فصل 97

joana

The hot cloth felt glorious on my face. The Wilhelm Gustloff had fifty bathrooms, one hundred showers, and one hundred and forty-five toilets. Dr. Richter gave me a white pinafore apron and suggested that I “freshen up.”

The woman in the mirror was frightening, especially when I realized that she was me. My face was caked with soot, my eyes ringed with grief from the things they had seen. I had lived for twenty-one years, but the recent months had changed me. I scrubbed at the dried blood and grime beneath my fingernails, thinking of the remorse I would never be able to wash down a sink.

To assist others, to help and heal, it was a good distraction. But what would I do about Emilia? In the privacy of the bathroom, alone and unseen, the weight of the experience pressed down upon me. I missed my family, questioned the fate of my country, and feared for my cousin Lina.

Survival had its price: guilt.

Vilnius, Kaunas, my birthplace of Bir?ai. What were the Lithuanian people experiencing? I longed to speak Lithuanian instead of German. To sing Lithuanian songs. Everything I ever loved I had been forced to leave behind.

Someone knocked on the door. I didn’t respond. Some part of me did not want to leave the small steel bathroom. I wanted to stay locked away from the pain and destruction. I didn’t want to be strong. I didn’t want to be “the smart girl.” I was so very tired. I just wanted it all to be over.

Four awful years rose to the surface.

And I started to cry.