My Mother's Tears

My mother was bleeding from her eyes.

Two straight lines. They ran down without seeking the nose or the mouth. Slow. The blood took its time.

She lay on her plank, the one at the back, the one that creaked. Someone had put a blanket over her belly. I don't know who.

The barrack stank. Forty women. Twenty planks. Two to a plank. At night they coughed, chattered their teeth, moaned low so as not to bring the guards back.

No one looked at her.

We had learned. A gaze catches. What catches becomes a debt. And debt, here, was paid in grams of corn.

The blood kept coming.

The night before, she had spoken into my ear. Her breath was warm for a second.

— My mother went like that. And my mother's mother.

I listened without moving.

— It comes through the women. It settles in. It waits.

She said nothing more. The cold took its place back between us.

That morning, she took my hand.

Hard. A clamp. Her thumb sank into my skin. It hurt.

— You have to leave here.

She had no voice left. The words came out in pieces.

— Outside. There are people. They know.

Outside there was barbed wire. Watchtowers. Floodlights that cut the mud into white squares. The dogs slept with their muzzles on their paws. At the whistle they all got up at once.

— Promise.

— Mom.

— Promise.

I said nothing.

Shame rose. Not against her. Against me. Because somewhere in my belly there was that thing that wanted to stay in line. Do like the others. Not be seen. The body loves what keeps it alive.

I squeezed her hand.

My fingers on her bones.

We held on. We knew how to do only that.

Beside us, a woman coughed. Another spat into the straw. Further off someone got up for roll call. Bare feet on the wood. The floor groaned. No one stopped. Here death itself had to wait its turn on the list.

My mother's lips moved.

— My daughter, I…

Blood rose into her mouth. The same as in her eyes. It took the word's place. A red foam trembled on her tongue then ran down her chin. Her fingers let go.

I didn't need her to finish. I knew. For a long time.

Every morning in the yard we shouted that word in front of the Leader's portrait. Hands along the body. Mouth open before the day's bowl. A herd word. We swallowed it dry.

What she was trying to say was the same sound. Not the same weight. It didn't pass through the portrait. It didn't go into the ledger. It didn't go to fatten another mouth.

I stayed with her hand.

A long time.

Even when the skin cooled. Even when it wasn't her anymore but something that had been her. A warm object I wasn't allowed to keep.

Two men came. They took her under the shoulders and under the knees like you take a load. Her head knocked the doorframe. No one lifted their eyes. Not me either. I looked at my hand.

Red in the creases. Under the nails. It browned. It stuck when I closed my fist.

I didn't wash.

I left it.

The whistle cut the air.

I stood up.

Outside the air was hard. Low sky. The barbed wire cut up the light. Over the mess hall door there was the Leader's portrait. Full cheeks. Smooth skin. The only face in the camp that had never been hungry.

The silhouettes fell into line. Fast. Thin bodies in clothes too big. On the chest a square of cloth with a number. The stitching pulled at the fabric.

I took my place.

I opened my mouth.

The word came out. Loud. Dry. Like the others.

In my closed hand under the brown crust there was my mother's blood.

A woman fell on Tuesday.

I had noticed her. She counted her steps. Her gaze a meter ahead. Small. Hands too clean. Workshop hands. On the site we didn't look at faces. We looked at hands. Hands told the quota before the day was over.

It started with her fingers.

They slowed on the handle. The grip slipped. The wood rubbed her skin raw. She started again. Harder. The guard on the catwalk didn't move. His eyes went back and forth. Hands. Picks. Rhythm.

In the evening we passed by the table.

It was always the same table. The same black ledger. The same pencil with its wood chewed. The same purple stamp that left a circle on the page. Two columns. On the left the number. On the right a mark. We said nothing. The pencil decided.

If the mark was good, we turned toward the door. The smell of boiled corn. Steam on the cheeks.

If the mark was missing, we kept going. We walked straight past the steam and kept going into the cold.

Tuesday evening, the woman kept going.

On Wednesday, she worked on an empty belly. Her arms rose less high. Her shoulders shook. That evening, again the bad mark. She took one breath too hard. Like an animal that has understood.

On Thursday her hands began to tremble. The muscles were looking for something to burn.

On Friday she fell. Knees first. Hands. Face in the mud. The mud took a little of her cheek and kept the imprint.

The picks went on. Same sound. Same cadence.

On Saturday her place was empty.

On Saturday in the mess hall the boy from the barrack opposite had one bowl too many.

He ate without lifting his eyes. The bowl against his mouth. The spoon knocked the bottom. Fast. His jaw worked dry. As if he wanted to finish before the bowl understood.

No one looked at him. No one judged him. No principles. No anger. It was just hunger. Hunger everywhere. In all the bellies.

