The Sunflower Forest (22 page)

She paused.

I wanted to tell her to stop altogether. I did not want to hear more of this. Unlike her usual stories, there was an aching simplicity to this account. No dramatics, no pregnant pauses for me to guess what happened next. She just talked, quietly, without embellishment. The contrast to her normal style made it even more difficult to listen to because suddenly it all seemed terribly private to me, as if I were eavesdropping or reading a personal diary.

The wind ceased, and the afternoon grew very warm around us. In the heat the prairie went absolutely soundless. You could have touched the silence.

‘I became pregnant,’ she said when she finally spoke again. ‘It was much better then. Big Boots still came sometimes. He was the one who stopped the other men from coming because I was already pregnant. But he still came.

‘Just the same, it was better. There weren’t all of them. It was easier. And I thought I would be going home. Some of the girls, you see, were allowed home as soon as they were pregnant; they just came back for the delivery. Some of them, I think, might even have been married to SS officers. But I’m not sure. No one talked there. Anyway, I asked Big Boots and he said,
ja, ja
, I could go home when the baby had come.’

She looked over at me, and there was a small smile on her lips. ‘I could feel the baby,’ she said, bringing a hand gently up to her stomach. ‘It was a wonderful feeling, him in there moving. I would lie on the bed and dream of him. I’d think, Mara, you’ll be free. This time next year, you’ll be home and helping Popi plant the flowers. This baby, he’s going to be your saviour.’ Then unexpectedly, Mama laughed. She looked at me and giggled again. ‘I must admit, I was a little afraid of going home. Can you imagine me explaining to Mutti and Popi how I got a baby? I thought about that the whole time. I invented such fantastic stories to explain. For nine whole months I was thinking, Mara, how
will
you tell Popi this?

‘Then he was born. I told you about that. I told you already how he was born. In the delivery room at the hostel. On the rubber mat.’ One corner of her mouth pulled back. ‘Anyway, I named him Klaus. For Hans Klaus Fischer, the baker’s son. Because I’d loved him. When I was fifteen, I’d thought I would marry him. I was so certain of that. I had my whole life mapped out, when I was fifteen.’ Then she shook her head. ‘But no. No, I didn’t, did I? But I named the baby after him anyhow. Because I wished so much the baby was his.’

A slight, inward smile. ‘He was such a good baby. Calmer than either you or Megan. You were both such squirmy babies, so anxious to be about your business. But he loved to be cuddled. He was very …what should I say? … peaceful. Like the sea when it’s quiet. He would just lie in my arms and look at me and was so at peace with himself.’ She glanced over. ‘And he was tiny. Just tiny. Just so.’ She measured with her hands. ‘You were bigger. You were a big galoot,’ she said, grinning.

There was a silence then, that grew long and brittle. She looked away from me, raising her head and gazing off into the distance. Her eyes narrowed, and she sat back. Still she said nothing. I studied the ripples on the water.

‘I was so stupid.
Die grosse Idiotin
,’ she said at last. ‘It hurts to remember that kind of stupidity. You see, I believed them. Even after the baby was born and they thought he was so beautiful. He was not black haired like some of the babies. He was blond from the beginning, and the nurses would come to me with him. All of them were in love with him. Even Big Boots came once and gave me squares of chocolate and told me what a good son I had borne.
Grosse Idiotin
. I kept thinking, Mara, you’re such a clever girl. You’ve not made a very big fuss about being here and so now everyone is happy with you and you’re almost free. And you have this wonderful little baby besides. You see, I still believed them. I thought I was very crafty to get through all that. I thought I was a fox.’

She let out a deep breath. ‘I thought the baby and I – I thought—’ Words failed her. She lowered her head and rested it on her arms, momentarily obscuring her face from my view. I found myself suddenly alarmed that she would cry. Not now, I was praying, because I didn’t know if I could bear the tears that would come from this. Then she lifted her head, and to my relief, was dry eyed. She looked upward at the sky.

Then nothing. We sat together in total silence. Time passed, seconds, minutes, maybe years.

