Motherland

by Maria Hummel

  “Ani, I want to talk to you,” Liesl called out, but she stayed where she was, reading the note again, slipping it back in the envelope, opening the dresser drawer. It was empty except for Uta’s gold bracelet.

  Liesl stared down at the bracelet, trying to move. Recognition had frozen her: Uta had been preparing for a day like today—for a grand gesture and an exit. She could have left the country altogether. To buy a fake passport, to start a singing career elsewhere. Instead, she had come to Liesl, and then given everything to her—her money as a bribe to Dr. Pfeizer, and the bracelet in the drawer. Liesl could picture it clearly, having seen Uta operate so many times before: Uta’s giddy laugh, her sidelong looks, her hand on the doctor’s arm gently guiding him out the door.

  And if Uta hadn’t done it, Ani might be gone by now. Taken to Hadamar. Liesl knew she would have screwed it up somehow, she who didn’t “understand” men—she would have been too truthful or fearful, and she would have lost him.

  She lifted the bracelet. In all her years of friendship with Uta, she had never slipped it on. The metal felt cold and heavy, and Liesl had a hard time fixing the small amethyst clasp. The bracelet was too big for her, made her thin wrist look stickish, as if she were a girl playing dress-up with her mother’s jewelry.

  “Ani,” she mumbled. “I need to talk to you.”

  She raised her arm, and the bracelet slid up to her elbow. She lowered her arm; it tumbled down to her hand, almost slipping off on its own. Raised, slid. Lowered, tumbled. Raised, lowered.

  She needed to retrieve the baby, quiz Ani, refill the stove, heat some milk, cobble together some supper, fill a washpan, scrub the dishes, let down the blackout blinds, turn on the radio, sort the laundry for tomorrow, give the baby a bath—but she couldn’t. She just kept moving her arm, like someone slicing the air to make a point, or signaling another person a long way off. The gold band moved with her, up and down, trapped on its axis.

  The next morning, Liesl combed her hair back and fixed it with a tortoiseshell pin. She found a smidge of Uta’s lipstick in the bathroom cabinet and rubbed it on her lips. A fleck of soot smoothed her eyebrows. Her best blouse and skirt were ironed and crisp. She took the photograph of Emmy Göring that Uta had cut out from some magazine, spoke to it silently, practicing her responses to the man who might come looking for her friend. I don’t know where she is. At this, Emmy’s lovely aging face appeared downcast, almost forgiving. She disappeared one afternoon. Emmy’s thin lips pursed. There was a butterfly on her dress, just below her right shoulder. I was at a Frauenschaft meeting.

  Liesl sat by the stove with the baby, jumping up at every noise. Hans had gone out. Ani was sitting with his Setzkasten open, waiting for her to call a word so he could spell it. She named simple words, like “rain” or “cold” or “egg,” and sometimes she had to say them again because he forgot what he was spelling. For three minutes he sat there, holding an A, as if it contained some peculiar mystery, and then set it down, saying, “What’s the word again?” She tried not to think about how he would fare in school. All the children were behind now, she told herself. And besides, Ani was a good boy. He tried to listen. That’s all teachers really cared about. And he was safe—she’d woken up that morning without fearing for his life for the first time in more than a month. He was safe. Hadamar had passed them over.

  She turned on the radio to hear reports from Dresden, the announcers listing the numbers of bodies in the streets and interviewing politicians who decried the attack on civilian Germany. It was still impossible to know who was alive and who was dead. Tens of thousands still missing, said the announcer. He made it sound as if “missing” were a consolation, better news than “dead.” But missing didn’t console. Missing meant you couldn’t put bread on the table without thinking, When has he last eaten? You couldn’t hear a dog bark without wondering if he was being chased. The passage of hours—light to the dark to the light to the dark—none of it felt real. The sun and the moon were the same, because you lived in stalled time. Your days gaped like a ripped pocket: Everything that you put into them fell out again.

  And yet she still hoped. Frank was almost home. And if Uta’s lover came today, it meant Uta was also free.

  Liesl licked her lips so much the color wore off them, and her armpits grew damp and wrinkled by sweat. Jürgen rubbed his nose on her collar. She looked at the windows. The glass panes had a cold gray hue. She could see them blasting inward as shards. She wished she could pull the blackout blinds now, seal herself and the boys away.

  Finally she left Ani and stripped off the ironed skirt and blouse, laying them out flat on the couch where Uta used to sleep. She put on an old housedress, fumbling with every button. Her temples hurt from trying not to cry. Her hands found the portrait of Emmy Göring on her dresser and crumpled it. The actress’s chin smashed into her blond curls, her calm eyes disappearing last. Liesl worked the paper until it was a tiny ball and shoved it in her pocket.

  She told Ani to come down to the kitchen, to keep at his spelling and watch his brother while she prepared their midday supper. Ani set up his tiles again and waited. But suddenly Liesl couldn’t think of anything to spell. The words that came to her mind were too big, too vague, like “friendship” and “homesick.” He would never manage them.

  She tried to think what Ani would know. He knew grief. He had lost his mother and yearned for her. He must yearn for concrete things. She missed Uta’s laugh and Frank’s warm strong arms and the way her aunt used to run a comb through her hair. Ani must miss Susi’s touch and Susi’s voice. He’d told her that he had taken the paintbrushes from Herr Geiss because he loved his mother and wanted “to make her.” To paint her? Yes, to paint her.

