The next morning Liesl shivered in the light drizzle as she dodged the spray from passing cars and hurried to the end of Leipzigerstrasse. The rain had pounded the city during the night, filling the streets with angry gray puddles. She pulled the hood of her jacket farther over her face, but the walk from home had already soaked her.
And even when she reached the end of the strasse, she couldn’t stop shaking — maybe not just from getting soaked. She felt in her pocket for her notebook, hoped it hadn’t gotten as wet as her clothes.
A group of about thirty teens huddled under sheets of plastic and a few umbrellas just around the corner from the western side of the wall. Here, in the shadow of the wall, a person could spray paint slogans (and many had) or even shout at the guard towers. But what difference did it make? Now, if they could spray paint the other side, that would be something. But of course the machine guns and mines and barbed wire lay just over there, daring anyone to try to escape.
“Liesl, isn’t it?” Katja, the girl who had protected her at the meeting, met her with a smile. “Nice to see you again, but — ”
“Jürgen said you decided to meet here at nine. I thought I’d just stop by, see what happens.”
Katja took Liesl’s sleeve and turned her away from the group.
“Listen, are you sure you want to be here? I mean, did Jürgen tell you about our plan for today?”
“Not really, but I can guess. Some kind of protest, right? A few signs? I’ll take some notes for my paper. The one I’m writing for history class.”
Katja looked around the group, opened her mouth, and then closed it. As if making up her mind, she said, “Right. Well actually, Liesl, it’s going to be a little more than that. So if I were you, I think I would turn right around and — ”
“Hey, look who’s here!” Jürgen plowed into the group like a movie star schmoozing for the press, ready to grant autographs to an adoring public. “Is everybody ready for this?”
The group murmured and parted to either side, leaving Liesl to face their leader.
“I’ve called the press,” someone offered. “Reporters should be here any minute, if they don’t mind the rain.”
“Perfect.” Jürgen nodded. “And the ropes?”
“In my bag.”
Wait a minute. Ropes? Liesl wondered, as one of the group dropped a sack at Jürgen’s feet. Another couple of teens arrived with protest signs shouting in big letters: Gorby: Tear Down That Wall! and The Wall Is History! And a dozen others Liesl couldn’t read, stacked in a pile.
“But — why in English and not in German?” Liesl wondered out loud.
“Oh, come on.” Jürgen grinned. “If we had just German signs, none of the Americans watching their TV news would understand what’s going on, here. Verstehen Sie?”
Yes, she understood, and she began to see that maybe this was more than she’d bargained for. Too late. A couple of shopkeepers glanced out at them through their windows, but nobody smiled. Probably they’d seen this kind of thing before. Jürgen unzipped the duffel bag, pulled out the end of a rope, and looked straight at Liesl.
“You wanted to do something to make a difference?” he asked her.
“Leave her alone, Jürgen.” Katja stepped up to the rescue once more. “She doesn’t have any idea what’s going on.”
“Makes no difference to me.” Jürgen shrugged. “I just thought she wanted to be involved.”
“Not like this, Jürgen.”
Jürgen sighed and picked up a sign.
“We don’t have time for this. Here.” Jürgen shoved one of the signs into Liesl’s hands. “Stay away from the wall and don’t get hurt. You can manage that, can’t you?”
Just then Liesl felt she could have managed to break one of the Amerikanisch protest signs over the older boy’s head. Instead she nodded and joined the others holding signs. But nothing seemed real — not the yells of the protesters, not the shouts of the small group throwing ropes weighted at one end so they’d fly over the wall. What were they thinking? Surely they’d get the attention of the East German border guards.
And they did, just as the news photographers arrived in three cars and started snapping photos of everything that happened. The East German Vopo guards fired warning shots from their towers. Jürgen and his friends tossed ropes into no-man’sland. A curious crowd gathered, watching from a safe distance. Kids held protest signs — even the petrified thirteen-year-old wondering what to do with hers. Liesl tried to turn away from a photographer but couldn’t tell whether he’d caught her. Maybe he had.
She could tell that the photographers snapped plenty of shots of West German police headed straight for Jürgen, Katja, and three others holding ropes.
“Join us and pull down the wall!” Jürgen yelled louder than anyone, as if he had a built-in megaphone. “It must come down now! Our friends in East Berlin must be heard!”
