Mother and Me (10 page)

Now there was the roar of airplanes—not the faint hum of a plane above the clouds, but the quickly growing pounding of nearby machines. It was a sound I had never heard before, but there was no mistaking it. My mother was on top of me under the truck. I raised my head to see, but she pushed it down.

I heard a blast of air and engines, feeling it with my whole body and sensing the truck over me swaying. “Stay down! Stay down!” the major shouted. The roar grew fainter and stopped. There was a moment's pause when everything was silent. I could hear nothing except my own feet scratching against the ground as I tried to change my position.

I wanted to see the planes. I had never seen an airplane up close, and these, I knew, must have passed close enough to even see the pilots.

Then I could hear the sound again. First a hum and then it growing into the roar. Mother's arm pushed my head down again. Now there was a new sound. Another sound I had no trouble identifying. It was machine gun fire.

It was a terrible noise. It was nothing like the
a-a-a-a-a
we would emit in make-believe. It was a noise of metal tearing and rocks jumping and people crying out.

The noise of the planes and the wind and the creaking of the truck blew over us one more time, and then, again, it was still.
“Stay down. Stay down. Everybody stay down,” the major was saying.

We lay very still, and there was the sound of crying from around us. People were crying and animals were crying.

“Everyone all right?” the major asked, cautiously.

“I'm all right, dear,” his wife answered

“Yulian and I are fine,” Mother said.

“We're fine!” Fredek said.

“I'm all right,” Auntie Paula said.

“And I.” It was Miss Bronia's voice.

“I'm all right,” Auntie Edna said. Everyone answered except Sonya.

“Sonya! Sonya!” Auntie Paula suddenly shouted. “Where are you?”

“Oh, I'm fine,” Sonya answered from somewhere behind me. “I'm just fine.”

“All right,” the major said. “I think they've gone.”

“Next time they come, everybody immediately under the truck,” his wife said.

I could hear people under the truck begin to move. There were strangers under our truck, and they were beginning to crawl out.

“Oh my God!” It was Auntie Edna's voice. “Oh, my God.”

“Oh, heavens!” Auntie Paula said. “Sonya, don't look.”

“Really, Mother.”

“Don't look,” my mother said to me. I tried to see, what it was I wasn't supposed to look at, but with my mother's weight on my head, all I could see was a piece of Auntie Edna prone beside me.

“Oh, my God, what have they done to her?” I suddenly heard Auntie Edna say. Mother raised her head, so I was able to raise mine as well. Mother quickly pushed me back down. But what I saw in that moment was a woman in a babushka, the colored kerchief Polish women frequently wore on their heads, sitting beside the truck holding a bloody glove hanging from her hand for us to see.

“Quickly, we have to fix a tourniquet,” I heard the major say. There were the sounds of people moving rapidly from under the truck. I caught sight of Auntie Paula moving towards the woman with Fredek crawling on all fours behind her. I wanted to go too, but my mother held me down.

“Fredek, come back!” Auntie Edna cried, then after a moment began to crawl after him, clearing my field of vision. The major, his wife, Auntie Paula, Fredek, and some other people were all crowding around the woman, hiding her from my view. Auntie Edna had stopped part way there. She was on her hands and knees and might have been throwing up.

“Keep her upright till I've fixed a tourniquet,” the major was saying. “Fredek, give me your belt.” I saw Fredek pulling his cloth belt out of its loops. I was deeply envious.

Suddenly it dawned on me. That had not been a glove in her hand. There had been no hand. That had been her hand and wrist, hanging by strands of flesh from her forearm.

And I suddenly saw my field of view narrowing, like in a tunnel, and felt a numbness coming over my body.

“Yulian! Yulian!” my mother was shouting. “You're all wet!”

For a moment I thought I had wet my pants. But I realized I was wet all over.

“You're all sweating,” Mother said.

“Get off him,” I heard Miss Bronia command. “Give him some air.”

