A Shadow of Shame | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: A Shadow of Shame | Previous Challenge Entry
By Ann Stocking
12/07/17
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE
SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
ADD TO MY FAVORITES

I’d never heard my grandmother raise her voice or behave in an undignified way. I’d never known her to be anything but serene and sweet-tempered.

It shouldn’t have been so. Her countenance should have been disfigured by vindictiveness, her manner vicious and vengeful. For Grandmother had a hideous secret.

We lived together, Grandmother, Mom, Erik, and me. Older than me, Erik left to work in London, and then Mom left, too, on a January day, her skin pale as alabaster, like the ice riming the window ledge.

Grandmother murmured, "Adjø min kjære, fly langt av sted bort langt,” as she touched Mom’s cooling brow. Softly she added, “I wish to fly away with you.”

I understood her wish. A mother shouldn’t live beyond her child’s last breath. And not long later, I knelt by the same bed, clenching the same coverlet in my hands, as Grandmother’s own life ebbed away.

“Kari.” She reached for me with gnarled fingers. “Kari, I must tell you.”

“Grandmother, please rest. There’ll be time enough later.”

“There’s no more time. Time has strong teeth, Kari. Do you hear them snapping at my heels?” She smiled thinly. “Come close to me.” Shards of dread pierced my belly as I laid my head on her pillow, and she was silent for so long I thought she slept. Finally, she spoke, her voice hushed.

“The SS came strutting into our village in 1940. I was young, impressionable, and desperate. The officers called me a Nordic angel, admiring my flaxen hair and blue eyes. Foolishly, I enjoyed their attention, too flattered to recognize the vileness of their plans and far too frightened to resist. My parents begged me to run, to hide in the forest.

“I was hungry, Kari. They promised good food, butter and cream. A warm, clean bed. It would be death to deny them, in spite of their pretty words. They would have their way. I had no choice, do you see? I had no choice.

Grandmother made a choking sound. I reached for the buzzer.

“No, Kari, don’t. Shame that cannot be lifted should be left to lie. But I am not afraid of the shame anymore. I must tell you.”

Grandmother drifted into quietness again. My heart was a captured bird, hammering against my ribs, as I willed Grandmother to speak again, and yet hoped she did not, would not, reveal more.

“An officer came to me three nights in a row. I never knew his name, and I never saw him again. I bore a child, as they wished. A boy. I suckled him for two weeks, and then he was torn from my breast. A child for the Reich, to be raised as a good German by pure German parents.

“My parents, your great grandparents, disowned me. All of Norway disowned us, every one of us who’d been coerced into bearing children for the Reich. German whores, they called us. Rubbish, used and discarded by the Germans. Our heads were shaved, and we were marched through the streets.”

Suddenly the burden of Grandmother’s dishonour and sorrow became my own. A great rope coiled around my neck as I struggled to envision her, forsaken, gobs of spittle glittering in her wispy, shorn hair, her innocence disparaged. My gentle grandmother, who’d never been unkind to anyone.

“After the war, after they left, I came to Sweden for a new life. There was nothing, no one, for me in Norway. And my son ...” Her eyes welled, overflowed.

“Where ...?”

“I don’t know, Kari. I hope ... I hope ... God forgive me.” She moaned and her eyelids fluttered.

I called the nurse. “She’s comfortable, Kari,” the nurse assured me. “I’m very sorry. It’s only a matter of time.”

Time. Time has strong teeth. Razor-edged, it tears away the veneer of misplaced perceptions and guilt and reveals the marrow of truth. Time clarifies. Justifies and purifies.

“Kari.” Grandmother’s whisper was feverish. “Find him. Please. Tell him I ...”

Those were to be her final words. I prayed that with her telling and my knowing, Grandmother had found the consolation she needed, and I breathed a blessing to her fleeing spirit.

“Goodbye, fly far away from all pain, till you find peace.”

Perhaps I will find her son, the brother my mother never knew existed. My uncle. Or perhaps he’s lost forever in an abyss of lost documents and secrecy and denial. But the key had been turned in a rusted lock and tarnished hinges loosened. Grandmother was free.

PREVIOUS ENTRY | NEXT ENTRY
SUBMIT YOUR ENTRY FOR THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE

The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.

Accept Jesus as Your Lord and Savior Right Now - CLICK HERE
JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel.