“You should do yoga,” Mariella was telling Jenny. “My sister Stefania did it every day her last two pregnancies, and she said they went much easier than the first.”
“I don’t know. A yoga class?” Jenny asked. “That’s kind of risky for me, all those people in workout clothes.”
“I will show you,” Mariella said. “In your own home. I am a black belt in yoga.”
“I didn’t know they gave black belts for that,” Seth said.
“It is only a joke. But I can teach you, Jenny.”
“It can’t hurt,” Jenny said. “It’ll give me something to do besides watch Seth play that Walking Dead video game.”
“I’m going to beat that game one day,” Seth said. “Watch.”
“I’m sure you will, Seth,” Jenny told him.
“Here.” Seth stepped toward a booth and picked up a plush rabbit, stitched together from several kinds of material to create a quilt pattern. “We should get this for him. Or her.”
“We can probably find some cute Christmas clothes here, too,” Mariella said. “So you’ll be ready next year.”
“Enough!” Jenny said. “We don’t even know...” Jenny decided she didn’t want to say We don’t even know whether the baby will live, so she fell quiet.
“We have to prepare, Jenny,” Seth said. “We have to believe. And I’m buying this wittle wabbit.” He paid the toymaker.
Jenny shook her head. She didn’t need the pressure.
“So, lunch,” Seth said. “Are chocolate-covered waffles okay with everyone?”
“Ugh. Baguette for me,” Jenny said.
“I’ll just have a soup,” Mariella told him, nodding at a chalet that sold both soup and baguettes.
“You two stalk a place to sit. I’ll be right back.” Seth headed toward the food vendors.
Mariella approached a wooden bench with carved, cartoony reindeer heads for its arms. Three teenage boys sat there, drinking wine and joking with each other, but the beautiful, smiling Italian girl quickly caught their attention. She spoke with them in French, explaining that her friend was pregnant and needed to sit.
The boys fell over themselves to do what she asked. Mariella waved Jenny over, and the two of them sat down. Mariella thanked the group of boys and waved good-bye, and they reluctantly trudged away.
“Being pregnant does have some advantages,” Mariella told her. “You should enjoy them.”
“They didn’t move because I was pregnant, they moved because you’re pretty,” Jenny said.
“Boys can be shallow. That’s something else worth taking advantage of.”
Jenny laughed and shook her head.
Mariella’s smile faded, and a hard look came into her eyes. “So. You and I were roommates at a Nazi death camp.”
“You could say that,” Jenny said.
“You gave me the worst dreams last night. Swastikas, fire, screaming, execution chambers...”
“I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t your fault.” Mariella paused, as if thinking something over. “Juliana. Mia. These names did feel very familiar, when you said them. So I was Sicilian? Have I just been bumming around Italy since the Renaissance? Or maybe the Roman Empire? Don’t I get to travel?”
“I’m sure you do,” Jenny said.
“Is it possible that I could remember my past lives, as you do?”
“Anything’s possible.”
“What is it like, all those memories?” Mariella asked. “It must be like a thousand voices in your head.”
Jenny laughed again. “Not exactly. It’s more like...Have you ever had something happen, maybe you taste something or hear a song, and then suddenly you remember a moment from your past that you’d completely forgotten? Like a childhood moment you haven’t thought about in years?”
“Yes, I know what you mean!”
“It’s like that, when you remember your past lives. Only lots and lots and lots of that. You really can’t remember everything at once. Just like you can’t remember your entire lifetime all at once. You have to focus. And also...”
“Also what?” Mariella was leaning forward, a hand on Jenny’s arm, intently soaking up every wood.
“Also, most of it’s not good.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s warfare, murder, deception,” Jenny said. “That’s what our kind love. The human race are just pawns to us. When you find out all the evil you’ve done in the past...it’s just not good. It’s hard to separate yourself from that. You have to learn that you can change, and not let your past trap you.”