I had a great feeling of shame. Fredek was helping to tend to the wounded woman, and I, who was six months older, who had talked so much with Kiki about going to care for the wounded, was lying here under the truck feeling faint. And I didn't even have a belt for a tourniquet—my pants were held up by buttons on my shirt.

Mother crawled off me. “I'll take him,” Miss Bronia said. She put an arm around my shoulders and tried to ease me towards the back of the truck. I didn't want to go. I didn't want
to go and be taken care of while Fredek was helping take care of wounded people. I hid my face in the crook of my elbow.

“Let's just stay here awhile, then,” Miss Bronia said. I felt her cover me with her cardigan sweater.

Lying there, I realized now that there were many voices crying, voices helping—Here, let's turn him over gently … Help me lay her down … Hold your hand like this … and then, Oh, he's dead … No, he isn't … Where is she? What happened to her? Oh, my God! … The bastards. They're shooting at civilians … They want to kill us all… Hail Mary full of grace …

After a few minutes I let Miss Bronia help me back into the truck. She had me sit on the bench beside her and held her arm around me. “Here, drink some cocoa.” She held the thermos up and then wiped the mouth of it with the hem of her skirt. I took a sip. “Would you like me to tell you a story?” she asked. I was not in a mood for giants and witches, but I didn't want to refuse her offer. I nodded my head. Then Miss Bronia proceeded to tell a story I had never heard before. It was about a toy stuffed bear and the boy who owned him and some other toy animals including a pig, a tiger, and a donkey. But there was no witch or jealous stepmother or evil king or hungry wolf in this story, and not one of the characters wanted to cause harm to any of the others—not even the tiger—except that once the bear wanted some honey that wasn't his. I had never heard a story like that before. I couldn't wait to tell Kiki about it.

And then I realized that Kiki, too, may have been machine-gunned on her way to the city where we were scheduled to meet. Kiki would be coming by train. Did they machine-gun trains. Did bullets penetrate the sides of railway cars? Did they drop bombs on trains?

The idea of something befalling Kiki on her way to our rendezvous now occurred to me for the first time. Suddenly a wave of fear moved outward from somewhere between my heart and where I believed my stomach to be.

“Yulian, you're shaking,” I heard Miss Bronia say, and she sounded as though she were on the other side of a closed door. I felt a blanket being wrapped around my shoulders. I realized my teeth were chattering and I was suddenly cold. And I was sweating again.

“He's so delicate,” I heard Mother saying apologetically. Miss Bronia was cradling my head and shoulders in her arms like a baby, and I realized I must have fainted completely. I tried to sit up, but Miss Bronia held me down. “Just rest a little longer,” she said.

“He was just very scared,” I heard Auntie Edna saying. “You see, he's just fine now. Bronia is a genius with children.”

“He is all right, isn't he?” I heard Mother ask.

“Yes, Mrs. Waisbrem, he's all right. He's just very upset,” Miss Bronia said.

“Miss Bronia, I will give you a hundred zloty if you stay with him.”

“That's not necessary, Missus,” Miss Bronia said. I could tell from her tone that Miss Bronia was impatient with Mother the way Kiki sometimes was. “I'll just hold him for awhile,” she said.

Then I realized that the truck was moving again. Mother crawled back to her seat over the bags. Across the way, Fredek was sitting beside his mother with spots on his shirt that I realized were blood. He made no effort to wipe them off. Nobody was talking.

I started to sit up again. “Just rest awhile longer,” Miss Bronia said in her kind voice. I closed my eyes and let her hold me.

Then I was sitting beside Miss Bronia again, as the truck made its wobbly way forward. Mother had sat down now beside Auntie Edna. The major's wife and Auntie Paula, I realized, were not with us. Had something happened to them? No,
I had seen them both after the attack. Had there been another attack while I was unconscious? That would have been too embarrassing. Or were they sitting up front with the driver and the major? Held tight against Miss Bronia's side, I could not see out of our partially open door. Fredek kept lowering his face to look at the blood spots drying on his shirt.

