The next day was Sunday. Sunday was a day apart, a day that felt different. Slower. After church, we sat down to a light lunch. My happiness from the night before carried over as I gazed around the noisy table.
“Dad planted a bodacious smooch on Mom on the front porch last night,” announced William, spreading peanut butter lavishly on a piece of bread.
Robert nearly choked on his coffee. “William, where did you learn that expression?”
“What expression?” he asked, carefully folding his bread in half.
“You know very well what expression I mean, young man,” Robert said sternly, a warning look on his face.
“Ernest said he is going to plant a bodacious smooch on Miss Penelope someday.”
“Didn’t I tell you, Robert? That boy spent too much time at the telegraph office this summer,” scolded Aunt Martha.
Robert ignored her. “William, stop spying on people.”
“But…,” he defended, “it was for my spy log!”
Robert scowled at me as if to say, “See what you started?”
I looked down at my plate. Elisabeth mumbled to William to pass the bread but he didn’t realize that she was talking to him.
“Elisabeth, you need to look directly at William when you speak so that he can read your lips. Use expression,” I pointed out.
She looked at me, puzzled.
“Mit der Gesichtsausdruck.” With facial expression.
“Oh. Okay,” she said earnestly. Then she looked straight at William, and shouted, “Pass dat d--- bread!”
We froze. Aunt Martha gasped, as Robert and I just stared at Elisabeth, stunned.
“What, Dad? What did she say?” asked William, tugging on Robert’s sleeve, aware that something interesting had just transpired.
Quietly, Robert picked up the bread and passed it to her. “I don’t think that’s what Louisa meant by adding expression, Elisabeth.”
To my astonishment, a look of mirth flitted through his eyes. Then he tucked his chin down against his chest, trying to cover a broad grin. He was trying so hard not to laugh that he had tears streaming down his face.
I could count on one hand the number of times I had ever seen Robert laugh with abandon. Once he started laughing, he couldn’t stop himself. Finally, he broke into gales of laughter.
Robert’s amusement with Elisabeth’s faux pas only fueled Aunt Martha’s aggravation. She stood up, glared at him, and marched upstairs. I’d never seen her mad at Robert! Often with me, but never at her beloved nephew. Robert could do no wrong in her eyes. As soon as she was out of hearing range, I started giggling. It felt so good to laugh after the seriousness of the last few weeks. We needed to laugh more often.
Later that evening, I was getting ready for bed and heard mumbled voices down in the kitchen. Mildly ashamed of myself, I unscrewed my radiator cap and listened in. “That child’s language must not be tolerated, Robert! To think that a word like that was uttered at your father’s table.”
“Now, now, Aunt Martha. She’ll learn.”
“You’ve got to nip it in the bud,” countered Aunt Martha. “Soon enough William will be picking those words up, too.”
“Aunt Martha, it’s not as if we haven’t heard cuss words before. I think most of my congregation leaves half of their vocabulary outside the sanctuary before entering on Sunday.”
“Don’t joke about this, Robert. I wouldn’t expect Louisa to do anything…”
Pardon me? What did she mean by that remark?
“…but I would certainly expect you, a minister, to hold to higher standards and not laugh at the child. It only encouraged her!”
I screwed the top back on the radiator pipe, not interested in hearing any more of Aunt Martha’s parenting advice.
* * * *
On Monday morning, I took Elisabeth to Dr. Singleton for a check-up. Peering at the advanced-in-years doctor, Elisabeth asked in an overloud voice, “Yust how old are you?”
Frankly, I had often wondered the same thing because he seemed to be heading into his second or third century. He had more lines on his face than a street map of Tucson. Still, Elisabeth’s bluntness was uncalled for. Just as I started to correct her, Dr. Singleton said, “Old enough, young lady.” He looked her up and down, frowning. “Well, well. This is going to take some work.”
Afterwards, Elisabeth was sent out to the waiting room while the doctor asked to speak with me in his office. “Mrs. Gordon, I’ve never seen anything like this. She’s severely malnourished. Her growth has been stunted. She needs calcium, especially. Her bones, her teeth…well, I just don’t know.”
“But she’ll be all right, won’t she?”
“Let’s just say it’s a good thing you got her out when you did. I’m going to have my nurse draw up a chart that will instruct Martha about how many calories she needs each day. “
“She eats like a horse,” I said, quoting Aunt Martha’s observation of Elisabeth at last night’s dinner.
“Good. Keep her eating. Fatten her up. Lots of bread, cakes and cookies. High calorie food. I’d like to check her again in a month. And she’ll need to see a dentist. Soon. Her teeth are in bad condition.” He snorted. “The Reverend will be making Dr. Klein a rich dentist!”
I failed to see the humor in that remark.
