Not for a moment do I regret the day, the hour, the minute, the second when I decided to stay. My life split into shards and splinters when I chose not to leave. My daughter, moja córka, became my life. Nothing else mattered. No, nothing else did, at that moment.
She looked out toward the window and picked up the pen.
~
Jarosław, mój mąż, had been squirreling away bread, potatoes, onions, sugar and flour in a bag hidden in a chest. He’d bring back things from the farm, somehow managed to slip a potato in his coat pocket, tucked his scarf in the next pocket, making sure it was screwed up into a ball so that nobody was suspicious. Our daughter Alicja cried in the nights. I did not need to tell Jarosław that the child wasn’t ill, just that her belly was empty. He found a way of mashing up stolen potatoes with flour and milk and feeding her little spoonfuls to make the gruel last all day and night.
As for Tymon, mój syn, he would look away each time his tummy growled as if the noise came from the dog. He was seven and already behaved as an adult would, working with Jarosław, making sure he did everything right as he was told. His big brown eyes and eyelashes take after mine but as for his stubbornness, surely that must be from his father! My little boy knew he had less to eat than the sons of the farm lord whose ancestors were from Germany. Tymon’s clothes were too tight but he never complained, not even once. He watched over Alicja whenever I had to leave the house to collect the clothes of the village ladies or to return them laundered and pressed dry. Life was tough back then for us Polish folks, living off the land as peasants, but we knew only music, dance and laughter. And love.