Stolen Child

by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

  It was still dark when I heard the creak of footsteps on the wooden floor and the sound of the bathroom door swinging open — Ivan was getting ready for work. Through the kitchen window there was now a bare glimmer of morning light. I could see the outline of the swing, shimmering with rain. I remembered how happy Ivan was when he surprised me with it. Maybe I could surprise him now. I walked over to the sink and filled the kettle with water for tea and put it on a burner. I found the frying pan, set it on the other burner, took out some bacon from the icebox and placed it in the frying pan. As the bacon sizzled, I cracked two eggs into the pan.

  By the time the bathroom door opened, breakfast was waiting on the table at Ivan’s spot.

  He came into the kitchen in his work shirt and pants, smelling of soap and with his wet hair combed back. “Nadia,” he said, glancing first at me and then at the plate of food. “What a surprise.”

  I could tell from the look in his eyes that he had a thousand questions. “I couldn’t sleep,” I told him. “And I wanted to do something special for you.”

  Ivan walked up behind my chair. He hugged my shoulders and kissed the top of my head. “You are such a sweet girl,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “Eat,” I told him, swallowing back tears. “It will get cold.”

  Ivan ate quickly and gulped down his tea. I knew that he didn’t want to be late for work. After he left, I washed the dishes and prepared breakfast for Marusia and myself.

  I took the word book with me when Marusia dropped me off at Miss MacIntosh’s house after breakfast and we practised new words and phrases. Mychailo came after lunch, just as he’d done the day before, but he seemed somehow nicer. He sat at the kitchen table with a workbook while I sat in the living room with Miss MacIntosh. Hours flew by.

  “You learn so quickly, Nadia,” she said with a smile. She took the word book from my lap and closed it, then set it on the coffee table. “Would you like to take this book home again with you?”

  “Yes please,” I said.

  “Why don’t I take her to the library today?” Mychailo said from the kitchen. “Then she’d get to practise her English with different books.”

  Miss MacIntosh’s face brightened. “What a lovely idea, Mychailo. If Marusia comes back before you two are finished at the library, I’ll tell her where you are.”

  Mychailo didn’t take me directly to the library. Instead, we walked around downtown for a bit. He showed me the movie theatre, the market square and the city hall. There was a long grey car parked out in front of city hall. “I think that’s the mayor’s,” said Mychailo.

  When we got to the library, we went up the big white steps to the glass doors and opened them. I was enveloped by a whoosh of cool air and the scent of books and furniture polish.

  “The children’s department is this way,” said Mychailo, taking me to a set of inside stairs that went down to the basement. We walked up to a long counter in the middle of the main room. For a library, this room had surprisingly few books. The walls were wood-panelled and empty of shelves.

  “Can’t we go in there?” I said, pointing to the room on the left that was filled with books.

  “We’ve got to find Miss Barry first,” said Mychailo. “You need to get a library card.”

  Just then, a pretty woman with blond curls and blue-framed glasses came in. “Good to see you, Mychailo,” she said. “So you’ve brought a friend.”

  “This is Nadia.”

  I did a little curtsey and said, “Hello, Miss Barry.”

  “Nadia needs a library card,” said Mychailo. “I can help her with the form.”

  Miss Barry went behind the counter and looked through the drawers. She handed me a pencil and a sheet of paper with questions and lines on it. “I need a phone number and address.”

  My heart sank. “We do not have a phone,” I said. Did that mean that I couldn’t have a library card?

  Mychailo took the form from my hand. “I’ll fill it out,” he said. “And I’ll put in the phone number of the foundry where your father works — my father works there too so I know the number.”

  “Thank you, Mychailo!”

  He led me into the room on the left. “These are good ones to start with,” he said.

  I gasped as I stepped into the room. All four walls were covered with shelves of books, and there were aisles of books as well …

  A long-ago room filled with books, so many books, but I was forbidden to touch them …

  “This is a good one for you to start with,” Mychailo said. He handed me a book and read the title out loud, The Little Engine That Could. “I’ll be in the other room for a while, so come and find me if you get bored.”

