The Rabbit Girls(74)
Henryk, I’m scared.
You exist within me, literally, now. I cannot tell you in person that I am carrying a child. Your child. I felt it stirring in the dark, it was my only light. Each flutter of movement bringing me closer to the world, bringing me back from the depths of my own hell.
Yet our love made something. How long I can keep it growing I do not know. Whether we survive this is doubtful.
My future is bleak. I have no idea what to do. I cannot tell anyone either, I would endanger all around me. And Hani, whose womb was blackened and removed with steel, having mine ripe and growing life?
I cannot do that to her. I need her, I need her so much right now, because she KNOWS that I am selfish and cruel and she sticks beside me anyway.
I hold on to her body, alive and holding mine, and I hope you have someone to hold you.
Miriam feels the familiar sensation growing from behind her eyes. She can smell hospital, she can smell Axel and she can feel the baby inside her. The weight, the tiny hiccups, and the kicks that made her feel whole, somehow.
She stands and walks the room. I hope you have someone to hold you, and he did. He always did. Her father had Mum. They were together.
They visited her, just after it happened. Both together, hand in hand. Her father held her tight. Mum dealt with the baby.
They left hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder. Both crying the tears Miriam could not. She sat with Axel’s arm around her. A coldness held her, and she felt emptiness so entirely she was almost transparent. The absence seemed to slither then boom, its weight heavier than any noise. And Miriam stuck under it.
30
MIRIAM
She turns up the heating and puts her father’s cardigan over her shoulders. His smell brings her back to the present, the letters and Frieda.
Henryk,
We have created something. More than either of us combined.
The child grows strong within me. I forget it exists in moments of the day. I have joined Hani at work at the Siemenslager. The factory is warm and we sit in chairs with backs and arm rests, and wind thin wire over spools. It is good work and the manager oversees us, not the guards, so there are fewer beatings, and above the noise of the factory we can talk in whispers and not be heard.
The baby is quiet in the day, but as soon as I lie down or when I eat – it kicks out and wriggles. I am fascinated by it. I can even see the movements through my skin now. My muscles and fat reduced to bone, however my belly protrudes. It grows. In a place of death there is life. It is strong. I imagine its dark hair and brilliant eyes. Holding my hand, looking up at me, looking like you.
My memories are broken. For surviving now is my only aim, for both of us. I listen to Eugenia and the talk of Allies, the talk of rescue or release, and I believe. I believe that it is possible for us, because I have to survive to bring this child into the world. I have to survive to bring it back to you. For we deserve an ending better than this one.
I hold on to our memories, but they are sand slipping through my fingertips. I hope we can create new ones together.
‘But she never did,’ Miriam says, placing the letter down.
In the early hours of the morning she gets some sleep and wakes from a heavy slumber. She showers, allowing the water to rinse her skin. The blood still pours from the wound, working its way down her arm like a vein. She sits uncomfortably on the top of the toilet and places four Steri-Strips along the wound which hold it closed, then covers her guilt with a large, white, gauze plaster.
She opens the windows to a bright, freezing-cold morning. Allowing the pungent smell of Axel and the rose-pink lilies to leave through the windows, she places the feather and the gold scissors, wrapped in their envelope, in the bin liner. The plaster pulls at her blouse. A reminder.
She makes two phone calls. The first to check on her father. She is told he slept well and is doing better. The second, a gruff voice answers and tells her he’ll be over to the apartment at some point today, he cannot give her a time.
Hanging up, she takes the bag outside, cumbersome and heavy, she places it in the bin and instantly wants to clamber in and retrieve the scissors.
‘Morning, pet.’
‘Morning, Lionel, how are you?’ His big bulk is moving towards her, she has the bin lid open, on tiptoes, undecided. He stands beside her and lowers the lid for her, despite being able to do so herself, but she is grateful.
Gone.
‘I’m good, thank you. How is your father?’
‘He’s holding up,’ she says, turning her back to the bin. Turning her back on the past.
‘Give him me best when you see him.’ He squeezes her shoulder and turns to walk away.
‘Oh Lionel, before I forget.’ She gathers herself, present. ‘I’m having a locksmith stop by today to change the locks. Hopefully I’ll be back in time, but can you show them up if not?’
‘Sure thing. Your husband mentioned he’d lost his key. Better to be safe than sorry these days, right?’ He turns back and she walks beside him into the main foyer. ‘When I was a lad, we always had our doors open, anyone could have just walked in. Mind, we didn’t have much to steal in them days.’
‘You let my husband in?’
‘Yes, just before I was getting off home. Was lucky really, five minutes later I’d have been halfway home myself. He had such beautiful flowers, I thought you’d be pleased to see him. He said it was a surprise.’