She needs to believe.
Chapter 11
“Mama, today we went to the Albis. It’s a mountain near Zurich. There’s a restaurant there called Gingerbread House. A witch came out of the house. Of course, it’s not a real witch, Anna said. Just the owner dressed up as a witch. At first, I was a little scared, but she was a kind witch. She gave the children candy. She was a little mean to the adults, though. She grabbed a lady’s purse and snatched a hat off an old man’s head. But she gave the things back. It was funny.
“Mama, I wish you could’ve seen her. She was wearing a long black coat and a black hood and she had a long red nose. She was carrying a broom and swept people’s feet away. I asked Anna if you were able to see her from Heaven. Anna said she didn’t know for sure but she believed you could. I wish you could let me know if you can see me.
“I miss you, Mama.” Karla swallowed and took a deep breath. She was sitting in bed before going to sleep, cuddling her patchwork doll. The flame of the candle on her mother’s shrine flickered lightly. Anna had bought her a new glass candleholder, which enclosed the candle and was safer than the old open candle. They had moved the shrine away from the window. After the fire, Anna had decided they might as well paint the whole room, not just the one wall. Karla had been allowed to pick out the color. It was a very light green, which matched the color of the rug and Karla’s green-and-yellow bedspread.
It was Sunday evening. Anna and Karla had been on an outing, and as usual before going to sleep, Karla told her mother about her day. The occasional flickering of the candlelight made Karla feel that her mother was listening.
“Next to the Gingerbread House, there’s a farm with lots of animals: cows, sheep, goats, donkeys and chickens and rabbits. After lunch, Anna took me there and I got to watch the farmer milk the cows and I got to pet the sheep and the baby cows.
“Maja came with us. Maja is my friend from school. She is one year older than I am but she is in the same class. That’s because she doesn’t know German well enough yet. We both take German classes and we practice together. Maja is from Croatia. That’s in Eastern Europe, Anna said. Maja’s mama died as well. She died because of the war. Maja lives with her aunt and uncle now. She misses her mama, too. Sometimes, we tell each other stories about you and her mama. Sometimes we get sad and cry, but the stories are fun.
“I don’t think it’s right that God takes people away and won’t let them come back. Maja said that God needs people to help him in Heaven. But he should take people who don’t have little children. Anna says that sometimes we don’t understand God, but we have to trust him. I don’t understand God. But I don’t want him to be mad at me. I pray every night and sometimes that makes me feel better.
“Anna says she thinks you can hear me, although I can’t hear you. Sometimes, I can feel you. It makes me feel better, better than praying to God even. I hope God isn’t mad now. Anna says not to worry. He’s very generous and kind. All right, good night, Mama. Sleep well. I’ll talk to you again tomorrow.”
Chapter 12
Anna smiled as she kissed Karla’s flushed cheek. She blew out the candle on the shrine and opened the window. It was still warm after a scorching day. She left the door to the living room open, so the nightly breeze would cool the room enough for Karla to be able to sleep. Tonight, however, she might sleep soundly after the fun and excitement during the day’s outing.
Anna had listened as Karla told her mother about her day. The evening “talk” had become a ritual just like the story time, the shrine, and her evening prayer. They seemed to help her. She had become a little happier overall during the past few weeks, ever since she started her art lessons with Jonas. She had bonded with her teacher right away. Anna hoped it would last. It would be good for Karla to have a male role model in her life. And Jonas seemed a very caring person and good with children.
There were still times when Karla was desperate. A few nights before, she had woken up and screamed. When Anna came rushing into her bedroom, thinking that the child had another one of her nightmares, she found Karla wide-awake in bed. She seemed all confused.
“I can’t remember what Mama looked like,” she cried.
Anna hugged her and pointed at the photo of her mother on the chest of drawers. “You just need to look at the picture of her, then you’ll remember,” she told her.
Karla eventually calmed down. Anna put her mother’s photo on the nightstand right next to her bed. Karla looked at the picture for a while, then her eyelids fluttered and she fell asleep again.
Such incidents showed Anna that the hurt was still there. The open wounds may heal with time but the scars would remain. The traumatic event of the car accident and her mother’s and grandmother’s deaths had robbed her of that feeling of security and comfort that was so important in a young child’s life.
Anna remembered the pain of loss when she was little and her father and mother split up for some time. It was much less traumatic than what happened to Karla, but even decades later, Anna could still feel the terror and pain, when the so-far secure world at home became undone.
Anna’s parents were a strangely matched couple. Father, the American artist, the freedom-loving creative dreamer and Mother, the strong woman, too demanding of herself and of others. They quarreled about everything.
One day after school, Anna noticed her father’s car in front of the house. He normally wasn’t home that early. She opened the door, dropped her schoolbag next to the wardrobe, and rushed to meet him. A few steps into the hallway, she stopped, hearing loud voices in the kitchen. Then the door opened and her father stepped outside, his face flushed. Anna saw her mother sitting at the table. She was supporting her head with her hands. Her blond hair, which was usually tied in a neat bun, had become loose and was hanging into her face. Her shoulders were heaving. A head of lettuce, carrots, and a colander with green beans were spread out on the kitchen table, waiting to be transformed into dinner.