  I held the book up to my face and breathed in its lovely scent of ink and glue. It seemed hard to believe that I would be allowed to take a book home from this place. I opened it up. The images in this story niggled at my memory. A train chugging along … boxes of toys … a blond doll with blue eyes … Maybe this wasn’t the book for me. I put it back on the shelf and pulled out one that had a painting of three little kittens on the front. Using the pictures as clues, I read as much as I could while I stood there … kittens, mittens, cry.

  I did the same with a few more books. How would I ever choose? I put them all back on the shelf and wandered into the other room. These books were thicker and they didn’t have as many pictures. I found Mychailo sitting in a corner, surrounded by books.

  “Which one are you going to take out?” I asked him.

  He looked up at me and then back down at the books on the floor. “I think I’ll take Tom Sawyer today,” he said. “Aren’t you getting one?”

  “I can’t decide,” I said.

  “I’ll show you some that I liked when I first came to Brantford,” he said. He stacked the books from the floor and set them on a wheeled cart. With Tom Sawyer tucked in the crook of his arm, he walked to the picture-book room with me following close behind.

  “Here’s a good one,” he said, reaching up and grabbing an oversized book from a shelf at the back. “It will help teach you the words for numbers in English.”

  It was a counting book very similar to Miss MacIntosh’s word book. “Thanks, Mychailo,” I said. “This is perfect.”

  When I got back home, Ivan was stretched out on the floor in our living room, carefully tapping nails into a narrow strip of wood along the bottom of the wall. “Can I get you anything?” I asked him.

  Ivan looked up from his work and smiled. “I would love some water.”

  I went into the kitchen and set my library book on the table. I filled a glass with tap water and brought it out to the living room for Ivan. He drank it down quickly and handed the glass back to me.

  When I took it back to the kitchen, I stood for a moment and stared out of the window. I could see my own reflection there. My face, my eyes, my braids …

  I am wearing the pink dress. The sight of it makes me feel sick.

  When I get downstairs, Mutter is at the dining room table. Cook has served her porridge and Eva is halfway through hers. On the table is a crystal serving dish filled with berries, apples and grapes.

  Cook places a bowl in front of me, sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. Even so, I hate it.

  “The rally is in less than an hour,” says Mutter, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “Eat quickly.”

  Eva shovels the last of her porridge into her mouth and swallows it down. She puts her spoon on the table with a clatter and stands up. “I’m finished!”

  “Go get your hairbrush,” says Mutter. “I’ll fix your hair as soon as your sister and I finish our breakfast.”

  I swallow the cereal as quickly as I can, not caring so much what it tastes like but just to get it over with. Eva comes back with pink hair ribbons and a hairbrush and a hand mirror.

  Mutter brushes out the tangles from Eva’s dark blond hair until it hangs down her back in shiny waves. She expertly makes two braids, finishing each off with a pink ribbon.

 
When it is my turn she tugs at my hair and braids it up more tightly than she needs to. “There,” she says with a cold edge in her voice. She hands me the mirror. “Don’t you look lovely?”

  The face that looks back at me is the same one as always. I never think of myself as lovely.

  A long black car with two small swastika flags along the side of the hood idles in the driveway as we walk outside. A uniformed man opens the back door. Mutter gets in first, then Eva, then me. The upholstery is lush black leather that gleams from a fresh buffing. The car door is closed with a firm click and we speed away.

  It takes half an hour of fast driving to get into the city. The streets narrow. Our driver slows down so we can wave to the blocks and blocks of cheering crowds.

  When we get within walking distance of the stage, the car stops. Soldiers push the crowd away so we can get out, and then they lead us to the steps on the side of the stage. Most of the chairs are taken by Nazi officers, but there are a few other mothers and children as well. We take our spots in the front row, behind the podium.

