Walls

by L. M. Elliott

  “By the time they make it to Marienfelde—if they manage to bluff their way through all the checkpoints—they’re wrecks.” She sighed sympathetically. “To think of all that those peasants have endured in the last twenty years—Hitler, the SS, the Russians . . .” She trailed off. “Anyway, your mom kindly offered to help when she got the call. She’ll be home by dinner.”

  Handing Joyce the key, Mrs. Jones said, “She wants you to pop a meatloaf she’s left in the refrigerator into the oven at 1730 hours.” Then she knelt beside Linda, who backed herself into Drew. “Sweetie, your mom asked me to tell you that she can’t wait to hear all about your day. She left this note for you.” With a reassuring smile, Mrs. Jones gently took Linda’s hand and closed it around an envelope.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Jones,” Joyce said. “This has been awfully kind of you. Come on, troops.”

  “Please stay, dear,” said Mrs. Jones. “You haven’t had a brownie yet.”

  “Thank you. So much. But we really should finish unpacking.”

  Inwardly, Drew cringed. Mrs. Jones would know that was a fib. Army families pitched camp immediately. She’d know they’d been settled in for days and days at this point.

  A twinge of hurt passed over Mrs. Jones’s face, but she nodded. “The door is always open for you, my dears.”

  “Yeah,” Bob echoed as Joyce passed him, his tone totally different from his mom’s.

  Shoving the key into the lock, Joyce jiggled it with some agitation.

  “Odd about Mom, don’t you think?” Drew whispered to Joyce as Linda stood back on the landing, reading her note. “I know Mom volunteers for everything, but it’s the first day of school.”

  “Didn’t you notice Sergeant Jones cornering her at the party? I overheard him say Marienfelde was being infiltrated by Stasi secret police posing as refugees.”

  “What’s that got to do with Mom?”

  “The U.S. sets up the refugees with housing and jobs in West Germany. Being rubber-stamped as okay by American authorities gives a Russian spy perfect cover in NATO territory.” She leaned over, really working the lock. “The camp has to interview the refugees carefully, to corroborate their identities and reasons for fleeing. Someone who’s truly fluent in German, like Mom, will catch inconsistencies in their stories.”

  Finally, the door popped open. “Poetic, isn’t it?” Joyce continued. “Hard to believe, given that Bob is such a dope, that his dad is in intelligence.”

  “CIA?”

  “I bet so.” Joyce threw the key onto the table before retreating to the bedroom she shared with her little sister. “Oh, for pity’s sake, Linda!” she shouted from within. “Can you puh-lease pick up all these stuffed animals? I can’t get to my records.”

  Linda burst into tears.

  Drew was stunned—Joyce hardly ever lost her temper, especially with their little sister. Hugging Linda, he said, “She didn’t mean it, sis.” Then he headed down the hall to the girls’ bedroom. “What gives? You made Linda cry.”

  Joyce was standing in the middle of the room, her arms filled with her little sister’s stuffed bears and Peter Rabbits, her back turned to the door. “I didn’t get in,” she mumbled.

  “What?”

  “I . . . didn’t . . . make . . . the . . . squad,” Joyce said slowly.

  “That’s impossible. You’re better than all of them.”

  Joyce turned. Her face was streaked with tears. “One of the teachers—one of the nice, young ones—pulled me aside and told me that I had been deemed a risk.”

  “What?” Drew sure had been saying that a lot since coming to Berlin. “What’s the risk?”

  Joyce hugged a huge bear. “She was nice about it, at least. She explained that the school had to be careful about which girls were on the squad, because cheerleaders travel with the sports teams—on the overnight duty trains.”

  “So?” Now Drew swelled up with protectiveness for Joyce. “She wasn’t implying that you—”

  “No.” Joyce interrupted. “But I worry this will start rumors about me now—about what kind of girl I am. Especially with jerks like Bob.” Joyce shook her head. “She said it wasn’t my fault. That it was just because I was so . . .” Joyce’s face puckered, and her voice caught as she continued, “. . . so . . . unusual-looking.”

  “You mean pretty?” Drew interrupted gently.