‘They just took him. He was twenty days old, and they thought I had no more milk for him.’ An abrupt pause. ‘No. No, I’m wrong. It wasn’t the milk. They’d always meant to take him. It was the
Idiotin
here,’ she said, touching her chest. ‘She was the one who needed reasons. They never did.

‘I swore I’d get him back. I cut my arm. Here, see. This is the scar. I cut it and I marked my blood on the door and said they’d never keep him from me. He was my flesh. I’d find him. They laughed at me. “Mara, our little Hungarian cunt,” they said, “she makes such a fuss.”

‘Then it started all over again. I said I wasn’t going to let the men come in. I pushed the wardrobe in front of the door. “You can’t do this to me,” I said. “I’m human.” I just wasn’t going to stand for it, now that I understood. I wasn’t going to let them treat me like that. But him, with the big boots, he came with the dog whip. He said, “You are nothing but a bitch to us, and this will show you that I’m right.” Every night he came with the dog whip. Every night until my periods came back. From then on he sent the men.’

She shrugged. ‘What else is there to say? It was the same. Except that I no longer got privileges. No more books. Never out of my room.

‘I got desperate to hear what was happening outside the hostel. It was 1941 then, and I could hear the Allied planes. I hid in the wardrobe at night. The planes would go over and I’d hear the bombs hitting. I was scared to death. I never knew who was the enemy and who wasn’t. Not that it made much difference. At that time they were all enemies.

‘When the men came, I asked them what was happening. Each one of them. Each night. I would give them a better time, if they told me a lot. Who was winning? I would ask. What is going on out there? What are the Allies doing to us? One man told me that soon Hitler would smash the British and be in London. Any day now, another officer said, we will prove the strength of the Thousand-Year Reich. They all said, and I think they all believed, that we were winning the war.

‘Well,’ she said with a shake of her head, ‘I will tell you, I thought I was going to be locked in that room for ever. If they could keep making me give them babies, there was no reason to think it would end with the war. And of course, I was terrified of the Allies. I believed they would kill me outright, if they won. So it got bad for me. I thought then, no matter what happened, no matter who won, I would never be free again.’

Hands on either side of her head, elbows on her knees, she stared across the reservoir. There was an animal there, a cow most likely, making its way down a small rise. It walked slowly and without apparent aim.

‘By December I was pregnant again. That was all they wanted out of me. So once that happened, they were better to me. I got books again. And sometimes, when the nurse was with me, I could come out of my room for meals. But I was terribly sick with that child. I hadn’t been with Klaus. Or you. Or Megan. But I was with him. I’d vomit from the moment I awoke in the morning until I fell asleep at night. I thought for sure I’d vomit that child right out.

‘But they took good care of me. They sent a special nurse. And she said, “Don’t worry. You’ll keep this child; you won’t miscarry. Because sickness always means a child’s well planted.” And she stayed with me all the time, even in the nights.’

The wind blew again faintly, and her hair was lifted from her shoulders. She gazed away, lost in thought. I sat, paralysed, beside her.

‘Yes,’ she said resolutely, ‘there are decisions one must make. When all the choices are evil ones but one must still decide. I had to make one then. I was only eighteen. Just a girl. Not such a stupid girl any more, but still just a girl. And that was a real decision. All the other decisions I’ve ever made have been nothing in comparison to that one.’

She stopped speaking for a moment.

‘The baby came early. He was due in August but he came in July, only three days after my birthday,’ she said. Her voice was flat and detached. ‘I asked them to name him Josef, after my father. But I made them spell it József. That’s the Hungarian. I wasn’t going to let him be a German. I told them to christen him and to bring me the certificate so that I could see that he’d been christened József.

‘They did,’ she said and then she stopped. Hands clasped together, resting against her lips, she said nothing more. Minutes built up. She stared at the grass.

‘My breasts would get very full. You see, when you haven’t had the baby to nurse for a while, your breasts become very round and hard. Especially in the beginning when you are just getting your milk.’ Her voice was soft and fragile but without discernible emotion.

