“Where are the potatoes and the beets?” I asked Mother.
“Well, they are clearly punishing me,” said Mother.
“Punishing you?” asked Mrs. Rimas. Mother whispered in her ear about the commander’s offer to work for him.
“But Elena, you could have gotten preferential treatment,” said Mrs. Rimas. “And most likely, extra food.”
“A guilty conscience is not worth extra food,” said Mother. “Think of the demands that could be made of me in that office. And think of what could happen to people. I don’t need that on my soul. I’ll persevere like everyone else.”
“A woman said there’s a town five kilometers away. There’s a store, a post office, and a school,” said Mrs. Rimas.
“Perhaps we could walk there,” said Mother, “and send letters. Maybe someone has heard from the men.”
“Be careful, Elena. Sending letters may endanger the people back home,” said Mrs. Rimas. “Don’t put anything in writing, ever.”
I looked at my feet. I had been writing down everything and had already filled several pages with descriptions and drawings.
“No,” whispered Mother. She looked to the grouchy woman pounding the dirt and leaned toward Mrs. Rimas. “I have a contact.”
What did Mother mean, she had a “contact”? Who was her contact? And the war—now the Germans were in Lithuania. What was Hitler doing? I wondered what had happened to our house and everything we left behind. And why were we digging this stupid hole?
“Well, at least your housemate talks to you,” said Mother. “Ours is a beastly thing that grabbed Lina by the hair.”
“The villagers are not happy,” said Mrs. Rimas. “But they were expecting us. Apparently, several truckloads of Estonians were dumped in a nearby village a few days ago.”
Mother’s shovel paused. “Estonians?”
“Yes,” whispered Mrs. Rimas. “They’ve deported people from Estonia and Latvia, too.”
Mother sighed. “I feared that might happen. It’s madness. How many will they deport?”
“Elena, there will be hundreds of thousands,” said Mrs. Rimas.
“Quit your gossiping and get to work,” barked the grouchy woman. “I want to eat.”
33
WE HAD DUG a pit more than two feet deep when a truck brought a small bucket of water. The guard gave us a break. Blisters wept on my hands. Our fingers were caked with dirt. They wouldn’t give us a ladle or cup. We bent like dogs, each taking turns lapping out of the bucket while the blond guard drank leisurely from a large canteen. The water smelled fishy, but I didn’t care. My knees looked like raw meat, and my back ached from bending for hours.
We were digging in a small clearing, surrounded by woods. Mother asked permission to go to the bathroom and then pulled me, along with Mrs. Rimas, into the trees. We squatted, our dresses bunched around our waists, to relieve ourselves.
We faced each other, all on our haunches. “Elena, can you pass the talcum, please?” said Mrs. Rimas, wiping herself with a leaf.
We began to laugh. It was such a ridiculous sight, grabbing our knees in a circle. We actually laughed. Mother laughed so hard that her ringlets fell loose from the kerchief she had tied around her hair.
“Our sense of humor,” said Mother, her eyes pooled with laughing tears. “They can’t take that away from us, right?”
We roared with laughter. The lantern flames flickered in the dark. Joana’s brother pumped a playful tune on the accordion. My uncle, who had indulged in blackberry liquor, danced a disjointed jig around the backyard of the cottage, trying to imitate our mothers. He pretended to hold a skirt and looped from side to side.
“Come,” whispered Joana, grabbing my hand. “Let’s take a walk.”
We locked arms and walked between the dark cottages down to the beach. Sand crawled into my shoes. We stood on the shore, the water lapping near our feet. The Baltic Sea glistened in the moonlight.
“The way the moon is shining on the water, it’s like it’s beckoning us in,” sighed Joana.
“It is. It’s calling us,” I said, memorizing the light and shadow to paint later. I kicked off my sandals. “Let’s go.”
“I don’t have my bathing suit,” said Joana.
“Neither do I. So what?”
“So what? Lina, we can’t swim naked,” she said.
“Who said anything about swimming naked?” I asked.
I waded into the black water in my dress.
“Lina! For goodness’ sake, what are you doing?” gasped Joana.
I held out my arms and traced the moon shadows on the water. My skirt lifted, weightless. “C’mon, it’s lovely!” I dived under the surface.
Joana kicked off her shoes and waded into the water up to her ankles. The light reflected off of her long brown hair and tall frame.
“Come in, it’s beautiful!” I said. She waded in slowly, too slowly. I jumped up and pulled her in. She screamed and laughed. Joana’s laugh could be singled out in a crowd. It had a raw freedom that echoed around me.
“You’re crazy!” she said.
“Why am I crazy? It looked so beautiful; I wanted to be part of it,” I said.
“Will you paint us like this?” asked Joana.
“Yes, I’ll call it... Two Heads, Bobbing in Black,” I said, flicking water at her.
“I don’t want to go home. It’s just too perfect here,” she said, swirling her arms through the water. “Shh, someone’s coming.”
“Where?” I said, spinning around.
“There, in the trees,” she whispered. Two figures emerged from the trees in front of the beach. “Lina, it’s him! The tall one. The one I told you about. The one I saw in town! What do we do?”
Two boys walked to shore, looking out at us.
“A bit late for a swim, isn’t it?” said the tall boy.
“Not at all,” I said.
“Oh, really, do you always go swimming after dark?” he asked.
“I go swimming whenever I feel like it,” I said.
“And what about your older sister there? Does she always go swimming at night?”
“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” I said. Joana kicked me underwater.
“You should be careful. You don’t want someone to see you without clothes.” He grinned.
“Really? You mean like this?” I jumped and stood up in the water. My wet dress clung to me like melted taffy to paper. I flung my arm in the water, trying to get them both wet.
“Crazy kid.” He laughed, dodging the water.
“C’mon,” said his friend. “We’ll be late for the meeting.”
“A meeting? What sort of meeting is going on at this hour?” I asked.
The boys dropped their heads for a moment. “We have to go. Good-bye, older sister,” said the tall boy to Joana before turning to walk down the beach with his friend.
“Bye,” said Joana.
We laughed so hard I thought surely our parents would hear us. We jumped out of the water, grabbed our sandals, and ran back through the sand onto the shadowy path. Frogs and crickets chirped and warbled all around us. Joana grabbed my arm, pulling me to a stop in the dark. “Don’t tell our parents.”
“Joana, we’re soaking wet. They’ll know we went swimming,” I said.
“No, I mean about the boys ... and what they said,” she said.
“All right, older sister, I won’t tell,” I said, grinning. We ran through the dark, laughing all the way back to the cottage.
What did Joana know about the boys and their meeting that I didn’t?
The laughter had died. “Lina, let’s go, dear,” said Mother.
I looked back to the hole. What if we were digging our own grave?
34
I FOUND A STICK and snapped it in half. I sat down and used it to draw in a patch of hard dirt. I drew our house, garden, and the trees before it was time to return to work. I pushed small stones into the earth with my thumb, creating a pathway to our front door, and lined the roof with twigs.