ten

That night I had my second argument with the Uncle, even fiercer than the first.

I was reminded of the Prussian and French soldiers with their grim faces and smoking guns. How well I remembered that morning on the bridge with the two soldiers, especially the one with the beard and the terrible eyes. But, thinking of Katharina’s letter, I told myself I must not act like a weak little girl without a brain. I was fighting for a way to get back to my home in Breisach someday, and I couldn’t afford to be afraid of anything. Especially not the Uncle.

At dinner he told us about his day washing Mrs. Koch’s carriage, her horses, and even the barn in back of her huge house, where they were kept. Dark shadows lay in crescents under his eyes, and the frown lines in his forehead seemed deeper than they had that morning.

I waited until dinner was over and Barbara had gone back to the bedroom with Maria before I spoke. “Are you ready to see the sewing machine, Uncle?”

Katharina would have told him to watch out. “Like König the cat, Dina has claws that you don’t see until you’ve been scratched,” she had said once when I had bested her in an argument.

I followed the Uncle down the hall and watched as he inspected the machine. He spent time running his fingers over the belts, and moved the needle up and down to see that it went smoothly. “Dina can sew while I am at Mrs. Koch’s house,” he muttered to himself. “Barbara will keep the house and help in between. It will work; yes, it will work.”

Even though he tried not to show it, I could see he was impressed with the way the machine gleamed in the flickering light.

Why not? It looked like new. And I had begun to organize the fabric he had managed to buy for the time when he had his own shop. I had refolded the pieces so they lay against the molding in neat piles, the heaviest at the bottom, the lightest at the top, matching colors where I could.

“I will sew for you at night.” I narrowed my eyes just a little, the way I did at home when Franz and Friedrich were bothering me. “I can sew quickly when I need to, but my stitches remain tiny and even and well placed.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked. “What do you mean, at night?”

I took a breath. “I mean to go into service with you and Aunt Ida during the day.”

His face reddened. “You will work all day and then come home to take a few stitches for me?”

I raised my chin. “More than a few.”

He was frowning, the lines in his forehead a washboard. “You will sew for me during the day. There is lots of work to do here, jackets and skirts and shirtwaists.”

My lower lip went out. “I have a pattern for a hat,” I said. “From Paris.” I didn’t say it was made of straw. I didn’t say how impossible it would be to do.

The flicker in his eyes matched the gaslight.

I rushed on. “I know the hats they are wearing in Paris and Breisach this year. I know what I need to make them and how to shape them.”

I drew myself up. I’d always been tall for my age, but still I came only to his shoulders. “Half the women in Breisach are wearing my hats and I’m only fourteen years old.”

Not quite the truth. In my mind I could see Mama’s eyebrows raised almost to her hairline, and I looked up quickly to see . . . something. I wasn’t sure, but was he ready to laugh? It was almost as if he could guess the truth. I had made hats once, for Frau Ottlinger and both her daughters, but nothing like the one I had made for myself, which by some miracle had turned out so well. Even I had been able to see that the ribbons that hung down the Ottlingers’ backs were a little crooked as I sat behind them in church.

I had made two other hats after that, and they had sold. They were better, though the flowers were heavy in front and sparse in back.

As I was thinking of Mama and home and bending over those flowers to secure them to the felt, the Uncle began to pound his fist on the edge of the sewing machine.

If he had been about to laugh, he wasn’t laughing now. “Do you think you can come here and tell me how important you are?” he asked.

Bang.

“Anyone can see you are just a child.”

Bang.

“A child who eats more than the rest of us.”

Bang.

“Two pork cutlets at supper. Two helpings of creamed potatoes, two of carrots.”

Bang.

His hand must have hurt. He stopped pounding and covered his head with both hands.

I had an enormous appetite, it was true. Once, at home, it had been my turn to chop the carrots for the stew. By the time I had finished cutting, I had eaten almost all of them.

For a brief moment I almost felt sorry for the Uncle. He had hoped for dear, good Katharina and had gotten me instead.

I slid onto the chair in front of the machine and ran my hands over it. “I can easily sew for you at night. I don’t need much sleep. And most of my work is by hand. You can use the machine while I sit at the kitchen table.”

In my mind, I saw Mama raise her eyebrows again. By the time the cathedral bells tolled nine times every evening, I was yawning. By ten o’clock, I was tucked up in my third-floor bedroom so sound asleep that Katharina had trouble pushing me to my side of the bed to make enough room for herself.

The Uncle’s neck looked as if it were too big for his stiff collar. He seemed as if he might explode.

I pulled a spool of pink thread off its nail on the wall so that I wouldn’t have to look at him, looped it under and over the machine hooks, and in one swift movement threaded it through the needle.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“With all this work you want me to do,” I said, leaning over to reach for the pink flowered cotton on top of the pile, “I will need a dress that won’t suffocate me.”

“I will take it out of your wages when you go into service,” he said.

“That’s fair.”

“Fair? You think any of this is fair?” He marched down the hall and slammed the outside door so hard I could see the fabric trembling under my fingers.

I rubbed my hands on the wool of my skirt. They were damp. And my heart was still pounding.

But I had won, hadn’t I? I calmed myself by taking deep breaths as I went back into my airless bedroom to pull a simple dress pattern out of my suitcase.

Kneeling on the hall floor, I pinned the pattern to the fabric and cut it quickly, thinking how glad I was that Mama had filled the bottom of my suitcase with starched white collars and cuffs.

I stood up, rubbing my back. What an endless day this had been.

It was much later by the time I sat in front of the machine, my feet on the treadle, and fed the material under the needle. I started by sewing the three pieces of the bodice together, matching the tiny flowers so it was impossible to see where they had been pieced, and then I gathered the sleeves into their openings.

By the time I began the four long seams of the skirt, I was hungry again. I told myself that I could do without, but I could hear the ice dripping into the pan under the icebox. I knew there was one small cutlet left on a plate.

I went into the kitchen and sprinkled a little salt onto the cutlet. Then I leaned against the windowsill. People below were still sitting on the steps to keep cool. I was getting used to the look of them: an old man reading a newspaper, a knot of women talking to each other, and even children playing in the dark streets. I closed my eyes and took a bite of the cutlet.