The Things We Cannot Say Read online

  One morning, when Mama and I were collecting the eggs, I waited until she’d rounded the corner of the barn to check the house yard. I ran back inside for the oil lamp, then I forced myself to go down into the dark cavity of the cellar. It had been hard enough to force myself into that space with my whole family around me, even when the threat of bombing was looming. My heart was racing as I climbed inside, but it nearly stopped altogether when I found only a single, dusty jar of jam and two bolted potatoes.

  That’s when I realized that even worse than the thought of Mama keeping a secret supply of food was the possibility that we’d already exhausted what she had. I clambered out of the cellar and back toward Mama.

  “Mama,” I choked. “We have run out of food, haven’t we?”

  “No,” she said, and she continued her work as if I hadn’t spoken. I stared at her in disbelief, then grabbed her upper arm to force her to look at me.

  “But I went into the cellar.”

  She silenced me with a single, incredulous look, and then she barked a laugh.

  “Alina,” she said, “since when do you go into the cellar?”

  “I was just so worried...”

  “When you need to be concerned, I will tell you. Until then, work hard and don’t ask so many questions.”

  “But, Mama,” I said uneasily, “I need to understand.”

  “Sometimes, not understanding something is the wise thing to do,” Mama sighed, and she glanced up at me. “We are nothing to the invaders, Alina. We were already poor, so there is not much more for them to take from us and if they think they are getting all of our produce, they leave us alone...for the most part. But if they suddenly start paying attention, then you and I will discuss this matter. Until that day, you have to trust Father and I to take care of you.”

  The jam kept coming long after it should have run out, and the potato cakes kept coming on Sundays, and most mornings Mama would silently serve me a heaping mound of eggs with my ration portion of oatmeal. I saw her slipping potatoes and eggs and sometimes even a small bag of grain or sugar into Truda’s coat after lunch every Sunday. I saw that all of us looked drawn and too slim, but Emilia somehow kept color in the apples on her cheeks. I saw the large sacks of wheat and sugar my Father uncovered in the back of the cart after a “spontaneous” trip to the town to “visit with Truda.”

  We were surviving only because my parents were covertly skimming from our harvests and making the occasional dip into the black market. It was thriving in those days, because every single Polish citizen was in exactly the same position.

  I didn’t question Mama again after that morning. I wanted to protest more, and I always planned to—I just didn’t know how I’d survive once the food dried up. Even with those scant added calories, every now and again I’d find myself light-headed in a field, or so exhausted I’d have to sit and rest midtask. Without that little bit of extra sustenance, I knew I could never keep up with the work my parents needed me to manage in order to keep the farm going.

  So instead of digging for the truth from my parents, I quietly added yet another stream of terror to the river of it that ran beneath each hour of my life.

  * * *

  Sometimes, when I was planting or weeding or harvesting in the vegetable field, I’d stand to stretch my aching back, and when I looked to the sky, I’d notice a rising tower of black smoke. At first, this barely caught my attention because there had been smoke on the horizon all the time when the occupation first began. But I gradually noticed that this was different from the smoke that rose when the Nazis destroyed our buildings with fire—because that came and went and moved around, and this odd smoke was always in the exact same place.

  It was initially an occasional landmark, but as one year under Nazi rule became two, the smoke became visible almost every day. Gradually, I made the reluctant connection between that odd tower of smoke and an awful smell that hung heavily in the air some days, like a sickly blanket across the whole district. When the smoke was billowing and there was no wind, that god-awful stench was never far behind. This was a scent unlike any other—not something I could identify, but something that made me feel physically ill and sometimes inexplicably scared. Soon, I didn’t want to so much as look at the black line of smoke against the deep blue of our skies, as if the very sight of the smoke was a threat to me.

