When you are five and a half years old, at what point do you start crying because you haven’t seen your mother? Is it on the first night, when after one week of separation, she suddenly appears at your bedside and, together with Irena, has you memorize the Catholic prayers and a strange story about your life? No, you don’t start crying yet because you don’t yet know that you have lost her.
You only know that you have been awakened to loving arms and voices whispering your name and caressing your brow. You sit up, wiping the sleep from your face, and you can see in your mother’s eyes that you are loved. Remember those eyes of love, for soon they will be gone. Soon, you will be disconnected. You will exist only as a small, furtive thing scurrying inside your body—like a flicker, a spark, a disappearing glimpse. And this fabricated self, this blonde, blue-eyed, sculpted little girl, will provide but a poor refuge for you. In fact, no refuge will suffice, for you were never meant to hide.
Always on guard, the sculpted little girl clearly remembers meetings with her father at the homes of the Polish hosts, but her departure with him becomes a vacant gap in her memory. In his care, her need for vigilance lapses and she withdraws, whereupon the furtive thing becomes more prominent. The furtive thing tries to connect, but lacking practice for so long, is unable to do so and dissolves into confusion, registering no trace of the memory.
I can only assume that in those moments of safety when I was with my father, I allowed myself to come forward. But having been muffled and feeling unloved for so long, I had lost my power of communication and remained a stunted and baffled being. It is only in my fabricated form that I was able to maneuver through life, as lived in the days of dread.
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