Everyone knew.

Everyone would have done the same.

The boy had said a word to the guard. The guard had made a sign in the ledger. The woman had disappeared. The boy was eating. That's all.

I watched.

My hands had been trembling for ten days. My quota slipped. The movements came heavy. Misaligned. As if someone had unscrewed my shoulders in the night.

In the barrack a tall woman with a shaved head kept one nail longer than the others. She used it like a tool. One evening I had seen her slide a kernel of corn under the mattress. Then another. Two kernels. A fortune here. Her eyes went to the door with every movement.

Hiding food was a crime. A crime against the collective. We had a word for it. A short word you learned to spit out at report. Diversion.

I knew where she hid it.

I knew who to tell.

Thirty steps to the post.

Thirty steps and I ate.

I stood up.

The floor creaked. A woman opened one eye without turning her head. Someone breathed out harder. No one said anything.

The post was a block of concrete. A bare bulb vibrating yellow. The same table. The same ledger. The same pencil.

The guard was sitting. He didn't lift his eyes.

I stayed standing a second too long. He tapped the pencil on the page. A dry tick. Impatient. I understood that silence here wasn't a choice. It was a waiting. Like the mud waits.

I gave the name.

The spot.

The mattress. The plank. The exact corner.

The pencil scratched the paper. One line. One only. No scene. No blows. Just the sound of pencil on paper.

Someone had just tipped over.

That night I ate.

The corn was lukewarm. The spoon knocked the bottom of the bowl. The noise cracked through the whole mess hall.

I chewed fast. I swallowed without breathing. Eyes down. Throat tight.

There was relief. One second. The belly stopped pounding. The body agreed to go on. Then the relief dropped all at once. Like a rotten plank.

The shame didn't come right away.

It came later. Heavy. A mass between stomach and throat. It never rises high enough to vomit. It waits for you to sleep.

The next day the woman's place was empty. The mattress flipped. Straw torn out on the ground like an animal's guts. The corn was gone. She too. There was a dark rectangle on the floor. Cleaner than the rest. Scrubbed fast. Like a mistake on a blackboard.

No one asked questions. Questions don't fill the belly.

No one looked at me.

I looked at no one.

I worked. The quota held. I ate.

The next day I worked. The quota held. I ate.

The days fell back into line. The arms rose. The trembling retreated. The body, fed just enough, took up its trade again.

A month later I woke with my cheek wet.

I touched.

My fingers came back red. A thick red. Fresh blood. Hot. Hot like a tongue.

I touched the other cheek. Same. Two straight lines. From top to bottom. Not drips. A writing.

Around me the barrack made its night noise. The cough. The teeth. The breaths. The smell of wet laundry and sour sweat stuck to the low ceiling. It never changed. It was there before us and it would be there after.

I put my fingers to my mouth.

Taste of blood. A taste that doesn't argue.

I didn't think of a doctor. There wasn't one. There was the service. The table. The black ledger. The stamp. And the men who came when a body became a useless line in the ledger.

I thought of my mother.

Of her mother.

Of her mother's mother.

I wiped with my sleeve. The blood came back. I wiped again. It came back. Like someone who has all the time in the world.

I went back to sleep.

The day I fell, the cold cut the lungs.

The earth was hard. The metal rang dry. My knees folded. The ground rose. The sky tightened between the barbed wire. Tears of blood blurred the light and everything went fuzzy and red and far. The picks kept going. I heard them as if through water. They didn't care.

That evening the mark in the black ledger was missing.

I passed the door.

The smell of corn hit me like a slap.

Then the cold.

Him.

The first time he crouched beside my bunk.

I had noticed him. Not because he was handsome. But he walked differently. Too straight. Like someone who had learned to be seen. Long hands. Fine fingers. Hands that had held something else. He turned his head too fast when a guard went by. A reflex not yet broken.

He put his hand on me. He looked at my cheeks. He clenched his teeth. He looked around as if the walls heard better than we did.

— You're dying.

It wasn't gentle. It was dry. Almost annoyed. Like my weakness was a problem I was making for him and he hadn't asked for it.

I said nothing.

He got up and left.

The next evening he came back with half a flatbread. It was still warm. He had kept it against his belly. When he put it in my hand I felt the heat go through the skin and my body reacted before me. The saliva. The vertigo. The urgency.

I said nothing.

I ate.

The next day he came back. The day after too.

Five evenings.

Each evening half. Each evening he grew a little thinner. I a little less. We hardly spoke. Sometimes he let a word fall. Not tender. Just a sound to keep fear at a distance.

— Don't do this to me.

As if my death was something I was doing to him on purpose. Maybe that was it at the start. A debt he had decided to make for himself alone and he already resented everyone for it.