“So, I want to see her again in a month.”
I nodded slowly and started to get up to leave.
The doctor surprised me by saying, “Whoa there, little lady. Not so fast. I understand that you need to have a check-up.”
I looked at him curiously.
“Your husband called me this morning.”
Ah. I was discovering a new side to Robert. In fact, when I came out of the doctor’s examination room, he was waiting, hat in hand, in the doctor’s office.
Robert looked worried. “Is everything all right? Is Louisa all right? I mean, with the sea journey…and…”
“Relax, Reverend. Your wife is fine. Your baby is fine.”
Robert’s face relaxed into a delighted grin. He reached over and squeezed my hand. “Did you hear that, Louisa? Everything is fine.” He was beaming. “So I guess the baby is due around March—”
“January,” the doctor interrupted.
“Excuse me?” Robert leaned forward in his chair. “When did you say this baby was due?”
“Sometime in late January, I would say.”
Robert turned and looked at me curiously. Then he shifted back to the doctor. “Just how far along is Louisa?”
“Four to five months.”
Uh oh. I could see the wheels in Robert’s mind start to spin.
On the way home, Robert faced the road ahead, hands tightly gripping the steering wheel. “Louisa, did you know that you were…with child…before you left for Germany?”
“I didn’t know for sure,” I supplied slowly, hoping to ward off follow-up questions. A feeling of dread intensified.
“But you suspected.”
Oh dear. “I might have wondered. Once or twice.” Or thrice.
Then his face fell dark and set. As he pulled into the driveway, Elisabeth jumped out of the car before Robert cut the engine. As I put one hand on the door handle, Robert turned and said, “Wait a minute, Louisa. Were you ever planning to tell me?”
“Yes. Of course. Soon.”
He pierced me with his angry eyes. “This is my baby, too, Louisa. It’s one thing to risk your own life by returning to Germany—something I was reluctant to let you do—but you also risked my child’s life. You had no right to make a decision like that without me. To not let me know.”
“I wasn’t trying to deceive you, Robert. Please don’t doubt that.”
But he looked at me, and I knew he did. A dark cloud settled between us.
* * * *
Robert had often been irritated with me, quite often, actually, but never angry with me. In fact, I don’t think I had ever seen him truly angry. A man with a great deal of self-control, he usually acted as the peacemaker in any conflict. But finding out I knew I was pregnant before I left for Germany sparked an icy response in him. It was like living with a glacier.
He hardly spoke to me. He hardly looked at me. He slept on the davenport in the parlor. Even Aunt Martha, not known for her sensitive streak, noticed his frosty treatment of me. Nothing I could do seemed to thaw him out. We went on for four more days in a similar manner. It should have been a happy time for us, a wonderful homecoming as it had begun, but instead, we steered clear of each other.
One afternoon, I spilled out the telegrams on my bed that he had sent to me on the trip to Germany. I used to read and re-read his telegrams so often during those weeks. I remembered the joy when a new telegram would arrive. Those telegrams helped me to long for my home and my husband. Those telegrams spurred me home.
Hmmm. I picked up a telegram and turned it over. What if I wrote a letter to him even now? I took a piece of paper and started.
DEAR ROBERT,
I KNOW YOU ARE UPSET WITH ME, BUT I FEEL WE SHOULD TRY AND DISCUSS THIS RATHER THAN IGNORE THE GREAT GULF BETWEEN US. WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO TALK? OR MAYBE TO WRITE TO ME?
LOVE, LOUISA.
I put it on his desk when I knew he was out of the church office.
Later that afternoon, I prepared for a piano lesson with Arthur Hobbs. As Aunt Martha saw me lift the piano lid, she announced, “That Arthur is a hopeless case, I hope you know.”
“No one is a hopeless case, Aunt Martha,” I said with great sincerity. Although privately, I had my doubts about Arthur. He was a music teacher’s greatest challenge. He had absolutely no talent whatsoever, nor any interest in music, but his ambitious mother was convinced he was the world’s next Mozart.
Just last spring I held a piano recital for my pupils. When it came time for Arthur’s turn, he was nowhere to be found. After a frantic search, we found him up in William’s tree house, throwing balls down for Dog to chase.
After a great deal of persuasion and a threat of a spanking by his father, Arthur reluctantly agreed to come down from the tree house and play. He marched up to the piano, right in front of everyone, and just stood there.
“Arthur, where is your music?” I asked with a sinking feeling.
He reached a grimy hand into his overalls’ pocket, pulled out a balled-up page of music, and sat down to play Bach’s Minuet in G. Badly. I offered up a silent apology to Mr. Bach, high up in heaven above, hands clapped over his ears, no doubt. It actually hurt to listen to Arthur, but his music put his mother into rhapsodies of happiness.