  The crowd roars as another long black car pulls up. When the führer steps out, the crowd goes wild. Vater gets out of the car just behind the führer.

  The crowd chants “Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!” as the führer steps onto the stage, but it is as if he doesn’t notice. He walks up to me and crouches down until we are eye level. He is so close to me that I can see his nose hair and smell the slightly spicy scent of his hair pomade. “What a perfect specimen of Aryan youth you are, my dear,” he says, pinching my cheek. I smile. What else can I do? Vater stands behind the führer, bursting with pride, but Eva looks like she is about to cry and Mutter’s lips are a thin white line. Vater sits down between Eva and Mutter. He grabs Mutter’s hand and kisses it.

  The führer walks to the podium and begins to …

  “Nadia, what are you doing?”

  I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of Marusia’s voice. The empty glass almost shot out of my hand. I blinked twice. I was standing in front of the window in the kitchen of the Brantford house.

  I turned to Marusia. She stood by the table, with Ivan beside her, his hammer in one hand and a look of concern on his face.

  I shook my head, desperate to clear away the image of Hitler’s face. If I’d met Hitler — Hitler himself — then I must be a Nazi. What secret was Marusia keeping from me? Who was I?

  My face was wet with tears, but I couldn’t remember crying. My legs felt wobbly, so I set the glass beside the sink and sat down at the table.

  Marusia walked behind my chair. She wrapped her arms protectively around me and rested her head on my neck.

  Ivan knelt beside us.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. His eyes were round with fright.

  “I was just thinking,” I told them.

  “You were shouting, ‘Heil Hitler,’” said Ivan, a troubled look in his eyes.

  “What were you thinking about?” asked Marusia.

  “The farmhouse and that family,” I said. “But there was more.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

  “No!” Couldn’t she understand how ashamed I was? Marusia insisted that I wasn’t a Nazi, but that’s not what my memory was telling me. How I wished I could wash away that horrible past.

  “You need to air these memories, Nadia,” said Ivan. “And until you remember it all, you’ll keep on having nightmares.”

  Was Ivan right? Maybe he was …

  “Would it help if I told you about what happened to me during the war?” he asked. He straddled the chair facing me and looked into my eyes.

  Ivan’s offer surprised me. He never talked about his past. “I would like to hear what you did during the war,” I told him.

  For a minute he said nothing and I saw his eyes fill with tears as his memories came drifting into his mind. He blinked the tears back and took a breath. “My story is one like so many others. The Soviets killed my father and brother in 1941. They were killing thousands of the men, even some of the women and children. I wasn’t arrested with them — I thought at the time that I was lucky — but then the Nazis came.”

  Ivan’s eyes met mine and I could feel my face flush with shame. He looked up at Marusia, who still stood behind me, her arms wrapped around me. Ivan gave a ragged sigh. “I thought nothing could compare to the Soviets, but I was wrong. The Nazis were just as bad. My sister was captured in a Nazi slave raid. My mother was sent to a concentration camp. I was the last of my family. I joined the underground. Sometimes we fought the Nazis and sometimes we fought the Soviets. It depended on which front was closest. I escaped to a DP camp just as the war was ending.”

  So much sadness in so few words. “I am sorry, Ivan.” I could feel tears spilling down my cheeks.

  “I needed to say that out loud,” said Ivan. “And you should talk to us about what you remember.” He gave me a long bear hug.

  Maybe he was right. I just couldn’t do it yet.

  We were silent for a long time, each of us wrapped in our own thoughts. As I sat there, I tried to piece together what I now remembered about my past. The rich farmhouse and a bedroom filled with toys. A pink dress that I hated — why would I hate it so? Towels stitched with GH. What did GH stand for? Were Mutter, Vater and Eva my real family? The scene of meeting Hitler face to face was etched in my brain — how I wished I could scrub that away, but it was vivid, right down to his smell.

