Lena's Rainbow

CHAPTER 1

            Lena looked out the dirty window at the cloud darkened Romanian countryside. The gray sky matched the gloom in her heart.  She was sixteen years old.  She was in prison.  Not a dungeon with bars on the windows, but a prison of her own making, wrought from selfishness and a desire to escape the confines of her wretched home in Poland.  She had pictured life in Romania, as nursemaid to her ailing uncle, Valentinius Rajtar, as the escape she needed. Now, there was no escape.   

            “Lena!  Lena! Come here!” 

            “What is it, Uncle?” 

            “I can’t sleep.  Sing to me, child,” begged the gaunt old man huddled under the feather bed made from the down of the relatives of the geese that cackled beneath the window and chased Lena each time she left the run down cottage to go to the outhouse, or the garden, or the barn.  The more she threatened them with the broom, the more they accepted the challenge to geeseomanic warfare.  So far Lena had managed to outrun them, but she looked forward to having goose for Easter dinner.

            “I’m here, Uncle Val.”

            “Why are you here?  Where is Julius?”

            “He is gone.  Your son prefers business elsewhere.  We are alone.”

            “Help me!  He wants me dead,” muttered the agitated  father of Julius.  “If he had any feeling for me, he would be here, not you.  Why are you here?” repeated the old man forgetting that he had just posed the question.  “Where is Laura?” 

            “Aunt Laura is dead, Uncle.  In paradise.  Waiting for you.  Go to her.”

  She took his gnarled hand in her soft hands, massaging the hand, the arm, and the worn out shoulder of her mother’s brother, her uncle, as she silently wished him in his grave.  She had been in Romania for only a week, yet she could understand why her cousin, Julius, had left her alone in these sordid surroundings without recourse from anyone.

            It had been her choice to come to Romania to care for her uncle.  She could have remained in Poland under the strict surveillance of a domineering mother and two older sisters who treated her as their personal slave.  She did not miss them.  It was Pawel, and Josephine, her younger brother and sister that she cried for her in her sleep.

            Life was hard in Poland.  Her father’s farm land was marginal to say the least.  They were lucky to raise enough potatoes to see them through a bitter cold Polish winter.  Along with the potatoes were the cabbages.  Lena could see her mother tamping the thinly shredded cabbage into the large sauerkraut crock. Sometimes she stuffed a whole head of cabbage in the fermenting mass so that there would be cabbage leaves to wrap a special treat of rice and sausage for a holiday feast.  Lena