  Joyce shrugged. “Mature was the other word she used.” Her face flushed. “Anyway, she said that my looks would make me vulnerable to being hassled by Soviet border police as the duty train passed through East Germany. Maybe even pulled off the train at checkpoints, just . . . just so the police could cause trouble and amuse themselves.”

  Right—there were no other American military schools behind the Iron Curtain. Any away game the Berlin Cubs played would mean traveling through a hundred miles of communist-held territory to schools in West Germany—Frankfurt, Bremerhaven, Stuttgart. During those trips, all of them would be open to the commies harassing them for fun, but a girl as beautiful as Joyce even more so.

  “That’s so unfair!” Drew exploded.

  “Tell me about it.” Joyce sighed.

  They stood in silence for a moment.

  “You know the other really swell thing I heard today?” Joyce added. “I’m missing a requirement at this school, and it could mean I can’t graduate in the spring.”

  It happened all the time. Different school districts had different requirements, sometimes varying wildly. School administrators never seemed to care that the reason military brats might have missed some class was that they were serving their country. But at a post school? C’mon. They at least should cut Joyce some slack. “Can’t they make an exception?”

  “Evidently not.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. But I sure as heck am not going to stay here for an extra semester,” Joyce fumed. “Especially not after today. I’m going to hightail it back home for college the day after I graduate.” She threw down the teddy bear she was holding and gazed forlornly at her records, blocked by mounds of other stuffed animals. “I forgot—I can’t even play any of my music until I get my Decca converted to German voltage.”

  Drew looked over at Joyce’s most prized possession, her behemoth collection of 45s. She’d already had to pare it down to accommodate the army’s weight limit for moves. Her red-trimmed portable record player with musical notes on its lid sat open and ready, but silent.

  “Hey, I’ve got an idea,” he said. “There’s a jukebox at the teen club.”

  “Really?” Wiping away a tear, Joyce lifted her chin and managed a small, defiant smile. “Let’s go.”

  As if her entrance had been choreographed, right as Joyce walked into the teen club, the jukebox thundered a crescendo of rock ’n’ roll piano chords. Bobby Freeman’s voice sang out: Do you, do you, do you, do you waaaanna dance?

  “Yes, I do!” Grinning, Joyce stepped forward and grabbed the hand of a girl standing just inside the door—a complete stranger—and waltzed them onto the small dance floor, slip-sliding in an easy swing. Just as Drew had witnessed dozens of times before, Joyce’s example emboldened others. Two more girls stood up from the chairs along the wall and joined in, giggling, their skirts swaying as they let the infectious music envelop them.

  Do you, do you, do you, do you waaaanna dance?

  Drew watched. His big sister beamed with a no-holds-barred joy, not looking at anybody or anything, not worrying about waiting to be asked to dance by a boy the way convention said she was supposed to. He leaned over and whispered to Linda, “Now that, sis, is how you take the hill.”

  Linda smiled.

  Beyond the dance floor was a game room, loud with ping-pong and tabletop shuffleboard. On the other side, high chrome swivel seats were lined up along a diner-style countertop. A soda jerk was making milkshakes. Drew spotte
d Charlie playing pool and some girls Linda’s age at the snack bar. He elbowed her. “Divide and conquer?”

  Linda’s face turned ashen, and she chewed on her lower lip. But after watching Joyce for another moment, she took a deep breath and whispered, “I could go for a root beer float.”

  Drew pulled a quarter out of his pocket. “Come get me if you need me. Okay?”

  Linda nodded and approached the counter. Joyce swiveled her head around as she danced to monitor her little sister’s advance. When Linda finally reached her objective and the other preteens seemed to welcome her, Drew and Joyce nodded to each other before turning to focus on their own tactical forays.

  Drew headed for the game room. Bob was there already, shoving the shuffleboard pucks hard to obliterate his opponent’s, which lay on the number three. Sssccrr-bang! Sssssrr-bang! His blue puck slammed into a sitting-duck red one, vaulting it into the air to zing by Drew.

  “Sorry, man,” Bob shouted and waved. “Just don’t know my own strength!”

  Suuuuure, Drew thought, admiring Bob’s aim. He picked up the puck and tossed it back as he sauntered over to the pool table, where Charlie leaned on his cue. Drew could tell Charlie was getting trounced.

