A Place to Stay (Part 1)

The mother made a short gasp and almost dropped her candle.  Wearing a brimmed helmet, the soldier’s silhouette was unmistakable.  She instinctively pointed her assault rifle at the mother, and the mother opened her free left hand in an attempt to show she was harmless.

“Is there anyone else in here?” the soldier asked, her rifle trembling as she shivered.

“Only my daughter and my son,” the mother answered with a voice as stiff as her body.  “She’s a child, and he’s a baby.”  The soldier lowered her rifle and stepped forward.  She was close enough to the candle for the mother to see her face, pale from the bitter weather.

“Is there anyone else in the village?”

“No, just us.”

“Where’d they go?”

“Anywhere but here, but probably westward.  The village head said the Resistance will arrive tomorrow evening.”

“Why didn’t you go with the others, then?”

“I have a connection with the Resistance.  I-I don’t fight for them at all or support them at all, it’s just…oh, it’s just a long story.  If you would, um, set your rifle aside and sit with me on the sofa, I can tell you everything.  Please, just don’t hurt my children.  I swear I won’t try anything.  I never would.”

“No, it’s fine,” the soldier declined, admiring the mother’s apparent honesty.  She slung her rifle around her shoulder and crossed her arms to keep warm.  “I just need a place to stay for the night.  It’s bloody cold out there, as you know.”

“Of course.  You can stay in—.”

“Mom?” a little girl in pajamas said from the stairs with a candle in hand.  After rubbing her eyes, she noticed the armed woman in her house, and her lip quivered in panic.  “Mom, what’s going on?  Who is that?”

“It’s not for you to know, Eliza,” her mother firmly said.  “Go back to bed.”

“What is she doing here?  Who is she!  Wh-why does she have a gun!”

“Eliza, quiet down!  She’s not going to hurt us.  She just needs a place to stay for the night.  She’s in the Union of Stability.  Do you remember what I told you about the Union?”

“I-I think.”  In a room upstairs, the baby began to cry, causing the mother to sigh in discontent and Eliza to cower in embarrassment.

“Oh, look at what you—.  God knows you need to stop being startled by every new face, Eliza, even in these difficult-to-understand times.  Now, will you go back to bed?”

“I’m sorry, mom.”

“It’s okay.  Just get to bed.”

“But I can’t go to sleep.”

“Please, try to.”  Eliza nodded and walked up the stairs and into her bedroom.  She shut the door behind her without giving the soldier another look.  The mother then hurried to her bedroom next to Eliza’s.  As she opened the door, the baby’s crying echoed throughout the living room, and it faded away when the mother closed the door to comfort the baby and say her there-there’s.  The soldier was left to her own devices.

---

With her anglehead flashlight, she first examined the family photos hung on the wall. From the lake to the park, the photos depicted the happy family in various places.  She soon thought about her own family whom she had not seen in months; she had not spent any valuable time with them in years.  No matter how much they reassured her, she was always afraid that her parents’ health was deteriorating and that her brother could not generate enough income.  Every penny the Union gave her, she gave to her family back home.  Even then, she thought, it must not be enough.

Before she could continue to beat herself up for supposedly being a bad daughter and sister, the soldier realized that one person in the gallery was unaccounted for.  In each of the photos, the mother stood next to a man, and between them was a baby, supposedly Eliza as there was no other baby in the gallery.  When the soldier observed the final photo on the right of the gallery, she saw the man walking with the mother on the beach kissed by the sunset; the mother was pregnant and wearing a maternity dress.  The soldier returned to her wits.  The mother must have lied about there being nobody but herself and her children, she thought.  Just as she was about to unsling her rifle and approach the mother for an explanation, she saw Eliza again patiently waiting behind her with a teddy bear in her embrace.

“What are you doing here?” the soldier demanded, giving Eliza a fright.  Lost in thought, she did not hear the girl come out of her room or even notice her candle, now placed on the table by the sofa.  “Get back to bed like your mother told you.”

