Nothing was good enough for her. When I ran a wet cloth over her shockingly fragile body the water was too hot. Too cold. My touch too hard, too soft. I missed a spot. I was too thorough. I smelled. I was inept.
“A nurse,” she’d scoffed more than once as she eyed me always with disdain, her milky eyes sweeping from my face to my breasts to my stomach. “My daughter, the traitor.”
I pushed the memory from my mind as Paulina pressed the gift for my baby into my hands. I peeled the paper away, lifted the lid of the box beneath, and gasped.
It had been my favorite dress when I was little, the pale blue fabric soft, unlike so many of my other dresses. There had been no petticoat to be worn under. No stiff material that felt like it was suffocating me as it scratched at my neck or arms. It was a dress for summers. For sunshine and walks in the park with my nanny. For falling asleep in after a big day of play. And I had worn it well past when I should’ve stopped, forcing my growing torso into the tightening bodice.
“Can’t we find another?” I’d asked Nanny Paulina.
“Sorry, Miss Gisela,” she’d said. “It was bought over a year ago. The store won’t have it any longer.”
And so, regretfully, I wore it for a last time and then folded it up and tucked it away in my closet for safekeeping.
Here it was now though, in my hands once more, the fabric as soft as I remembered it, and refashioned in not one, but two outfits—a dress with a rounded white collar, and a pair of overalls.
“Do you recognize the fabric?” Paulina asked.
I nodded, my eyes filled with tears.
“I remembered how you loved that dress.” She sighed. “I found it years ago when I was cleaning. When you told me you were pregnant, I knew I had to turn it into something your child could wear. Of course, we don’t know if you’re having a boy or a girl so...I made something for both sexes. I hope you like them?”
“Oh, Paulina,” I said, my voice catching on a sob. “They’re beautiful. Absolutely perfect. Thank you.”
“I’m making a few other things, as well,” she said, wiping away a tear of her own. “But I thought these were a perfect gift for Christmas.”
I hugged her and she held me tight for a moment before letting me go and handing me the other gift at the same time I handed her the one I had for her.
When we’d decided to have a small celebration for the holiday, we’d agreed not to risk going out to find gifts at the few shops in town, but to shop the house instead. Nothing was off limits. But it had to be thoughtful and well-intentioned.
“Do not give me one of your mother’s gaudy jeweled necklaces,” Paulina had said, making me laugh.
“What about one of her furs?”
“Can you imagine if I went out in one of those to pick up meat from the butcher?” We’d laughed more and then looked out the window where huge snowflakes were coming down. “On second thought,” she’d said.
And so there were no jewels or furs beneath the elegant wrapping paper. Instead, for her there was a beautiful knit scarf in a vibrant blue that had been gifted to my mother years before and shoved in the back of her closet because “Such a horrid color shouldn’t be forced upon anyone.” But it was pretty. And soft. And all Paulina’s scarves were worn and old.
“I remember when she got this,” she said, wrapping it around her neck and burying her face in it. “I’d thought it so beautiful, and then felt a fool hearing how she hated it. I clearly knew nothing about fashion if I coveted something she deemed so awful.”
“My mother is a snob,” I said. “You know that. What she really didn’t like was that it wasn’t a Vionnet or Lanvin.”
“Well, her loss is my gain.”
She pointed to my gift then and I pulled the wrapping away from a box the size of my hand. When I lifted the lid, I smiled. Inside was a crystal angel like the ones we’d hung in the living room.
“You’ve always loved them,” she said as I pulled it from the box and held it up by its string, watching as it twirled, the light from the candles we’d lit and the fire sending tiny rainbows around the room. “Do you remember doing that for Catrin when she was a baby? I would bring you to her bassinet and she’d smile up at you. I don’t even think she noticed the angel.”
I sighed and dropped my arm.
“Part of me thought...hoped...today would be the day she showed up.”
“I won’t lie. I thought she would too.”
“Do you think something has happened to her?”
Paulina shook her head. “If anything had, we would know right away. I promise.”
We cleaned up the wrapping paper and then Paulina went to check on dinner while I climbed the stairs to my mother’s room. She’d been asleep all day, not even waking when Paulina changed her soiled clothes and bedding. Paulina had called for me after, worried, and I’d checked her pulse and temperature. She was breathing, her irises responded to light, there was no fever, and her pulse was faint, but no different than it had been in the weeks before.
