Pam Jenoff - The Winter Guest

Reaching for the coffeepot, Ruth stifled a laugh. There was no trolley in Biekowice, and no Jews, either. She had seen Jews only once in her life on a trip with her parents to the market in My´slenice. “Dorfjuden,” she’d heard them called on the radio recently. Village Jews. Their cluster of dismal, tar-roofed shacks made her family’s own cottage seem luxurious by comparison.

“I’m surprised we haven’t seen more of them, really, with all of the trouble,” Helena had remarked a few weeks earlier over breakfast, in that vague manner of speech they tended to use around the children.

“Better that they stay where they are,” Ruth had replied, her own voice sounding harsh. She did not mean it unkindly, nor did she harbor any special animosity toward the Jews. But while the Germans seldom seemed to trifle with Poles, they had enacted an endless series of laws aimed at the Jews, forbidding them from doing ordinary things and making their already-miserable lives harder. Ruth just didn’t want, as Mama would have said, to borrow trouble by having them around.

But Helena had a point, Ruth reflected now. Why didn’t the Jews scatter and flee the Germans? Though they probably thought there was strength in numbers, staying in their small compact centers just made them an easier target.

There was no mention of the bombing on the radio that Helena had thought she had heard the previous evening. Ruth smiled with satisfaction, glad that her sister, who always accused her of having an overactive imagination, had this time been wrong.

She finished shelling the peas and transferred them to a smaller bowl. From the bedroom came the sound of Michal’s snoring, the girls breathing gently beside him. She sighed. No one saw the work she did, the little things that kept them going. Helena deemed the chores she did outside and in the barn so much harder, scoffing at what she called “woman’s work.” Perhaps that was because Mama had made it look so easy, doing things twice as well and without complaint. To Ruth, though, it sometimes felt like too much.

Ruth washed the plate and dried it carefully, setting it back in its place in the cupboard. She tried to keep everything exactly as Mama had, as though she might walk through the door at any moment and inspect everything with a sweeping eye and issue Ruth a grade. Not like Helena, who blew through a room like a storm, sending things scattering. Borrowed was how the house seemed to Ruth, though she had grown up here herself. Like a sweater she kept carefully because she would one day be expected to return it. To acknowledge anything more would mean that Mama might not come back, and the thought was more than she could bear.

Ruth was suddenly restless. It was not like her. Usually Helena was the one hopping around like a chimpanzee. “Bored?” Ruth had replied incredulously once when her sister remarked upon it. The notion seemed absurd, especially when there was so much work to be done. But now the house felt small and confining. She wanted to go—not into the woods, rough and deep, like Helena, but somewhere else.

Ruth tiptoed back into the bedroom to the washbasin, studying her reflection in the pale early light that just illuminated the cracked mirror. She took in her thick auburn hair and round blue eyes with a twinge of self-admiration, avoiding the scar that marred her neck. She combed her hair and patted a bit of Mama’s old lotion onto her cheeks, fighting the tears that welled up at the familiar, flowery smell. The jar of lotion Mama had given her was one of Ruth’s most prized possessions and she loved the way it soothed her cheeks and eased the redness brought on by the wind and cold. She did not know where the cream had come from or how she would replace it when the last precious drops were gone.

It was important, Mama had said, to always look one’s best, even for the most mundane of occasions. Ruth did not wear the lotion every day, though; she used to save it for Sundays when Piotr came. Her mind reeled back to one of his visits a few months earlier. The weather had been unseasonably warm and he had cajoled her into the shadows of the trees, persuaded her to let his hands wander lower and longer than they had before. But she had pushed him away a minute later and he had not tried again. Her cheeks stung now, remembering.

Turning from the mirror, she looked down at the sleeping children and a wave of affection passed over her. She had been sixteen when Karolina was born, old enough to have a family of her own if things had worked out differently. At the sight of the squiggling bundle in their mother’s arms, she’d felt a longing she could not remember with Dorie or Michal—and more than a twinge of envy as Tata hovered above, glazed eyes proud and happy. Not that Ruth was jealous of his attention—she had long since resigned herself to being the daughter he did not see, his main interest in Helena because she would walk the woods and do rugged things with him. But Ruth wanted to be the center of her own family, an adoring husband standing anxiously above her. Now she had the family, the responsibility of caring for the children, only with none of the love or affection of a husband.

“Watch the others,” she whispered into Michal’s ear, judging by the way the covers shifted that he had heard her. The girls did not move. Let me go with you, Dorie would have pled through the long, uneven fringe of hair that fell into her eyes. Having lost both parents, she was afraid to let Ruth out of her sight, for fear she, too, might not return.

Nearing the front door, Ruth frowned at a brown footprint she had somehow missed when sweeping in the dim light the previous evening. Keeping the house was an endless battle against dirt tracked in under feet, crumbs and milk spilled on the table. But she persisted doggedly in her attempts to keep the house as neat as Mama had. What would happen, she wondered now, if she simply stopped trying?

Ruth donned her coat. It was more of a cape, really, great swaths of billowing fabric where the sleeves should have been. She had found it in the back of her mother’s armoire two years earlier, and had been instantly captivated by the soft, flowing garment, which was more fitting of what she imagined a night at the opera to be than anything in their roughshod farm life. “Where did you get it, Mama?”

Her mother had stared at the cape, as though it was part of another lifetime. “I don’t remember.” It was not just her vague tone that told Ruth she was lying—surely one could not forget acquiring such an extraordinary thing.

“Can I keep it?” Mama shrugged, seemingly divorced from whatever part of her life she had worn it. After that, Ruth wore the cape from October to April.

“So impractical,” Helena chided each winter. “Not very warm. And you’re going to trip.” Ruth’s first impulse was always to take it off to escape Helena’s disdain. But she persisted in wearing it, navigating the extra folds of cloth like a second skin. She pulled the hood high and close around her face now, her own personal coat of armor. Mama’s lavender scent enveloped her like the arms she had not felt in more than a year. It was growing fainter, though, muted by her own smell and the passage of time. She had to burrow deeper, stick her nose in the collar, to really find it anymore.

Ruth stepped outside and breathed in the crisp, coal-tinged air like a drink of water she had not known she needed. She had not realized how much she craved this bit of solitude, a few minutes just for herself. Their wounded goat, Bolek, one of the last two animals still living in the barn, limped hopefully to the fence and she patted his nose in silent apology for the lack of the treat he was seeking. She paused at the gate to arrange some twigs on the ground, pointing in the direction of the barn. It was a game she and Dorie played, Ruth leaving clues that led around the house and yard. Once they might have ended with the discovery of a piece of fruit or hard candy, but with none to be had she would have to come up with another sort of treasure.