“But you need a better teacher than me,” he said. “True catechism, am I right, Agathe?”
“Yes, of course.” Oma hadn’t contributed a single answer, nor any praise for her granddaughter’s curiosity. “A better teacher.”
Therese learned that, no, neither Oma nor Opa could read or understand Latin. That was only for the priests to know. Which is why it was so important to go to church to hear the Word of God as he intended.
“But the poem Sister Heida taught me? About the Good Shepherd? She said it was from the Bible.”
“Some things we know,” Opa said. “Some we don’t.”
“I want to know everything,” Therese said, wondering how she had ever been content with a head full of darkness. One tiny sip of light, and dissatisfaction trickled down through her throat and puddled between her ribs. Every answer only brought more questions.
“It is not for us to know everything,” Oma said. “Much of God is left to mystery, and we must content ourselves with that.”
They walked in silence from then on, their neighbors having peeled away to their own homes, leaving nothing but the scattered birdsong of the afternoon to fill the silence. Unmindful of the cleanliness of her feet, Therese varied her steps, sometimes dragging a single big toe, sometimes grinding each footfall with a twist into the dirt. The dress had been hemmed right to her ankle, keeping it from dragging in the path. Still, when she came to a stubborn puddle or a patch of lingering mud, she lifted it as if it were a gown as grand as those she’d seen at the front of the church. How difficult it would be to be a nun, the kind that wore the white dress, and to keep it clean always. But then . . .
“Do nuns know everything? Not everything,” she amended, lest Oma think she was being contrary, “but more? As much as a priest?”
“How do I know what nuns know?” Oma sounded cross now. They were nearly to the cottage, and she must be tired from the walk. “Am I a nun?”
The question required no answer, of course, and Therese bit her bottom lip to keep from giving one. Soon Gräber was on the path, barking and running in circles to escort them home, where a stew waited to be warmed over the fire and biscuits baked this morning rested in a bowl beneath a clean cloth.
“There are some who fast on the Lord’s Day,” Opa said, snatching one immediately upon entering the cottage, “but I am not one of them. Here you are, my girl.”
But Therese declined, saying she’d wait until the meal was on the table. Instead, she stayed outside with Gräber, endlessly throwing a stick for him to fetch back to her, reciting a line of her poem—the psalm, as she’d learned on the walk home—with each toss.
The Lord is my shepherd.
Throw, wait.
I shall not want.
Throw, wait.
How was it that, just yesterday, these lines had seemed to contain such a vast amount of learning? Now she’d seen the enormity of God’s Word. Heard it spoken in a new language. Felt it stirring up something inside that would never be fulfilled. Not once she went back home. Mutti would never take her to church, nor even allow her to go, most likely.
Thou preparest a place for me.
Throw. Wait.
And he had. Here, with Oma and Opa. Because they had been her enemies—she knew that—but now she had a place. A bed. A dress. A church. A home.
That night, the only story she wanted to hear was that of the Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin, and Opa added details about her husband, Joseph. How he could have had her killed, but the angel came to him in a dream and told him to marry her.
“How so? In a dream?”
“That I don’t know, child. If the angel crept inside his mind or woke him up, just a little, so he could talk to him as real as you and I are talking right now.”
Oma sat at the table behind them, knitting what would be a pair of small, warm winter socks. Her needles clicked with every third stitch or so, and she seemed so engrossed in her work, Therese doubted she could hear their conversation.
“Opa?” She whispered, just in case, placing her hand on his cheek to draw him closer. “Why didn’t an angel come to my papa? Like one did to Joseph, to tell him to marry my mother?”
Oma’s needles stopped with her sharp intake of a breath. Opa seemed to catch that breath from across the room and exhaled it with a force that ruffled the hair on top of Therese’s head.
“Sometimes,” he said at last, “angels come and we don’t see them. Or they speak, and we don’t listen.”
“I promise always to listen, Opa.”
“That’s my good girl.” He kissed her brow in the place the stone had struck, a habit he’d assumed the night of her arrival, and she hopped down from his lap in order to give a proper embrace. Oma set her knitting on the table and held out her arms—albeit with her customary reserve—and Therese planted a kiss on both of her cheeks saying, “Good night, Oma.”
“Sweet dreams, little one.”
Therese had climbed into her bed and turned her back to the room, prepared as always to be lulled to sleep by soft conversation, when Opa called to her.
“We have neglected something—something very important.”
Therese sat up. “What is it, Opa?”
“You need to say a prayer. All good Christian children say a prayer before they go to sleep.”
“I don’t know any prayers.”
“Up,” he said, rising from his chair. “I’ll teach you.”
Following his instructions, Therese climbed out of bed and braced her elbows on the mattress. Hands folded, she bowed her head and closed her eyes.
“Father God, I pray this night . . . ,” Opa said, and Therese repeated.
Father God, I pray this night,
That thou will keep me in thy sight.
And when the darkness turns to day,
By my side, thou wilt stay.
“And now,” Opa said, “ask him to bless the ones you love.”
Therese scrunched her eyes tighter. “Please bless Mutti and Opa and Oma. Amen.”