What really worried me was that Arthur had two younger brothers. Six-year-old twins.
Today, I went to the piano and was surprised to find a letter waiting for me from Robert. I smiled. A promising sign. Perhaps we were finally getting somewhere.
Louisa, I’m just not ready. Robert
I slumped my shoulders and released an audible sigh.
There was a part of me that wanted to write him back:
Dear Robert, I might have replied, you might be annoyed with me, but I am annoyed with you, for being annoyed with me. Am I not a grown woman? Have I not proven myself to live a life of common sense? Good heavens, I was a Resistance Worker. I did not take any undue risks. And I still would make the same decision, to go to Germany for those few short weeks to bring Elisabeth home. I simply could not miss that opportunity.
But I didn’t write it to him, and we remained stuck at an impasse.
On the fifth morning after our argument, Robert and Aunt Martha were in the kitchen, talking. I went over to the radiator pipe and unscrewed it. Today, I did not feel a single twinge of guilt. “Crick in your neck, Robert?” asked Aunt Martha.
“Oh, it’s that horsehair davenport. If I ever have some spare change, I am getting a new sofa. My mother bought that davenport secondhand when I was in college. I don’t know what she was thinking.”
“She was thinking that there’s no reason to keep a stubborn man sleeping too comfortably on the davenport,” Aunt Martha responded back tartly.
Then silence descended upon the kitchen. I could just see Robert stiffen his back in the Gordon Way. I couldn’t hold back a grin. Good for you, Aunt Martha!
A few days later, before the heat of the day was upon me, I started turning the soil for a fall garden. My garden had expanded to a rather sizeable portion of the front yard. I had expected Aunt Martha to object as Robert built more beds for me and hauled in better soil, but I think she enjoyed the compliments the parsonage was getting.
Our neighbor and friend, Ramon, stopped by with his daughter Esmeralda. “Hello, Louisa! Esmeralda wondered if Elisabeth might like to come to play.”
“Really? Oh, I think she’d love it! Go in and ask! She’s in the kitchen.”
Esmeralda scampered up to the front door and burst right in. I turned back to Ramon and smiled happily.
“You feeling well, Louisa?”
William had appointed himself the Town Crier, broadcasting news of our baby to every citizen of Copper Springs whether they were interested or not. “I am. Very well. Thank you for asking.”
“Robert must be proud.”
I cocked my head. “I hope so.”
Ramon raised an eyebrow, but remained quiet.
“I just…well…” Before I knew what I was saying, I spilled out the story.
Ramon listened patiently, nodding at all of the right places. Scratching his chin, he quietly offered, “If my memory serves me right, the first Mrs. Gordon had a habit of not telling him things.”
I leaned back on my feet. My heart dropped into my stomach. I had never once linked how Robert might have felt about my keeping something from him, after what Ruth had done. The sting of her betrayal lingered. I shook my head in dismay. How could I have missed that? “Thank you, Ramon. You’ve helped me immeasurably.”
Esmeralda and William came out of the house together. “Where’s Elisabeth?” I asked.
Esmeralda shrugged.
“She wouldn’t come out to play,” William volunteered.
I sighed. I should have realized that nothing would be easy for Elisabeth, including making friends.
“Another time, Louisa,” Ramon said reassuringly, as he followed the children home.
I went in to the house, wrote another letter to Robert, this time with a sincere apology, and a promise to not withhold information from him again. Later that afternoon, I found another letter on the piano.
Dear Louisa,
Why don’t you start by telling me your real name
Sincerely, Robert
This time, he added a salutation. Perhaps the glacier was thawing.
I went over to the study, knocked on the door and opened it. He looked at me without expression. “Annika. Annika Schumacher. That’s the name I was born with. When I went to University, I took my mother’s name so I wouldn’t be identified as a Jew. Jews weren’t allowed to attend University.” I turned and opened the door to leave, then turned back again. “But my real name is Louisa Gordon.” And I closed the door quietly and left.
Later that night, as I was reading in bed, I heard a gentle knock on my door. He poked his head in. “I can’t sleep on that lumpy sofa another night.”
I leaned over and pulled back the covers on his side of the bed. Robert was half-smiling, a good sign. Our fight was over.
* * * *
“I don’t vant to go to no d--- school.” Until that improper remark, there had been a resonant peace in the parsonage this morning.
Robert nearly dropped the orange juice pitcher he was holding, Aunt Martha spun around on her heels with jaw wide open, and I, accustomed to Elisabeth’s colorful language, darted my eyes nervously between them. Only William remained unperturbed, reading the comic strips in the newspaper. “Elisabeth! Stop using that word” I scolded.
“Vhat vord?” she asked innocently, eyes wide open.