On the sixth evening he didn't bring food.

He brought a scrap of paper.

A drawing. The Leader's portrait. Round cheeks. The smile. But he had added two big tears under the eyes. Two thick drops running down the chin like grease.

I laughed.

It was a low sound. Brief. It surprised me myself. I had forgotten it existed, that noise. Laughter. I had forgotten what it did in the chest. The boy flinched with panic. His eyes jumped to the shadow. To the slit of the door. And then he smiled. Fast. A small dangerous smile. The kind you tuck away like a knife up your sleeve.

We burned the paper with a match stolen from the service. The flame ate the full cheeks. The tears blackened. The smell of burnt paper was sweeter than the soup. It was the best thing I had smelled in months.

One night he told me he hadn't been born here.

Outside. Before. He had seen a foreign film. That was what had put him here. Not a weapon. Not a bomb. A film. A screen that shows too far. That's all he had done. He had watched something he shouldn't have watched.

He spoke of buildings so tall they touched the clouds. I didn't know if I believed him. He spoke of people who ate without counting. Who went out at night. Who moved their bodies to the sound of something he called music.

He closed his eyes. He sang very softly. One phrase.

His voice was small. Not only fear. Hunger. Hunger makes a narrow voice. But it was the most beautiful thing I had heard. Not beautiful like a bowl. It was for nothing.

I laughed again.

That night he kissed me.

We were separating for the dormitories. The dark. The cold. The Leader's face above. Far off the whistle like an animal. He put his mouth on my mouth. It was a heat. Brutal. A passage. One minute outside the ledger.

I didn't think of my mother right away.

I thought of my mouth. His mouth.

After, yes. I understood what she had tried to say.

The same word we howled each morning to the Leader. The same sound.

But not the same place in the body.

Not the same thing.

The blood came back three weeks later.

I woke with my hands red.

That evening I told him. Everything.

The sickness. My mother. My mother's mother. The blood that comes through the women and stays in the women. That outside there might be someone who can help. Maybe. And that if he denounced me I would die tonight instead of in six months.

I said it without looking at him. I looked at the ground.

He didn't answer.

For three days, he said nothing.

For three days, I waited for the boots. The sound of soles on wood. The pencil scratching my number. The purple stamp. The mud.

The first day, I thought: he'll do it.

The second, I thought: he's already started.

The third, he came.

He sat on the bench. He looked at the wall. A long time.

— I'm coming.

Two words.

He added nothing.

I asked nothing.

We left on a moonless night.

The barbed wire was to the north. Three rows. Knee. Chest. Head. The current ran through all three. You could hear it. A thin buzzing. Like wasps that never sleep.

Before going out we waited because a guard was laughing. Brief. Joyless. It frightened me more than shouting. It was a sated man's laugh.

At the wire he took off his jacket. Folded it. Set it over the first row. The wire sizzled. Smell of burnt wool.

He grabbed the wire with bare hands.

His body stiffened. His jaw clenched. I heard his teeth. His hands tightened. The current didn't let go.

He lay down on the wires. His back against the metal. The crackling entered his flesh. The smell rose. Sweet and foul. His eyes stayed open. Nothing came out.

I passed over him.

My feet on his belly. My hands on his shoulders. The current shot through my palms. A cold bolt up into my teeth. I let go. I tipped to the other side.

He fell between the rows. Crawled under the last. His skin smoked. His hands were black. He got up. Three steps. He fell. Got up.

We ran.

The forest was black. Branches clawed at our faces. We fell. We got up. We didn't speak. To speak is to lose breath. Breath that night was all we had.

Behind us the floodlights swept the trees. The whistle screamed twice. The camp was waking like a single beast. Boots. Orders. The first bark.

The dogs came after.

At first far. One bark then two then ten. Not dogs. Things trained to want flesh. The sound swelled.

We found the cave by chance. A fissure in the rock. We went down scraping our hands. It narrowed. The air grew cold. It smelled of earth.

Him in front. Me behind. His burned hands against the wall. My blood on my cheeks.

The wall came.

His fingers touched stone. The stone didn't open. He felt to the left. To the right. Up. Nothing. Rock everywhere. The cave ended there.

Above us the dogs. The barking dropped into the fissure and bounced back.

Behind the dogs the voices. Behind the voices the boots. The first shots began.

He turned his head. I couldn't see his face. I felt his breath. Short. As if he was afraid of not having enough room in his lungs.

He said the word.

The one my mother hadn't finished. He said it whole. His voice was small. Smaller than the dogs. Smaller than the boots. But it was there. Whole. Without ledger. Without bowl. Without Leader.

— I love you.

A word that fed nothing but us.