A television news crew arrived in a Volkswagen van, wheels screeching to a stop. Liesl took the chance to blend into the watching crowd, just in front of a florist’s shop. Most of the other protestors had also dropped their signs and sprinted down the street to safety, but the police didn’t seem interested in following. Liesl could only watch in horror as officers led Katja and Jürgen and a couple of others to waiting cars. She tried to look away when Jürgen made eye contact with her and winked, just as an officer shoved him into the car. What was she still doing there? And why had she really come?
“I’m so sorry, Lord,” she whispered. No one heard her above the two-tone wail of sirens. No one but God.
“Crazy kids,” said an old man in the crowd. He must not have seen her join the onlookers. “They’re on the wrong side of the wall. What do they think they’re going to prove over here?”
Yes, what? Liesl wondered how she would answer that question in her paper. Why had she let Jürgen sweet-talk her into showing up for this circus? Had they really done anything about the wall? As the flashing lights of the police cars disappeared down Leipzigerstrasse, she pressed her back against the brick wall of the flower shop, let herself slip to the sidewalk, and felt the tears of relief and frustration run down her cheeks.
Back home that night she discovered that the rain had soaked through her notebook and smeared her notes. Maybe it was just as well. She realized she had to ask herself, how did she want to focus this paper, really?
Was it about the protest, about kids throwing ropes over the wall in a strange demonstration and getting themselves arrested? She had plenty to write about that. Maybe the protest could add something to her paper, if she could sort out what had happened.
But maybe it should be about the beginning of this stupid Cold War between the East and the West, between the Russians and the Americans, between East Germany and West Germany, East Berlin and West Berlin. Or maybe she should center her report on the American grandfather she had never known — the one who had helped drop candy to the hungry kids of Berlin but had died in a fiery plane crash. At least, that’s what Oma Brigitte had always believed — the man at the American embassy must have the wrong information.
Didn’t he?
Or maybe she should write about the brave pastor, her grandmother’s first husband, Ulrich Becker, and the mysterious communion cup engraved with his name. He had died during World War 2 fighting his own walls. Surely she could get more information about him from Onkel Erich and her grandmother.
After thinking it over, she had no answers, only more and more questions. But by this time she knew one thing: it all fit together, somehow. And she also knew — I could have been taken away today, too.
And maybe she should have been. She couldn’t shake the guilty feeling. It had followed her all day as she’d gone through the motions of cleaning windows for her mother, sweeping the kitchen floor, finishing all the Cinderella chores she had to do each Saturday.
Later that evening after dinner, her mother came to check on her as she scrubbed the kitchen sink. Liesl had hoped that somehow she could scrub away this guilty feeling. But the harder she scrubbed, the worse she felt.
“Ouch!” She scraped her knuckles against the faucet and pulled her hand back in pain.
“Careful.” Her mother looked at her with concern.
“I’m okay,” Liesl said, keeping her face brave, debating once again whether she should say something to her mother about the American who might not have died. How could she keep it to herself? “Er, Mutti? There’s something I want to tell you.”
“Hmm?”
“It’s about — ” But no. Her mother had always refused to talk about him. And Liesl couldn’t bring him up without knowing for sure. Because if the man at the embassy had it wrong — “I mean, I’m almost done with the sink.”
A pause, as Sabine tried to figure out what she’d just missed.
“That’s what you wanted to tell me?”
Liesl nodded. Now it was.
“I see,” her mother told her. “Well, thank you.”
In the den the TV blared, and it was a good thing no one but Liesl was there to watch.
“A gang of young protesters were arrested near the wall earlier today,” the announcer told them, as if such a thing happened every day. “Four were detained briefly on charges of disorderly conduct and trespassing on government property, while at least twenty others fled after police arrived on the scene. Authorities say the young people are part of a growing sympathy movement with protestors on the other side of the wall, and that — ”
Liesl’s face flamed red as she prayed the cameras hadn’t caught her, too. She didn’t want to listen anymore. She finished her chores and quietly found her way to bed. She pulled the covers over her head and plugged her ears — but it didn’t help. She even listened for God but could only hear a TV commercial in her mind for a detergent that left dishes sparkling clean. An hour passed, then another, and she lost track of time. But even after the house got quiet, the echoes from that morning would not let her sleep. They just played over and over in her head — the warning shots, the Vopos, the reporters, the sirens.