Aunt Martha threw the spatula in the kitchen sink and went outside to hang laundry, slamming the door behind her.
I frowned at Elizabeth and hurried behind Aunt Martha. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” replied Aunt Martha, pressing her lips together in that way I loathed. “Where did she learn those awful words anyway?” She glared at me accusingly, as if I had taught her them myself.
“From the sailors on the ship. She was so eager to learn English that she picked up every word she could remember from them.”
Disapproval radiated in waves from Aunt Martha. “Can’t you do something about her English?”
“Her English?” Was she serious? What about Elisabeth’s temper? Or her pain? Or the fact that she didn’t trust anyone? Or that she never laughed? Or cried? I walked closer to Aunt Martha and picked up a clothespin that she had dropped on the ground. “There are so many things about Elisabeth we need to do something about. It’s overwhelming. She needs time, Aunt Martha. Time to understand what a family is like.”
She put the clothespins down and looked straight at me. “And how do you expect her to learn when you kowtow to her every demand?!”
Kowtow? What did that mean? I refused to give her the satisfaction of asking. Unfortunately, she caught the puzzled look on my face.
“I meant that you spoil her.”
“Well, right now she needs some spoiling.”
With that, Aunt Martha rolled her eyes to heaven.
“I’m trying to develop a relationship with her. I’m not ignoring her behavior. It upsets me, too.”
She glared at me. “I’ll tell you what else upsets me. Her voice.”
“I know.” It was true. Elisabeth’s German accent coloring her broken English was very guttural and throaty. “German can be a harsh sounding language.”
“Do you mean to tell me that entire country talks like they’re clearing phlegm from the back of their throat?”
I had to look down to keep from grinning. “Well…I guess that’s one way of describing it.”
“Thank goodness you don’t sound that way.”
Thank goodness, indeed! I’m not sure I could have coped with one more category of displeasure from Aunt Martha.
Later that morning, I took fresh coffee in a thermos over to Robert’s office. Wincing, I filled his coffee cup and said, “I’m sorry about breakfast.”
He only smiled. “Well, Elisabeth has a way of jumpstarting the day.” He took a sip of coffee. “Can you stay for a few minutes? I have some gaps about Dietrich I hope you can fill.”
I poured a cup of coffee and sat down across from him.
He had a pen and notepad in front of him. “Dietrich and I became acquainted in 1931 while he spent the year at Union Theological Seminary. What happened when he returned to Germany?”
I nodded. “He taught in Berlin until he was forbidden to teach in 1936. After that, he directed an underground seminary for the Confessing Church—a secret community of German pastors who opposed Hitler. He had a profound influence on others. He wrote quite a bit during that period, too. But when the seminary was discovered, the students were immediately inducted into the army.”
He leaned forward in his chair, interested. “So is that why he ended up back at Union Theological Seminary?”
“Yes. The invitation came just at the right moment. Many were encouraging Dietrich to leave Germany. He was being heavily censored. He was forbidden to preach or teach or publish. So he went to New York.” I tried to think of the dates. “I think that was 1939.”
He scribbled down a few lines on his notepad.
“No sooner had he arrived when he decided to return to Germany, no matter what came of it. He took the last ship to sail for Germany before the war.” I stopped for a moment, swirling the coffee in my cup. “He felt that unless he was right alongside the German people during the war, he would have no right to lead them after the war.” It made me sad to think of Dietrich during this time. If only he had stayed in the United States. If only he hadn’t returned to Germany.
“I saw him right before he left,” Robert said, interrupting my muse. He poured a second cup of coffee, raising the thermos to see if I wanted a refill. I shook my head.
Curious, I asked, “What were you doing in New York?”
“We were…” he hesitated. “The timing…it was just a coincidence that brought us…me…to New York.”
Us? Could he have meant Ruth? Robert never spoke of her. Could that mean Dietrich had once met Ruth? I cocked my head to listen carefully.
He swirled in his chair a little so he wasn’t facing me. “I had a call to serve as a minister to a church in New York City, so I agreed to go and deliver a sermon.” He glanced sideways at me, as if he wasn’t sure if he wanted to continue. “Dietrich happened to have been in church that day, so we went out to lunch afterwards. That was when he asked me if I would sponsor someone from Germany, if he ever needed my help.”
I remained silent, profoundly touched at how God had been weaving our lives together, years before we met.
He cleared his throat. “So I was offered the pulpit.”
I nodded.
“But…I turned it down.” With that, Robert ran out of steam. He didn’t need to say anything more.
I could guess how this story played out. Ruth wanted Robert to live in New York. She wanted a more exciting life than the one they had in humble Copper Springs. I could imagine how angry she must have been with him when he turned down that opportunity. Not much later, I realized as I started to add up the years, William was born. And soon after, she began a relationship with Friedrich Mueller.