Anna was familiar with her parents’ fights, but somehow, this time, she felt that things were more serious. “Why is Mama crying?”
Her father bent down and hugged her. “Anna,” he said. He spoke with a slight American accent. “Mother and I are having problems. I’m going to move out for a while until things get better again.”
Anna’s heart stopped. She held on to her father, digging her fingers into his arms. She searched his eyes for any kind of sign that this all wasn’t true.
“Don’t worry, we’ll still be together. You can visit me and I’ll visit you all the time.”
It was only then that Anna saw the suitcase next to the wardrobe. “Don’t leave, Daddy, please. Don’t leave.” Anna’s head was spinning and she felt she was suffocating.
“Anna, you have to be brave. Be kind to your mother. She needs you now. I’ll call you tonight, all right?” He picked up the suitcase and opened the door.
“No,” Anna screamed at the top of her lungs. “Don’t go.” She fell to her knees and began to cry loudly. The world as she had known it shattered and a cold wave of fear washed over her.
“Anna, come here.” Her mother stood at the kitchen door. Her face was swollen from crying. She held out her arms. “Come, honey. It’ll be okay. I promise.”
Eventually, things were okay again, at least on the surface. After a few weeks, her father moved back in. The feeling of abandonment Anna had felt that day, the fear of everything safe and secure being snatched away from her, never quite left her, though. Sometimes, when she came home from school and saw her father’s car outside, she was overcome by dread. Would he leave again?
Chapter 13
It was another hot summer day. The horizon above the lake to the south was tinged with a smoky yellowish haze. Jonas kept the balcony door and the windows open, but there was hardly a breeze. He stepped out on the balcony. In the north, heaps of black-gray thunderclouds began to form.
Inside in his studio, Karla was painting with oil pastels. She was wearing an apron to protect
her clothes. Her hands were smeared and there were streaks of green, blue, and red on her face. Small pearls of sweat had formed on her upper lip and she kept wiping her forehead, adding more color to her face.
Jonas laughed out loud and Karla looked at him surprised.
“Come on, I’ll show you something,” he said and pointed at the mirror on the closet door. Karla got up and the two stood in front of the glass and grinned at Karla’s colorful face.
“Like an Indian on the warpath,” Jonas said. “I guess today is almost too hot for working. But let’s see what you got.”
They looked at Karla’s picture. It was a summer scene, a landscape with a pond, skirted by trees and bushes. On a blanket next to the pond was a picnic basket with fruit—apples, bananas, grapes—and a big bottle of what could have been lemonade. A little girl with dark hair stood by the pond, obviously Karla. A woman with long blond hair sat on a blue blanket or towel under a yellow sun umbrella. As in many of Karla’s paintings, her mother was present. It was almost an obsession and Jonas knew it was one of the ways Karla tried to keep in touch with her.
Whenever she drew or painted her mother, her painting habits changed. Normally, when Karla drew other objects from imagination, she didn’t bother with a realistic outlook of her drawing. She was very inventive and it was that kind of unusual composition that gave her pictures power. However, when Karla drew her mother, she tried very hard to make her look realistic. She kept erasing her drawing, which she didn’t do when drawing other objects. It was as if she wanted to re-create an exact likeness. Often the drawings of her mother were less successful and lacked the strength the other objects in her paintings had.
“Your mama?” Jonas asked, pointing at the woman, although he already knew the answer.
“Yeah,” Karla said and glanced at him, then looked back down at the picture. “I paint her so I don’t forget what she looks like,” she said in a low voice.
“Oh, I see,” Jonas said. “But you have photos of her, don’t you? They’ll help you remember.”
“Yeah, but it’s not the same.”
“What do you mean?”
Karla wrinkled her forehead. “It’s . . . like cheating.”
“Cheating?” Jonas asked.
“Mmm.” Karla nodded. “I need to remember without a photo.” There was a tinge of panic in her voice.
Jonas sat down and put his hand on her shoulder. He sensed what Karla meant. He remembered the first time he became aware that Eva’s face was fading in his memory. It gave him a little jolt and he stood in front of the photo trying to bring her face back. It was a natural progression, time erasing both reality and memories. And for a young child like Karla, it must be frightening.
“I think I know what you mean, but I don’t think looking at a photo is cheating. A photo is like any other work of art, like the pictures you draw of your mother. They just help us remember. I look at my wife’s photos all the time. See.” Jonas got up and opened the door to the living room. “Look at all the pictures of her.”
Karla came to the door and nodded, scanning the photos in the living room.
“I don’t know, Karla, but sometimes I think the two of us make a mistake.”
Karla looked at him surprised. “Why?”
“We live too much in the past. I still grieve for Eva and I know you miss your mama. But we need to move on and live in the present, not always think of those who are gone.”
“I don’t want to forget my mama,” Karla said, her voice determined, almost angry.
“You don’t need to forget her. You’ll never forget her. But you can let her rest once in a while. And I need to do the same with Eva. Eva and your mama want us to be happy. They don’t want us to be sad and always grieve for them.”