“I didn’t belong there.” She began to pray, but she didn’t have much of an excuse to offer God. She thought back to the photographers snapping shots of her and the others holding their silly signs. And she couldn’t fight off her worry. “What if someone sees me in the paper? What will Mutti and Papa say?” If they had caught her on film, well then, what would happen if the photos were actually printed in Die Welt or the Berliner Morgenpost? The thought made her almost ill, and she lay for another hour worrying whether she’d managed to avoid the photographers’ lenses.
Well, it’s too late for that now, she finally told herself, but it didn’t make her feel any better.
It was about midnight when she snapped on her reading light and pulled Uhr-Oma Poldi’s Bible from the shelf above her pillow. She realized with a start that she hadn’t even opened it since bringing it home from Onkel Erich’s.
“I’m sorry for not keeping in touch, God,” she whispered as she leafed carefully through the well-worn pages. She read some of her favorite psalms, then skipped over to the words of Jesus recorded by his friend John. And she began to hear God once more, at first in a whisper, then louder as she read the record of Jesus’ life — Jesus forgiving the woman everyone wanted to stone to death, Jesus teaching in the temple, Jesus arguing with the religious people. And the one line she found herself reading over and over and over:
“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Free? She asked herself. Who’s free, around here? In a weird sort of way, only Onkel Erich, who had chosen to live behind barbed wire. And Liesl? Living in a nice apartment, in the “free” half of the city?
Was she free?
As if God heard her question, the answer came right back to her as she read another verse, one underlined in her great-grandmother’s wavy pencil:
“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
If this had been one of her great-grandmother’s favorite verses, Liesl could understand why. It made a whole lot more sense to her than trying to scrub her way to feeling better, or forgiven, or whatever she was missing. And now she knew she was missing something. She took a deep breath and kept reading.
“What’s this?” Several pages fluttered out, like pressed autumn leaves, and settled on her lap. At first she thought the Bible had actually started to come apart. Then she realized they were letters, written on thin onionskin airmail letter forms, the kind that folded up into their own envelope. And there were two — no, three.
I wonder if I should be reading these? They looked — private, somehow — personal letters. But she couldn’t just throw them away without even looking at them. Her great-grandmother had saved them for a reason. She unfolded one and held it up to the light.
The first was dated 1948 and addressed to Mrs. Brigitte DeWitt in the precise, feminine script of the American nurse who signed the note. Liesl caught her breath as she read: “Your husband is struggling bravely, even after losing both legs.”
What?
“Though he remains in critical condition, you should know that he asks for you often. We hope that you can leave Germany soon to join your husband.”
Liesl wrestled to put the words into place, strained to make sense of them. For one thing, the letter was dated after her grandfather supposedly died in a plane crash. And for another thing, how did they end up in Uhr-Oma Poldi’s Bible?
No. This was the kind of thing that happened in the movies, not in real life. She picked up the second letter, obviously scrawled a couple of months later by a man with not-so-neat penmanship.
“Dearest Brigitte, I am not the man you married anymore, and I understand why you might have second thoughts about us. But won’t you please write back?”
Liesl read it through to the signature at the end (“Your Fred”) but still couldn’t believe she was holding letters her Oma Brigitte should have seen many years ago — but clearly never had. How could this have happened? Not even the third letter, dated two months later, explained everything.
“Dear Brigitte,” Liesl’s breath caught as she read her American grandfather’s message, “I received the note from your mother-in-law, and I want you to know that I will not contest the annulment.”
Annulment? Liesl wasn’t completely sure of the English word, but it became clear when she read the next sentence:
“I understand your decision to end our marriage, though I never thought it was a mistake. I guess you deserve better than taking care of a crippled American for the rest of your life. I wish you had written me yourself, but I also wish you all the best in your new life with your new husband-to-be. Love always, Fred.”
Liesl read each of the letters again and again, still trying to put the story together. If they meant what she thought they meant, her great-grandmother had pulled off a horrible lie. Or maybe Oma Brigitte had known all along? Either way, she had to tell someone, right now. Was this part of the truth that was supposed to set her free?
Letters in hand, she slipped off her bed and padded down the hall toward her parents’ room.
Never mind that her clock said 2 A.M.