Lilac Girls (26 page)

“I'm happy to, Mrs. Custer.”

“We're doing a two-hour time limit. Just gather the tallies at the gong and bring me the winner. You've seen it done a million times, of course.”

I dropped a pack of tally sheets and a box of little green pencils at each table and found Betty in the library, standing with Prudence Bowles, a sweet, doe-eyed Vanderbilt cousin; Jinx Whitney, a not-so-sweet Rockefeller cousin; and Kipper Lee, a dim girl with a gummy smile, one of Jinx's furies.

The four stood in a huddle—something between rugby scrum and papal synod—as Jinx told a story. Was Betty still cross with me? Surely she'd soften once I made an effort.

“…and then I told her,” Jinx was saying, “the man is the member. We can't make an exception. I don't care if her father was the president of the United States. We're simply full up now.”

Seeing her companions' eyes flash to me, Jinx turned.

Jinx, who'd somehow managed to marry money, resembled a Frigidaire in both shape and hue.

“Oh, Caroline,” Jinx said. “My goodness, you're in costume?”

“Nice to see you, Jinx.”

“Aren't you lovely in black?” Jinx said.

“Yes, you look pretty,” Pru said. “It takes a certain skin tone to wear dark colors.”

“True,” Jinx said. “My grandmother wore that very shade for her viewing. Everyone said she looked so natural.”

Pru chimed in. “But Caroline, of course you look lovely. You
were
chosen as Poppy Girl after all.”

Jinx turned away. She still hadn't recovered from me beating her in the contest to be Poppy Girl in 1921. It had been quite an honor to be singled out from all of that year's debutantes. At nineteen, I became the face of the new poppy effort, sponsored by the American and French Children's League, my photo in every magazine and newspaper to promote the sale of silk boutonnière poppies. It was all to aid wounded American Great War servicemen and sick French children back in France.

“Of course,
half
of that poppy money went back to France,” Jinx said.

“To help tubercular children. It was a reciprocal effort, Jinx. Half of the proceeds from the poppies sold in France were used to mark the graves of American soldiers.”

“Who's ready for bridge?” Jinx said in Betty's direction.

“Does anyone need a partner, Betty?” I asked.

“I'm playing with Pru,” Betty said, suddenly interested in the baguettes of her engagement ring.

“I hate to say it, but we're full up for bridge,” Jinx said with a pout. “The teams have been set for weeks, darling. I'm so terribly sorry.”

“Caroline's been busy at
work,
” Betty said.

Jinx stepped closer to Betty. “Who are you and Pru playing for, Betty?”

“Haven't a clue,” Betty said. “Not that we'll win.”

Betty was right. She and Pru were miserable at bridge.

“Kipper and I are playing for the American Soldier Services,” Jinx said.

“Delightful,” I said.

Jinx turned to me. “You have a problem with that, Caroline?”

“Well, it's just that most of that money goes to parties.”

“Someone has to support our troops,” Jinx said.

“I guess. If you call civilians drinking gin while the troops are off fighting support, then yes.”

“Betty, do let's partner next time,” Jinx said. She fiddled with the accordion-pleated scarf at her neck, which brought to mind the undergills of a toadstool. For fun, I considered pulling the scarf tight around her neck. This crowd would be happy to see someone do that, something they'd all imagined themselves.

“So where's your mother, Caroline?” Jinx asked. “Does she even come to town anymore or just stay up in the country in that big house alone?”

“The cook is there,” I said.

Jinx sipped her club soda through a tiny straw. “Alone with the Russian chef?”

“I really need to be going,” I said.

“And that handsome Negro gardener? Well, times have changed.”

“Mr. Gardener has been a tremendous friend to our family through difficult times, Jinx. Certainly a better friend to us than many others in so-called polite society.”

“Caroline, I sent a check for your French children,” Pru said, one hand on my arm. Trying to defuse the tension? She had a lovely feline way about her and gave one the impression that, given the right circumstances, she would curl up in your lap and purr.

“Thank you, Pru. We can use the donation.”

“You know, they don't allow soliciting here tonight,” Jinx said. “It's printed in the program. I was thrilled to see that. There's a limit to charity.”

“At your house, certainly,” I said.

