The Last Green Valley - Mark Sullivan (black female authors .txt) 📗

a hand in all of it at first: clearing the rubble from the ruins of the facility, digging out the remains of the foundation, and then building wooden forms to hold concrete.

When the forms were in place, Emil was put to work on a team mixing lime, clay, and fly ash for the cement, and then mixing that with sand, gravel, and furnace slag to form concrete, which was poured into the forms. The assignment kept him off to the side of the fury of activity on the hospital site, and he preferred it that way. The guards barely gave him a glance as he mixed concrete. He held his head down, worked hard, and kept his mouth shut.

I can survive this, he told himself over and over again those first few days. I will survive this place, but only if I rely on myself alone. No allies means no betrayals.

Emil also kept alert for opportunities to escape. So far there had been none. They were guarded at the hospital site. They were watched marching to meals and on their way back to the museum basement. Once down there and on the wooden bunks, Emil ignored the men shifting to either side of him and tried to fall straight asleep, hoping to be in a deeper, darker place when the night suffering began.

But in the middle of the night, when he’d been pushed or kicked or snored awake, he’d try to think of Adeline and Will and Walt to give him hope of making it through another day.

July 5, 1945

Cottbus, Germany

As they approached the first large town in Soviet-held eastern Germany, Adeline was still shaken by Marie’s decision to jump into the truck with the Russians. But then, she’d look back at the boys, still pushing the cart. What might I do if both of them were taken from me or killed?

Those thoughts haunted her every step of the next four days, which unfolded in blazing heat and humidity. At a fork in a road that passed through woods near the town of Falkenberg, Adeline called for a rest. Her mother limped over and sat on a boulder in the shade.

“You can all go on without me,” she said. “I’ll live here.”

Adeline sighed. “On that rock, Mother? In this forest?”

“No,” Lydia snapped, and gestured to the road sign. “I am going into that town, finding out who is in charge, and asking for a place to stay.”

“Mother,” Adeline said, “we’re less than two weeks’ walk from Berlin. Two weeks from finding a way to the western Allies and—”

“Stop that nonsense!” her mother shouted, pounding her bony little fist against her thigh. “That was Emil’s crazy idea, not mine and not yours. For better, for worse, we know how it works under Stalin. The sooner we settle down and adapt, the better. Admit it, Adeline, once and for all. Karoline was right. Emil is gone, just like his brother. He will never find a way back to you. Don’t waste your life waiting for him. Your foolish dream of a green valley is over.”

Adeline was surprised at the fierce bitterness that pumped through the old woman. “It is not over, Mother, until I say it is over. My husband, who I love and trust, told me to go as far west as I can, and he’ll find me. I believed him then. I believe him now.”

“I believed your father when he said he’d come back, too.”

Adeline ignored her and looked at Malia. “We can find a place for her to stay, and you can come with us.”

Her older sister smiled sadly and took Adeline’s hand in hers. “My place is with Mother; you know that.”

Adeline gazed at Malia, both of them blinking back tears. “I told you once I couldn’t do this without you.”

“I know, but now you have to,” Malia said. “I don’t want you to go, but you have to do what you think is right.”

“We’ll find each other again, won’t we?”

“That’s in the hands of a power far greater than us, dear,” Malia said, taking Adeline in her arms. “But take my love with you wherever you go. And I’ll take your love with me. And hopefully, someday, like your friend Mrs. Kantor, we’ll be able to see the beauty in every cruelty we’ve had to endure. Even this moment.”

Leaving her older sister’s arms felt like roots were being ripped from her chest. That feeling amplified when Adeline went to her mother, who would not look at her as she said, “Don’t promise me anything.”

“I won’t, Mother,” Adeline said. “This is good-bye, then.”

For a few gut-wrenching moments, she thought Lydia would be cold at their parting. But then her mother’s shoulders trembled, and she got up to hug her daughter.

“You always were braver than me,” Lydia whispered. “Like your father.”

“I got the rest of me from you,” Adeline said, her throat constricting as she felt how thin her mother had gotten on this most recent walk toward freedom.

When they broke apart, Adeline called to the boys to say good-bye to their oma and aunt Malia. Walt was stoic, but Will began to cry as he hugged Malia. And then they had to go.

“I can’t sit here watching you leave,” Malia said. “We’ll each go our own way at the same time.”

Adeline nodded, unable to stop the tears from flowing down her cheeks as she went to the front of the little wagon and picked up the handle. She wiped at the tears, then looked at the boys, forced a smile, and said, “Here we go. The Martels are off on another adventure.”

With a weak last wave toward her mother and older sister, Adeline turned fully away, mentally chopping the ties, drenched with fear, but taking a step in her own direction and another and a third. She would later think that the first step she took that day, away from her past and toward an uncertain future, was like a leap between cliffs and the