I resisted sweets since I not only had baby fat to lose, but a cavity in my left canine tooth as well, a souvenir from Ravensbrück, and which stung when it met with sugar.
My father kissed my hand, then my forehead and the baby’s too. “How are you, Kasia?”
Pietrik lifted the baby from my arms, leaving me cold. He handed Papa the baby, Marthe’s purse still on Papa’s arm.
“We are thinking of naming her Halina,” Pietrik said.
“Well, I like the name Irenka,” I said. “It means hope—”
“Halina, of course,” Papa said. “How nice.”
Were those tears in his eyes?
“She favors you, Pietrik,” Marthe said. “Will you christen her at home? Don’t even think about a church.”
She was right. The Polish Workers’ Party no longer simply suggested a ban on religious ceremonies, including baptisms and weddings. It openly discouraged them and made life terribly difficult for those who disobeyed. Marthe and Papa were still not married, though many priests wed couples in secret.
Marthe scooped the baby from Papa’s arms. “This may be hard for you, Kasia, with your bad leg once you come home. I will take care of the baby.”
As Marthe cooed over the baby, a dark wave crashed over me. Why wasn’t my mother here? Matka would walk the ward with the baby and show her off. She would tell me stories of myself as a child and make me laugh about it all.
All at once, my face was wet with tears. I’d helped hundreds of mothers fight baby blues, but it was harder than it appeared, like being sucked down into a dark hole.
“I need the baby back, please,” I said.
Suddenly I wanted them all gone, Pietrik too. If I couldn’t have my mother, I wanted no one.
Pietrik took the baby from Marthe, who looked pained to release her, and placed her back in my arms.
“Kasia needs to rest,” he said.
Marthe gathered her plate of paczkis. “We’ll be back tomorrow with pierogies.”
“No thank you,” I said. “They feed us well here.”
Once they left and Pietrik went back to the factory, the baby and I drifted in and out of sleep. When the radiator started hissing steam, I woke with a start thinking I was back on the train to Ravensbrück, the train’s whistle screaming as we came to the platform. My heart raced, but I calmed once I looked at the baby. She shifted in my arms.
Halina? So she would have my mother’s name after all? As it was, I could barely look at my mother’s picture without falling to pieces. More terrifying, could the child’s name somehow cause her to follow Matka’s terrible path? To live a wonderful life, cut short? A shiver ran through me. Stranger things have happened.
Once Pietrik and Papa started calling the baby Halina, I gave in and soon called her that myself. I needed to grow up after all. I was a mother now, with responsibilities, no longer a child. Plus, everyone said it was a beautiful name, and it suited the baby. It honored my mother, and she would have been pleased.
But somehow I couldn’t shake the notion I should have named her Hope.
1946–1947
Once I found the child and arranged for her parents to fetch her, I stayed in Paris doing my best to avoid Paul. He was a father now, and I wanted no part in disrupting his family. It was easy to avoid him since they remained at Rena’s house in Rouen.
You might think there is no better place to salve a wounded psyche than the City of Love, but that year, after the war ended, every park bench teemed with lovers kissing in public, some before breakfast, vivid reminders of my lost love. Even the news from home was grim, for Roger wrote that our elevator boy, Cuddy, had been killed in action in the Pacific.
I became like a drug addict, the withdrawal from Paul hellish. No sleep, no appetite. Why could I not move on to a higher purpose? So I would remain unmarried, alone for the rest of my life. Worse things had happened to people.
It didn’t help that letters from Paul choked our letter box. Mother lobbed each one into a basket in the living room with a labored stage sigh. More than once I flipped through them admiring Paul’s handwriting and held a few to the light. But why read them? It would only prolong the agony.
I felt like Paris had cheated on me. We’d both been dealt a blow, but only she was recovering, starting to rebuild and clear the rubble. If the fashion industry was any indication, Paris was back, already holding elaborate fashion shows in the grand haute couture houses and magazine shoots against backdrops of ruined buildings, while I was still reduced to tears by a crippled pigeon or an old fruit man with three wormy apples arranged on a towel to sell.
—
MONTHS PASSED. I WOKE one November morning and vowed to immerse myself in work and not think of Paul even once more that day. There were no new letters in the basket, and fortunately there was still much to be done in Paris since rebuilding was in full swing. Turning oneself to the misfortunes of others is the best way to dispense with personal troubles. Hadn’t Lord Byron himself said, “The busy have no time for tears”?
Gasoline remained in short supply, so Parisians still rode their bicycles everywhere. Things like plates, matches, and shoe leather were still in short supply, not to mention decent food. Workers continued to cultivate beans and potatoes on the Esplanade des Invalides with horse and plow, but there were few eggs to be found, and ridiculously long lines formed at the bread and butcher shops at the hint of a rumor that a few scraps were available.
Mother secured a supply of old K rations from a friend at the military post exchange store to supplement our diets. Each cardboard rectangle held a miniature American breakfast: a tin of diced ham and eggs, Nescafé coffee, cellophaned crackers, a pack of Wrigley’s gum, and a pack of Chesterfield cigarettes. It was a miracle our boys had stayed alive to fight in spite of those breakfasts, but any food was precious then.
Mother volunteered for the ADIR, the National Association of Deportees and Internees of the Resistance, a new organization that helped women deportees returning from Nazi concentration camps get back on their feet. These “lucky” women often had lost everything. Their husbands and children. Their homes. To make matters worse, the French government focused on the men who returned, military men especially, but any males who’d survived the war. Somehow the returning women were an afterthought.
I volunteered here and there as well. Since so many children in Paris lacked coats, Mother and I appealed to Le Bon Marché department store to allow us to set up a donation station just outside the store’s doors and they agreed. They carted out coatracks and folding tables to the cordoned-off area, and Mother and I hung donated children’s coats by size. The price of admission into our little shop was one child’s coat. A parent could choose from any of our coats and jackets in a larger size, and the donated garment was cleaned and redistributed. Le Bon Marché even advertised our event, running a grim little photograph of Mother and me at the bottom of their newspaper ad.
We chose a perfect sunny November day to set up, when all of Paris was out to see what fashions the stores held for the coming season. Dior had debuted his revolutionary New Look, with its nipped waists and full skirts, that spring, and Paris was abuzz about what he’d unveil next. It was hard not to feel optimistic that day, with the scent of roasting chestnuts in the air and the one-man band in the adjacent park playing a lively version of “Le Chaland qui passe.”
Soon people queued up and crowded in. Mother had left me in charge, for she’d already achieved field marshal status in the post–World War II French charitable world and had gone to oversee a soup kitchen on the other side of town. I was thrilled, for I desperately needed a new mission of my own. Besides, I’d become good at picking the perfect coat for a child. The key was in the coloring. This was Paris after all. A yellow coat on a sallow child was almost worse than no coat at all.