  “Sweet,” Charlie complimented his opponent as the kid managed to slam the two ball into the side pocket with a wild bank shot.

  Four shots later, he’d sunk every ball before Charlie ever got another turn. Laugh-groaning, Charlie handed his cue to the next guy in line. “Good luck, man, you’re gonna need it against this Fast Eddie.”

  “Rack ’em,” the boy crowed.

  Charlie rounded the table to Drew. “After that drubbing, I’m going for a BLT. Want to join me?”

  Drew pulled out the change he had left over after giving Linda that quarter. Thirty-seven cents.

  “That’ll be enough for a hot dog,” said Charlie. He headed for the snack bar, and Drew followed.

  “Is there any way to make some money around here?” Drew asked. “I used to bike a paper route in Arlington.”

  “Bagging and carrying groceries on weekends for tips. On a good day, you can make ten bucks, easy. The really nice moms usually give you a quarter. Only downside is that you have to get to the commissary’s back door to sign up around 0500 hours to beat out everyone else. I do it every Saturday there’s not a game going on. The army teams are really good, by the way. The Bears play Stuttgart in football this weekend. You should come. Everybody goes together.”

  They sat on two stools at the end of the counter and swiveled as they talked. Half a dozen seats down, Linda silently sipped her root beer float. The girl next to her had shifted to chat up the kid on her other side, her back turned to Linda.

  There wasn’t any way for Drew to swoop in and save his little sister without embarrassing her. Closer in age, he and Joyce had always been able to bail each other out better. Well, Joyce had been able to rescue him. Drew tried to catch Linda’s eye to give her encouragement, but her gaze was riveted on her drink.

  The music stopped. As she caught her breath, Joyce walked over to peruse the jukebox’s record selection, ringed by the other dancing girls. They’d all taken off their shoes to swivel more easily in their bobby socks, and now, cheeks flushed and ponytails a bit awry, they burbled happily at one another.

  “Excuse me a sec,” Drew said to Charlie, and he walked over to Joyce.

  “Yeah, I see,” she murmured before Drew could even say anything about Linda. “Drew, this is Shirley.” Joyce introduced him to the girl whose hand she’d grabbed at the door. “She’s new, too. A sophomore, like you. She’s from Oklahoma—Fort Sill.”

  Shirley smiled at Drew. “That was our last post. But my family’s from Chicago. I like to call that home.”

  Drew had never heard a brat say that before. Where would he call home, he wondered.

  “It’s not in here.” Joyce frowned.

  “You’re kidding,” Shirley answered. “It’s the biggest thing there is stateside.”

  “I know!” Joyce glanced over at Linda, then back at Shirley. Drew had seen that look before, when Joyce double dared him to do something totally nonregulation. “You sing?” she asked her new friend.

  Shirley’s eyebrow shot up. “Do birds have beaks?”

  Joyce laughed. “Here we go, then.” She whirled around and shouted, “Hey, everyone! Listen up.”

  Shhhh-shhhh. The room quieted.

  “My brother, Drew, and my little sister, Linda, and I”—she did a little curtsey—“have just come from the States. Shirley, here, too. And we want to introduce you to the dance that’s all the rage back home—the twist! Any of you guys know it?”

  A girl and a boy about Linda’s age raised their hands.

  “Come on out here, then!”

  The children crept forward. Linda looked up.

  “The record isn’t on the box yet, so Shirley and I are going to sing it to you. And all you have to do is twist your hips and arms, almost like you’re using a Hula-Hoop.” Her listeners laughed. “Shirley and I will show you.”

  Shirley nodded. “Ready?”

  “Ready, Freddy!” shouted the younger kids.

  Joyce cleared her throat and then let fly the voice that had dazzled her former high school’s audiences when she starred as Laurie in Oklahoma.

  “Come on, baby, let’s do the twist.” She swung her hips, leaning forward and back as she sang, her skirt singing along—swwwiiiish, swish, swish.

  Snapping her fingers on the beat, Shirley gave Joyce perfectly harmonized backup: “Doooooooooo-wop-wop.”

  Joyce sashayed her way over to Linda, pointing at her and pretending to reel her in as she sang, “Yeah, you should see myyyyyy little sis. She really knows how to rock . . .”

