Master Class

by Christina Dalcher

  And then she begins to talk.

  “I am old and I am going to die soon, and when I die, this story will die with me,” she says. “This is what I have always wanted for my family. To let something ugly die and to bury it. Aber.” But.

  She tells us in English words and German words, words that develop colorful pictures and clear sounds in my mind as I listen to stories of young girls in uniform. Their heads are high and proud, even the youngest ones in the Jungmädelbund, only ten years old, stand with haughty self-importance as they are photographed at rallies, demonstrations, marches. Starched blouses barely ripple in the breeze, and the pleats in the navy skirts are crisp as the girls parade down streets and riverbank paths. There are echoes of a hundred steel taps on concrete, click-click click-click click-click, and young virgin voices rising in soprano and alto notes. They are the future, a man tells them. They are Germany, and they are perfect. And they march as if they know this.

  The voices turn harsh, becoming low, menacing growls in schoolyards, outside shops and synagogues. Hands that spend evenings sewing and playing piano pick up stones. Maria Fischer, now just fourteen in the year 1933, walks past her friend Miriam’s house without so much as a glance toward the girl standing in the doorway. She does this every day, until there’s no more Miriam to ignore.

  “Do you see now?” Oma says, inviting my father to refill her glass. When he does, and after she has sipped greedily from it, she continues, and I see the scene she paints pull itself together in detailed strokes:

  Now we are in a building, a three-story beige block with a decorative mansard roof and flags waving in salute at the building’s right and left. Two men enter its doors, both gray and bearded, almost look-alikes. One speaks English with an accent; the other as I might, the flat and intonationless English of this country. The first, the one with the accented speech, has a little girl’s hand in his own. He smiles at her, telling her stories of the rich Americans who offered money to help finish the construction, and of the meetings that will fill its rooms in years to come.

  Oma sinks back into the sofa’s cushions, her gray eyes glassy. “I remember that day,” she says. “We went to Berlin to see this new institute named for Kaiser Wilhelm. I must have only been seven, perhaps eight. My father had business appointments and left me in the care of a great-uncle. This uncle took me on a tour, and he introduced me to some of his work colleagues.” She pauses. “It was all rather boring for a young girl, but in the afternoon he took me to tea and told me he had a surprise for my birthday. All little girls like surprises, so I brightened.”

  “What was the surprise?” I ask.

  “A trip to Switzerland,” Oma says. “To the city of Geneva. I had never been to Switzerland, and when my uncle asked Father’s permission, I begged him to grant it. In two weeks, we boarded a—”

  I see a train now, chugging furiously from village to village in the green of late summer, a small, pinafored girl sipping tea in the dining car. Her attention is torn between the adventure on the inside of the train, the smoke curling past the windows, and the cities they pass. Mannheim. Karlsruhe. Baden-Baden. The long journey makes her tired, but she resists sleep, wanting to take every moment in and hold it. Then, the blue-mirror lakes of Neuchâtel and Léman, as the train rolls toward the city of Geneva.

  My father interrupts. “Mutti, what does any of this have to do with Elena going to Kansas? I’m sure Geneva was a wonderful trip.” He looks at me pointedly. “And one Sandra and I have heard about before. But—”

  Oma quiets him with a raised hand. “Listen to me, Gerhard. And you will understand after I have finished. I am tired now, and my throat hurts me.”

  Dad backs down, but he shakes his head at me.

  “I met many people during those three days in Geneva. Uncle had meetings each morning, but in the late afternoons he would fetch me from the hotel where I stayed with a hired governess. ‘We are going out now, Maria,’ he would say, and so we did, always to a pretty tearoom with white linens and crystal chandeliers and cream cakes. There were professors from America and doctors from Italy and England, all of whom thought me very charming. But my favorite new person was an American lady. She came each afternoon and was very kind to me. I remember Mrs. Sanger said I would have beautiful, perfect children.”