‘So when they brought him to me in the afternoon …that afternoon …they gave him to me and …I held him. He turned so hungrily for the milk. He hadn’t been fed since the morning and he rooted against me. As babies do. So, very, very gently, I just pressed his head against my breast and smothered him.’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I was sent to Ravensbrück. Big Boots, he said he had no other choice.’ Her expression was almost a smile, mirthless and sardonic. ‘The choice, you see, had been all mine.’

‘H
e enjoyed seeing her,’ my father said to me in the study that night.

I leaned back against the lounger. ‘But what does he think is wrong with her? Why does he think she’s doing that?’

‘He said he found her delightful. Very articulate.’

‘Daddy, she was purposely trying to be delightful. You know Mama.’

‘Well, then,’ he said with a smile, ‘things can’t be too bad, can they? Not if she can do that.’

‘
Daddy
. What did the doctor
say
? What’s the matter with her? What are we going to do about it?’

‘He said he didn’t think it was too serious. Something about a personality disorder, about her being obsessed at the moment with this thing about Klaus.’

‘We didn’t need a psychiatrist to tell us that. We
know
she’s obsessed. Even Megs can tell that. But what are we going to do about it? About the Watermans? What about my ever getting to go back to school again?’

My father reached down and picked up one of the framed photos of Mama he kept on his desk. ‘He wants to keep seeing her. Every Wednesday. To try and sort it out for her. And he gave her some pills. He said those should help.’

‘And what if they don’t?’

‘They should. He said so.’ Dad turned away. He still held the picture in his hands. He studied it. ‘You know what the doctor told me? They gave her tests. You know. To measure how alert she was. An IQ test. And you know what?’ He turned back to me. ‘Dr Carrera said she got every single question right. He said she was a very, very brilliant woman.’

‘Daddy, she’s not applying for college.’

‘She’s beautiful,’ he said softly to the photograph.

‘
Dad!
’ I cried in exasperation. ‘Stop it, OK? It’s Mama we’re talking about. Her, downstairs, who keeps going out to the Watermans. And what’s going to happen to her if those pills don’t work? That’s all I want to know. Nothing else. What if they don’t work?’

‘They should. He said so. He’s a psychiatrist, Lesley. He’s used to these kinds of problems. He knows what he’s talking about. He said they’re special pills, tranquillizers, and they’re very strong. They’re what’s given to schizophrenics to make them stop hallucinating.’

‘But Mama’s not hallucinating. And she’s had billions of tranquillizers before. What if these don’t work on her? I want to know. I’m sick to death of waiting. I want to know right now what we’re going to do next, if this doesn’t work.’

‘You have to have patience, Les.’

‘You weren’t the one sitting there today, Dad. You didn’t see her conning all of them. You don’t have to spend every day with her, day in, day out, trying constantly to stay one step ahead of her. You haven’t had to give up your school time and your job and your friends because of her.’

‘Your mother didn’t “con” anyone, Lesley. That man is a psychiatrist. A very highly trained specialist. He knows about things like that.’

‘She didn’t tell him about Toby.’

‘He already knew about Toby.’ Dad was a little angry with me, and it echoed in his voice.

Nettled, I turned and went over to the bookshelf. I browsed among the titles. ‘I just don’t have that kind of faith in anything any more, Dad. I need to know where we go from here when this fails.’

He lifted one shoulder in a weary, defensive gesture. ‘We just cross that bridge when we come to it, kiddo.’

I returned to stand in front of the desk.

He looked over, and when he saw my face, he looked away and shook his head. ‘Don’t be so difficult, Lesley. It’s hard. I know it’s hard, believe me. But other families go through this too. And a lot worse than we’ve got it. Families with retarded children. Or senile parents. Having to change diapers on someone twelve years old, as the Martins do with Kenny. Or Perry Edelmann with his autistic son. It’s not easy. But you do what you can do. If you don’t want them in institutions, Les, you do what you can. It’s hell sometimes. I know that awfully well. But it’s part and parcel of loving someone.’

I said nothing.

