Each day was numbingly the same. Guards woke them at 5:45 a.m. for roll call. After a breakfast of bread and margarine, most of the women were sent to work in the rope factory. Lunch consisted of thin, watery soup with an occasional vegetable floating in it. Supper was bread and margarine again. Every once in a while, the Red Cross arrived to serve a hearty soup. Ans looked forward to it as if it were a feast. She soon lost weight on the meager diet, becoming so thin her underwear wouldn’t stay up. She could count all of her ribs. Several other women in her barracks grew ill and died.

Ans scrubbed the floor of the latrine on her hands and knees every morning, the stench making her gag. Then she reported to the laundry, where she soaped and scrubbed and rinsed and wrung the guards’ heavy clothing until the skin on her hands cracked and bled. Day after weary day, her hope drained away like the gray wash water swirling down the drain. At night, shivering on her bunk, despair seeped through to her soul like the cold wind that leaked through the cracks in the barracks walls and around the windows.

On some days, Ans chatted with the other laundry workers to help pass the time, but most days, they all fell into silence, their grief too heavy to voice, their sorrow too painful to speak of. Ans scrolled through her memories to keep her mind occupied, and most of them were happy ones. But as the days dragged on and the weather grew frigid, regret for the mistakes and poor choices she’d made began to color all of her memories. She couldn’t think of her mama without regretting that she’d fought with her. If only she had another chance to make it up to her. She longed to tell Mama how much she loved her, how much she missed hearing her sing while she worked. The farm life Ans had rejected had been ideal in so many ways —she’d been well-fed and nurtured, surrounded by a family who loved her and each other. Yet she’d rebelled against the rules and a life of faith, longing for something more. What that was, Ans couldn’t say. She had been foolish —so foolish.

She wished she could thank her parents and grandparents for their patient Bible teaching and for insisting that she memorize the catechism. Those words had been in her mind and heart when she’d needed them, giving her peace and calm. She remembered doubting God’s goodness when her grandmother became sick and died. It had been her first experience with grief. Ans hadn’t known that death would soon surround her every day.