  This time, I interrupt. “Margaret Sanger? What was she doing in Geneva?” Sanger, as far as I knew, had been working on rolling out birth control in the States.

  Oma laughs. “Oh, Leni, there were hundreds of people in Geneva that summer. You see, it was the World Population Conference. And Mrs. Sanger, she organized it, and she asked my great-uncle to be a speaker. Father’s uncle was very important. He managed the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for fifteen years.”

  “What was that? A hospital?” I ask.

  This time when Oma laughs she goes into a fit, her body folding in on itself, until my father gently thumps her on the back and my mother replaces the schnapps glass with a tumbler of water. I don’t know which frightens me more—seeing her in obvious pain, or knowing that the laughter is the kind of laughter we do when there’s nothing to laugh at. When she recovers, she explains.

  “There were sick people in that place. For the most part, the men and women who worked there. Also the men and women who helped them. Magnussen. Mengele. That American, Charles Davenport. It has always seemed strange to me that a man named Eugen”—she pronounces this “OY-gain”—“would be the director of such an institute. So now you know, Gerhard.” She shrugs slightly when she addresses my father.

  Dad shakes his head again. “What do I know?”

  Oma, who has been sitting listlessly on the sofa, straightens and leans forward. “That your great-great-uncle was one of the men behind the extermination of millions of humans. His name was Eugen Fischer. Yes, you are wondering now why I kept that name, and that is another story for another time. I must go to bed now.”

  The room’s temperature seems to drop. My mother and father exchange confused glances as they help Oma to her feet. I tumble names around in my head—monsters from a not-so-distant past, activists painted as heroes. Solutions that promised fitter families and ended with finality for so many others.

  Before Oma closes her bedroom door, I say, “It wouldn’t happen here, Oma. This is the United States.”

  “Oh, my darling girl,” she says, sighing. “Where do you think my great-uncle Eugen got the idea?”

  When we’re alone, Mom speaks softly. “She’s getting worse, Gerhard, isn’t she? First those stories about her friend Miriam, then that business about the uniform.”

  “She told you about that?” I ask. “She said she hadn’t mentioned it to anyone.”

  Mom clears away Oma’s empty glass and fetches three for us, pouring a fat dose of schnapps into each. She doesn’t touch hers, only paces the room with her hands clasped behind her back. “She’s told that story a million times, El. Each time, it changes. The uniform belonged to another girl. Or she found it at a garage sale. Or she bought it on eBay. The latest story is that it was hers.” She turns to my father. “I’m so sorry, but I think it’s time to have another talk with her doctor. We’ve been putting it off for too long.”

  “What about the great-uncle?” I say. “Another invention?”

  “I don’t know. Probably.” Mom stops pacing, then starts up again. “The last time she told us about Geneva, she rambled on until she could hardly speak. Dr. Mendez tells us to humor her, so that’s what we do.” Her shoulders rise and fall, a sign there’s nothing more to be said on the matter. “All right. Who’s going to help me peel potatoes for dinner?”

  I volunteer, and for the rest of the afternoon, we talk about more pleasant things than failing daughters and senile grandmothers. Still, a cloud of doubt and worry hangs over me all through the hours.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  It wasn’t that I didn’t believe my grandmother, but I sta
yed long hours into the night reading web page after web page, looking up the names I’d found in Malcolm’s old books and journal articles. At one o’clock, when my head swam with names and places and dates, Mom came downstairs and forced me to bed. My father, worried about the next stage of his own mother’s life, hadn’t said much during dinner, or afterward. He only phoned Malcolm to announce I’d be spending the night and that I’d go straight to school for my testing session in the morning. The phone call was short, not especially sweet.

  Now, driving east with a low autumn sun in the exact spot I need to direct my eyes, wary of the wet carpet of leaves on the backroads, my head is punishing me for the late night. And the Kraüterschnapps, of which there might have been one glass too many. That guy on the morning radio show doesn’t help, either. How the fuck can anyone be so awake and cheery at seven o’clock? I slap the volume button and shut him up.