“We can't all nail ourselves to the cross, Caroline, like your mother the wet-wool type. Not happy unless she's wearing it, attending the needy.”

Betty stirred, shifting from one foot to the other. Breaking in new alligator pumps or uncomfortable that my mother was being maligned?

“How
is
Big Liz?” I asked. Jinx was named Elizabeth after her mother, who became known as Big Liz to differentiate them, a name that suited her. “Home from the ranch? You know they sell Slenderella courses by mail now.”

“She's loving Southampton,” Jinx said. “The Murrays had her over to Gin Lane. They've gutted the place, your Mitchell Cottage
.
They brightened it up considerably. It was so
dreary,
they said, with the roof practically coming down and all.”

“I'm happy for them,” I said.

“So sad you had to give that place up,” Jinx said. “All because of your poor young lungs.”

“Don't you need to be getting to the tables, Betty?” I asked.

“Poor little you, not being able to take the Southampton air. I adore that salt air rolling in off the Atlantic. Comes all the way from Africa.”

“Jinx, stop,” Betty said.

“So your parents ended up in Connecticut because of you, Caroline?” Jinx said.

What would happen if I slapped Jinx right there in front of everyone? It would feel good—my hand grazing her fat cheek.

“Yes,” I said.

“Ironic, isn't it?” Jinx said.

“Honestly, Jinx,” Betty said. “That's enough.”

“Ironic because, after all that, your father's lungs were the ones to go. Tragic, really.”

“I'm sorry for your loss,” Kipper said.

“It was years ago, Kipper, but thank you,” I said.

“I can't imagine the guilt, him lying there in your apartment, nothing to be done,” Jinx said with the pained look of concern she did so well. “I just hate the word ‘pneumonia,' and I imagine you do too, dear. Such a terrible word.”

At least Betty had the good manners to look away.

“If you'll excuse me, I need to go…”

I spent most of the match eating more shrimp than was socially acceptable and then pretending to listen to a corporate lawyer discuss his wife's difficulties with her maid dressing better than she did while considering ways to bring Jinx Whitney down.

At last, the gong sounded. I walked to the library and collected the tallies, the tension in the room palpable, for the only people more competitive than those bridge groups were Wall Street traders and Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitors. At least the Brazilians had banned eye gouging.

Guests mingled close to the scoreboard, bordering on jostling but trying to appear casual while awaiting results. Jinx stood with Kipper, Betty, and Pru, and after her strenuous rounds of bridge, looked more rumpled than a Bergdorf catalog at a Smith College reunion.

“How did you do, Betty?” I asked, attempting to mend our fence.

“Well, Pru got lucky on a slam.”

“I think we edged you out, Pru,” Jinx said.

I flapped my stack of tallies. “We'll see,” I said.

“You're tallying?” Jinx said. “Have someone double-check your math. I'd hate for you to make a mistake.”

“Don't worry, Jinx,” I said. “How could anyone but you and Kipper come out on top?”

I ferried the fat stack back to the powder room, a gilded affair with golden swan-headed lavatory taps Marie Antoinette would have liked, and tallied the scores. Jinx and Kipper were the team to beat, having trounced Betty and Pru.

The gong to gather sounded, and I hurried to the library. Mrs. Custer stood with Mrs. Vanderbilt near the chalk tally board. Mrs. Vanderbilt, ablaze with old mine diamonds, was lovely in steel-gray taffeta and matching turban. Was it the champagne or the exertion of the noblesse oblige that brought high color to her cheek?

“Come, dear, who are our winners?” Mrs. Custer asked. “I'm afraid there's no time to put it on the board.”

I handed her the stack, the winning tally on top. Mrs. Custer showed it to Mrs. Vanderbilt, and they shared a smile. As I stepped to the back of the room, Mrs. Custer sounded the gong, and guests gathered from all parts of the house. Men in evening clothes gave way to those in uniform, and all craned their necks for a better view.

“It is with
great
pleasure that I announce the winners of tonight's bridge tournament,” Mrs. Vanderbilt said. “My late husband would see this as a fitting send-off for our old place, raising twenty
thousand
dollars for the Red Cross.”

The crowd clapped and shouted, and Jinx and Kipper edged their way to the front of the room.

