Berta’s Table: Marietta's Lullabye

Berta’s Table: Marietta's Lullabye

The snow is coming down so thick tonight that the cabin feels like the only lit place left in the world.

One scarred pine table, one pot of cheese bubbling, one battered kettle of Glühwein breathing cinnamon and orange into the cold.

Five women, five forks, five chipped mugs that crossed an ocean in a flour sack.

Come, sit. The storm can wait outside.

I was five the summer Marietta died, chasing grasshoppers through the rye stubble in Rosengarth, East Prussia.

That Sunday the women lingered by the church door, whispering, crossing themselves.

I only knew my mother’s arms were suddenly tighter, her cheek wet against my hair.

Later the nuns brought pictures: a small girl in white lace, lilies in her folded hands.

They said she was in heaven because she forgave the man who hurt her.

I believed them. I wanted to be good like that, too.

It took two wars, a burned continent, and sixty more years of kneading bread for strangers before I understood what my mother already knew that day:

Marietta didn’t need to become a saint.

She only needed to be allowed to grow up.

Tonight the cabin smells of woodsmoke and cloves and the particular warmth that happens when women stop pretending.

Rita sits with her veil slipped back like any tired widow.

Thérèse has her knees tucked under her, watching the candles instead of us.

The Sacred and The Scarlet share the warmest bench, shoulders touching, quiet.

I pour another round of Glühwein.

The mugs are chipped; they remember Rosengarth.

We are not here to shout.

We are here to remember a little girl named Marietta.

She was eleven.

Poor as dust.

Already carrying more than most grown men.

On a July afternoon in 1902 a neighbor decided her “no” did not matter.

She fought anyway.

He stabbed her fourteen times.

She died the next day holding her mother’s hand, whispering forgiveness because sometimes that is the only thing a terrified child has left to give.

Assunta walked home barefoot over hot stones without her daughter.

Within weeks the other children were scattered; poverty finished what the knife began.

She carried that emptiness for fifty-two more years.

Half a century later the Church dressed Maria in lace (she had died in rags) and put a lily in her hand (she had been clutching a crust of bread).

Assunta stood on the Vatican balcony and smiled when the Pope spoke of “heroic chastity,” because what else could a poor widow do?

Only once, very late, to a nun gentle enough to listen, did she whisper the truth every mother carries like a hidden wound:

“I only wanted my Marietta back, laughing, with dirty feet and a mouth full of bread.”

That is all any mother ever wants.

So tonight we light seven small candles (one for Marietta and one for each brother and sister left behind and we say her name the way Assunta said it in the dark:

Marietta.

Just Marietta.

A child who liked sunshine and helping her mamma, who should have grown up to burn supper, dance at weddings, rock her own babies on nights exactly like this.

Rita sets her fork down. “I kissed wounds once, too. I know the taste of smiling when your heart is bleeding.”

Thérèse, voice small: “They told me love was being sweet and small. Then I saw what one afternoon of violence cost an entire family.”

The Scarlet leans in, eyes soft now. “Every lesson in female virtue has always been paid for with somebody’s daughter.”

The Sacred traces an invisible running child in the air. “The real miracle would have been a locked door and arms strong enough to hold the world back.”

I scrape the last golden skin of cheese onto our bread.

“So we sit here,” I say, “five women who have carried impossible things, and we keep her name warm the way my mother kept it warm for me when I was five:

Marietta.

Barefoot.

Stubborn.

Enough.”

We pass the bread hand to hand.

We pass the Glühwein hand to hand.

No banners tonight.

No lessons in heroic obedience.

Only the quiet vow of every mother who ever set an extra plate in an empty kitchen:

You should have lived, baby.

You should have grown old enough to burn the world down if it ever came for your daughters.

We can’t give you those years.

But we can give you this table, this circle, this night where no one asks you to forgive in order to be loved.

Outside, the snow falls like mercy that asks nothing in return.

Inside, the candles burn low, and Marietta (bare feet, mouth full of bread, laughing somewhere beyond every halo) is finally, finally safe.

The cheese is gone.

The Glühwein is low.

The night isn’t.

And none of us are leaving this table until every lost child in the room feels found.

Sleep softly, Marietta.

We’ve got the door tonight.

♡

Berta

(still five years old inside whenever a child needs keeping)

Author's/Artist's Note: I am disabled survivor using assistive technology, which changes day by day pending health - (#zebralife). -to allow me to create, based on my needs on any given day - Art Therapy. We all can find ways.

For resources : RAINN or Support for Men at 1in6.org are lifelines.