler boasting of his thousand-year reign. All that was left of that reign—two potatoes! And rubble.”
My father added, “Thank God we ended up in a camp in the American Zone in Germany, rather than the British, French, or—God forbid—the Russian Zone. We finally got some food.”
The adults decided to play cards. Mr. Vitkus drank too many highballs and began to curse the Communists again. “The French, Danish, and even the Russians went home after the war, but we couldn’t go home. Why?”
My father studied his cards and slapped one down on the table. “It’s as if the war never ended in Eastern Europe.”
My mother took the cigarette out of her red mouth and blew a string of smoke up in the air. “Remember how the KGB agitators showed up at the camps urging everyone to return to a free Lithuania, saying that Uncle Joe Stalin said we had nothing to fear. We later heard that those who were caught in the Russian sector of Germany were either sent to Siberia or shot at the train station in their home country.” She shook her head. “As if we’d ever trust Stalin.”
“The women caught in the Russian zone were raped,” Mrs. Vitkus whispered behind her hand. “Which camp were you in?”
“Dillingen, and you?”
“Hanau, thank God. The KGB came to our camp as well.”
Mr. Vitkus put out his cigarette. “Remember how after the Soviets invaded in 1940, there followed a reign of terror, and how anyone could be declared a Soviet enemy and put under arrest or deported without any legal process?”
My father added, “What I remember is how, in June of 1941, many thousands of men, women, and children were being deported to Siberia. It only stopped when the Germans invaded Lithuania. And then what a disaster for the Jews.” He shook his head as if trying to erase the memories.
“What a horror,” said Regina. “I can’t bear to think of it.”
“Tell me, why didn’t the Americans come to rescue Lithuania or Latvia or Estonia?” Mr. Vitkus demanded as he scooped up the cards on the table. “The Allies signed the Atlantic Charter promising to protect the sovereign rights of those forcibly deprived of them. God, I memorized those words! Thousands of anti-Soviet partisans are still in bunkers in the woods, fighting as they wait for Allied help.”
“Stalin knew that everyone was exhausted by the war,” said my father.
I rolled my eyes. War, war, war. That’s all they ever talked about.
Magda and I took our dolls and went to rummage through my mother’s box of fabric scraps to see what we could use. I tied a piece of gauzy fabric on my Lovey doll, like a babushka.
Behind me, I could still hear them talking. “Remember V-E Day? How we all celebrated, thinking we could go home again?” Reshuffling the deck, Mr. Vitkus began to drum his war stories again. “Millions of refugees marching across Europe at the end of the war—stateless, without countries or passports.”
Regina Vitkus added, “Running from the Soviets into a bankrupt and bombed Germany.”
“Enough please, it’s New Year’s.” My mother slapped another card down. “Can’t we forget these conversations for just one day?”
“You’re right, Dora,” said Regina. “Let’s talk about something more pleasant.”
No one said anything for a few moments, and then my father looked up. “We’re finally moving out of this place.”
Hearing this, I turned around and asked my father, “Are we going back to the DP camp in Germany?” The adults laughed.
“No, we’re moving to Marquette Park, right here in Chicago.”
“Really?” Regina’s head shot up. “We’ll miss you all so much.” She looked over at her husband.
Jurgis shrugged, looked at his daughter, Magda, and drank down the rest of his highball.
Across the room, the news hit me hard as tears welled in my eyes when I realized we’d be leaving Magda and Al, and Lovey, Charlie, and even the Gypsies, though they had made me mad. Pete had the same stricken look in his eyes. Neither of us could stand any more change.
“I don’t want to move,” I announced loudly.
My parents looked at me with puzzled expressions. “Why, Irena?” asked my father. “Do you love this dirty store so much?”
“My friends are here.”
My mother waved her hand in dismissal. “Who? Those Gypsies? Bah! Forget those dirty girls. They’re nothing but trouble. You’ve been running wild with them ever since we moved here, and I don’t like it.”
“What about Lovey?” I pleaded, tears threatening.
My mother shrugged. “Who—that Negro boy? Don’t worry, you’ll make new friends. I hear there are nice Lithuanian boys and girls in that neighborhood for you to play with.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “What about Magda and Algis?”
“You’ll be fine, Irena, you’ll see,” said Mrs. Vitkus. And with that the adults returned to playing cards and drinking.
