Night

In the city the rule was:

come home when

the street lights go on.

In the country

I know it is night

when overhead

the white patches

disappear from the wings

of the nighthawks

and the whippoorwill

makes his rounds boasting

he can stay out

as late as he pleases.

After dinner tonight I went out to check my garden. Even though it’s been nearly a week since I planted it, nothing seemed to be happening. But when I dug up one of the beans I had planted, I saw a sprout with two tiny leaves sticking out. I stuck it back in the ground, hoping I hadn’t killed it.

I stood at the edge of the orchard and looked out over the fields that lay between me and the road that led back to the city. As the sun began going down, things got quieter and quieter. The birds disappeared, except for some black-and-white birds that my grandparents said were nighthawks. They flew up so high in the sky that you could hardly see them, and then they dropped down until you thought they would crash into the ground. Instead, just in time, they swooped up again. As it grew dark there were no sounds but the crickets chirping and the call of the whippoorwill. Nighthawks and whippoorwills. The names sounded sad to me.

I missed the sounds of the city: the cars screeching past our apartment, and my friends calling to one another. Lots of children live up and down our street. In the early evenings, before I got sick, we would play “Relievo” and “Giant Steps.” There were six of us. Every night after dinner we would hurry out of our houses to find each other. Sometimes we would just sit and watch the cars hurry by until the streetlights came on. In the city you never have to listen to silence like you do in the country. There is always something to talk back to you, even if it’s just an automobile horn or the squeal of brakes.

The quiet of the country made me nervous, so I hurried back to the cottage before it got dark. Grandmama was sitting in her favorite chair, hemming dishtowels and listening to Caruso records on the Victrola. Caruso is a famous Italian singer who is dead now. Grandpapa was reading the newspaper, shaking his head over what he was reading. “Germany has chosen a dangerous leader. This Hitler is an evil man. We have friends in Germany who will find themselves in trouble. I only hope they can leave before it is too late.”

I asked Grandpapa, “Why did you come to America from Germany?”

“Ach, over there they wanted everyone to go into the army. They would have sent me to Africa to fight just so they could steal a little more land for themselves. That was not for me.”

Grandmama sighed. “But when we came away from Germany we had to leave behind everyone we loved.” I thought about my parents and my aunts and uncles and my friends miles away in the city, and I understood what Grandmama felt. Grandmama told me about the grossen Schiff, the big boat, that had brought her and Grandpapa to America. “We sailed from the city of Bremerhaven,” she said. “My papa and mama and my brothers and sister all came to see us off. As the boat pulled away from the dock my family grew smaller and smaller until I couldn’t see them at all. They separated your grandpapa and me. The women had their own cabins and the men had theirs. I was in a stateroom no larger than a closet with four other women, and I knew none of them.”

“You became good friends,” Grandpapa said. “We could hear you laughing and giggling.”

“For the first days we were all seasick. You can’t have five women in a closet, all throwing up together, without becoming friends.”

Grandpapa laughed. “You should have been in my cabin. Hans Liebig’s mother packed a basket for him to take on the ship. The basket was the size of a bathtub. We ate from it for a week: bread, sausages, pickles, cheeses, cakes. We were so busy eating Hans’s food we had no time to be seasick.”

“Except for the canoes on Belle Isle,” I said, “I’ve never been in a boat.”

“Our friend Mr. Ladamacher has a boat,” Grandpapa said. “This week we will take you out on the lake fishing.”

I wished I hadn’t said anything about a boat. I didn’t think I wanted to be out on that big lake in a little boat.