twenty-one

Blossoms of ice coated the air shaft window, and the first snow had settled in the streets. My hands were chapped and cracked from hanging wash on the roof and then taking it down, dry but stiff and crackling with frost. I made sure that I was the one to do that chore; Barbara’s time was coming soon. Weeks, maybe, or even days.

Excitement was everywhere. Christmas was only days away.

Whenever Maria slept, I worked on her doll. Johann had found a small porcelain head for me, and I had fashioned a soft cloth body for it.

Every spare moment, I cut tiny petticoats and dresses with aprons to match for that doll. I remembered when I was small Mama had given me a doll with clothes in a small wooden trunk.

One morning I reached behind the torn lining in the trunk for a bit of my precious money and took myself down to A. T. Stewart’s to buy a few feathers, a yard of crimson ribbon, buckram, and felt.

The money would double itself, triple itself. I had just gotten orders for three hats to be delivered two days before Christmas, the loveliest to Mrs. Koch, of course.

In the evenings Barbara and I baked Christmas cookies that we formed into wreaths and snowmen. I teased Barbara, saying she was like one of those plump little snowmen herself with her round cheeks and her apron tight around her middle, smelling as always of the cinnamon she carried in her pocket. How lovely she looked standing there laughing, her hands covered with flour.

I couldn’t think about that, though; I couldn’t think about Barbara’s needing me. By next Christmas I’d be home. If only I could wrap all this up and take it home with me: the steamy kitchen and its trays of cookies, Barbara handing me one to try, Maria on the floor banging her shoe so loudly and grinning up at me, pleased with herself.

“One day,” Barbara said, reaching out to touch my arm, a dusting of flour on her chin, “we’ll fill your trunk with sheets and pillowcases, and petticoats with edgings that we’ll crochet, and . . .”

“Foolishness,” the Uncle said, but I could almost see the curve of his mouth as he smiled under his beard.

“In the meantime,” Barbara said, “it will be Maria’s second Christmas. Dina and I will bake fruitcakes, and we’ll light the rooms with candles everywhere.”

Next Christmas, flickering candles in all the windows in Breisach, the lights reflected in the river.

And then at last the holiday was on us. Mrs. Koch sent an armful of evergreen branches that had been cut for her in Lake Placid to put on our mantel. Barbara and I took deep breaths. “It smells like home,” she told me, taking my hand and doing a little dance down the hall with Maria following us, grabbing us by the skirts until Barbara lifted her and danced with her.

On Christmas morning, we all went to church, walking slowly because Barbara tired easily now. I looked at the women’s hats and bent my head, telling myself not to be so vain. But none of the hats was as pretty as the three I had made for Mrs. Koch and her friends. And none was as lovely as the one Barbara wore now, with the leftover feathers and crimson ribbon, the felt brim dipping low over her forehead.

I was conscious of Johann and his family sitting in the pew directly in back of us. I sat up straight, glad I had taken time to sweep my hair back with clips. I noticed that Johann had a strong deep voice when we sang the hymns and had to keep telling myself to pay attention to the priest.

I smiled, thinking about the lovely days when we walked through the park and the cold ones when we sat in the bakery. He often talked about the promise his father had made to set him up in a corner of their men’s shop. “One day I’ll make a key just for you, Dina,” he said. “The only one like it.”

We laughed over this language we were learning and tried to outdo each other with strange-sounding words.

“Do you know what Schlamm is in English?” he asked.

“Ha, of course. It’s muddah.”

He laughed. “Say mud. No ah.”

“I like it better with the ah,” I said.

We leaned forward, our heads together. “Muffin. Puff pastry,” he whispered.

“Yes, puff!” Wonderful on the lips.

We’d leave each other smiling, marking the time until we saw each other again, calling back: “Sunrise, sofa . . .”

Then it was Christmas night. I opened my trunk and tucked away the blue striped scarf Barbara had knitted for me, and the small sewing wife with its needles and pins and silver thimble from the Uncle. I stopped to look at the candles on the mantel and the windowsill. In the dim light, everything glowed. Shadows patterned the walls and the ceiling. What a beautiful day it had been. Dinner with everyone around the table, and Aunt Ida telling us that Peder had written saying that next year they would surely be together.

I unbuttoned my shoes and eased out of them, then suddenly remembered the wash. I had run up to hang it on the roof yesterday. Another night up there and everything, chemises, nightgowns, diapers, would be covered with soot . . . gray forever. “I’m just going to bring in the diapers,” I called in to the kitchen.

“Oh, Dina,” Barbara began. “Never mind. It’s late.”

I didn’t answer. I let myself out of the apartment, not bothering to put my shoes back on, holding the wash basket against my hip, and ran up the stairs to the roof on tiptoe, pushing open the door and hearing the wind banging it shut behind me.

I glanced at the sky, which was filled with stars and a dusty moon, and took a step forward in the wind. In front of me, one of the diapers blew off the line and sailed off the roof just ahead of my grasping fingers.

Shifting from foot to foot on the icy rooftop, I looked down over the edge to see the white square gently fly across the street like a kite and land on a step.

I hadn’t bothered to put on my coat, either, so I was cold standing there on the windy roof, brushing my hair out of my eyes, but the sky was so beautiful I was in no hurry to go back to the apartment.

Below, people still hurried along dressed in festive clothes. A few women wore old-fashioned hoops that sailed up in front as the wind caught them. I leaned against the wall, sheltering myself from the wind, peeking down at them and at the candles that glowed in the windows across the way.

People were pointing at something, perhaps at our building, but I couldn’t see what it was. A Christmas tree covered with small candles, or the wreath on the door?

I remembered a blustery afternoon hurrying along the Schwartz Street in Breisach, opposite the blacksmith’s shop. It had been so cold I had crossed over and walked through his open doors to gather warmth from his enormous fire. Standing near his forge, watching him pump the fire with his bellows, I had breathed in the smoky odor that surrounded him.

Why was I thinking of that now? The cold, but something else. The smell of the smoke from his fire. I could smell it here, too. Wisps of it came from every chimney.

Taking my time, I began to pull the wash off the line, dropping it and the clothespins into the basket: Maria’s small stockings, her slips, her nightgowns, not much bigger than the clothes of the doll she had loved when I gave them to her.

I had a secret. Under my shirtwaist was a key on a chain. It was slim and lovely, with the tiniest red stone in the center. Johann had slipped it to me after church, unwrapped. “Merry Christmas,” he had whispered.

“Merry Christmas,” I had whispered back, proud that I knew the words. I had clutched the key so tightly on the way home that it had left marks in the palm of my hand.

If the Uncle ever found out, he’d tell me to give it back. I rubbed my feet against each other in my woolen stockings, thinking Mama would have a fit that I had accepted anything from a boy.

I finished with the wash at last and took one more look over the edge of the roof. More people had stopped, a knot of them huddled on the corner, the wind blowing through them so they had to hold their hats and skirts down.

Something felt wrong to me, and I remembered the blacksmith again. Strange; I could still smell his great forge and the smoke that swirled around it.

I spun around on the roof. Was that it? Smoke? The licorice smell of fire? And then I saw them, curls of gray coming from under the metal door.

I was instantly seized with fear. Through my mind went the memory of the small mice that sometimes scurried along the riverbank at home, their eyes dark with terror when they saw me. Once I had been so close to one that for a second, the small creature had been unable to move. I had stood still, too, and then he had darted first one way and then another to escape the huge creature in front of him.

I was doing the same thing.