‘When the Germans invaded during the war, we thought things might finally get better, but they were as bad as the Soviets. They destroyed our villages, killed people, and they took Ukrainians to use in their factories and on their farms in Germany. Lots of Ukrainians.” She sank back into her pillow, her voice soft. “They took Halya.”
Her breath hitched, the pain etched on her face as fresh as if it had happened yesterday, not decades ago. “She was so beautiful and good. All the best parts of Alina lived in her.”
A lump formed in Cassie’s throat. “And she never came back?”
Bobby shook her head. “The factory she worked at was bombed by the Allies.”
“After all that, she died in a bombing?” Anna asked.
“That’s what they told us.” Bobby plucked at the end of the blanket on her bed. “We’d fled our village as the eastern front grew near. We couldn’t live under the Soviets again, and the fighting was so close we could hear the mortars exploding. So, we loaded up our wagon and left. We were going to find Halya and start over fresh somewhere new.”
She took a deep breath and met Cassie’s eyes. “We traveled through Poland and ended up in the Allied occupied zone of Germany when the war ended. After that, we spent a few years in the Displaced Persons camps. We kept looking for her, just in case, but there were so many refugees. Millions of displaced people with no home, no country, no family. It was like searching for a needle in a haystack. As the years passed, we realized we had to accept that we’d been told the truth—she’d died in the bombing. She was lost to us, like my father, and like my father, we never found any more answers.”
Bobby choked down a strangled sob. “I kept her safe through the Holodomor, but I couldn’t save her from the war.”
“Oh, Mama.” Tears glistened in Anna’s eyes as she leaned closer to Bobby. “Why didn’t you ever tell us?”
Bobby stroked Anna’s cheek. “I found out I was pregnant with you the same day we were approved to go to America from our DP camp. I’d never forgotten the way my cousin Vasyl had talked about it, and I knew we could begin our new life there. Your father and I decided that if we wanted to truly move on and be happy, we couldn’t speak of the painful things in our past; we would keep those memories buried and only look to the future. And our future was you, Anna. Our miracle baby.”
Anna took a shaky breath. “What about what Stalin did to you? People should have been told about the famine.”
Bobby sighed. “You must understand, no one spoke of those things. Stalin denied the famine, and the world believed him because they needed his force to beat the Nazis. Speaking of it or sharing my journal would have only drawn attention to us, and people were arrested for such things and sent away to labor camps for decades. I couldn’t risk that.”
“But what about when you left? You could have told people then,” Cassie said.
“The Soviet reach was far. In the camps after the war, they were repatriating people like us back to the USSR every day, telling them they were going home but really sending them to gulags and labor camps for ‘collaborating with the enemy’。 Even here, in America, we were afraid to say anything.”
Cassie thought about the phone call from the police charity and the money Bobby had tried to give them to ensure she wasn’t arrested in the night. Guilt needled her. The scars of living under an oppressive regime ran deep, and she hadn’t realized the extent of her grandmother’s wounds.
Bobby gave a sad smile. “The longer I said nothing, the easier it became to leave that part of my life sealed off. We were so happy. We had each other, our beautiful little girl and a chance at a new life. We vowed to make the most of every day, to live in the moment.”
“But it wasn’t ever fully sealed off, was it?” Cassie said. “It was always there, in the back of your mind.”
“Yes.” Bobby nodded slowly. “You can never forget love, Cassie, but you know that. Now, at the end of my life, it’s all I can think about.”
Cassie gently picked up Bobby’s twisted hand, and the image of it being slammed in a door flashed through her head. “Bobby, you were put in unthinkable situations. You did everything you could.”
“I’ll never really know that, though, will I?” Bobby said. “Life is a series of choices, each one pushing you towards the next. Maybe if I’d chosen differently in the very beginning, things would have been better.”