Pete went to show Al his stamp collection while I went over to the window to sit with Magda. Hugging my Lovey doll, I scratched a peek hole in the dried pink film on the windows and another hole for Magda. Together we watched the snow falling in thick clumps, piling up on the sidewalks, on the cars, on the trembling bare branches of the elm trees. The night was still and bitterly cold as we watched the lights in the other apartments and houses across the street. We sat there until we heard the bells of Precious Blood Church ringing in the New Year on the South Side of Chicago. Somewhere outside people were cheering and blowing horns. The noise scared Magda, so she held my hand. It seemed all of Chicago was celebrating, but I felt a helpless sadness coming down on me like the snow piling up outside. The war and the refugee camps of Europe seemed far away. My parents’ home in Lithuania was behind an Iron Curtain. We had started our new life in America, and it was safe here. But on this night I saw that war wasn’t the only heartbreak.
As I was kneeling by the window, my knees began to hurt. Though they had healed long ago, I could still sometimes feel those forgotten sharp cinders my mother hadn’t managed to take out. When I looked closely, I could still see them, submerged below my scarred knees, like black pebbles beneath ice, remnants of old pain.
Lost Birds
Agota Janulis, 1951
As Agota Janulis straightened the Life magazines on the table, she stopped to consider a cover photo of a hospital nursery filled with rows of babies. War veterans had returned to marry their sweethearts, and now they were having babies, so many that it was called a baby boom. She thought of it as atonement for all the deaths of World War II. The world had gone mad, and now everyone was trying to pretend life was back to normal: having babies, moving to the suburbs, trying to forget names like Hiroshima, Auschwitz, Normandy, and Dresden. She threw the magazine down with a disgusted huff. Why
was everyone in such a hurry to forget? What happened to the need for mourning the dead, for grieving losses?
To the rest of the world, it was 1951, a time of technological hope and progress, but Agota’s mind was stuck like a needle on a bad record, refusing to go forward. Like a somnambulist, she mopped and dusted and swept the fourteenth floor of the Prudential Building while her mind replayed the recent traumas of the war. It was as if she lived two lives simultaneously.
Regina Vitkus, a dark, compact woman who cleaned alongside Agota, shuffled in like a wraith, wearing a faded housedress. Dunking a mop into the soapy water of the bucket, she clamped the wringers shut with her foot and pulled the steaming mop back out. Agota thought Regina looked as thin as that mop. Still lost in thought, she stared at the rising steam. Six years already since she’d left her farm in Lithuania. A year ago she had come to Chicago from the DP camps in Europe like so many others. Now they were seen all over Chicago—walking ghosts, like Regina—blinking in the foreign sunlight, startled by their new lives. Lithuanians weren’t the only ghosts—there were Jewish, Latvian, Ukrainian, and Polish ghosts as well. All of Eastern Europe had infiltrated Chicago. Sick with nostalgia for their lost homelands, they didn’t have the hopeful looks of the immigrants who had come before them.
Turning to her reflection in the office window, Agota saw that her broad, fleshy face looked older than her thirty-eight years. After all the hunger and deprivation of the war and post-war years, it seemed she couldn’t stop eating in America. Outside, the last wisps of color still hung on the horizon. She watched as the evening colors dispersed, dissolving into gray. Below, a flock of sparrows lifted from one building, swarmed, and finally settled on the window ledges of another high-rise. Once she had seen a hawk nesting on a ledge nearby, obviously lost. These birds didn’t belong in the city. On the tracks below, an elevated train clamored loudly, scaring the birds away. The grating and rumbling sound reminded her of the cattle cars headed for Siberia, crammed with men, women, grandparents, and babies. The Soviets had deported the best and the brightest. Those who died on the way to the frozen north were left at train stops like cords of wood. A teacher and a judge had asked her husband, Pranas, to help them to escape to East Prussia, the frontier heavily guarded by the Soviets and their dogs. Afraid of the danger, Agota had begged her husband not to do it, but he wouldn’t listen. “Mind your own business,” she told him. “Wars come and go. We have to wait until the madness passes.” But her husband brought the madness back to the family. One night when returning from the border, a neighbor stopped him before he reached home to tell Pranas that the NKVD was waiting for him. Someone had betrayed him, so he escaped to the woods to join the partisans. That was June 1941, during the first Russian occupation. The following week the deportations stopped when the Germans marched into Lithuania, with the Soviets in retreat.
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