  On cloudless days, I could sometimes trick myself into believing that we had gone back in time, back to the years before Tomasz left Trzebinia. One such day, I’d been working with my hands but my thoughts had strayed elsewhere. I’d imagined that Tomasz might wander down the hill, whistling, to join us for lunch and make my father laugh with some outrageous tale from his high school life, or that Filipe might bound in from the far field to beg Mama to let him go to Justyna’s for a visit. I stared up at the sky and ignored for a moment the way that I’d been tired for so long, I’d forgotten what “refreshed” felt like.

  Mama and I had been weeding in the morning, but when we emerged from the house after lunch, my hopeful, wistful mood deflated in an instant when I saw that the smoke had started. By afternoon, as we planted on the other side of the vegetable field, the black-gray line had risen so high that it seemed to stretch all the way across the sky.

  “Stop looking,” Mama snapped at me suddenly. “Looking at it won’t make it go away.”

  I flushed, then glanced at her and saw the scowl on her face. I could tell she didn’t like its presence any more than I did, so I dared to ask for the first time, “What do you think it is?”

  “I know what it is. It’s from a work camp for prisoners,” Mama said abruptly. “Just a furnace.”

  “A furnace?” I repeated, glancing at the tower of smoke again and frowning. “That must be a very big furnace.”

  “It’s to heat the water,” she told me. “There are many prisoners in the camp—mostly prisoners of war. They are just warming water for the showers and the laundry.”

  This seemed to make sense—so I told myself there was nothing at all to fear in that tower of smoke, that my visceral reaction to it was in fact an overreaction; that I had been right in trying to ignore it altogether.

  But when I saw it again the next day, and the day after that, and then soon it was there day and night, some deep part of me knew that my mother was wrong.

  I still didn’t know what the smoke represented, but I was increasingly certain that it was yet another sign that the noose around the neck of my nation was being tightened.

  * * *

  We heard of Filipe’s death only by chance. The twins had been placed together on an immense work farm hundreds of miles away from us, working with young people from all over Poland, one of which was assigned to camp administration. This man was later “promoted” by the Nazis to a more senior post in Krakow. On his way to the new position, he came through Trzebinia and sought us out.

  Just a few months after they arrived at the camp, Filipe had been outraged by some happening in the camp and had tried to intervene—unsuccessfully, because of course the camp was heavily guarded and several soldiers turned their weapons on him in an instant. His death didn’t feel at all like an inevitability to me, although in hindsight, maybe it should have.

  There was nothing to bury, no body to conduct a service over. Instead, we heard that he was gone, and that was that. There was no verification, no official notification—just silence where there had been silence for many months anyway. Nothing had changed, except that nothing was the same anymore, because once I had two brothers, and now I had one.

  This was what the occupation did to families; it shattered them into pieces without closure or explanation. Occasionally, as with Emilia and Truda, random pieces got stuck back together in a whole new way. But mostly? Our oppression was loss without reason, and pain without a purpose.

  My parents seemed to retreat into themselves after this, and we all just lived and worked
in that tiny little house without ever directly discussing the agony of it all, each of us carrying the burden of our grief alone. I kept moving forward only because I clung to a thread of optimism that just wouldn’t die. Perhaps the resistance would make an impact. Perhaps Stanislaw would come home. Perhaps Tomasz would find his way home. Every time Father went into the town, I’d wait breathlessly by the door.

  “Any new of Tomasz or Stani?” I’d ask, and he’d shake his head and often give me a soft kiss against my head or a hug.

  “Sorry, Alina. Not today.”

  “Did you ask?”

  “Everyone I could, child. I promise.”

  And then just when the worst of my grief for Filipe was easing, Father came home from a trip to pick up our rations. It was winter by then, and there was snow all around, so I’d finished tending the animals by midmorning and was hiding inside by the fire, darning socks with Mama. I heard the creak of the gate opening and I ran to the door to greet Father as I always did—but the slump of his shoulders and his red-rimmed eyes said it all.

  “Tomasz or Stani?” I asked numbly. I saw Father look beyond me into the house and I followed his gaze. Mama had risen from her seat and the color was gone in an instant from her face, and then I knew that she’d read the truth in Father’s eyes, communicating with him without a word in that way they had perfected after thirty years of marriage. She let out a wail as she sank to her knees and covered her face with her hands. I looked back to Father and shook my head.

