Gitta's Story

photo kamil vojnar

I can hear her light voice below. She is laughing. Muffled shrieks and shrill melodies creep their way over concrete and split beams. I inhale and feel particles of dust and smoke enter my small lungs making themselves at home in places where oxygen should live. I am floating on the wave of her buried song. Everything is dark but I can feel myself rising. I am five feet above myself. I can sense this despite the everlasting darkness. Up I go twisting and twirling like a ballerina to the sound of a mother’s heart beating. Seven feet, ten feet, I break free and the light is brilliant. The sky is crisp and cool and smells of autumn. Neighbors burning leaves, burning wood, smoking rubble, burning, burning.

My gaze shifts downward and I see the place where my home used to be and suddenly realize the laughing song that lifted me upward is no song at all.
Suddenly the screaming sucks me back downward and my still and twisted body captures me like a Chinese finger trap. I am back in the dark and I can hear my mother crying softly. I can hear nothing except the silence and my mother’s sobs.

*

I am here, forever. This is where I live now. In the darkness, this place where air does not go. Where light does not traverse. I am just thirteen and I had no idea what living really meant. Now I know I will never have to think about that. This is all I know and will ever know. Now, I think I will sleep.

*

When I once was a girl I lived in **** Germany. My family and I resided in a modest home on *** Strasse. When it rained outside I would jump in puddles and when it was warm I would swim with my best friend Hannalore. In my home there was me and my older sister Anna, my baby sister Lina, Mutter and Vatter. We baked for a living and there was a shop around the corner where everyone in the town would visit for fresh bread and kuchen. My favorite was Pfefferkuchen, a cinnamon cake densely made with creamy white glaze that melted on your fingers when you held a slice up to your mouth.

When I was a girl this was my life. I went to school and learned to read and spell and I learned the family business. I was quiet, which was appreciated by my parents and others since children were meant to be observant and obedient. I was always a bit in my own mind and when I ventured out I was usually disappointed anyways. So back I retreated into myself.
I guess that is why this happened. How I came to not be a little girl, I mean. I think I spent so much time in my head that now I am stuck here. It’s nice enough here. Dark but very still and I can think of whatever I like now, uninterrupted. It’s strange though why I keep hearing my mother. She is praying to the Holy Ghost but she has become quieter.

*

She stopped. Five hundred thirty two seconds ago she stopped. I have been counting, waiting for her to start again. I don’t like this anymore. I’m very tired and I don’t want to be here. I can feel my heart beat weakly and my lungs expand slightly every few seconds. I don’t think I’m in my head at all. If I were I would wish away my heartbeat, and breathing and anything that reminded me of once being a little girl. And most of all I would wish back my mother’s solemn quiet praying.

*

The town of **** is quaint and busy. Foothills surround a small valley and right in between, like a baby chick cupped in a child’s small hands lies ****. Everything has its place. Everyone has a job to do. Even when the airplanes started flying over us like so many hideously large dragonflies, we did what we have always done.

*

Arms wrap around me, ripping me from my home. My bed of dust and broken glass falls away and a blanket is thrown around my shoulders. I’m so tired and I can’t understand what is being said. My heart leaps as I hear a woman wailing. But this guttural moan is not my mother. I close my eyes and hope I will never have to open them again.

*

On the ** day of *** 1938 an American fighter plane piloted by a twenty two year old boy from Wisconsin loses altitude and prepares its bomb doors. The boy has been ready for this moment, ready to do what he has been trained for, what he has lived for these last 5 months. The button must be pushed for the good of the world. This will work.
If only things existed in such simple terms. Douse a fire with water and it goes out. They will win this war, and thousands will be saved. A few will die; hundreds, thousands and your life will never be the same again. Ever.
Nothing remains of my home except a smoldering pile of rubble and the persistent air of death. I was wrong. I am still a girl. Every pore on my body screams this truth. I see my face reflected in a broken window shard. How can this person I see still be her. No it is not possible. This is some nightmarish ghoul readying itself for a kill. The striking blow will be at my neck and as its teeth sink in, my blood will flow warm and sticky down the front of my dress. I lift my hands and see the dried blood under my fingernails. They say I was trying to dig myself out. I don’t remember. My fingers resemble something I would liken to an animal. Sweet with blood, its last meal left on the talons. But these are my fingers and my hands, my broken leg and my collapsed lung. I own them like I own my immaturity and naivety. Like I own my pain, sprouting the seed of it within me, bracing it to grow strong.