;)
Excerpt 4 (page 328)
That night, I awoke to Agnes’s heart-rending crying. Embroiled in a nightmare, she thrashed about wildly, beat down on her pillow, and shouted, “I can’t find mother’s head! Where’s mother’s head?”
Erika came running in her nightgown, took Agnes in her arms, and shook her. “Agnes, it’s all right. It’s all right. Wake up! No one is going to hurt you.”
But Agnes could not stop crying. “Don’t be afraid,” Erika said. “You’re with us. Eva is right next to you. You’re not alone.”
Comforted, Agnes reached for my hand. “What happened to your mother’s head?” I asked after Erika left.
Wide awake now, the words spilled out of Agnes. Her family, mother, grandmother, and younger brother had fled on their wagon with other villagers. When their vehicle had broken down, they had been separated from the group and had gotten caught between the two fighting factions. They had hidden in a ditch to escape the shooting. Grenades had exploded around them, blowing the wagon to pieces. When Agnes had looked up, her mother was lying lifeless in a pool of blood, with her head missing. Other body parts had been scattered everywhere. “I wanted to look for mother’s head, but the shooting wouldn’t stop. When it got all quiet, I screamed, but no one answered. They were dead, all of them. Then a Russian tank drove up.”
“Were you scared?” I interrupted.
“I was so scared, I couldn’t move. I thought the tank would roll right over me. But it stopped. A soldier jumped down and picked me up. I was terrified. When we arrived at a village, that same soldier carried me to the first farm house we came to. He pointed his pistol at the women and children who lived there and said, ‘You! Take care of girl! Her people dead. Germanski Soldat, German soldiers, kill.’ You should have seen the women. They looked like stone statues, afraid to breathe. The soldier set me down and handed me a piece of chocolate. Then, he climbed back into the tank, and they drove off.”
“Do all the Russians speak German now?”
“This one did. He was really nice, too. He held me the whole time until we got to the village. He kept repeating, ‘We no shoot your family, little one. Germans shoot at us. You just in way.’ He said he was really sorry.”