‘And the thing is, Lesley, I do love your mother. She doesn’t belong in a hospital or an institution. That’d kill her. And if it takes my last breath, I’ll make sure she never goes in one.’

‘Dad, I’m not asking that.’

‘You are. Because if you and I and Meggie can’t cope with her, then that’s what’s left.’

I lowered my head.

‘But I won’t have it happen. I don’t care what kind of sacrifices that means for us. I won’t let anything happen to your mama. She’s where she’s at through no fault of her own.’

Swiftly, without any prior warning, tears rose to my eyes. They did not simply blur my vision but rather swelled up and came down my cheeks before I even anticipated them.

Concerned, my father came around the desk to me. I shook my head, unable to speak.

‘I’m sorry, it’s so hard on you, sweetheart. I’m sorry you’re having to take the brunt of it. I do understand.’

‘It’s not that,’ I said, strangling.

His brow puckered.

‘She told me,’ I said. ‘This afternoon when we were out. She told me about the hostel and József and how she got to Ravensbrück. I was trying not to think about it but I can’t. It’s the only thing on my mind.’

The pills made my mother listless and drowsy. The doctor prescribed two a day, and they took effect immediately, making her unable to keep her eyes open. She would sit on the couch in the living room, hands on either side of her head, trying to stay awake. Eventually, she gave up and lay down, dozing fitfully. My father rang Dr Carrera to tell him that he thought the pills were too strong, but the psychiatrist said she would adjust to them.

I returned to school that Tuesday afternoon after two weeks’ absence. It felt odd to be back. I think I’d thought I was missing it more than I apparently was, because when I arrived back, it did not turn out to be nearly the high I had anticipated. Old Mr Tennant in German spoke to me as if I’d been there all along. No one asked me where I’d been or how it felt to be back. The day left me lonely and depressed. I felt adrift between two worlds.

The tranquillizers literally immobilized Mama. There was little worry about leaving her alone. When they didn’t put her right to sleep, they left her too sluggish to accomplish much. When I left for school in the morning, she would be lying on the couch, watching TV. When I returned in the afternoon, she was still there, She didn’t even bother to make herself lunch.

Megan found Mama’s torpid behaviour under the tranquillizers very unnerving. She worried constantly that Mama needed someone to take care of her in such a stuporous state. She fretted when she noticed Mama had not been making herself coffee during the day, because Megan knew how much Mama loved her dark, aromatic coffee. If we’d just not give Mama the pills, Megan begged, she’d be willing to stay home and take care of her. She didn’t mind missing school. Which was probably true, given the state of Megan’s previous report card.

On Thursday Mama finally appeared to be adjusting to the tranquillizers. At breakfast she was more alert, and by the time I came back from school in the afternoon, she was practically her old self, puttering around the kitchen, humming under her breath. I watched her carefully as I was having my after-school sandwich to see if I could detect any renewed interest in Toby Waterman, but there was none. She wore a pair of old, holey tennis shoes, not her walking shoes. Most of her conversation was about mundane things, cheerfully put and in English.

Later when I was in the living room, I noticed dust collecting along the mopboards. Housework really had become a fetish with me, and realizing that Mama hadn’t been up to doing any during the week, I went to get the vacuum from the back cupboard.

Down on my hands and knees behind the couch, I came across a slip of paper. It had fallen from a stack of magazines and papers under the end table.

I picked it up, turned it over. What’d caught my eye was that it bore my mother’s handwriting. She had written on the back of one of Megan’s school papers. Megan’s work was dated the previous Monday, so I knew Mama had written this recently. I inspected it. It was written in German, in my mother’s foreign-looking script. She had a bold, distinctive hand, the letters large and easy to read in spite of their European appearance. Apparently, it was some kind of list. Brown shoes, it said. Three shirts. Bread.

‘Mama?’ I asked, coming into the kitchen. ‘What’s this?’ I held the paper out.

She looked at it but did not take it from my hand. She shook her head.

‘You wrote it, Mama, What is it?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘This medicine, it makes my head funny. I do things I don’t remember.’

‘It looks like some kind of shopping list or something.’

