“I guess it’s up to him.” I point up.
She takes my hand and looks at me, terrified. “I’m glad you played with me, Russell.”
“We make a great team,” I say as the light reaches our feet. I only wish Mom were here to see us now.
REUNION
by Susan Beth Pfeffer
WE WALKED INTO THE OFFICE WHERE MAMA WAS SITTING. That was how Mama had dreamed of this reunion, her daughters walking hand in hand, as we had when we were little.
The room where Mama awaited us was a dull shade of brown. The one window in the room had also been painted brown. There was no way of knowing what it had once looked out on. The walls were unadorned, the picture of The Leader having been removed and not yet replaced with whatever the new government would deem appropriate.
Mama gazed eagerly at the girl as we walked in. “Your eyes are so brown,” she said. “Like Isabella’s. Like mine.”
“Sit down,” I said, gesturing to one of the straight-back chairs that faced Mama. The girl eased herself into the chair. Her posture was flawless, her right hand cupped by her left, her ankles crossed demurely.
“My Maria,” Mama said. “I’ve longed for this day since the soldiers took you.”
The girl nodded sympathetically but said nothing.
“Were you treated well?” Mama asked. “Were they kind to you?”
“Yes,” the girl said. “My parents loved me and cared for me.”
“But they weren’t your parents,” I pointed out. “You were stolen from our family. You must have known that. What did they tell you?”
“Papa explained it to me,” the girl replied. “Mama had been taken ill when I was a baby, and I was given to one of our servants to look after. The servant ran away with me, and sold me to some villagers. Papa and Mama searched four years before they found me, and when they did, they brought me home.”
“And you believed them?” I asked.
“They were my parents,” the girl said. “Why should I doubt them? Besides, I knew what servants were like. They would do anything, say anything, for an extra morsel of food.”
I looked up at the wall, where the portrait of The Leader had hung. “All lies,” I said. “All of it, lies.”
“So I’ve been told,” the girl replied politely. “But of course I had no way of knowing.”
“For months, soldiers came to houses,” Mama said. “Every village for miles around. There was nothing we could do to stop them. The soldiers knew who lived in each house, how many children there were. To hide even one child meant death to everyone in the family. If an entire family went into hiding, all the children in the village were killed. And each day, the rules were different. One day, in one village, the soldiers took all the firstborns and sent them to the slave camps. The next day, it could be babies, sent to a death camp. The day they took you, they took four-year-olds. They had our records. They knew your age. They took you.”
“Do you remember?” I asked. “The soldiers taking you away?”
The girl nodded. “They were kind to me,” she said. “They played games and told me jokes.”
“You were a happy little girl,” I said. “I remember how we used to run to the fields together. I was two years older, so I always outran you, but you never minded. Bobo ran with us. How you loved that dog.”
The girl’s face lit up. “Doggie,” she said. For a moment, I could glimpse the child she had been.
“Then Christian would find us and bring us home,” I continued. “You’d ride piggyback, laughing all the way. Christian was twelve, and we adored him, the way little girls worship their big brothers.”
“The people who took you,” Mama said. “The general and his wife. Did they have other children?”
The girl shook her head.
“With no brothers, no sisters, you must have been lonely,” Mama said. “Did you have playmates at school?”
“It was too dangerous for me to go to school,” the girl said. “Mama taught me piano and embroidery. My governess taught me everything else.”
“Did you have pets to play with?” I asked. “A dog like Bobo, maybe?”
“Papa kept guard dogs,” the girl replied. “But they were for our protection. There were assassins everywhere, and kidnappers and murderers. Once, Mama and Papa and I were walking home from church, and a man sprang out of the bushes. He was too fast, even for our bodyguards, but the dogs lunged at him and tore him to pieces.”
“How terrible for you to have seen such a thing,” Mama said. “I would have covered your eyes to protect you.”
“Children see worse every day,” I said sharply. “The man was a stranger to her, not her father.”
“Pay no attention to Isabella,” Mama said to the girl. “She was always jealous of you. You were far prettier, the prettiest girl in the village. And even though you were two years younger, you were smarter as well. Now you have a fine education, lessons from a governess. Isabella can’t even sign her own name.”
“That wasn’t my choice,” I said, trying to keep my anger under control. “All the village children were forced to work in the fields, seven days a week, from sunrise past nightfall. Sometimes I prayed to be taken to a slave camp. There, I’d heard, the children worked just as hard, but were given food daily to maintain their strength.”
“No one makes you work in the fields now,” Mama said. “But I don’t see you picking up a book.”
This was an argument Mama and I often had. Before The Leader had seized control, every village had had its own school, and Mama and Papa both could read and write and do sums. But I’d come home each night too exhausted to learn, and even if I’d wanted, it was too dark in our house for study.
I turned my attention to the girl. “We’ve asked you questions,” I said. “But you’ve asked us nothing. Surely there’s something you would like to know.”
The girl nodded. “After I was taken,” she said, “did you wonder what had become of me? Did you try to find out?”
“Of course we did!” Mama cried. “All of us who’d had our babies stolen from us. Do you think we were heartless? Do you think it meant nothing to us to lose our children?”
The girl lowered her head. “I was taught that the villagers and the slum dwellers were like animals,” she said. “It was the responsibility of people of the educated classes to see to it rules were followed and order maintained. Animals can’t think for themselves. Animals have no feelings.”
“We had feelings,” Mama said, but her voice was gentle and loving, as it always was with Maria. “There were rules for finding out what had become of our children, and we followed them. All children were kept alive for thirty days after being taken. The mothers from all the local villages went daily to the town hall, hoping we’d be told where our child was. There was no way of knowing which mothers would be let in. Some days, none were admitted.
Other days, one, two, ten mothers, would be shown in by the soldiers. The mothers weren’t supposed to talk to us when they came out, but still you heard things. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes, if your child had been sent to a death camp, you could negotiate. If you offered another of your children, that child and the one taken by the soldiers might be sent to a slave camp. We had no illusions about the slave camps. Children there were often worked to death. But there was no hope for a child sent to a death camp.”
“Were you ever admitted to the office?” the girl asked. “Were you told what had become of me?”
“One day, the soldiers selected eight of us to go in,” Mama said. “Over three weeks had passed. The mothers who were selected fell to the floor, weeping in gratitude.”
“I never cry,” the girl said. “People who cry are ungrateful and should be regarded as enemies of The State.”
“I didn’t cry,” Mama said. “Other mothers did, but I didn’t. Did I, Isabella? Have you ever seen me cry?”
“Never, Mama,” I replied. “Not since the day the soldiers took Maria.”
Mama and the girl both stared at me.
“Not that day either,” I corrected myself.
The girl smiled. “You knew The State wanted only what was best for its people,” she said. “The Leader was most kind and loving to the lowest of the low.”
