Pretending to Sleep by Monalisa Foster

Author:Monalisa Foster [Foster, Monalisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Monalisa Foster

Chapter 2

Satu-Mare, Socialist Republic of Romania, 1977

* * *

I think that if my mother was on the fence about going or staying, me being escorted out the Directorate gate gave her that final push. I didn't see it on her face and she never said anything at all about it. Which was not unusual. Nothing had changed. I was still a curse, just like I had always been, a constant reminder of the freedom she'd lost by being forced to have me, something that I would never be allowed to forget.

I never did go back to school. I was deemed unsuitable, and in many ways it was a blessing. I knew how pariahs were treated, how monitors and teachers looked the other way. Again, as silly and petty as it seems, I feared for my braids. I had nightmares about my hair falling out, about going bald, about looking like a criminal, about how it marked me as clearly as if they were to take a brand and burn it in my forehead.

I did miss my friends and I did miss my teacher. And learning. It felt like I was going to miss out on the world and I'd spend the rest of my days working on a farm, bored out of my mind.

Ghizi-néni and Lotzi-bácsi, as usual, came to my rescue. They dug up books I didn't even know we had buried. I was so happy about it at the time that the enormity of what was happening hadn't hit me yet. Those things were being dug up for me not just because I was no longer allowed to go to school. They were being dug up because I was it. The end of their line. With me, the oral history of the graveyard stones would be gone. They had lost their only child to crib-death and never had another. I was as much a surrogate daughter as they'd ever had or ever would have.

They never told me. Never let me know. I know now why. They didn't want me to stay. Unlike me, they were not petty and selfish and self-centered. They needed me to go, because even a small chance at a better life was better than what was to come.

Winter came, cold and harsh. Made even harsher by a lack of wood. We were no longer entitled to a wood ration. It was a small, two-room house. I'd been born there. So had my father. And it was kept warm by three things—bribes, furniture, and the generosity of those too old to care about the consequences.

Even as I helped unload wheel-barrows pushed across unpaved streets across many miles, by legs and backs too old and feeble to the task, I did not understand it, or I would have despaired. I would have despaired and I would have stayed.

My mother lost her cushy Party job. Our phone was taken away soon after. And then our electricity was cut. And we were followed everywhere we went.

At one point, I got pneumonia.

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