  I planned it out last night after a few drinks, a half carton of ice cream, and a video interview with a man I watched on YouTube. It was an anecdote about the man’s grandmother in Munich who stood in front of a line of soldiers on a railway platform when her best friend got loaded into one of the waiting boxcars, suitcase in her right hand, star on her left breast. They wouldn’t let the German girl on the train, but damned if she hadn’t tried, hadn’t been willing to leave her own family behind for the sake of someone she cared about, even if it meant eating and sleeping and pissing in a windowless boxcar for who knew how many days and nights. Knowing everything I know about history, I’m not sure I would have been as insistent. It’s too easy to think of yourself as the one who stands up when everyone else sits down, but I wonder if I have it in me to be that selfless.

  Still, here I am, driving to my soon-to-be-former place of employment, ready to screw up every test question, ready to manufacture my own demotion, ready to be put on a bus and go to my younger daughter. It’s a hell of a choice, deciding between Freddie and Anne, but it’s one I need to make. Anne’s sixteen; she’ll be fine with Malcolm for the few remaining years he can keep her to himself.

  The wrinkle in this shitty plan hit me late last night. I could be demoted to a green school. Although, with what I have planned for the morning testing sessions, it’s more likely the board of education will put me in an asylum. No, that’s not the worry. The worry is that even if the board sends me packing, there are now nearly fifty state schools scattered about the lesser populated regions of this country, giving me almost no chance of being placed in the same school as Freddie.

  For that, I’ll need Malcolm’s help, even if said help comes without him knowing.

  First stop is home, but only after texting Malcolm to see if he’s gone into the office yet. A two-word, all-caps message pings back almost immediately: TEACHER TEST. Not the information I wanted, but I’ve learned over the years that I’m never going to get what I want from Malcolm, not even a relevant response to a text message.

  Our driveway is empty when I pull in, and my dashboard clock tells me Anne’s silver bus has already come and gone. I don’t bother changing out of my jeans—testing days are casual affairs as far as the dress code is concerned—and head straight for Malcolm’s desk in the upstairs office we share. The room is part workspace, part Office Depot warehouse. Two printers, multiple reams of copy paper stacked next to them, binders waiting to be filled with the latest hole-punched reports are all crammed into every shelf and spare bit of surface area.

  I know what I’m looking for, though, and where to find it.

  Malcolm’s letterhead from the Department of Education is in the second drawer down, nestled next to envelopes with the same logo. I slide out three of each and rummage around for something—anything—with his signature on it. Then I fire up the copier and print out the three sentences I typed early this morning, using my husband’s best you will do as I say voice, on Mom’s laptop. The memo, now on Malcolm’s own letterhead, looks good. I slip this forged document and an accompanying envelope into a folder.

  The clock downstairs chimes half of the Westminster Quarters. Eight thirty. Time to go.

  I think of my mother’s last words to me before I left this morning: “Do you really want to do this?”

  I wish there were another answer, one that rhymes with “no” instead of the one I gave my mother:

  “I have to.”

  Five blocks from my school, I take a minute to look over Malcolm’s letter, signing his name with sharp, pointed strokes, and finishing the signature off with a bold double underline. Nice and aggressive looking.

  The park where I’ve stopped my car is notable for two contrasting visitor types. The first is a dwindling batch of older men who cocoon themselves in blankets and crumpled newspaper, adept at a quick disappearing act should a police cruiser roll by. The second group couldn’t be more different: wiry twenty-somethings with stripped-down racing bikes between their legs and messenger bags slung slantwise over their backs. These are the ones I want.

  With a single twenty-dollar bill from my wallet in one hand and the envelope addressed to the principal of the Davenport Silver School in the other, I walk to the friendliest-looking bike courier in the group. He’s only friendly by bike courier standards—these kids are sharp and swift and take no prisoners, running red lights and dodging frightened pedestrians around the labyrinthine streets and avenues of Washington, DC. If the twenty doesn’t convince him, I’ll pay forty.

