“Da, my Russian friend. Or do you imagine that Roosevelt women are ladies of leisure who never lift a finger?” That was exactly what I’d thought, and she smiled again at my expression. “I assure you, American women know how to work! Now, into the bottoms first . . .”
I was still too bemused to argue as she tactfully turned her back to rummage through her sewing box, and I swam into the pajama bottoms. Heavy rose-pink satin, clearly never worn, with violets embroidered down the seams—I’d never seen anything so lovely in my life, just for sleeping in. Normally I slept in one of Lyonya’s old shirts, or if it was cold, my winter uniform’s woolen under-layers. I left the towel around my torso as the First Lady whipped out a tape measure and took the length of my arms. “You do not need to do this, ma’am,” I assayed feebly, but she paid no attention at all, so I submitted to the measuring.
“Goodness,” she said behind me, and I knew she was looking at the scar on my back. “What’s that, Lyudmila?”
I felt Kostia murmuring against my spine, Wear it with pride—felt it so keenly, a shiver went over the entire surface of my skin. “The result of a scrap of metal,” I said finally, unable to find the English words for scar or splinter. “Last December, Sevastopol.”
“A mechanical accident?” Mrs. Roosevelt came back around to the front, folding her measuring tape. “Or did it come from fighting the Germans?”
“From battle.”
“My poor girl,” she said simply. “What dreadful things you’ve had to endure.”
She hugged me. Hugged me—I hadn’t been hugged since my mother embraced me on the train platform in Moscow. And it shattered me. I felt my shoulders shake, felt the First Lady’s arms tighten around my back as I buried my face in her bony shoulder. I had so many broken pieces stabbing me inside, I didn’t know what to do but dissolve into that hug and try not to weep. “I lost—so many,” I managed to say around deep gulping breaths. Lyonya, Vartanov, Lena, my platoon . . . and now, when I went back to the front, I was going to lose Kostia. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but soon. We’d never fight together again.
The First Lady said nothing. She just held me until I stopped shaking, and then she passed me a handkerchief, just like Mama would have done. I laughed shakily. “You and my mother—you would like each other.”
“I’m sure I would. She raised a fine daughter, after all.” Mrs. Roosevelt stepped back, going to her sewing box to give me time to scrub at my eyes. “Is your mother pleased at your war record, Lyudmila?”
“She is proud,” I said, perching on the edge of the bed as the First Lady seated herself on the other side and threaded a needle. “But she grieves for the history student she waved off to university.” I hesitated, wondering if it was defeatist counterpropaganda to say what I wanted to say. “I grieve, too,” I admitted finally.
“Do you?” Mrs. Roosevelt took up her scissors, measuring where to cut the too-long sleeves.
“People think I hate the Hitlerites,” I said tiredly. “I do hate them. I have to. But I didn’t ask to hate them. I grew up dreaming to be a historian, not of killing 309 fascists.”
“I know it hurts you when you read articles that call you a killer. Don’t look surprised; I saw your face when you read the accounts of your first press conference.” Snip went her scissors; the ends of the cuffs fell away. “I advise you not to go into politics, where one has to get used to reading such things about oneself.”
“You are used to it?” I couldn’t help asking.
“If I worried about mudslinging, I would have been dead long ago.” The First Lady folded the cut edges of satin over for a new hem. “But I was a shy girl, Lyudmila, and the sight of my name in newspapers once made me cringe. Eventually I grew into my role, but in those early days as a politician’s wife . . . well, public criticism had a way of stinging. It takes time to grow a thick skin for insults.”