“Maybe I’d better go see if Elisabeth and William are annoying Aunt Martha.” I could see it was difficult for Robert to remember back to those years, for his own reasons, and recalling memories of Dietrich during that deteriorating situation in Germany churned me up inside. I picked up the empty thermos and kissed him on the cheek. “Perhaps we can only manage brief discussions about Dietrich.”
He gave a short nod of agreement but reached out to squeeze my hand.
After lunch, I told Elisabeth to hurry and brush her teeth so we could go.
“Vhere go ve?” She looked up at me from her bed where she was reading.
“Where are we going?” I corrected. “That’s how you should ask that question. Not ‘where go we?’ You can’t translate an English sentence from German construction.”
She scowled, but she paid attention. Elisabeth was trying very hard to learn English; she had already made huge strides. On the ship, she mixed German and English in sentences when she didn’t know the English words. Now, even if she didn’t get the right word, she rarely resorted to German anymore. I couldn’t help but admire her determination.
“So vhere are ve going?” she asked.
“Over to Rosita’s. She has some hand-me-downs from Esmeralda to give you for school.”
“Vhat is dat?”
“Hand-me-downs?” With delight, I realized it was the first American colloquialism that I’d ever used. Frankly, the first one I understood. “Dresses that Esmeralda has outgrown.” Even though Esmeralda was younger than Elisabeth, she was much taller and filled out, more like her mother’s generously sized figure.
I sat on a bed while Rosita cleaned out Esmeralda’s closet, tossing outgrown clothes into a large pile on the floor. Esmeralda was downstairs trying to teach Elisabeth and William how to play “Go Fish” with a deck of cards.
“So how is it going, Louisa?” asked Rosita.
“Harder than I thought it would be,” I answered honestly.
“She looks like a tough cookie.”
“She is. Inside and out. I hope her looks will soften when she starts to put some weight on. And when her hair grows. We’ve already been to the doctor. He’s put her on a diet to gain weight.”
“I didn’t know there was such a thing!” Rosita laughed, patting her round bottom.
Just then, the girls came upstairs. Elisabeth’s eyes grew as round as saucers as she saw the pile of clothes on the floor. She looked up at the closet, which was still overflowing with clothes. “Dat is a sin!” she announced, pointing at the pile of clothes.
The very Catholic Rosita gasped. “What is a sin?” Quickly, she pulled out her Rosary beads from her skirt pocket.
“To make such vaste. Is a sin!”
“Elisabeth!” I scolded, but she turned and ran down the stairs and back home. I looked at Rosita. “I’m so sorry. She doesn’t know…she’s been in such a terrible environment…please don’t take that comment seriously. She doesn’t understand how she can hurt people.”
The pained look on Rosita’s face crumpled into the big toothy grin I loved so well. “Louisa, welcome to parenthood.”
We gathered up the clothes into a few bags, and William helped me carry them home.
“Did Elisabeth say something bad?” he asked, looking up at me.
I stopped to look directly at him. “Not bad. Just not…good.”
“I think she does that a lot.”
I smiled. “I think you’re right.”
“But I found something good.”
“Really? What?”
“Aunt Martha hasn’t said anything mean about Dog since Elisabeth came to stay with us.”
It was true. Aunt Martha had been so busy complaining about Elisabeth that she had hardly noticed Dog’s latest indiscretions. Just last night, he had rummaged through the garbage can, but all that Aunt Martha said was, “You’d think no one ever fed that creature.”
Thinking about Dog filled me with sadness. It was starting to look as if we might have to find a new home for him. Elisabeth was terrified whenever he came near her, so we kept him outside, on the line. When I mentioned my worry to Robert, he looked stricken. He said he would keep Dog with him in the church study during the day. But that wasn’t fair to Dog. He was meant to be a boy’s dog, not a minister’s footstool.
I didn’t know what to do about this situation; Elisabeth’s fears were very real. She had already had a few bad dreams about Dog, waking up in a cold sweat, shouting “Das hund!” The dog!
I looked down at William’s sandy-blond head, holding two big bags of clothes in his little arms. He had a way of catching me in the heart. “William, do you know you’re my boy?”
He nodded up at me solemnly. “And Elisabeth is your girl.”
I gulped. I really didn’t feel much love for Elisabeth, only a sense of familial obligation, and a steadily growing annoyance. But love? Not yet, but I was working on it. To William, I nodded enthusiastically.
When we got home, I took the clothes and a box of straight pins into Elisabeth’s room. “I’d like to have you try these on so I can tailor them to you. School starts in just a few weeks, so I’ll need to get busy adjusting them for you.”
