eight

Everything changed that morning.

It began at breakfast. I helped Barbara lay out the cheese, the rolls, the thick cups, and poured the coffee and milk into pitchers.

How different it was from our breakfasts at home, with Franz and Friedrich spilling things and laughing, and Katharina good-naturedly wiping up after them.

Here everyone was quiet, with just the sounds of knives and spoons clinking and Maria banging her wooden blocks on her high chair.

It might have been because the Uncle looked exhausted, almost too tired to eat. He worked hard, I had to admit that. First he spent a long day working for Mrs. Koch. And then after a late dinner he sat at the sewing machine running off five or six skirts, or pairs of trousers, or shirtwaists for Mr. Eis, who sold them in a shop in Manhattan.

But that morning, the Uncle cleared his throat. “It’s time for you to work, Dina.”

Barbara shook her head. “She’s helping wonderfully, Lucas. Didn’t she make that roast last night, and she’s cleaning. . . .”

“Yes.” I agreed with him instantly. “I need money. I could go out and . . .” I tried to think of what I could do.

But that wasn’t what he had in mind. “Right here,” he said, waving his arm toward the sewing machine. “It is a busy time for tailoring.”

I brought the cup of coffee to my mouth. It almost scalded my lips.

Late summer at home. Waking up in the dark to hem heavy skirts, to turn over cuffs, to shape collars. Not stopping for meals, but gulping down vegetable soup that Mama stirred and then poured, running back and forth from the kitchen. Every hour the cathedral bells tolled, reminding us that coats, suits, and dresses had to be ready for the clients at a moment’s notice.

I swallowed that first burning sip of coffee before I looked up at the Uncle, thinking carefully of what to say. “I want to do something instead of sewing.” My words were even, as if I weren’t challenging him, but I could feel the pulse at my throat, the slight trembling of my fingers against the cup.

The Uncle raised his eyebrows. “And what, may I ask, can you do?”

I put the cup down before I could spill it. I couldn’t look at him.

He stabbed a piece of cheese from the platter with his fork and stopped to chew. “Katharina would have gone into service.”

I leaned forward. “Service?”

“We would have found a place for her at Mrs. Koch’s house with Ida. She would have become a maid there, doing some cleaning, and maybe a little cooking.”

“I can—” I began.

“You can’t,” he said. “You’re too young.”

“Only four years younger,” I said, as if it were four months. “Besides, I’m not going to sew.”

Barbara stood up quietly and took Maria out of the high chair. In a moment both of them had disappeared down the hall and into the bedroom.

“You are fourteen,” the Uncle said. “You need food and a place to stay.” He leaned forward. “Do you think I can afford to have even one person in this house who doesn’t work?”

Sounds came through the open window: a horse clopping, someone calling. It must have been almost a hundred degrees in that room. I could feel perspiration on my forehead, my back. But at the same time I was chilled.

“If you will send me back to Breisach,” I said, “I will return the money someday.”

“If you want to go back, write to your mother. I have no money to spare.”

I bit my lip, telling myself that not one tear would drop from my eyes. I put on my I don’t care face, which used to drive Katharina wild.

“You can sew well. I know that. Your mother is so proud of you. The best of all of us, she says.” His face was red. “Today you will clean the sewing machine,” he said. “There’s oil in the closet.” He waved his hand vaguely toward the kitchen counter. “And now I must go to work. Work.” He almost shouted the word.

He stood up fast. The plates on the table rattled; his cup wobbled, spilling hot coffee across the table.

I sat there, my hands shaking under the table as he jammed his hat on his head and stamped down the stairs . . . boom boom boom. I could hear every step of each flight.

And then that terrible bang as he slammed the door on his way out. It must have startled everyone in the building.

There was no help for it. I had just exchanged one sewing machine for another. And this one was much older than the one in our sewing room. I had to say, though, that the Uncle kept it carefully; still, he did so much sewing at night with so little time to clean, it was covered with lint.

I bent over it just as I used to at home, using a small brush to dust out the fluff, and then squirted oil on a cloth to go over the works. When I was finished, it fairly shone. The belts that turned the wheel were black and slippery; the metal reflected my face.

But this wasn’t even a sewing room. Nails were beaten into the hall wall to hold the large spools of thread. Folds of cloth were stacked on the floor so that I had to take huge steps around or over them.

Barbara tried to explain. “Poor Lucas,” she said. “All he wants is his own shop, a place to put things, a place to spread himself out, a place where he can do what he loves.”

“Sewing?” I said. “He loves sewing?”

She nodded. “Yes.” And as she said it, her face turned the color of the river after a storm. She rushed past me to be sick in a basin in the bedroom.

A baby, I thought. She was going to have a second baby. I would be sure to tell Mama and Katharina in my next letter home.

Maria was out of her high chair now, holding a roll with butter and jam, smearing it on the floor and laughing.

I had to laugh, too, running my fingers over her arms and under her neck. “Mouse fingers,” I said. But all the time I was thinking about the Uncle.

I had just lost my first battle with him. It wouldn’t be the last one I’d lose.