  Ivan hated the Nazis. Look what they did to his mother and sister. If I was a Nazi, then how could Ivan love me? How could anyone love me?

  But how could I argue with these flashes from the past? My name wasn’t really Nadia, but something starting with G. The farmhouse, the long black car and Hitler — these images were like photographs in my mind.

  I knew how easily Marusia could lie. Was she lying to me about my past?

  Chapter Six

  Lilacs

  Summer went by quickly. Marusia got a job picking strawberries. When strawberry season was over, the same farmer hired her to work on his other crops. My days were taken up with lessons at Miss MacIntosh’s house and visits to the library with Mychailo. Miss Barry grinned whenever she saw us. She would let us look at the new arrivals and would point out books that she thought we might like. The routine of the summer seemed to settle my mind. The flashbacks and nightmares seemed to go away.

  On Saturday nights, if Ivan wasn’t too tired, he, Marusia and I would walk to the hall on Dundas Street. It was a rented building shared by all the Ukrainians in town — Catholic and Orthodox alike. Marusia especially loved it when we went out like this. For working on the farm she wore a used pair of men’s overalls and she would change into a second-hand housedress when she got home. But for Saturday nights, she wore her one nice blouse and skirt.

  Sometimes people at the hall would get together a band and there would be a dance. Other times, people would sit at tables and talk. Marusia would sit with a group who were writing letters to relief organizations, trying to find lost loved ones. They would update each other on their progress and compare notes.

  I liked to go because there were other children who spoke Ukrainian. Mychailo would often be there. I was devastated to learn that none of the other Ukrainian children except for Mychailo would be attending Central School. There weren’t that many of us and we were spread all over the city. There were two sisters who had been born in Canada. Their Ukrainian was not good. They went to Grandview. And a tall boy with glasses who spoke Ukrainian with a Polish accent was going to start at St. Basil’s School.

  Early each Sunday morning we would dress again in our good clothing and walk to the Ukrainian Catholic church on Terrace Hill Street, which was one block closer than the hall. It was a small church and there were so many people who attended that we had to get there early if we wanted to get a pew. The only inside place where I felt completely safe was sitting in that church. Few parishioners could sing on key, but that didn’t bother me. I loved being enveloped in
the hymns and I loved the smell of the incense. It made me feel protected.

  Ivan worked on the house every day after work, and by the last week in August, it was finished. Each morning Marusia got picked up by a truck to take her to the farm in Burford. The money was needed, but her hands were swollen from the long hours of working in the fields.

  I knew it was more than just her hands and the long hours that bothered her, though. Whenever the postman delivered mail, she looked through the envelopes with a hungry eye, but he never seemed to bring whatever she was waiting for. I asked her about it once, but her eyes filled with tears. “I cannot talk about it now,” was all she told me. I think she was hoping to get news from the Red Cross about a relative. At the hall, when someone got one of these letters, everyone gathered round to hear it read aloud. Sometimes the news was bad, but when it was good, we all hooted for joy.

  Marusia had once studied to be a pharmacist, but as a slave labourer during the war, she worked in a factory. Later on she was forced to work as a cook at the German farm where we met. How awful it was for her to have to do hard labour again, even though she was supposed to be free. I would see a troubled look come over her face from time to time. Whenever I asked her what was wrong, she’d paste on a smile and say, “Nothing, Nadia. I was just thinking.”

  As often as we could, the three of us would sit down together on the cinder blocks in the backyard and pore over the books from the library and from Miss MacIntosh. Marusia’s dream was to learn English well enough to get a job in a store or maybe even a pharmacy. Ivan’s spoken English was good, but he had no way of learning how to write it. I think he was looking forward to me starting school because then I could teach him everything I learned.

  The week before school was to start, Ivan greeted me at the door when I came in from Miss MacIntosh’s. He had a grin on his face. “The day has come to choose the colour of your room.”