  But the twenty turns out to be enough. He listens to my instructions, taps a note and location into his phone, and rides off with his messenger bag on his back. If all goes as planned, I’ll see him again this afternoon in the school’s central offices.

  Not that he’ll show any sign of recognizing me.

  The life sciences department of the Davenport Silver School is tucked between two of the ten streets that form the spokes of Dupont Circle, housed in a Beaux-Arts mansion that was once a club for Washington’s wealthiest women. They donated the building and its grounds to the Fitter Family Campaign ten years ago, and the FFC turned the old club into a school when they grew out of it. I park in the underground lot next door, sign in at the front desk, and walk up the wide staircase to the ballroom-turned-auditorium, where a few dozen of my colleagues sit in nervous silence.

  Dr. Chen, the first-year chemistry teacher, clicks her pen to the beat of an inaudible metronome set to allegro. Drs. Stone and Stone, the married couple who handle advanced placement Spanish and French, exchange smiles in their seats toward the back. The smiles seem forced, as if ghost-like hands are tugging at the corners of their mouths. I have it in confidence that the female Dr. Stone nearly suffered a breakdown after her last test. Dr. Chen, despite her envious ability to recall the entire periodic table of the elements, slips a pill into her mouth, chasing it with what looks like water but what I think might have slightly more numbing properties.

  Everyone has a right to be on edge. The academic portion isn’t enough to freak out twenty-some people with terminal degrees, but the administrative section—five pages assessing our understanding and absorption of various new policies handed down from the federal Department of Education—is maddening. Our doctorates haven’t prepared us for Madeleine Sinclair’s ever-evolving plans for the future of learning. And the document I forged this morning only raises the stakes for my colleagues. I’m glad they don’t know what I know, that they have no idea the words I wrote—just a few little words—have the power to condemn them to something far worse than demotion to a green school. I try to swallow my guilt. It tastes bitter.

  Normally, I would study throughout the month and pull a weekend-long policy cram session immediately before the test. Normally, I would not have put my daughter on a bus to a tier-three school twenty-four hours prior to a battery of grueling assessments. Even if I didn’t want to bomb today’s test of mental endurance, I know I’m grossly unprepared for a three-hour assault on my overworked brain.

  Perhaps
that makes things easier, having the decision out of my hands, especially since I don’t have a clue as to what the next few days will bring.

  While we wait for the proctor to come in with stacks of blue books and the usual recitation of rules against collaboration, talking, and the use of electronic devices, I practice breathing in and out in a steady rhythm, and I think about my grandmother.

  Oma didn’t reemerge from her room for dinner, although she called me in twice during the early evening. Each time, she seemed ready to tell me something. Each time, she started down a winding path of stories with an extensive cast of characters until my mother came in and insisted on rest.

  I looked them up. Most of her stories were verifiable, although whether they were Oma’s stories or co-opted tales she’d cobbled together and made into her own is a different question. Mom insists it’s the latter, that Oma isn’t all there anymore. Were there institutions for the so-called feebleminded here a century ago? Absolutely. There were also Jim Crow laws and insane asylums, neither of which I imagine will be experiencing a renaissance. I put thoughts of prisons and Dickensian workhouses out of my mind, smiling a little at the ridiculousness of it all. Freddie’s in a boarding school, and I’m going to take her out of it.

  It will be three short days before I realize how absolutely wrong I am.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I’ve been staring at the same blank page for over an hour. My pen, now with a mind of its own, writes one sentence.

  There. That should get the attention of the assessment board.

  Not that they’d care. There are plenty of would-be teachers lining up to take my place; plenty of people willing to switch tracks and sell their souls to snag a position at a silver school. If there aren’t enough willing souls, the Fitter Family Campaign will offer more money from its bottomless bucket.