“And another five thousand to a very lucky charity. I know you're all eager to know the names of the talented winners who can call themselves the best of the best. So without further ado, say hello to your winning team…”

The orchestra played an anticipatory riff.

Jinx took Kipper's hand and started toward the board.

“Mrs. Elizabeth Stockwell Merchant and Mrs. Prudence Vanderbilt Aldrich Bowles.”

Mrs. Custer tossed the remaining tallies in the fire as Betty and Pru pushed their way through the crowd. Mrs. Vanderbilt handed the check to Betty, who seemed nonplussed by the whole thing.

“And what charity are you girls playing for tonight?” Mrs. Vanderbilt asked.

“One close to my heart,” Betty said, hand to her chest. “Caroline Ferriday's French Families Fund.”

The crowd clapped and the applause, polite at first, swelled as Mrs. Vanderbilt wiped a tear. Betty's smile made me glad our splinter had worked its way out.

The crowd surrounded Betty and Pru, and I made my way to the door, eager to breathe the night air. On the way, I passed Jinx and Kipper.

“Sorry for your loss,” I said.

“Math never was your strong suit,” Jinx said. “Don't think I won't get the word out about this.”

“Thank you, Jinx,” I said. “I hope you do.”

I made it outside and tried to shake off the nipping of my conscience. So I'd been dishonest. It was in the service of a friend. I tried to focus on all the good Roger and I would do with five thousand dollars.

I walked home with a lighter step, for that night had knocked something loose in me, something long overdue to be knocked. At long last, I saw that group for what they were, with a few exceptions—a queer assortment of layabouts and late risers, most overdrawn at the bank or at least cutting into principal, only interested in who's going in the drawer at the Maidstone Club or their wedge on the fifteenth hole at Pebble Beach or dressing down the staff about a bit of shell in the lobster while shoveling canapés in. Jinx had done me a favor, freed me of any lingering allegiances to New York Society, snipped my fear of being on their bad side.

I was free of spending my life pleasing them, free to go it alone.

W
hen Gebhardt cracked open my cast and I saw my leg, it no longer looked like a human limb. It was swollen fat as a log, covered in dark blue and greenish-black patches. Black sutures strained to hold the flesh together along the incision from anklebone to knee.

I don't remember screaming, but later the girls back in the ward said they thought I was being operated on again, this time with no anesthesia, and others heard my screams in the courtyard at
Appell.
Dr. Gebhardt rolled a towel and forced it into my mouth as one of the nurses gave me a shot of something that put me to sleep.

I woke up back in the ward, my leg wrapped tight in gauze, the incision feeling like a thousand knives cutting it. Zuzanna slipped out of bed to look at it. She pried a corner of the gauze back.

“Is it bad?” I asked.

“It isn't good, Kasia. I think they've removed bone. And maybe muscle.”

It didn't make sense. Why would muscle just be taken out of a person? “What is all this for?”

“It might be some sort of experiment,” Zuzanna said. “They give you tablets, but some of the others received nothing.”

“I'm so hot,” I said.

“Hang on, Kasia. Matka will help us soon.”

I
WAS OPERATED ON
three more times, and each time the suffering began anew. Each time the fevers were higher, and it was harder to recover, as if the doctors were seeing how far they could go before I'd die. By the last operation, I'd given up all hope of dancing again and just hoped for walking. I lay on my back all day all mixed up, sometimes conscious, sometimes not, dreaming of Matka and Pietrik and Nadia, thinking I was back at home.

I grew angrier as I lay there completely in their control. Though it was hard to track time, I knew it was the late winter of 1942 and I tried to stay positive and think of seeing Matka again.

As we lay there, Regina drilled us on English verbs and told us funny stories about Freddie and his habit of climbing out of his crib. Janina taught us all French, for she'd learned many phrases working at the hair salon in Lublin. She taught us phrases such as “This dryer is too hot,”
Ce séchoir est trop chaud,
and “May I have a cold overnight permanent wave, please, with medium curl and extra end papers?” After Janina's tutoring, I had a working knowledge of French, with a heavy emphasis on things like asking for help with dandruff.

“I can't just lie around like this any longer,” I said.