She acted disinterested but got up to see the clothes. She pulled off her shirt and pants to try on one dress. I forced my eyes away from her body. It was nearly skeletal. I could count her ribs, and her scapula looked more like chicken wings than shoulder blades. It melted my heart toward her.
As I pinned up the hem on one dress, I said, “This reminds me of when I first arrived in Copper Springs. Rosita gave me clothes to wear. I didn’t have very many, and the ones I brought with me from Germany were threadbare.”
“Dey are rich,” she announced.
“No. They’re not rich. They’re like we are.”
“Den vhy she give me da clothes?”
“Rosita is extremely generous. Kind-hearted, too. She has provided a great help to you, Elisabeth. Did you know we haven’t even been able to buy new shoes in America?”
“Vhy not?”
“There was a ban on shoe making and all kinds of other things so every resource could go toward fighting the war. You wouldn’t have these shoes to wear if it weren’t for Esmeralda.”
She looked down at the secondhand shoes on her small feet.
I glanced up at her. “Don’t you think you should apologize for telling her she sinned by having so many clothes?”
“No. She did sin. People in da vorld need da clothes, and she has too many.”
“Elisabeth, you’re not in the camp any more. It’s over.”
“Sprichst du nicht davon!” she spat at me. Speak not of it! She clapped her hands on her ears and scowled darkly at me.
O Lord, give me patience! I prayed silently. I finished adjusting the rest of the clothes and then left her alone.
At dinner that evening, William said, “Pass that d--- spinach, please.”
Aunt Martha nearly suffered a heart attack. Robert froze his fork in mid-air. He glanced at me and raised an eyebrow. Then he said, “William, please don’t use that word.”
“What word?” William asked.
I glared at Elisabeth, who had an angelic expression on her face. When she felt my eyes on her, she quickly looked down at her plate and put her hand over her mouth to hide a grin.
Robert cast a glance at Aunt Martha. “We’ll discuss it later.”
“Okay.” William returned to eating then remembered something in his pocket. He pulled out the log from his latest spywork and showed me his notes. “Is this the kind of thing you did when you worked with the Resistance?” he asked me.
“Vhat?” interrupted Elisabeth.
“Elisabeth, didn’t you know Louisa was part of the Resistance Movement?” asked Robert.
“No,” she said, cocking her head as she looked at me. “So you did do someting to fight the var. Not yust sit here in America and read da newspaper stories?”
I didn’t think this day could get any harder with Elisabeth, but it just had. I couldn’t stand being at the same table with her another moment. I pushed my plate away. “Please excuse me,” I said. “I need some fresh air.” I went outside on the front porch, leaned against the railing, and watched the evening sky, fighting back tears.
Robert came outside. He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close, tucking my head under his chin. “You can’t let her get to you, Louisa. She wants to upset you.”
“I know,” I said. “But I think I might have made a mistake bringing her here. I think she’s upsetting the entire family.”
“Actually, I kind of get a kick out of her.”
I leaned my head back to search his eyes. “Really? You don’t mind her?”
“No. There’s something rather endearing about her. And I can’t help but admire her. Imagine surviving a camp like that. That takes someone with an astonishing amount of inner strength.”
He was absolutely right about that. “I’m glad you can see something good in her. Aunt Martha says she’s as mean as a snake.”
“Well, she isn’t rude to me like she is to you. You’re the lucky one,” he added.
I frowned at him.
“Look at it this way, Louisa. She knows you’re committed to her. She knows you’re her family. You went all the way to Germany to prove that to her. She feels safe with you. She’s counting on you. Ironically, that’s why she treats you badly.”
“Do you know what bothers me the most? She acts as though she’s the only one who has suffered in that war. And to be fair, she has suffered more. I can’t deny that.”
“I think she wants us all to feel some of her pain.”
“I worry that she has been hobbled, that she’ll never be whole again. Sometimes I think there’s a part of her that’s missing now. She has no understanding of anything or anyone except how it affects her.”
“I don’t think it’s missing. I think it’s frozen.” He watched the changing sky for a few moments. “Have you ever told Elisabeth that you tried to find her and her mother?”
“No. Any time I bring up it up, she puts her hands on her ears and tells me she doesn’t want to hear it.”
“I wonder if that could be why she seems so angry with you. She thinks you could have saved them if you had tried.”
“But I did try.”
“I know that.” He brushed some wisps of hair off of my forehead. “Did you ever meet that boy she talks about so much?”
“Danny? No. I wish I had. I didn’t realize how important he was to her.”
“No kidding. Sounds as if he gave her the determination to survive the camp.”
“I’ve had the same thought. All I know about him was what—” I stopped abruptly. I had never mentioned Karl’s name to Robert and had no plans to. “The case worker said they were still trying to locate a relative of Danny.”