  “No,” I whispered. He gave a heavy, shuddering sigh.

  “Stani,” he choked, as his eyes filled with tears. “Dysentery.”

  Almost overnight, it was as if my brothers had never existed at all. It was one thing for the Nazis to have the power of life or death over us, but this preternatural ability to entirely erase two young men who had meant so much to us? Just like that, my parents had gone from a family of four children to a family of two daughters. Any parent would struggle with the loss—but for a long time, Father was caught in an overwhelming depression. I’d catch him standing in the fields, staring into space, and Mama sometimes had to force him to eat his sparse ration. When Truda, Mateusz and Emilia visited with us on Sunday, Father would sit apart from the rest of the family, staring into space. It was as if he’d given up. I feared that war had taken his sons and his name would no longer continue after he was gone, so he no longer saw the point of carrying on at all. Mama herself was courageous during the day, but I’d wake sometimes at night to hear the quiet sobs she could no longer contain.

  All I had left to hope for was Tomasz. I’d always thought of him as my whole world, but when everything else around me became ugliness and grief, I pined for him with an intensity that frightened me. I was furious with God that He had let these things happen to my country, and often during the day I’d promise myself that I would never pray again. I didn’t want to be a Catholic anymore—I didn’t want to be a person of faith anymore—if God would let such terrible things happen, I wanted nothing more to do with Him.

  But every night I relented, and every night I made a silent truce, at least with Mother Mary. Just for a moment or two, I put my anger and my confusion aside, so I could plead with her to intercede for me and to keep Tomasz safe.

  But I no longer asked my father to ask after Tomasz in the town, and I no longer prayed for news of him. Every other piece of news in those past months had changed things, and never for the better, so I told myself that even deafening silence was preferable to noise if the noise always ended in grief.

  CHAPTER 10

  Alice

  I convince Mom to go back to her house a second time to bring her own iPad in for Babcia. Eddie needs his so we can’t leave it behind, but it doesn’t feel right to leave Babcia without a voice. Mom gets the iPad, then I search for the AAC app in the App store. It’s an insanely expensive app—almost three hundred dollars. Mom grumbles when she sees the price, but she puts her password in and buys it anyway. Once Babcia realizes what I’m doing, she hits the thank you button again and again.

  Finally it’s time to go home. All I can think about is getting Eddie settled and pouring myself a nice glass of wine, but Callie greets me at the door, blustering with fury.

  “You are not going to believe what happened to me today. It’s an outrage!”

  Eddie looks like my child—the same green eyes, the same muddy blond hair, the same essential features. Until his pediatrician put him on risperidone to try to help with his repetitive movements, Eddie even had my slight frame—although he’s thirty pounds heavier now and so that “slight frame” is somewhat hidden these days. But Callie is all Wade and she always has been—she’s tall and broad, and she has the same shade of hair and cool blue eyes. She also inherited his intellect, and his black-and-white perspective on life.

  “What is it, Callie?” I ask her with a sigh. She plants her hands on her hips and her chin rises defiantly. I recognize the signs of indignation in my daughter, and I mentally brace myself. What is it today? Did someone dare to suggest she might be wrong about something again? Or maybe a teacher paired her with one of the slightly less gifted students for an assignment? Right on cue, Callie delivers an outrage.

  “There was a substitute teacher and she made me do regular class work. Like I was a normal kid! It’s a human rights abuse!”

  Eddie drops onto his beanbag in the front room. He rests the dreidel on his lap, and I realize that he’s been carrying that thing all day now. I wish I had asked for that woman’s name from the store, so I could send her a note to thank her. The remote is waiting right where he left it this morning on the right-hand side of the beanbag, so he loads the YouTube app on the television, then navigates to a Thomas the Tank Engine video. He won’t watch those in public anymore and lately at school he’s been reacting violently if the teacher tries to put one on for him. She thinks he’s socially aware enough to understand that he’s probably a bit old to watch them, but he doesn’t have the language to talk to us about that, so he only wants to watch them in private. That nearly breaks my heart. I’m glad he still binges on them at home, just as I’m glad I can leave him be now. He’ll probably watch a half dozen episodes of the show before dinner. I think it’s the Eddie-equivalent of that glass of wine I so desperately need right now.

