I had said, absolutely determined to honor their trust.
Except that...within a week, with only the lonely apple tree and a slightly overgrown boundary garden to amuse me, I was bored silly, so I went looking for something else to entertain me. Ever since, as soon as our apartment door closed behind me, I would turn right to visit with Sara, the woman who shared the third floor of our building with us.
Every now and again I would wonder if Truda wouldn’t mind at all that I was visiting Sara. After all, Sara was a nurse and a social worker, an accomplished woman by any standards. And while I knew almost nothing of her story, I did know that she was alone, and I had a feeling my visits brought her a measure of comfort. Besides, most of the time, she was giving me lessons from her nursing textbooks or allowing me to assist her with her endlessly ambitious cross-stitch or knitting projects. Our time together was entirely innocent, and there was likely no need for me to keep it a secret, except that I liked that hour being hidden from my parents. Sara spoke to me as an adult, not a child, and she very rarely refused to answer my questions, even if they were awkward or uncomfortable. It was Sara who warned me about the likely arrival of my monthly courses just before it happened for the first time, and she who had explained the basic mechanics of sex.
The unlikely bond she and I forged over several months had become far too important to me to risk.
And so, each afternoon, I waited until Truda was busy preparing supper. I’d dress as if I were leaving the building, call out a farewell and then, as quickly as I could, reach into the small drawer in the hall table by the front door. I’d withdraw Sara’s spare key, just in case she was running late from her job, and then I’d slip out into the hallway that joined our apartments, and instead of turning left, I’d turn right.
It was one small thing I could control. One small thing I could be responsible for. One small measure of power. And, it turned out, that was enough.
* * *
There was nothing to suggest that that night was going to be any different from any of the other nights I had spent with Sara. We had worked on unpicking a sweater so that she could reuse the good yarn for another project, and we had discussed the kinds of books she liked to read. She offered to lend me a tattered copy of the first part of Nights and Days, by her favorite author, Maria Da˛browska. I panicked at this generous offer, wondering how I would explain the book’s presence in my hand when I returned home to Truda and Mateusz.
“Or, if you already have plenty to read, you could borrow it some other time,” she had said, when my panicked pause stretched too long.
When the grandfather clock in her sitting room had almost reached six thirty, I carefully set down the yarn, and Sara walked me to the door. I had to leave right on time, because Mateusz ran on a militant schedule and always arrived home between six thirty-five and six forty.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said as I pulled the door open, but to my surprise, I saw my adoptive father standing there, holding a small package in his hand. He looked every bit as startled as I.
“Elz·bieta...” he said, using the false name I adopted when we arrived in Warsaw. Even after all of those months, I still hated that name. My natural mother died during labor, but my father once told me that all throughout her pregnancy, he’d hear her talking to me, calling me Emilia right from the outset. Answering to Elz·bieta now felt like a betrayal, even though I recognized I had no choice. But that was the least of my worries, because Mateusz’s gaze skipped between me and Sara, then narrowed. “I am surprised to see you here.” His frown was as intense as any I’d ever seen.
“I... I was just... It was...”
For once in my chatty young life, I was completely lost for words. I kept glancing between Sara and Mateusz, trying to figure out how to draw the strands of my two falsehoods together. Was there some way I could explain this to Mateusz without betraying to Sara that I was not supposed to