Cilka's Journey(51)
* * *
It is well over a week before Vadim comes knocking. As he starts his groping and pawing of Josie, she stops him.
“I have to tell you something.”
“I don’t want to talk just now.”
“I’m having your baby,” she blurts out.
Cilka has turned her head away from Boris to listen to the exchange.
“What’s wrong?” asks Boris.
“Nothing, shhh.”
“What did you say?” Vadim growls.
“I’m having a baby, your baby.”
“I thought you were just getting fat.”
“No.”
“I don’t want no fuckin’ baby. What the hell do you think you’re doing having a baby?”
“You did this to me. I didn’t ask for it.”
“How do I know it’s mine?”
Josie pushes him away, screaming, “Because you made me your property, remember? No one else is allowed to touch me, remember? Get out of here, get out, get out!”
Josie’s screams reduce to a whimper.
Vadim stumbles from the bed, hopping about as he looks for his discarded clothes. The exchange disturbs all the men in the room, who scramble for their trousers and start retreating.
“I would never speak to you like that,” Boris says to Cilka, pushing a lock of hair back from her eyes. “In fact, I’d be so happy if you had my baby.”
That’s not going to happen, Boris, she thinks, but she merely tells him it’s time to go. Cilka has never been pregnant. Her period stopped in the other place for a long time, like so many of the women there, and now only comes intermittently. Poor nutrition, shock, she isn’t sure. It is possible there is no coming back from it.
“All right, I will, but I will be thinking about you.”
In the dark, the women find their way to Josie’s bed, offering support and hugs. The slightly warped sense of humor the women have developed over the past few years serves them well as they share stories about what the men who have visited them lack, and their capacity to father a child. Josie finds herself laughing, between sobs. Cilka feels affection bloom for these women, with their hollow cheeks and gap-toothed smiles—a feeling that has only ever surfaced in brief moments surrounded by loss. For her sister. For Gita. She tucks the feeling deep inside, where nothing can harm it.
* * *
Over the next few weeks, Josie’s moods swing wildly. In the morning she wakes, joins the others for breakfast and roll call upbeat and keen to go to work, where she will be asked by medical and nursing staff how she is feeling. At the end of the day, tired and aching, she barely speaks, stays on her bed and often doesn’t come to dinner. At first she had been excited about the small gowns the women were making for her; now she barely glances at them.
Cilka and Elena gently speak to Josie, to discover if it is the fear of the approaching birth causing her mood swings. The only clue she gives them relates to Vadim. How will she ever be able to tell her baby about its father? They comfort her as best they can, promising to be in her and her baby’s life always. It is a promise they all know will be difficult to keep. Just words to keep her holding on, to get her through.
With little more than a month before Josie’s expected birth date, Cilka wakes in the middle of the night, startled by the hut door slamming shut in the wind. She glances at Josie’s bed. It is empty. She has spent many nights looking at her friend sleeping, her face pinched and troubled even in sleep, her growing stomach protruding underneath the blanket.
Alarmed, she reaches out to pat the bed, to confirm Josie has gone. Her hands rest on something soft and she realizes it is an article of clothing. It is well below freezing outside. She sits up, grasps the coat and several more items of clothing she finds with it.
Cilka quietly locates her boots and shuffles along the row of beds until she gets to Elena’s. She shakes her awake and tells her to get dressed quickly. Wrapping their faces, heads and hands as best they can, the two women head out of the hut.
It is bitterly cold. Snow is falling lightly. A chilling wind cuts through their layers of clothing to their blood and bones. The nearby searchlights cast a ghostly shadow around their hurrying forms. They see bare footprints in the snow leading away from their hut. Their feet squelch and squeak as they follow the trail.
Behind the mess hut, they find Josie. Naked, unconscious, barely breathing, curled up by the perimeter fence. Cilka gasps—no. And then feels the blankness closing over her.
“What do we do with her? I think she may be dead,” Elena whispers.
Cilka leans over and wraps Josie in the coat she has brought with her.
“We have to get her back to the hut and warm her up. Oh, Josie, what have you done?” Cilka cries.
Cilka lifts her by the shoulders; Elena takes her legs. Together they stumble back the way they came to the safety of their hut.
They are unable to open and close the door quietly, and soon the rest of the women are awake, demanding to know what is going on. Elena fills them in, and calls them over, for whatever they can do. Cilka seems to have lost her words for a moment. The women go about helping as they can. Two of them begin massaging Josie’s feet, another two her hands. Cilka places her ear on Josie’s stomach, tells them all to be quiet a minute, and listens.
Thump, thump, strong and loud, bounces back to her.