“Hope they find one soon. Everybody needs family.” Robert turned to go inside. “You know, Louisa, you treat Elisabeth as if she’s made of spun sugar. I think she’s a lot tougher than you’re giving her credit.”
I stayed outside a little longer, watching the sunset. Lord, take over, I prayed. Remove this tension and frustration. Fill me with your peace and power. As the sun slipped behind the mountain, the Lord did not disappoint me.
* * * *
The next day, after receiving a few more blunt remarks from Elisabeth that punctuated breakfast, Aunt Martha looked out the kitchen window at Elisabeth and William as they hung laundry outside on the clothes line. “She’s da vorst,” said Aunt Martha.
I burst out laughing. “You’re right! She is da vorst.” Laughter was a tremendous gift. How ironic that Aunt Martha, a woman of little humor, reminded me of that.
All day, I mulled over Robert’s remark that I treated Elisabeth like spun sugar. I decided that I was going about this the wrong way. Trying to love Elisabeth through unbending kindness wasn’t working. In fact, it only made her sharp tongue a little keener. Loving Elisabeth meant giving her clear limits.
At breakfast, she gave me a chance to try my new parenting method.
“Who made dis pancake?” Elisabeth demanded.
“I did,” I shot back. “Don’t you like it?”
“It’s da vorst,” Elisabeth said vigorously. “Yust like eating a tire.”
I leveled my eyes on Elisabeth’s and stared straight at her. “Don’t eat it, then.”
Robert and Aunt Martha watched the exchange between us in astonishment.
“I did not say I vould not eat it. I only said it vas da vorst pancake ever.” Nonchalantly, she resumed eating. “Maybe da vorst pancake in da vorld.”
Afterwards, as Aunt Martha washed dishes, she turned to me and asked, “Weren’t you a little hard on her?”
“I think the time has come,” I answered, putting the glass milk container back in the refrigerator.
“Hmm.” She turned back to the sink. “And to think I thought you couldn’t mash a mango.”
“I would have no trouble mashing a mango, Aunt Martha. Any mango,” I replied with great confidence. I would have to remember to look up “mango” in the dictionary later.
After that morning, I noticed a slow, glacially slow, improvement in Elisabeth’s behavior. I felt quite encouraged, thinking we were actually making some progress. That feeling of well-being lasted just a few days, evaporating when I heard Aunt Martha shriek hysterically. I ran upstairs. Aunt Martha was in Elisabeth’s room, pointing at the bed as if a dead body might be stuffed underneath. “Look! Look what’s there!”
Gingerly, I crouched down and reached under the bed, pulling out a pillow case full of rotting food. “Oh no.” My heart sank. Elisabeth had hoarded food on the ship, too, but I thought it was just an isolated situation because she was in such a temporary environment.
“That girl is the limit! She is the limit! Such waste! No wonder Dog is always trying to get in here.”
Out of the pillow case I pulled bruised apples, shriveled oranges turned green with fuzz, moldy bread.
“When has she been getting this food?” asked Aunt Martha.
I cringed. “I thought I’ve heard someone downstairs in the night.”
“What would make her behave so peculiarly?”
“Not so peculiar when you remember that she spent the last year starving.”
I looked under the bed again and found another filled pillow case. Aunt Martha took the pillow cases and emptied them into the garbage, with a flourish.
I went into my bedroom and took out newspapers that I had saved from my trip to Germany. They had pictures of the camps, taken by American news reporters as they followed Allied soldiers into the camps. I also had a transcript from Edward R. Murrow as he went through Buchenwald just after it was liberated.
“Aunt Martha, this is very upsetting, but please read this over. Buchenwald was where Dietrich Bonhoeffer had been held for a while. And look at these pictures I took of Dachau with William’s camera. That’s the camp where Elisabeth was imprisoned.”
She frowned at me but sat down at the kitchen table and read the following:
Edward R. Murrow's Report From Buchenwald
Legendary CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow described the scene at Buchenwald when he entered the camp after liberation:
There surged around me an evil-smelling stink, men and boys reached out to touch me. They were in rags and the remnants of uniforms. Death already had marked many of them, but they were smiling with their eyes. I looked out over the mass of men to the green fields beyond, where well-fed Germans were ploughing...
I asked to see one of the barracks. It happened to be occupied by Czechoslovaks. When I entered, men crowded around, tried to lift me to their shoulders. They were too weak. Many of them could not get out of bed. I was told that this building had once stabled 80 horses. There were 1200 men in it, five to a bunk. The stink was beyond all description.
They called the doctor. We inspected his records. There were only names in the little black book - nothing more - nothing about who had been where, what he had done or hoped. Behind the names of those who had died, there was a cross. I counted them. They totaled 242 - 242 out of 1200, in one month.
