Her mother laughed. “Dead? What does dead mean? I am here now, cooking, no?”
“Yes,” Eva said. “But this is a dream.”
“So it is.” Her mother said. “And I am dead, and I am cooking for you. You need me. You need someone to take care of you, Evalein. So I will take care of you. Even though I am dead, and even though this is just a dream.”
It was meant to be a comforting dream. In the dream, Eva had been comforted. But on waking, it disturbed her to think of her mother’s face like that again. Whenever Eva did think of her mother, she thought of her as she was before she was sick, before her face became so disfigured. Now there it was: her death face, her lovely mother’s death face, smiling at her in her dreams.
Eva stood quietly, trying not to wake Hans. This was not easy, as the floorboards in the cabin squeaked. He turned on his side and snorted as she moved, but his breathing stayed shallow. Quietly she wrapped herself in a thick wool coat that he’d left in the cabin and shoved her feet into a pair of rubber boots he kept there as well. She stepped outside and walked toward the lake. Halfway there, she squatted, lifting her skirt with her already cold hands, and relieved herself in the snow. Her urine hissed and the warmth of her fluids melted the snow, mist rising toward her. Using her left hand, as she was taught as a girl, but without the help of a leaf, she wiped herself, her vagina still sore, almost hot, from last night, from Hans’s rough, quick time with her. It was okay he was quick. It was cold; quick was good in the cold. She wiped her hand in the snow, then on her coat; then she smelled it. Mossy. Slaty. Then awkwardly standing, grunting to do so, she continued down to the lake. It was a small lake, or a big pond, frozen smooth. On the other side of it was another cabin or an outbuilding of some sort. There was a path through the woods that circled around most of the pond, and Eva took it. She walked quickly, her breath coming out in a wet fog.
The path was littered with the roots of the pines and the smaller trees and shrubs. Occasionally Eva tripped, but she didn’t fall. She had to duck her head, too, as the branches came down low. Stooped and tripping, she made it to the other cabin, which on closer inspection was a boathouse. Two large doors stood padlocked in the front, toward the lake, and on the side was a window with no glass. Eva looked in. Two rowboats, one stacked on the other, sat next to a large metal locker. She circled around the house and on the other side saw a large cellar door, padlocked. She grabbed the door handle and shook it. The skin of her hands cracked in the cold, the metal nearly ripping flesh from her.
“Ach!” she said, frustrated with the lock, with herself, with the secrets she didn’t know and wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She walked around to the front door and saw that it wasn’t properly locked. The cold had burst the hinge out of its sockets and the door was stuck ajar an inch. Despite her painful hands, she grabbed the wooden door and pulled to open it, struggling against the crusty snow but eventually getting it open enough for her to squeeze through. The lockers were well locked, and she didn’t want to ruin her hands any more than she already had. She walked up to the boats and sat leaning against them for a while, warming her sore hands between her legs, the coolness feeling almost good on her privates. She closed her eyes. Not for long. She needed the fire.
The way back seemed easier, as always. Her feet had grown so quickly used to the terrain. When she returned, Hans was still sleeping.
Chapter 27
Eva had not been her mother’s favorite. A firstborn daughter was a disappointment back then. A daughter was for the third or fourth child, so as to have someone to take care of you when you got older. But then Willi was born, and he was the center of her mother’s heart. A healthy, noisy, troublesome boy. This is what people wanted then. They wanted sons.
But even if she had not been her mother’s favorite, her mother loved her. She was a big warm woman, and she had been very young when she had her children—not yet twenty when Eva was born. Her mother kissed and hugged but was also quick to swat and scold. She was not unique, not special in any way with her kids. But she was good enough. Good enough indeed.
When she got sick, of course, everything changed. Eva was old enough to be strong about it. Any fear and sadness she kept so well hidden she didn’t even remember feeling it, not even after her mother died. It was as if laundry and shopping for cheap meals and sewing the clothes and keeping the floors clean became her emotional life. And taking care of Liezel. Liezel was all hers then. And she loved that. That was how she remembered it. The house, particularly getting meals together was sometimes stressful and overwhelming. But Liezel was her prize.
Not that it had been so easy, winning Liezel away from her mother. But it hadn’t been so hard, either. As her mother became more sick and spent more time in the hospital, Liezel seemed to forget her. That’s how children are. They move on, so quickly it can take your breath away. They’re built for survival.
The older we get, thought Eva, the more we sabotage ourselves,