“I’m sorry,” Eliza lowly said.  “I can’t go to sleep.”

“Oh.”

“What’s your name?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I want to talk to you, and you know my name.”

“It’s Eliza, isn’t it?”

“Yeah!” she pridefully affirmed.

“My name is Jill,” the soldier said in a more inviting tone.  “How old are you, Eliza?”

“I am five years old.  How old are you?”

“I’m twenty-two,” and I should be working in a job that does not involve transporting troops to shoot at people or break into people’s homes, Jill thought.

“I like your name, Jill.”

“Oh, thank you.  I like your name too, Eliza.”

“Thank you.”  Eliza smiled and showed Jill her teddy bear.  Its eyes had different buttonholes, and its right arm was tightly stitched to its body.  “This is Tom.  Can you say hi to Tom?”

“Of course.  Hello, Tom.”  Eliza gently waved the teddy bear’s right arm.

“Hello, Jill,” she mimicked in a deep voice, and they giggled.  Suddenly, the lights turned on in the living room.  As if new life was breathed into the house, all the other rooms’ lights turned on one by one.  “The electrickity is back on!”

“I think you mean the electricity, Eliza!  My, I didn’t even notice your house had lights.”

“They go on and off for a long time sometimes.  Mom says it’s because the, uh, electricity is bad.  She doesn’t know how to fix it.”

“I wish I could fix it, Eliza, but I don’t know how.”

“That’s okay.”  While the light was a pleasant surprise for Jill, it soon reminded Eliza that she was armed.  Keeping a nervous eye on Jill’s rifle, which was almost completely iron-wrought and carried the industrial stench of old gun lubricant, Eliza kindly asked her, “Can you put your gun away?  I don’t like it, and Tom doesn’t like it too.”

“Oh, of course.”  Jill was confident that Eliza meant no harm.  Perhaps her mother’s assessment was wrong, and Eliza was not scared of her, a stern-spoken stranger.  No, Jill thought, she was scared of her rifle.  She unslung it, engaged the safety, and leaned it against the wall.  There was no need for her to warn Eliza not to touch it, for not even in her most curious state would Eliza dare to do so.

“Thank you.”

“Eliza,” Jill went on, leading her eyes to the gallery, “is the man in these photos your father?”

“Yeah.”

“Is he here?”

“No.”

“Oh.  Where is he?”

“He’s fighting in the, uh…”

“In the war?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, I see.  How long has he been gone?”

“Um…I don’t know.”  Before Jill could inquire any further, the mother’s bedroom door opened, and she quickly redirected her attention from the family photos to the mother.

“Ah, it looks like you two have gotten to talk,” the mother said, pleased.  “Did she bother you much, miss?”

“No, not at all,” Jill assured.

“Eliza, you can return to bed now.”

“Can I have tea with Tom?” Eliza begged.  “Just for a few minutes, mom, a few.  I still can’t go to sleep.”

“Agh, alright,” the mother resigned, much to Eliza’s delight.  Eliza waved Jill goodbye with Tom and retreated to her bedroom again, leaving the door ajar.

“She’s a very sweet child,” Jill remarked, loosening her chin strap and taking off her helmet.

“She is.  She’s been dying to talk to anyone.”  The mother took a seat on the sofa, followed by Jill.  “Sorry about the electricity.  It’s funny, Eliza and I sometimes like to guess what time it will come back on, and whoever is closest wins.  On a more serious note, though, you know more about the situation out there than I do.  There aren’t any Resistance fighters nearby, are there?  We’d have to turn off the lights.”

“I received my last update a few hours ago.  Your village head gave you the worst possible scenario.  They’d have to really give it their all to be here by tomorrow evening, overextending from and abandoning their other strategic points for a single village.”

