The Rabbit Girls(54)

I get to wash twice a day and I have access to so much paper. My letters to you can be longer now. When I write, I do so not to you, because I cannot know you will receive them, I write to the memory of you and that keeps you alive, and the language that I fell in love with; with you.

I ask everyone I know and all the people I meet about Hani. I think of the children and their ‘grandmamma’ and I cannot get the look of disgust from my mind. Finding Hani seems to have taken a deeper meaning, I trade my food for information. I look for Hani like I am possessed. I am sick to the stomach, I do not eat and struggle to rest; I am exhausted. The work I have is much better now as I fear I would have fallen asleep in the sun and the sand. I would have died there. Here I am safe. I sit next to an old school teacher. She is quiet but will nudge me gently if I fall asleep when the guard comes back around. I do not know her name. I do not want to ask it. We work in silence.

I sleep alone, and although there is more space, I cannot rest. Her presence in this place has been all I have known. I am without a shadow, alone in the sun.

Miriam cries next to the empty bed. How much effort Frieda went to to write letters to her father, and now she is all alone. She feels such sympathy for the woman, her father’s lover, that she cannot stop the tears from falling. For Miriam knows what it feels like to be all alone.

The next letter is the one about Eugenia, which in its rightful place comes next, and she realises with a sinking heart that the following letter will complete Eugenia’s story and she doesn’t want to hear it at all. The silence grows around her like a storm. She thinks about the flames, the matches, and this steadies her, remembering the mother and baby with the little socks, waiting for something. She reads.

Eugenia sucked in a deep breath, nodded her head to herself then on her exhale she talked, fast, her words joining together, stumbling over each other.

Eugenia jumped out of her skin and bashed her head on the top of the box. She felt the soldiers before she heard them, moving like shadows, then the putrid smell of smoke.

The baby cried out at the din, but the mother quietened it as Eugenia’s skin crawled with fear. She could taste burning and could touch the smoky tendrils as they snaked around her. Imagining wisps penetrating the box like long skeletal fingers. She feared being burnt alive.

‘Search. Search,’ they shouted.

The main door opened and the crash of objects followed. In the room, she heard heavy boots and it felt like the soldiers were standing on her lungs.

A jack in the box before it pops up, every sinew of her body pulled so taut. She couldn’t trust herself not to spring out.

The footsteps moved away.

Then the lid of the box opened.

The woman and baby. Opened to the day. Eugenia shrank away from the light and curled as small as she could into the dark recesses of the box. And at this angle she could see higher, she saw them.

Their deep voices shouting a mockery of empty words.

They pulled the mama up by the hair. Her breast was still out, the baby sucking hard to stay attached. The force brought the baby to his feet. He stood. Alone. Shock still.

But the mama, she screamed and screamed and kicked and flew at the men, stretching out to her baby.

They held the mama easily, despite the effort she put in to get to the baby. One of them carefully picked him up. Held him in his own thick hands. The mama screamed again. The baby cried too, hands reaching for each other – hers long and thin, his small and fat.

They shot her. In the neck. She folded on top of herself like a blanket.

The baby outdid his mother in the screaming, a caterwaul of noise escaped his bright red lips. Eugenia sobbed. But the baby scratched, he bit and kicked at them. Hands outstretched to the mama on the ground. They had a harder time holding the baby than they did the mama. He flapped around in the man’s arms, trying to get to the floor. To his mama.

Another man must have pulled out his gun, but Eugenia heard, ‘Don’t shoot, you’ll waste the bullet or miss and hit me!’

They laughed. Laughed like it was a game.

The baby screamed, constant.

‘Then-his-skull-went-crack, against the side of the box,’ Eugenia said it so fast, it took a while for me to register what she’d said.

The silence was held within our bunk. We heard Stella’s gentle snores and Bunny pulled her closer.

When the soldiers left, Eugenia got out of the box. As fast as she could.

The mama was on the floor, face down, shot in the back of the neck; Eugenia turned her. Her eyes were open, body straight, arms outstretched to her baby who was also on the floor, crumpled, one shoe off his little foot.

His round face was broken, wonky, his baby eyes closed.

Eugenia pulled on the mother’s arms and dragged her, leaving a long smear of shiny blood on the floor. It took some effort to pull and push and the mama fell heavily into the box. She was tiny, so skinny and young. Her eyes . . . vacant. Eugenia got back out and picked up the baby. His head fell back. Floppy and wrong. His little mouth was open and she saw two tiny little teeth. He smelled of milk and blood.

Eugenia placed the baby into the mother’s arms. Snuggled them in as tight as she could, even tried to wrap the mama’s arms around him. Eugenia placed one of her hands on the baby. And used her jacket as a blanket over them both. Eugenia tried to close the mama’s eyes, but she was unsure if she should. Maybe she needed to watch over her baby in heaven.

Eugenia tucked them in and closed the lid.