  Before Linda could fight it, Joyce pulled her onto the floor, tugging on her arms—left, right, left, right—so Linda had to twist along. And suddenly, there Linda was—for a magical moment, anyway—smack-dab in the middle of the Berlin brats’ social swirl.

  Drew plunged in, too. If Joyce was brave enough to sing without a band, he could forget trying to be cool. He swiveled his butt.

  “Round and around and around and around.”

  Within seconds, Charlie was out on the floor, followed by one, two, three—more than a dozen kids in a full-troop surge, all laughing and clapping. It was beautiful—a total devil-may-care, sock-hop romp, all thanks to Joyce. She might not be an official cheerleader, but she sure knew how to muster an all-American pep rally.

  That new girl Shirley was pretty darn bodacious, too.

  CHAPTER THREE

  OCTOBER 1960

  Groggy, Drew reached for his alarm clock. Oh no! No ticking. He must have forgotten to wind it. He fell to the floor in a tumble of blankets, thrashing to disentangle himself. When he scrambled to his feet, he came eye-to-eye with the Kennedy campaign poster and its slogan he’d tacked above his bed: a time for greatness.

  Greatness? He couldn’t even manage to wake up on time. At this rate, he’d have to pull off the perfect code-red scramble to make it to the commissary before all the bagging slots were filled. Drew raced to the kitchen.

  His mom was at the stove. “Good morning, sir!”

  Drew looked past her at the teapot-shaped wall clock: 7:15! “Mom!” he nearly shouted.

  “Shhhh. I promised Joyce she could sleep in.”

  “Can you drive me to the commissary?” Normally, Drew would bike, but today, no moment could be spared. If he hurried, maybe he could be the last name on the list.

  Charlie had been right. Bagging on Saturdays was a great way to make money. It had also turned out that hauling bags stuffed with Frosted Flakes, deviled ham, and Jell-O was a great way to bond with the other brats. Last weekend, the other boys had swept Drew up in a spur-of-the-moment outing to climb one of the seven mini mountains made of World War II bombing de
bris to watch for a glint of Echo I, a new satellite the Americans had sent into orbit to rival the Russians’ Sputnik. It’d been swell.

  “Scrambled or fried?” Drew’s mom asked as she lifted out the last strip of bacon from the skillet.

  “Mom! I need to go!”

  “Honey, don’t you remember our plans for the day?” He could hear a dash of hurt in her voice.

  Drew frowned. No, he didn’t. But it began to dawn on him that she was already neatly dressed in her typical going-out garb: straight skirt, pressed blouse, cardigan sweater, and sensible heels, her blond waves perfect.

  Maybe he should start drinking coffee.

  “We’re sightseeing with Marta and Matthias. We’ve been here seven weeks now, and you haven’t really seen Berlin—the Brandenburg Gate, the Tiergarten, the Berlin State Opera. This is the perk of these overseas assignments, sweetheart. You get to see the world.”

  She popped two slices of Wonder Bread into the toaster. “We’ll start in the West, take a little tootle along the Kurfürstendamm—it’s like Fifth Avenue. Dad’s Bonneville finally got shipped over, and he said we could take it for the day.” She paused. “It’s unusually warm for October. Maybe we can put the top down! Wouldn’t that be lovely?”

  “Mom . . .” Drew tried to slow her field trip euphoria.

  “To think we’ll be walking the same streets as Mendelssohn and Strauss.”

  Yeah, thought Drew, and Hitler and Himmler and Goebbels.

  “Oh, and the Schumanns. To be in the same place as Clara . . .” Drew’s mom gazed dreamily over at her piano. “One of the first female concert pianists, you know. And a composer!”

  “Don’t you have piano students on Saturdays, Mom?”

  “Not this Saturday. I canceled all lessons. Today is just for us, sweetheart.” She patted his face. “You and I get so little one-on-one time, especially now that I’m translating at Marienfelde. I love feeling as if I am finally doing something to help in the battle against communism—and lord knows, it’s not easy to say no to the CO—but I worry I’m missing out on so much here with you and the girls.” Her brow furrowed for a moment. “Besides, won’t it be nice to get to know Cousin Marta and Matthias better? And”—she spoke more to herself now—“for them to learn to trust us.” She turned back to the stove. “Fried or scrambled?”