I was aware that I had not experienced any more feelings regarding Kiki since regaining consciousness. Kiki might already be dead, I said deliberately in my own mind. But, strangely, the words had no impact. She might have had her hand severed by machine gun bullets like that poor woman—or a foot, or a leg. I tried to make myself visualize these conditions, but, still, I had no feelings about it. That wave of fear for Kiki's safety that I had felt before falling unconscious, I could remember it, but I could no longer feel it. Why was that? What was happening to me?

After a while, the truck stopped again. Auntie Paula appeared at the rear of the truck. “I told Dembovski to stop here so he could rest,” she explained. “He drove all night and now all morning.”

“That's a good idea,” my mother said.

“Besides which, I need my cigarettes,” Auntie Paula added. She laughed as she said it, but it didn't sound as though she really found it funny.

There were trees beside the road. “Everyone find a bush,” Auntie Edna was saying as we climbed down from the truck. There was a jolly tone to her voice too, and it didn't sound any more real than Auntie Paula's. “Fredek, stay close,” she added.

“Yulek, stay close to Fredek,” my mother called.

I saw Fredek heading into the trees and followed. He stopped by a large tree and began digging into the leg opening of his shorts. Not wishing to intrude on his privacy, I walked to a tree a few yards further. In a moment, I saw Fredek walk past me to a still further tree. It took me a moment to understand
his purpose—he wanted to go further from the truck than I did. Unlike the matter of helping the wounded, this was only a silly game. I let him have his silly way. When I had finished, I simply turned around and walked back.

“Where is Fredek?” his mother asked when I came back to the truck.

“He's going to the bathroom, Auntie Edna,” I said.

“Weren't you two together?” my mother asked.

“Well, yes, but he went farther than I did.”

“Farther?” Auntie Edna asked.

“Well…”

“Fredek!” Auntie Edna called. The alarm in her voice was real. “Fredek, can you hear me?!”

“For godsakes, Edna, he'll be right out,” Auntie Paula said.

“Would Missus like me to find him?” Miss Bronia asked.

“That's nonsense,” Auntie Paula said. “He'll come out by himself when he's through doing his business.”

“Why didn't you stay with your cousin?” my mother asked.

“I'll go look,” Miss Bronia said.

“There may be animals,” Auntie Edna said.

“Don't be stupid,” Auntie Paula said. I didn't like Auntie Paula.

Miss Bronia took me by the hand. “Show me where you went,” she said. I headed straight into the trees, the way we had gone before.

“I think it was this tree,” I said, pointing to the one I thought he had stopped at first. Sure enough, it was still wet. “I went to that one,” I said, pointing to my tree, “and then Fredek went to that one.”

“He did?”

“Yes.” I didn't want to go into explanations.

“Oh, I see,” she said. “Fredek! Fredek!” she called, “it's time to go back!”

We waited in vain for a response. “Fredek, I'm not playing now!” Miss Bronia called, her voice more serious than before. There was still no answer.

“Fre …” she began again, but was cut off by the a-a-a-a-a! of Fredek's machine gun sound behind us.

“You're both dead!” he said as we turned to face him. He had stepped out from behind a tree, an imaginary sub-machine gun shaking in his hands.

“That's not funny, Fredek,” Miss Bronia said. It was the first time I had heard her disapproval. “Do an about-face right now and forward march!”

Fredek turned on his heel and began marching back toward the road. As we saw him walk out into the clear, I felt Miss Bronia squeeze my hand a little. “What were you doing, Fredek?” she whispered in a shrill little, make-believe cry, just for me to hear. “I was so worried!”

Immediately we heard Auntie Edna's voice. “What were you doing there? We were all worried something had happened to you!” Miss Bronia and I both laughed silently. I laughed out of happiness because I knew now that Miss Bronia didn't really like Fredek more than me.