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, amen.” Opa crossed himself and helped her back into bed. “A good prayer brings sweeter dreams, the kind where angels come to visit.” He kissed her again and tucked the cover tightly around her.
But she did not dream because she did not sleep. Not while Opa sat with Oma at the table to drink his last mug of beer and she—for the first time since Therese’s arrival—said she’d like to have a mug too.
Without question, he opened the tap. Therese could hear the froth and the sound of the pewter on the table. They sat for a time, no doubt waiting for her to fall asleep. The fire crackled, the needles clicked, and mugs were lifted and set down over and over.
“We should have sent her to the convent,” Oma said, her voice so low that, had Therese not been alert, waiting to hear something, she might have missed the words entirely. “When she was young, and we had the chance.”
“The convent is for the second daughter, Agathe. You know that.”
“But we didn’t have a second daughter.”
“We did. Just not long enough.”
That’s when Therese remembered her mother talking about a younger sister. One who died when she was not much older than Therese. There had only been one conversation about her, and Mutti had been drinking wine for most of the day. Hannah, her name was, and she had fallen sick with a fever one day, never waking up to see the next. Mutti had been a big girl of twelve at the time, never seeing her sister as more than a nuisance and a reservoir for her parents’ attention.
“I hated her,” Mutti said. “And I still do.”
Now her ghost filled the room in a way Therese couldn’t quite understand.
“Well, then,” Opa was saying, “we should bring her here to live.”
“What, bring her here?” Oma said. “She’s here.”
“No. I mean Marta. We should bring her home. It’s not right for us to turn our backs anymore. It’s not fair to the girl
—”
“The girl can stay.”
“Without her mother?”
Oma made an ugly sound. “Who knows that she wouldn’t be relieved? God knows she takes little care of the child.”
“Therese loves her mother.”
“So did we, and look how little she cared.”
Neither spoke for a while, as Therese squeezed her eyes shut, wishing she’d fallen asleep even minutes before. Shame crept around her thoughts, keeping her silent in her mother’s defense. What would it be like to bring her here? Perhaps Opa would make the second room back into a place just for them—their own home, but attached. Mutti could help Oma make bread; Therese could continue to feed the chickens and take on other chores. Maybe Opa was the man of Mutti’s dreams, her own father with a small farm near the road. Could it be that all this time, Mutti simply wanted to go home?
“What would people say?” Oma’s voice snuffed the tiny flame of Therese’s dream.
“Who cares what they say? And why should we spend another minute worrying about it?”
“You heard them today.”
“They said she was beautiful.” His voice rang with pleasure. “Which she is.”
“And that she looks like her mother.” There was no compliment in the delivery. “And behind our backs they whispered much worse. She will always be what she is. Bringing her into our home won’t legitimize her. And bringing Marta will only make it worse.”
“I don’t agree.”
“You don’t have to.”
“You are right. Nor do I have to follow your command. I can bring my daughter home if I wish to do so. It’s been long enough.”
“How long is long enough? People remember—”
“For a while. And then they forget. The boy is gone, has been since before the wedding date. And his parents are dead, so there’s no other claim to her. She is my daughter, and I forgive her. I suggest, Wife, that you find a way to do the same.”
Therese curled and uncurled her toes in delight, the only movement that would not attract her grandparents’ attention. She tried to imagine her mother’s voice added to those at the table, speaking softly into the darkness. Making plans for market and marveling at how much their smart little girl was growing. Here, Mutti would never be sad. Who could be sad with the promise of bacon in the morning and the howling Gräber protecting them throughout the night?
“When?” Oma asked, voicing Therese’s own thought.
“Soon.”
Therese tried to act surprised at Opa’s announcement at breakfast.
“Here? We’re going to live here? All four of us?”
“Yes,” Opa said. “For as long as you like, this is your home.”
Reminiscent of her gratitude that first night, Therese hugged him tight, saying, “Thank you, Opa!” and expressed the same to Oma across the room. Her grandmother did not have Therese’s ability to mask the conversation of the night before and did little to veil her displeasure at the idea.
“It was your Opa’s idea.” Her body rocked with the kneading of the week’s bread. “Though I’m not so much against it.”
Opa thumped a triumphant fist on the table, making the trenchers jump in place. “What do you say we leave tomorrow? You will have to show me where you live. Can you believe? I’ve never been to my own daughter’s home.”
Therese thought about their home, the tiny, dark room tucked into the alley. The streams of waste sometimes in the street, the foul language of the men—and women, sometimes—pouring from the tavern on the corner. Their single bed and single chair and nothing else but a pot on the floor and a few hooks in the wall.
How could she bring him there? Expose him to the life that, until these weeks, had seemed to be enough?
And what of Mutti? Often, when Therese went away, even for the course of an afternoon, she would come home to find their door closed. Latched, with a man inside. Mutti would open it, speak over Therese’s head. The man—different each time—would have a sly, stupid smile as he thanked her mother. Never using her name. There would be a small pile of coins on the table next to a half-empty bottle of wine.
“We’ll have a fine supper tonight,” Mutti would say before splashing her face with water from the basin and dropping the coins in her purse. “We’ll go to the good place on Firma Street. They won’t turn me out when they see I’ve got money.”