  I look from my son who can’t communicate, to my daughter who can’t help but communicate, and I sigh and grasp for patience. These moments of surreal disparity in my parenting obligations happen periodically and I always manage to navigate them, but I feel my tolerance for this moment slipping through my fingers, and I grapple to get a handle on it. My reserve of patience becomes a life rope I just can’t grasp, and I say the right words but they come out too short, so that I fire the full force of my adult-grade sarcasm at my ten-year-old daughter.

  “I doubt it was ‘regular class work,’ Callie. I don’t think they do ‘regular class work’ at an academic magnet school.”

  “It was regular work. It wasn’t my advanced program, so it may as well have been finger-painting to someone like me.”

  It’s the determined arrogance that gets me. It’s the wide stance of her feet, the hands pinching into her hips, the jutted chin, the way her gaze keeps flicking to Eddie like she’s trying to ram home the point. I’m your highly gifted child, not your special needs child. I deserve better than this because I’m bright, not challenged.

  I’m raising a monster, and that sudden realization makes me very angry. I mirror her stance and I say flatly, “One day of being treated like everyone else won’t hurt you, Callie.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t understand. Dad understands. Dad knows how frustrating it is to have unlimited intellectual potential and to be forced to do coloring-in sheets like a...like a...” She pauses, then she looks at Eddie once more, but this time she lets her gaze linger before she says bitterly, “Like a retard.”

  I hate that word so much. It�
�s the connotations of uselessness that gets me, the imagery it inspires of padded cell institutions and children left behind. The very sound of it makes me see red.

  “Pascale!” I snap. “Go to your room, now.”

  Her nostrils flare as she stares at me, and then she bursts into tears and runs off up the stairs to her room. Wade appears in the doorway to the kitchen. He’s wearing my apron; a white and neon pink number he got me for Mother’s Day last year. Wade is so tall that the apron barely reaches the tops of his thighs. He’s wearing it over his business shirt and trousers, and he looks completely ridiculous.

  But for the fact that I’m seething, I’d probably have burst out laughing at the sight of him. Instead, I stare at him, and I hope he’s going to say something—anything—to display even just a little empathy.

  “It’s days like these,” he says, starting exactly as I need him to, but finishing the sentence with an utterly disappointing focus on Callie, “I think we should think about streaming her into a class with older gifted kids who are operating at the same level as she is. She’s not some regular gifted kid—she’s highly gifted, so it’s frustrating for her to have to—”

  “No,” I say, far too sharply. He falls silent, and I drag in a steadying breath, then try to soften my tone. This is a well-worn argument—because I’m determined that Callie has some age-appropriate friends as well as academic challenge, and Wade seems to think friends are somewhat overrated and just wants her to work at the limit of her potential. “I’m sorry. I just can’t have this conversation again, not today. Please—tomorrow?”

  He hesitates, then nods, and he belatedly asks, “Okay. How did you go with Babcia?”

  “I’ll tell you about it once I eat,” I sigh. “What are you cooking? Something smells good.”

  “It’s just some chicken steaks and vegetables.”

  He leads the way into the kitchen and I see the chaos—pots and pans all over the benches, open packets of ingredients on every conceivable surface, even offcuts from vegetables on the floor. This man literally understands how to create and manipulate nanoparticles to do all kinds of semimagical medical and industrial things, but he cannot get his head around the rule that if you drop something, you pick it up. But I can’t yell at him about the kitchen being messy, because technically he’s helping me right now, even though I know he will serve up the meal, eat it, and then retire to his study to catch up on the work he missed this afternoon, and I’ll be left with the disaster zone of a kitchen.