Dobryd by Ann Charney Page B

interested.
    â€œDon’t be stupid. What would I do with that piece of rag? It may be all right for you and my sister and that kid you play with, but don’t expect me to play games like that. I’m going to get some proper clothes.”
    My mind did a quick inventory of all my possessions. Did I own anything that Elsa would consider fit to wear? All I could think of were some hair ribbons, but surely Elsa would find these too childish as well. I was about to give up in despair, when Elsa herself came up with a suggestion. She must have paid more attention to our games than we suspected.
    â€œI want your perfume bottle.”
    I hesitated when Elsa named her price. For the last few days our play-acting props had been enriched by a perfume vial with an atomizer attached to it and a handle decorated with a ragged gold fringe. The perfume had been used up long ago, but its fragrance still lingered inside the container. I don’t remember which one of us found it. It belonged to the three of us. We kept it at my house, however, along with our other treasures, since we agreed I had the most privacy.
    The bottle, like the piece of tulle, was a sacred communal object. By giving it away, wouldn’t I be betraying my friends? My heart filled with remorse, but I knew I could not resist Elsa. I ran upstairs, and in a minute the bottle was in my hands. No one saw me with it, and there were no witnesses as I handed it over to Elsa. When she accepted it I felt almost grateful to her. It seemed a small price to pay for the information I was about to receive.
    Elsa did not even look at the bottle when I handed it to her, but with a quick, careless gesture she made it disappear.
    â€œWhat are you going to tell the others?”
    â€œI don’t know. I’ll make something up.”
    â€œWell, that’s your worry. Now I’ll tell you. My grandmother said your mother steals little bags of sugar from the army storehouse and brings them home, hidden in her clothes. At the end of the week she takes the sugar to Lwow, where she trades it. My grandmother said that what she is doing is very dangerous. If she’s caught, they’ll shoot her. It’s true that everyone steals, and they overlook it if it’s an unimportant person, but your mother is the translator for the head colonel. That’s an important job. I heard the women say it happened once before. The Russians caught a man who did what your mother does, and shot him on the spot.
    â€œThat’s all I heard. Now you know how your mother gets all those things for you. Remember, you promised not to tell anyone I told you.”
    It never occurred to me to doubt Elsa’s words. The horror of her explanation fitted in perfectly with the view I myself had of the world—danger lurked everywhere. My pretty new dress carried the price of my mother’s life. There were no innocent pleasures.
    I had always suspected that my mother and my aunt kept things from me. I knew I was more sheltered than other children. Now it was my turn to keep a secret from them. But how? Where would I find the necessary self-control to hide such terrible knowledge from them?
    As I walked away from Elsa, sobs such as I had never experienced convulsed my every step. I made it to our secret shelter. All care for my new dress was forgotten. I saw it now as an object of shame and terror. By wearing it I betrayed my mother to everyone who saw me. I never wanted to put it on again. But how could I explain such an action at home, when only this morning I had been so happy with it?
    I stayed in the hideout as long as I could. The degraded condition of my dress seemed to me a proper camouflage. When the crying gave way for a while, it was replaced by grandiose schemes I invented to protect my mother. By the time it became dark outside, I had already given up both alternatives: I was too weak to cry or to hope. Whether my mother continued her trips or not, we were in equal