“Sure,” Janina said. “Let's go out and ride bicycles.”

“I'm serious. I have a plan.”

“Oh no,” Zuzanna said.

“I think we should write secret letters home to our families.”

Regina propped herself up on her elbows. “Like in
Satan from the Seventh Grade
? I loved that book.” What schoolchild had not read Kornel Makuszynski's adventure story about the boy detective?

“Yes, exactly,” I said. “We did it in Girl Guides.”

Zuzanna looked up from the bread bead she was rolling for her homemade string of rosary beads. Why was she not
eating
that bread? Prayer had long since proved ineffective. Even my favorite saint Agnes had forsaken me.

“That's a good way to get us all killed, Kasia,” she said.

“The boy in that book used lemon juice,” Regina said. “He coded his letters so the first letter of every sentence spelled out a message.”

I sat up as best I could. “Our own urine would work just as well. It's acidic. We could code in
letters written in urine
…”

“It's ingenious,” Regina said.

“It's insanity,” Zuzanna said. “Put it out of your head.”

Z
UZANNA WAS RELEASED BEFORE
I was, and I missed her terribly. We heard new girls arriving in the room next door.

Then one morning Janina made a comment while old Nurse Marschall was in the room, walking about taking vitals, a towel to her nose to stem the stench. It was a harmless comment about how tired we were of being there. Nurse Marschall walked out of the room in her prickly way, and a moment later Dr. Oberheuser came back with her.

“Well, if you don't want to be here, then get out,” Dr. Oberheuser said. “Right now. Stand up and get back to your block.”

At first we thought she was joking, since none of us were fully healed. We realized she was serious when Marschall poked and prodded us out of bed.

“But we haven't been issued shoes—” I began.

“Out,” Dr. Oberheuser said, one arm outstretched toward the door. “Hop if you cannot walk.”

I tried to stand but fell. My plaster was gone by then, but I couldn't put weight on the leg without the worst pain.

“Get up and be off with you, quickly,” Dr. Oberheuser said.

I froze there on the floor. Dr. Oberheuser curled her strong fingers around my upper arm and pulled. She dragged me out through the
Revier
front entrance as one pulls carpets out on cleaning day.

Dr. Oberheuser tossed a wooden crutch out after me and left me there in the cold, the sharp slag that covered Beauty Road like glass jabbing my skin. I looked to see if Matka was anywhere around and tried to sit up.

It was strange to be outside again, like being on the moon. It was cold and overcast, everything gray, and no birds flew in the sky. Pieces of ash floated in the air, like black snowflakes in a grimy snow globe, and there was a new stench. A cleaning detail was sweeping the windowpanes of the blocks, for black soot had drifted there the way snow does. In the distance, just behind the bunker, outside the camp walls, twin crimson tongues shot into the sky from new chimneys. You could hear the roar of that fire from almost anyplace in the camp, a giant belching furnace from the mouth of hell.

How good it was to soon see Zuzanna hurrying toward me, a look of deepest concern on her face! I leaned on her as she helped me stand and take a step. Zuzanna, already in our new home for a few weeks, led me toward the block. I was eager to see Matka again.

I hadn't taken more than one step in months, and even with the crutch the walk was too much, especially barefoot across jagged pieces of slag. I stopped.

“I can't make it. Leave me. Please.”

“Come now,” Zuzanna said as she half-carried me. “Baby steps.”

Block 31 was our new home, an international block: some Poles, including all the “Rabbits,” as we'd come to be known; French women arrested for working in the underground; and Red Army nurses, all political prisoners. This block was even more crowded than our previous one.

Since I'd been in the
Revier,
there had been a new development. Some prisoners, including the Poles, were now allowed to receive packages from their families. The soup had become even thinner by then, so it was easy to tell who was receiving food packages from home and who was not. Those who got packages walked about relatively healthy. Those who did not were reduced to skeletal wretches who lay in their bunks no longer able to clean the lice off themselves.

I dozed and then woke as the girls were coming in for lunch. Zuzanna knelt by me and held my hand. Her friend Anise, a quick-witted, handsome woman who gave the impression she could solve any problem, stood behind her.

“We missed you,” Anise said. “We have a new
Blockova.
Marzenka. A tough one.”

