As she set Karolina in her high chair, she hoped they would not ask about the woman.
The children darted beneath the table and around the chairs, as though the colder weather had made them unusually restless. “Where’s Helena?” Dorie asked, seeming to notice her sister’s absence for the first time.
“She’s gone to the city,” Ruth replied absently.
“Nooo!” the child wailed, her face seeming to crumple. She swung her braids from side to side, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Ruth stopped in surprise, milk pitcher suspended midair. The children seldom noticed, much less minded, Helena’s absences. She set the pitcher down and knelt. “There, there,” she soothed, stroking Dorie’s hair. The child’s breath was improbably sweet like cinnamon. “She’ll be back by tonight. You’ll see. She’s only gone to visit Mama.” She usually refrained from mentioning their mother, not wanting to remind the children and cause them distress or answer their many questions. But now she added the information, hoping it would bring further plausibility to her explanation of Helena’s absence.
“You know Christmas is coming,” Ruth offered, trying to change the subject.
“Are we having a tree?” Michal asked.
“I don’t think so, darling,” Ruth said, a knife going through her as she watched his face fall. It seemed frivolous, cutting down a pine tree when there was so much else to worry about. “But we’ll have a lovely meal and all of the songs and stories.”
“And Mama?” Dorie looked up hopefully, eyes brightening. “Will she be back for Christmas, too? Did Helena go to get her?” Ruth understood then that for some reason today, Dorie had equated Helena’s going to the city with Mama’s disappearance, a trip was taken in one direction only. She imagined that Helena, too, wasn’t coming back.
“Mama,” Karolina repeated absently, asking for the mother she surely could not remember.
Inwardly, Ruth crumbled. This was the conversation she had been avoiding. “No,” she said gently, knowing that there was no way to avoid breaking Dorie’s heart again. She pushed a cup of milk toward her sister. “Mama needs to stay in the hospital where there are doctors and medicine that can make her feel better.”
“Just like we were playing outside, Dor,” Michal offered. Ruth braced herself for further questions about their mother’s recovery, tried to anticipate and come up with answers that were not quite lies but spared the child from the truth. But Dorie turned away and began playing with her rag doll on the floor.
“What were you playing outside?” Ruth asked, grateful to Michal for redirecting the conversation. When she and Helena were little, theirs were simple pretend games, like house and school. Ruth was always the mother or the teacher, taking charge in a way that now seemed prophetic.
“Hospital,” Michal replied. “Dorie’s the nurse. I was the patient and Dorie cured me.” She wondered what the unseen hospital life must look like in his mind.
“Doctor,” his little sister corrected quickly. “I’m going to become a doctor for real.”
Ruth started to tell Dorie that to be a doctor you need to go to school and then college, which would take money they did not have. That even under better circumstances, it would be nearly impossible for a woman. But Dorie’s eyes shone at the idea, a childlike dream not yet deterred by the war or realities of their situation, and Ruth would not take that from her. “That sounds wonderful.”
Dorie’s expression dampened. “Ruti, what are Nazis?” she asked, shifting topics without warning.
“Why do you ask?”
“I heard you talking to Helena about them.” Inwardly, Ruth sighed. She already knew better than to speak in front of Michal about matters from which she wanted to shield the children. But Dorie was getting older now, and speaking guardedly or spelling out words did not work anymore.
“They’re Germans, darling—German soldiers.” The last word—too good for them, really—stuck in her throat.
“Why have they come?” Dorie had a need to know why things were a certain way, how they worked, to scratch beneath the surface. It was a fierce intellect that in another time and place might have been nurtured to greatness. But Ruth did not know how to channel it, and after taking care of their basic survival needs, she seldom had the energy.
Ruth stopped, stymied by the impossibility of explaining war to children. Why indeed? “They want to be in charge. It’s all about politics and government. But they haven’t come to Biekowice so they won’t bother us.”
“But what about the Garzels?” Dorie had been outside playing when she and Helena had spoken of their neighbors’ disappearance. Had Helena told her about it? “Did the Germans make them leave the village?” Dorie persisted.
“Never you mind about the Garzels. Tend your own garden, as Mama used to say.” Karolina giggled from her high chair, as though Ruth had said something funny. Ruth wiped the milk that had dribbled onto her chin, then picked her up and set her on the floor by the fire.
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