As we walked out into the courtyard, a man fell dead. Two others, they must have been over 60, were crawling toward the latrine. I saw it, but will not describe it.
In another part of the camp they showed me the children, hundreds of them. Some were only 6 years old. One rolled up his sleeves, showed me his number. It was tattooed on his arm. B-6030, it was. The others showed me their numbers. They will carry them till they die. An elderly man standing beside me said: "The children were enemies of the state!" I could see their ribs through their thin shirts...
We went to the hospital. It was full. The doctor told me that 200 had died the day before. I asked the cause of death. He shrugged and said: "tuberculosis, starvation, fatigue and there are many who have no desire to live. It is very difficult." He pulled back the blanket from a man's feet to show me how swollen they were. The man was dead. Most of the patients could not move.
I asked to see the kitchen. It was clean. The German in charge...showed me the daily ration. One piece of brown bread about as thick as your thumb, on top of it a piece of margarine as big as three sticks of chewing gum. That, and a little stew, was what they received every 24 hours. He had a chart on the wall. Very complicated it was. There were little red tabs scattered through it. He said that was to indicate each 10 men who died. He had to account for the rations and he added: "We're very efficient here."
We proceeded to the small courtyard. The wall adjoined what had been a stable or garage. We entered. It was floored with concrete. There were two rows of bodies stacked up like cordwood. They were thin and very white. Some of the bodies were terribly bruised; though there seemed to be little flesh to bruise. Some had been shot through the head, but they bled but little.
I arrived at the conclusion that all that was mortal of more than 500 men and boys lay there in two neat piles. There was a German trailer, which must have contained another 50, but it wasn't possible to count them. The clothing was piled in a heap against the wall. It appeared that most of the men and boys had died of starvation; they had not been executed.
But the manner of death seemed unimportant. Murder had been done at Buchenwald. God alone knows how many men and boys have died there during the last 12 years. Thursday, I was told that there were more than 20,000 in the camp. There had been as many as 60,000. Where are they now?
I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it, I have no words.
If I have offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I'm not in the least sorry...
Edward R. Murrow - April 16, 1945.
Aunt Martha finished reading and looked at me with a grave face. “I…knew it was bad…but…I had no idea.”
“I know. Not many people knew about these camps. And not many people want to know about them.” Including Aunt Martha. She had heard news reports just like I did, but she just hadn’t given it much thought. Until now.
“Have you shown this to Robert?”
“Robert saw all of this when I returned. I should have shown you when I first arrived. It’s just…terribly hard to stomach. I don’t even want Elisabeth to know that I took those pictures.” I gathered the papers and turned to go upstairs. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t hide food in her room anymore.”
Aunt Martha stood up and went over to the kitchen window, gazing outside at Dog, tied up to the tree, looking woeful as Elisabeth and William played hopscotch on the driveway. Then she turned back to me and said crisply, “Just make sure she doesn’t hide food that needs to be refrigerated.”
I glanced at her, astonished. For once, she sensed the spirit behind the rules. “I’ll do that, Aunt Martha.”
I had found something else under Elisabeth’s bed. It was one of Esmeralda’s skirts, but not one that Rosita had given to us. One that Elisabeth had taken without permission. When Elisabeth came back inside, I was waiting for her upstairs. “We have to have a talk.” I held up the skirt.
Her eyes darted to the skirt. “No talk. I’m tired. My stomach hurts,” she said, flopping on her bed.
“Elisabeth, you took something that didn’t belong to you.”
“So vhat? Dey are rich.”
“They’re not rich. They’re our friends. And it doesn’t matter whether they’re rich or whether they’re our friends. You stole something.”
She sat up slowly on the bed and fixed her eyes with a level stare. “I not steal noting. I organize tings.”
“What are you talking about?’
“I vas da organizer in dat camp.”
I sat down on the bed next to her. “What do you mean by organizer?”
“I found tings for people.”
Oh! She was the scrounger. That shouldn’t have surprised me. She was a clever and observant girl. Shrewd, too.
“I organized da lunch from da guards. I could have been shot.”
“You were hungry.”
“So vas dat stealing?”
I looked at her large, inquisitive brown eyes. “Elisabeth, you needed food. There’s a difference between wanting something and needing it.”
She pointed to the skirt in my hands. “I need dat.”
“No. You want that skirt. You have to take the skirt back to Esmeralda and apologize to her. And tell her that you won’t take anything from her again.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Vhy did you come and get me?”
I clapped my eyes on hers. “Don’t you remember? I told you I wanted you to know you are not alone.”
Elisabeth glared at me, but she got off the bed and we went over to the Gonsalvez’ to confess the day’s crime.