“I missed you too,” I said. “What is that smell outside?”

Zuzanna squeezed my hand. “They've built a crematorium. Furnaces.”

“For what?”

Zuzanna hesitated. “To burn—” Zuzanna said, not able to finish. I figured it out, of course. To burn those of us unfortunate enough to die there.

“I'm sorry to tell you, sister, but everyone has heard about Luiza,” Zuzanna said. “I thought it best for you to hear it from me. One of the Norwegian girls told me she saw her in the room they use for a morgue—”

“No, it's a mistake.”

Poor sweet Lou, who never hurt anyone. Pietrik would never forgive me.

“No mistake. She said it broke her heart to see such a young thing lying there. Alfreda too.”

Luiza and Alfreda both dead? It was hard to understand. Why had they killed such loving girls?

“You mustn't dwell on it,” Zuzanna said. “Only think of getting better. At least you don't have to work this week. Nurse Marschall issued you a bed card.”

“Such an angel,” I said.

“The whole camp is up in arms over what they did to you all,” Anise said. “There've been more than fifty Polish girls operated on now, and word is they're planning more. The Girl Guides have organized—over one hundred strong now.”

“We call ourselves Mury
,
” Zuzanna said. The Walls. “Someone found a Girl Guide badge in the clothing brought back from the shooting wall, and we swear in new Guides on it.”

“They've collected all sorts of good things for you,” Anise said. “So much bread. And the French girls wrote a play for you all called
The Rabbits.
”

“Did my mother see it?”

Anise and Zuzanna just looked at each other.

Anise squeezed my hand. “Oh, Kasia.”

“What?” Why was everyone looking so scared? “Tell me. Zuzanna, please.”

“No one has seen Matka since we were taken for the operations,” Zuzanna said. Her eyes were glassy, but how could she be so calm?

I tried to sit up, but a stab in my leg sent me back down. “Maybe they sent her to a satellite camp. Maybe she's in the bunker.”

“No, Kasia,” Anise said. “She was never there. We think it happened the first day you were operated on.”

How could it be? There'd been a terrible mistake.

“She's gone, Kasia,” Zuzanna said.

“Impossible. No one saw anything? She was always so good at hide-and-seek. Remember? The time she hid under my bed?”

“Kasia—” Zuzanna said.

“And we spent all morning trying to find her, and she had fallen asleep under there?”

“I don't think so, Kasia.”

“She is probably with the Bible girls,” I said. “Maybe Suhren has her cutting hair.”

“No, Kasia.”

“You just don't care enough to look,” I said to Zuzanna.

Zuzanna pressed her homemade rosary into my hand. “Of course I care.”

I threw it to the floor with a clatter. “You never loved her like I did.” A black ink spot grew over my face, seeping into my eyes and nose and taking me down with it. “No wonder you've given up.”

Zuzanna retrieved her rosary.

“I will forget you said that, Kasia. It's just the fever talking, and the shock.”

“Don't forget it. I mean it. I am going back to the
Revier
right now to find her. I don't care if they kill me.”

I tried to get out of bed, but Zuzanna pinned me down. I raged against her until I'd lost all strength. I slept, waking only to fall deeper into despair.

I
T TOOK A FEW DAYS
for it to sink in that Matka was not coming back.

At first I hoped that our Polish network just failed to find her and she was tucked away somewhere safe or transferred to another camp. When I asked girls from the block to help me find her, they were kind, but after a few days, it was clear they all believed she was dead.

There would be no funeral. No birch cross. No black cloth nailed to our door.

Before I learned to use my crutch, I depended on Anise and Zuzanna to carry me to and from the latrine. Janina needed an escort too. Our helpers were gracious, but I hated being a burden. I imagined my own death. What a wonderful, quick death it would have been to throw myself on the electric fence. Of course, no one would carry me there.

Until that time, all through our arrest, our arrival at the camp, and the operations even, I had always found good things to think about and Polish optimism to fall back on, but once Matka was gone, I could not pull myself out of the darkness. I felt like a fish I read about when I was a child, the African mudskipper. Each year when the drought came, it burrowed deep into the mud and lived there for weeks, neither dead nor alive, waiting for the rains to come and bring it back to life.