‘I do these things,’ she said, her expression guileless. ‘It isn’t good, this medicine. It makes me do things and I don’t know I do them.’

I raised an eyebrow but she gazed steadily back at me. She was sly as a fox, my mama, pills or no pills.

I went into the study to join my father at about half-past eight. He was sitting at the desk reading a magazine.

‘Dad,’ I said, ‘I’ve done something. I don’t think you’re going to be too happy when you hear about it. But I think it had to be done.’

He looked up. He’d washed his hair in the shower when he’d returned from work, and it had dried without much combing. Wild, black and curly, it gave him the look of an Irish Albert Einstein.

‘I took Grandma’s bond and cashed it. I’ve bought tickets to Wales.’ I threw the travel agent’s folder on to the desk. ‘There’s only two there. I wanted us all to go, but it costs too much money. The girl at the agency, she did these pretty cheap. So there’s three hundred dollars left over. That and my savings from work. See? Here.’ I put the money on the desk too. ‘I want you and Mama to go to Wales. I’ll take care of Megan. But I want you to take her back.’

My dad said absolutely nothing. He stared at the ticket folder and the money.

‘I know you’re going to be mad at me. I know you didn’t want me to do it. But I had to. I had to do something. I just couldn’t stand around and watch Mama go through this. It’s my money, after all. And this is how I decided to spend it.’

He shook his head slightly. Colour had risen into his cheeks. ‘Oh Lessie, sweetheart, you shouldn’t have.’ His voice was barely above a whisper.

‘I know you’re going to be mad. But you’re always talking to me about love. You’re always saying that this thing or that thing we do is just because it’s something you do when you love someone. Well, so is this. I love you and Mama. And this is just something I had to do.’

He put his palm against his mouth and slowly let out a long breath of air. He wouldn’t raise his head to look at me.

‘It’s for June. I had to get it at least twenty-one days ahead of time to get the discount. Is that all right? Can you get off at the garage?’

‘Oh Lessie, you shouldn’t have done this,’ he said again. ‘How are we going to pay for college now? What will we do?’

‘Well, like you’re always saying, we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it. I’ll get by. I’ll work. I’ll go and I’ll manage. But for now I just want you and Mama to go back to Forest of Flowers.’

I wished he would speak more. I’d been prepared for him to go into a tirade. I had not been prepared for him to sit, speechless.

‘Dad, I had to do something.’

‘I just wish you had told me about it first.’

‘I couldn’t,’ I replied. ‘You wouldn’t have let me do it.’

It was purely by accident that I went back up to my room the next morning. I should have already left for school, but a few steps up the sidewalk, I recalled that I’d left my French essay on my desk. I went running back.

My bedroom was right next to the bathroom, a facet of the room I hated because I could hear everything that went on in there. So, when I came back to get my assignment that morning, I paused. I could hear someone in the bathroom, vomiting.

Going to the bedroom door, I looked out. Megan had been downstairs at the kitchen table when I came through. However, for some reason I assumed it was she. ‘Megs?’ I said at the bathroom door. ‘Are you sick? Let me in.’

No answer. I tried the door. It was locked.

Running back to my room, I got a coat hanger. Our bathroom locked only with a hook and eye because Dad worried about what a dangerous room it was. Someone could slip in the bathtub or have some other accident, he was always warning, so he made certain that you could push the door ajar and easily unlatch it in an emergency. I knew the system worked because Megan was always breaking in on me.

Mama was in there, sitting on the edge of the bathtub beside the toilet. Her expression was wary. The toilet had been flushed.

‘What are you doing?’ Sudden realization dawned on me. ‘You threw up the goddamned pills, didn’t you?’ Anger roared into full flame.

Her cheeks were flushed. She was running her tongue around the inside of her mouth.

‘Oh, honestly, Mama,’ I said and flapped my hands in frustration. ‘What are we going to do with you?’

‘They make me too sleepy. I can’t think.’

‘You’re not
supposed
to think, goddamnit. We don’t
want
you to think. That’s what causing us all this trouble, your thinking. Damn it, Mama, those pills were for your own good.’