“Oh God,” the mother sighed in relief.  “Oh, thank God.  Ugh, our village head is horrible at his job.  It’s this kind of fear-mongering that has had us all cooped in for the past year.  Before everyone left today, no parent in the village was confident enough to let their children out very much, especially me.  Eliza is often scared by strangers, but once she gets familiar with someone, she is very friendly.  I told her already that the Union is more, say, disciplined and wouldn’t hurt us one bit if we stay on their good side.  Then again, I told her the same thing about our own village guards, and she’s still scared.  It makes me wish this war never began, and I wouldn’t have had to turn my daughter into a recluse.  But then again, that’s…well, that’s my choice, isn’t it?”

“I think she’s more scared of guns than strangers.”

“Hmm.  You might be right about that.  Our village never wanted to toil with this war.  The guards come by every house from time to time, but they always seemed to like visiting ours the most.”

“I suppose that’s to be expected.”

“What?” the mother stammered.  “What do you mean?”

“She told me her father is fighting for the Resistance.  Is this the connection you meant?”

“Oh.  Yes.  Yes, it is.  He’s not fighting, though.  He’s only an associate.  He has been one for, um…for as long as I’ve known him, really.  He left a few months ago to help however he could.  That’s what he told me, at least.  I swear to you again that I have nothing to do with it.  I’ve wanted him to toss this into the past since before we married, but—.”

“Ma’am, it’s fine.”

“Thank you.  I’m sorry.”  The mother looked away from Jill for a moment to breathe and release her apprehension.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.  Please don’t…oh, listen to me, I’m doing it again.”

“It’s fine.  Just take your time.”

“H-how can I know that we can trust each other?”

“My name,” Jill hesitatingly proposed.  “Would that be enough for you?”  The mother did not respond.  It was inexplicable for Jill to offer her identity to a civilian who, for all she knew, could kill her in her sleep with how jittery she was, not to mention the fact that her husband was associated with the enemy.  For any reasonable person, the best course of action would be to find some other building in the village to sleep in.  Jill wondered what exactly made her so determined to establish trust with the risk of jeopardizing not only herself but her friends in arms, what made her so unreasonable.  She felt, in some unexplainable way at the time, a connection.  “My name is Jill Kreter, Employ Jill Kreter.  I’m a truck driver in Combat Group 135.  I trust you to tell nobody but the Union that I was here.  Would that be enough?”  The mother nodded.

“Diana,” she replied.  “My name is Diana Feldam.”  Names and titles can be falsified, and Jill knew this, but they were a step in the right direction.  Both she and Diana smiled, comfortable now that they could call each other by name and not miss or ma’am.

“Diana, can I see Eliza again?  I want to tell her good night before I head to sleep.”

“So long as you don’t keep her awake forever, Jill,” Diana joked, and Jill stood from the sofa.  She trod up the stairs, hoping none of the boards would creak and alert the baby, and carefully opened the door to Eliza’s room.  Eliza sat on the floor with her teddy bear Tom opposite of her from the tea set.  She pretended to sip from her miniature cup and poured more imaginary tea for him, whose cup lay between his feet.  “Eliza?” Jill quietly said.

“Hi, Jill,” Eliza welcomed with a glimmering smile.  “Do you want to have tea with us?”

“I wish I could, but I only came to tell you good night.”  She wished she could have done more.  She wished she could do more now for her family.  If she had simply decided not to fight in this war, she would wake up tomorrow to make breakfast for her parents; she would go off to work with her brother; she would be able to drink tea with them.  Across the years, there were so many instances in which Jill could have done more than wave and say hello to her family.  They were instances wasted, instances that could have been more than just instances.  So quick was Jill to find trust with the Feldams, and so quick was she to find why she even bothered: so that more could be done.  She could have pestered her commander to let her stay longer at the Kreter house.  Tonight, in the Feldam house, she knew she had to do more than simply pester Diana to let her have some tea time.

“Good night, Jill!” Eliza repeated, and Jill realized she was busy in thought again.  “Didn’t you hear me the first time?"

“Oh, sorry.”  Jill walked out of the room and closed the door behind her.  Diana looked up at her, waiting at the bottom of the staircase.