Karla gave him a thoughtful look. Jonas smiled. “Not convinced, huh? Well, let’s try something else for a change.” He pointed at Karla’s picture. “I like this. I love the colors and I like the fact that the picture fills the whole paper. That’s a good composition. Now, put it aside and I’ll show you something.”
Jonas stepped onto the rooftop patio and waved at Karla to follow him. He pointed north to where the storm clouds were towering over the mountains. “Look at the clouds. Close your eyes halfway and scan them. Take your time; don’t focus on them too much. Relax your gaze and try to see the colors in the clouds. When we don’t pay attention, storm clouds are just black and gray. But in reality, there are many more colors. Can you see them?”
Karla squinted her eyes and looked toward the north. She nodded her head. “Yes. I can see purple.”
“Good,” Jonas said. “What else?”
“Yellow and blue and white and orange.”
“Excellent. See, there is much more to the world than it looks like on the surface. We just need to learn to see. Drawing and painting are all about learning to see. You understand?”
Karla nodded.
“Now, what about painting the clouds the way you see them?”
Karla’s face lit up. “Yeah, that would be cool.”
Jonas smiled. “Okay, let’s do it. You can use the pastels. But only the sky and the clouds, no people. And if you forget what the sky looks like, you can always come out here and check.”
Jonas put a new large piece of paper on Karla’s drawing table, then sat down at the other end of the room and observed her while she worked. He noticed the change in her right away. A new kind of energy seemed to fill her. Not having to worry about exact forms and figures, she let herself go. Her body and her mind opened up. Her facial color deepened, her arms and hands moved with great agility, and her strokes became bolder.
Karla was a beautiful child. She seemed to have inherited her Latin father’s facial features, the large dark eyes, the high cheekbones, and the light-bronze skin. The highlights in her shiny black hair must have come from her Swiss mother’s side.
Every once in a while, Karla stepped out on the balcony and looked toward the sky. Then she returned with a smile and continued.
Jonas nodded to himself. There was a lot of passion in the girl and Jonas wanted to find ways for her to express it. Drawing her mother was a basic need for Karla and Jonas didn’t want to interfere too much. They just had to find a balance between preserving that link and exploring the rest of the wide and exciting world.
Chapter 14
Fall vacation was almost over and school was about to start again. The October winds had blown many of the colored leaves from the trees. Karla had collected the most beautiful ones and pressed them in a notebook. Once they were dry, she wanted to use them for a collage.
Today, Anna had taken her shopping in the city for a few school supplies. Karla stuffed the notebooks and pens into her backpack but kept her new set of crayons and other painting utensils on the table. She gazed at the window, scrunching her eyes, as if trying to decide what to draw. The sun rays piercing through the windowpane lit up the reddish highlights in her black hair.
“Look, Anna,” she said and got up. Her eyes opened wide and she pointed at the window. An almost perfect spiderweb was stretched between the top of the window and the side frame, its fine threads shimmering in the golden evening light.
“Neat, huh?” Anna said. They both gazed at the perfect work of art.
“I could draw it,” Karla said, pointing at the spiderweb. “I’ll add the spider, too, and perhaps the colored leaves.” She got excited and hurried back to the table.
Anna sighed. She hated to spoil Karla’s enthusiasm, but they needed to talk. They hadn’t discussed Karla’s flawed report card yet. The grades hadn’t been bad: a high Six, or A-plus, in drawing; a Five, or B, in writing; and a Four, or C, in math. Under “Attitude and Behavior,” however, there was a remark about inattentiveness, daydreaming, forgetfulness, and handing in homework late or not at all.
“That sounds like a great idea, Karla, but first we have to talk about school.”
“Mmm,” Karla said and picked up a pastel pen.
“Put that down and pay attention,” Anna said a little more forcefully.
Karla gave her a probing look, then lowered the crayon but kept it in her hand.
“I talked to your teacher and he told me that you did well in your written work but that you don’t pay attention during oral lessons. What can we do to improve your performance?”
Karla turned her head and looked out the window. She didn’t answer.
“Karla?” Anna put her hand on Karla’s shoulder.
Karla turned back and stared at her, her eyes glowering, her full lips pressed into a thin line. There was a new energy about her. So far, Karla had been mostly obedient and quiet, even passive and often sad. Seeing defiance and anger in her face was almost a relief.
Anna kept a straight face, although she felt a smile tickle the corners of her mouth. Perhaps being a little more assertive was a good thing, even if it was for the wrong reason. Her optimism, however, took a dive when she heard Karla’s answer.
“Mama said school wasn’t important.” She angrily pushed the crayon aside.
“When did your mother say that?”
“When I talk to her at night.” Karla jutted out her chin.
“I thought she wasn’t talking back to you.”
“Sometimes, she does.”
“Karla, why would your mother say something like that? You know that’s not true. Think about it. Remember how your mom would work with you when you still went to kindergarten? You already knew how to read and write before you started school. Do you think your mom would have taught you these things, if she didn’t believe school and learning were important?”
Karla shook her head but her face remained hard and tight.
“What did you two do every Wednesday afternoon after kindergarten? Where did you go?”
Karla hesitated, then said, “We went to the library.”
“Okay, why did you go there?”
An Uncommon Family Page 5