She needed a different approach.
What if she were the first one to be honest? What if she told June the truth about herself? Perhaps June might in turn do the same.
But then again, there was risk in doing that.
And yet, as Eva thought about saying frank words that she’d not said aloud to anyone in years, an unexpected calm came over her. What was the worst thing that could happen if she told June who she really was? June could blab it to someone, yes, but there was no benefit to June in telling anyone. And June clearly had her own problems.
“May I tell you something?” Eva said, the decision made.
June’s eyes widened slightly. “Yes?”
“It is something I have not told anyone.”
A slight pause. “All right.”
Eva considered what she was about to do, and June waited. Then she spoke.
“I’m not Polish. I’ve never even lived in Poland.”
“Oh?” June looked surprised but not concerned. Not irritated for having been lied to.
“My people all came from Germany,” Eva continued. “They were all farmers from Hessen decades ago. They left Germany with many, many others—tens of thousands—when Catherine the Great offered them land near the Volga River.”
June slightly furrowed a brow. “The Volga River. But that’s…that’s in…”
“Russia. Yes. That is where I was born. Norka, Russia. It is where my father was born, too, and his father and his father. Eight generations. We all learned to speak Russian of course, but we always spoke German at home. We still felt German—even more so afterthe Revolution when things got very bad for us. And then when I was fifteen Germany was suddenly at war with Russia, see? It was not safe for Germans to be there anymore. My father and brother and fiancé were taken from me and sent away to labor camps far away in Siberia. No one ever comes back from the gulag. I fled first to Kyiv when the Germans occupied it and then to Berlin with Sascha’s mother, Irina, and his sister when the Red Army was marching back to recapture it. We spoke only German to each other. Irina forbade me to even think in Russian. When the war was over I didn’t want to go back to Russia. I was afraid to. A Ukrainian roommate and I were moved to a new DP camp near Munich at the start of the American occupation. We told everyone there we were Polish and that our papers had been stolen. I was given new papers that said I’d been born in Warsaw.”
“But…you are Russian?”
Eva thought for a moment. “I don’t know what I am. Sometimes I feel like I am nothing. The whole time I was in Germany I did not feel German. I know I am not Russian, either, even though I was born there.”
“And you were engaged to this young man? Tell me again how old you were?”
“I did not have a ring. But Sascha and I loved each other. We wanted to marry. It didn’t matter to me that I was only fifteen and he was only seventeen. I knew he was the only man I would ever love.”
June was quiet for a moment while she thought. “It doesn’t matter to me what nationality you are, Eva.”
Eva smiled. “Thank you. But…all of this might matter to Melanie. You see?”
A look of understanding stole across June’s face. “Oh, my. Yes, I do see. Because of the blacklist.”
“I am not a communist. I never was. It was very hard for usVolga Germans after the Revolution. That’s why when the war was over people like me in the refugee camps begged not to be repatriated to the Soviet Union though it was demanded we be returned. That’s why some of us lied about where we were from so that we weren’t forced to go back.”
“And you haven’t told any of this to Melanie?”
“When I first started working for her I didn’t know she was on this thing called a blacklist. And then when I learned of it, I did not know what to do. I knew if I told her the truth she would fire me, and then the agency I work for would fire me, too, because I lied on my immigration papers. They might report me and I’d get deported. Back to the Soviet Union. It would not go well for me there. I have tried looking for other employment but nothing has come of it.”
“But why do you think Melanie will find out about this when no one else has?” June asked.
“I have heard her talking to Mr. Edwards and her lawyer about that committee in Washington. They all say those men are looking at who she knows. Who she spends time with. I am no one to her, and I can only hope I am no one to those men. But I am with her almost every day. For several hours.”
“Yes, I see.”
“I know I should quit,” Eva said. “But Marvelous Maids would want to know why. I can’t say why.”
“Can’t you just tell them you are tired of cleaning houses?”
“But what else could I do? This is the only job I have had here in the States.”
