@geopfert / Pieck: "Just take her, please."
Picture the mother defeated. Pieck sits on the cot, her fingers laced into her hair unwashed hair. It falls in dry strands, obscures where she is pressing hard into her eyes, where the headache screws holes into her brain. She has been sitting there for too long, sunken into herself, a discarded doll with pointed shoulders. While the makeshift crib bears the miserable wails of a child.
Pieck doesn't look. Is too ashamed, too tired to look. She hides in the palms of her hands and lets her mind leak out of her ears, liquified by sleep deprivation and migraines. Her shirt is dirtied, swollen and raw teats soaking it with wasted milk. She's cried already and is now too dried up to attempt it a second time. Her eyes are red-rimmed, punched black and blue by sleepless nights. Colic, said the one doctor she could find who'd give her and the crying little creature writhing in her arms the time of day. She doesn't know what that means. She was sent away, told to give it time. But the child keeps screaming and Pieck can't bear her weight anymore.
"I can't do it, Annie. I can't. I don't know how. I don't know what to do." She rasps out, a confession she flicks at her like a pebble. She chokes on a half-swallowed breath. Such helplessness leaves her so cruel, so resentful. It's not the child's fault. It can't be. How could it be? And yet, every scream balls up in her stomach like a hateful fist.
"Just... Take her away."
A tarpaulin-domed den, drenched in a scent Annie associated with burrows or caves ā primal places, floors lined with fur and bones. Dirt and piss. The intimate, viscera-tang of a motherās innards. Blood and milk. The lattermost bloomed in wet, sticky flowers on Pieckās chest, her body reduced to a leaking, deflated thing. Some small, bruised part of Annie died of second-hand shame and was grateful for the distraction of those piercing wails. Such a wretched sound must hit Pieck like a bullet, like a train that kept on coming.
āWhat a racket youāre makingā¦ā
Annie murmured darkly, peering at the bundle lying at the heart of the cobbled-together crib. It heaved and writhed with unpractised misery. Through it all, Pieck sat with a faraway and feral look on her face, fingers twisting in the stiff, dirty hair that cloaked her like a burial shroud. Two people were drowning, which one to choose?
āYou just need sleep.ā
This isnāt you, she wanted to emphasise. Years apart had left them almost strangers, but still she knew enough of Pieck to understand such overwhelm was uncharacteristic.
As always, Annie chose obedience. Taking the desperate order between her teeth she lifted the infant ā Zofia ā and held her gingerly, scooped against the bird bones of her own brittle chest. Annie was the colour of a fish belly, all mean features and hard angles sharpened by hunger, ringing hollow at her roots. She was not built to coddle something so soft, so new. Still she tried, swaying faintly where she stood, gazing dubiously into the stiff nest of blankets. Zofia arched and raged against her with surprising strength, hands clenched into tiny pink fists. How had her father ever weathered such inconsolable crying? How he had resisted the urge to smother her, to drown her in the same pail as the millerās kittens?
Attention returned to Pieck, who sat shell-shocked, defeated by the squall of her unhappy baby.
āYou need to rest. When youāve done that, get cleaned up. Wash your face. Drag your fingers through your hair. Pull yourself together ā because it isnāt just you anymore, is it?ā
Annie meant it kindly, meant only that Pieck couldnāt afford to unravel, not even in these impossible circumstances.
āI can take Zofia. For a while, anyway. Then Iāll bring you something to eat.ā













