I just wasn’t sure I could deal with his aggression in the way I always had. Every morning, I woke and hoped to find I felt differently. Every night, I prayed to God to make me stronger, so that we could be reunited.
I wanted to find peace, but I realized peace could only be found if I accepted my life would never be what it once was. That might mean accepting that my country would never be what it had been. Such an attitude, even if I could achieve it, would mean putting my life’s path at odds with Roman’s, because I knew he would never rest until Poland was governed once again by the Polish.
The rest of that mid-October visit with Truda unfolded as they always did. Her eyes dipped to my belly, and her questions would come rapid-fire, soothing and smothering me in equal measures.
“How are you feeling? Can I get you anything?”
“No, thank you.”
“Are you eating? Sleeping well? Are the Sisters still taking good care of you?”
“Truda,” I said, as gently as I could, “I promise you, I’m fine.”
“You look so tired.”
“I am so tired. It never stops moving,” I muttered, rubbing my lower back. I felt like I was awake all the time now, the squirming and wriggling beneath my heart constant, as if the baby were determined to make sure I couldn’t forget about it, even just for a moment of peace. As if it had consciously decided to torture me with its very existence.
Worse than that, I finally realized that even once I gave birth and the baby had gone to live with some other family, I would never forget it. Sometimes I would touch my belly with one hand, wanting to send thoughts of kindness, as if that would help it grow up to be a good person, as my other hand curled into a furious fist, resting on the sheet beside me. The balance of loving and hating the intruder in my belly was exhausting. It gradually dawned on me that even when the pregnancy was over I would be torn between relief and grief. It seemed that life wasn’t finished with its cruel tricks.
When Sara came for her next visit, she was buzzing with excitement. She’d taken a job as a nurse at the newly reopened Warsaw Hospital. With a reliable income, she’d been able to rent a small apartment and had at last moved out of the orphanage.
“Sara, what happened to the records of the children we rescued from the ghetto?”
“I went and retrieved the jar, just after we moved you here. A woman named Miriam Liebman is now leading the project to restore the children to their families. She’s a widow, the wife of a well-respected rabbi who died during the war. I check in on her every few weeks. So far she has managed to reunite only a handful of families.” Sara bit her lip. “You and I both know that those deported on the trains will not be found.”
“And... Eleonora Gorka?”
Sara smiled faintly.
“Roman asked after her, too, the moment he returned. Miriam has tried to make contact with Eleonora’s foster family but has had no luck. We think they may have moved since we were last in touch with them.” At my look of alarm, Sara hastened to reassure me. “This does not mean Eleonora is lost—it might just take a little while for Miriam and her team to track her down.”
We sat in silence for a while, before Sara told me she had to go so she could be home before dark. As she got up to leave, she passed me a letter, and I knew it was from Roman. I tucked it into the pocket of my maternity smock without opening it. Unexpected tears filled my eyes, and I looked away from Sara, to the bookshelves behind her.
“I wish you could stay.”
“Only a few months left to go,” she said gently.
“Fifty-seven days,” I said. She smiled.
“You know that babies don’t come exactly when we want them to. He or she might be born anytime from mid-December all the way through to mid-January.”
I groaned in frustration.
“Mid-January? God. This is never going to end.”
“You seem out of sorts today.”
“I feel it,” I admitted, then sighed. “I don’t even want to see Truda and Mateusz. I just don’t know how to ask them to stop visiting me.”
“But why?” Sara asked, eyebrows rising. “They are so worried about you.”
“They look at my... Truda constantly looks at my...” I closed my eyes, struggling for words. Instead, I pointed out my stomach. “She constantly stares at it, and she bombards me with questions. Why can’t I feel one way about anything anymore, Sara? I hate the baby, I worry about the baby. I miss Truda desperately, I hate it when she visits. It’s all so hard.” I opened my eyes, then gave Sara a half smile. “Yes, I know. I complain so much these days. It is tiresome.”
Sara laughed softly.
“Pregnancy is a difficult thing under your circumstances. But I want to talk to you about Truda. For half of her life, she has been married to Mateusz. For half of her life, they have been hoping for a baby, and she has never fallen pregnant. And now, this awful thing has happened to you, and you have to suffer through a pregnancy. Surely you can see how complex that must be for her.”
“She is jealous?”
Sara shook her head hastily.
“Not jealous. No one would want to be in your shoes. But...please don’t be so hard on Truda. That’s all I’m asking. The one experience she has dreamed of her whole life has been forced upon the very person she loves most in the world.”
I hadn’t thought about it like that. Not at all.
* * *
I was awake again all night, but now I was trying to ask myself hard questions—finally feeling courageous after months of feeling like a victim. Instead of avoiding thoughts of the baby, I forced myself to stare them down.
I am pregnant. I am going to give birth to a baby. That baby was conceived in violence. That baby will always be a reminder of the worst moments of my life. That baby has forced me to endure these months when my body is not my own.
But it is not that baby’s fault, and the baby is also part of me. Even when it is gone from my body, it will have a part of my heart. How do I learn to live not knowing if it is well? How do I know that I am handing it over to the right people? Who in Poland has the resources to care for a baby? Sara assured me she would find just the right family, but what if just the right family doesn’t actually exist?
I tossed these thoughts over in my mind, turning them this way and that, trying to understand the right way forward. One night, tortured by insomnia, I walked to the chapel. The convent halls were freezing at night, so I wrapped myself in robes, but my belly jutted out. I walked slowly, thinking about how, when the warm weather returned and winter was over, I would have parted from the baby and would never see it again.
I lit a candle in the chapel and then knelt at the altar to pray.