Bird

After that I eat the last of the bread, then I get into bed and hold her close. She pats me. Gentle. She gives me butterfly kisses. Sometimes she speaks; her words are like tiny stars in a dark night sky, sparkling. Soon she will be free.

‘Bird,’ she says, ‘Papa will find you. You will live. I know this. A mother knows these things. Your life will be such a special one that no one could ever imagine a girl such as you existed.’

Silence.

Then: ‘Oh my little one. I am so sorry to leave you here where it is dark and cold. It is so dark and so cold.’

I did not understand before that one night can be so long. I try to stay awake. I want to look into my beautiful mama’s eyes as she is dying. I don’t want her to be alone, but I am so cold and so hungry. I fall asleep and when I wake Mama is dead.

For a moment I pretend she isn’t. ‘Mama,’ I say. ‘It is time for breakfast.’ But of course she doesn’t answer. Then I realize that I can use her ration card until the end of the month so I feel, for a moment, less afraid. I won’t be like other children, children I have glimpsed through windows and doors holding onto their parents’ bodies, crying. I make myself understand hard truths, just like Estella understood them. Mama will be dust soon and I am alone. That is the truth.

I go to the cupboard and get out Mama’s favourite dress. The one she wore in the years before the war, the nights when she went out dancing with Papa. It is made of satin and the colour of cherries. It doesn’t have sleeves, but I don’t have to worry about Mama being cold anymore so I thread her bony arms into the summer dress. Then I put a photo of Mama and Papa, young Mikhail and baby me inside the dress. I rip a page out of her favourite book, a poem called ‘Courage’ she has been reading over and over, and put that in her dress as well. After that I pack a bag with a photo of Mama, some clothes and my diary, and I write a note for Papa. I put the letter in Papa’s box of things that is kept under the bed, with the lock of my hair and of Mama’s that we kept after we shaved our heads. To remind us we’d once been beautiful. Then I write a note for Nikolay and put it under his door.

Suddenly I am hungry. I don’t understand how I can be still more hungry, but it is as if an animal is ripping into my organs and eating them to keep itself alive. I suddenly understand that it is the same animal Mama saw squatting beside her on its haunches, and I am scared of that animal; scared it will haunt me. I am scared I will be hungry for the rest of my life.

It is hard getting Mama’s body down the stairs. I try to drag her, but her head thuds on the stairs and I think I am going to be sick. After that I carry her shoulders, and let her heels bump until I get outside. There is a sled out the front of the apartment so I put Mama in it and begin to walk. Once, a long time ago, people would have stared at us: a dead lady dressed in an evening gown being dragged across the dirty melting ice by a small child. Not now.

I am taking her to Piskarevsky Cemetery. It is a long way, but I know trenches have been dug there for the bodies. I want Mama to be under the ground. I want her to be warm.

I don’t know what happens next. An hour passes. Or is it a day? A month? Perhaps it is like this: I drag Mama’s body for ever, across the ice.

Then I smell turpentine and there is a truck coming towards me. A soldier climbs over the bodies stacked up in the back and gets down to stand beside me. He touches me on the shoulder.

‘Let me help you,’ he says. ‘We will take your mother where she needs to go.’

The soldier lifts her up gently. ‘Her dress is beautiful,’ he says, smiling at me, and I love him for saying that. He could have said so many other things, things like, ‘Her dress looks strange,’ or, ‘Did you kill her?’ He holds Mama’s body so I can kiss her goodbye. And then, as if she has been lifted up into the sky by an angel, Mama is gone.

Extract published courtesy of Text Publishing
© Sophie Cunningham