Halfway to Firma Street, though, Mutti would get tired. Or afraid. And she’d proclaim that the Nudel two blocks over was just as good as anything they’d get at some rich man’s tavern. At a dark table in a back corner, she would purchase a dish of the salty Nudel with bits of pork stirred through, and the two of them would eat in silence, Mutti’s eyes shifting constantly about the room.
Therese couldn’t bring her sweet Opa to this life. Couldn’t bring this strong, proud man to face whatever shrinking, distasteful lout might be slinking out of his daughter’s bed.
“No,” she said, running a spoon through her porridge. “Let me go home alone. I know the way.”
“Out of the question,” Opa said, as if he’d had a place of authority all her life.
“What if—” Her mind spun to find a reason. “What if she is surprised? I mean, not the good kind of surprise. The happy surprise, like I felt when you told me. What if she’s the bad kind of surprised, and says no?”
“She won’t say no,” Opa said.
“She might,” Oma said. “We’ve given her no reason to feel welcome until now.”
“She might be upset at first,” Therese continued, pouncing on Oma’s words. “And I don’t want you to have your feelings hurt if she is.”
Opa seemed to be considering, so she continued, breathlessly. “Let me go home—back—and tell her. Give us time to pack our things—” though there were no things—“and then you can come fetch us.”
“She could very well need the time.” Oma separated the dough into five small loaves.
“But I want to tell her myself. That I forgive her and want her to come home.”
“Let the girl tell her first. Then you can come along and scoop her up.”
“And bring her home?”
“If she wants.”
Therese followed this exchange, twisting her head from one to the other.
“She will,” she said with finality.
She wore her own dress for the journey back home, not wanting her mother to sense any kind of immediate change in spirit. True, there was nothing about her that was the same as the day she left, even if such a short time had passed. She was baptized now, a Christian. She knew an entire psalm and the story of the Blessed Mother and the Last Supper and the body and blood of Christ Our Savior. She knew a prayer for the nighttime, and another to say before eating, and how to make the sign of the cross each time. She’d been wounded and healed. She’d tasted chocolate (just a bit from Oma’s secret tin), witnessed the birth of a calf, fed chickens, and seen trampled eggs with half-born chicks oozing out.
She felt taller, like the forest floor was half an inch farther away, and she knew she was fatter. Her arms had taken on a bit of flesh, as had her tummy, which now rounded softly beneath her dress. Her face, too, looked rounder, her eyes smaller, her cheeks pink from sunlight and laughter.
Opa walked with her as far as Papa Bear, where she insisted he repeat one final time the directions to her home with Mutti.
“Go straight to the fountain in the center square,” she said authoritatively, “and then the side street behind the baker.”
Opa repeated the words faithfully, then bowed to her insistence that she continue the journey alone. A real bow—like one would make to a princess—with battered leather cap in his hand and a kiss to hers.
“Until I come to fetch you, mein kleines Lamm.” He’d told her the story of the shepherd abandoning his entire flock to search for the lost lamb and begun calling her his “little lamb” because she’d once been lost too. He stood on the bank until she safely crossed the rickety bridge, now only inches a
bove the water, and was still there when Therese turned her head one last time before taking a bend in the path that would erase him from her view.
For the next hour she was completely alone—something she hadn’t experienced since walking away from Mutti nearly a month ago. Her thoughts swam with all that she’d learned, as well as with the words she would say upon her return. She would wait until after her reception to tell Mutti about their invitation to go live with Oma and Opa. For instance, if Mutti seemed angry that Therese had been away for so long, she would present the loaf of fresh bread, given purposely as an offering of peace, along with a sealed jar of pickled vegetables and two small fruit pies—all tightly packed in the hamper slung over her shoulder. She might even wait until tomorrow, after Mutti had a good dinner, a few glasses of beer from the tavern tap, and a long night’s sleep.
Yes, it would be best to start fresh in the day.
Unless, of course, Mutti met her with joy, sweeping her daughter up in her arms, maybe at the top of the street where she’d run to greet her. Once the laughter had died down, and they removed each other from their tight embrace, Therese would declare, “And, Mutti! You’ll never guess! Oma and Opa want us to come home!”
Then the evening would be full of feasting and planning and resting up for the journey to come.
Therese hoped against hope for this scenario but couldn’t remember a single time Mutti had swept her up for anything.
The trees began to thin, and she emerged from the forest, squinting at the unfiltered afternoon sun. The air was cool, though, sweet with the lingering scent of spring. She readjusted the weight of the hamper, relieved at knowing her journey would end within the hour.
She followed the path past an open field, freshly plowed, and thought, By the time this field is harvested, I’ll be living with Oma and Opa on their farm.
Her steps took her past one cottage after another. She stopped to watch an amusing display of a woman with a determined hatchet chasing an elusive chicken around the yard, the squawks of each drawing the attention of all the neighbors. Therese joined in the cheers—siding more for the chicken—and did not take her leave until the poor thing’s head was thrown into the crowd as a trophy.
An Offering: The Tale of Therese Page 5