  “I need a new word,” Ani said.

  Liesl searched the kitchen. “Bread,” she said.

  B-R. He stopped. His head flicked to the right.

  Ani was lost, too. He lived in the world of the windowpane, caught between outside and inside.

  “What’s the word again?” he said after a whole minute passed. He frowned at her expression. “Mutti, what’s wrong?”

  She pressed her handkerchief to her mouth, trying to swallow the sob. “It’s all right,” she choked out. “You finished spelling it already.”

  The boy watched her, puzzled. “Why did you change clothes?”

  “I was cold,” Liesl said. She fisted the handkerchief and tried to smile at him. “You need a new word. How about ‘bird’?”

  A mysterious parcel arrived the following week. Liesl unwrapped it slowly, knowing what was inside by the familiar weight and hollowness, the smell of leather and sweat.

  He’s taken me back. He’s quite pleased and proprietary about the child, and spoiling me far too much. Only three months left, and then I’ll come visit you, and you can show me everything I’m supposed to do. I’m not a natural mother like you, and I will need lots of training! And don’t worry your head about Dr. Becker—he was eager to pass on the case to his Dr. Pfeizer, and Dr. Pfeizer was happy to drop it. I hope you find my castoffs comfortable.

  The paper was tucked in the heel of Liesl’s boot. Another paper, tucked in the left boot, said simply, Forgive me.

  Liesl read the first letter again. It didn’t sound like Uta at all. Liesl’s mouth filled with a sour taste. She wound the paper around her finger until it curled, and then pulled it free, and wound it again.

  Forgive me.

  Never, Liesl thought. Not for endangering your own life.

  Not an hour went by when she wasn’t telling something to Uta—Uta, her conscience, skeptical and loving. I think Berte may become a friend, after all . . . It’s silly, but I think whatever Ani ate might have been in Herr Geiss’s house . . . I looked at the map and counted the kilometers—even if he was walking, Frank would almost be home.

  Liesl threw the curls of paper in the stove. She couldn’t forgive Uta, but she couldn’t stop talking to her. She would never stop talking to her.

  Motherland
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br />   Hans rubbed the crusty sleep from his eyes and turned down the street to the brewery pasture. Another air raid last night, close enough to sound the sirens, to hear the thunder of bombs, but not to feel them shake the earth. Not you, they seemed to drum. Not yet. For hours, he’d huddled next to Ani and his stepmother in the cellar, now crowded and smelly with bodies, and waited for the attack to come. He’d waited with the candles lit, then blown out. Waited with silence, with Frau Winter whispering a story to her restless sons about a girl who ran outside during a raid and dragged herself back with an iron pole through her belly. It was broken from a street lamp, she said in a wondering voice. Hans had waited with the stink of sweat and the explosion of someone’s fart, and the humiliating awareness that Berte was on the other side of the hole, probably thinking the fart was his. The lack of sleep made him feel raw and old now. He had the feeling that all his morning dreams had been bad dreams, but he couldn’t remember them, only their sticky, shadowed residue.

  Hans was done with his errands, but he didn’t want to go home. He didn’t want his stepmother to give him another job to do. He could see from the commotion of bodies in the old stable that a game of Kidnap was on. He dropped his parcels at the edge: winter-soft tubers and sunflower seeds—finally Ani’s sunflower seeds! He jogged to join the team that was down a man.

  The snow had given way to mud. Even the girls were filthy. The streaks on their cheeks and hair made them seem desperate. More of a plunder and less of a treasure. When they shrieked, their voices sounded harsh, crow-like. When they ran, they kicked up spatter.

  “Kiss my boots!” the oldest Winter brother commanded the girls after he’d rescued them. He climbed into the stone stall and gestured for them to kneel in the mud. “I freed you. Kiss my boots.” He was tall and hawk-like, with hair on his upper lip. He smoked in the bathroom at home and used up all their newspaper. Hans hated and admired him.

  The five girls stared at him, fingering a braid, chewing a lip. The other boys shifted from foot to foot.

  “That’s against the rules—” Hans started to say.

  But Frieda Dillman was already sinking down and kissing the shoe. She bolted up again, swabbing her lips. The others quickly followed. The game resumed. The girls were locked in Hans’s team’s prison, then escorted to safety, and then someone else shouted, “Kiss our shoes,” and the girls lined up again. Hans saw the backs of their necks below their wool hats, and that one girl had a strawberry birthmark at her nape. His lips and fingers were numb with cold. He didn’t understand what was happening, only he was fighting with the other team again—not just throwing mud and running, but grappling body to body—and as he was flung to the earth he saw the girls shoved up against the wall and heard their shrieks, some of them frightened and others pleased, and he rose and tackled and threw a boy down, and pushed his own hips into the scratchy wool coat of a girl, and her eyes widened as she crashed into the stone wall, and then an elbow snaked around his neck and he backed off, choking, and heard the first tear of cloth and the first real scream, and then he was hitting the ground, his cheek mashing into slick mud.

  He rose, his feet sliding, his arms swinging. His back wasn’t even straight when he saw the torn fabric and the bare breast beneath, a little pillow of flesh puckered by a single dark red button. Frieda Dillman pulled her jacket closed and staggered away.

  Above them, three planes droned.

  Hans turned and ran for the edge of the lot, shoving the rutabagas in his coat, the sunflower seeds in an inner pocket. He heard the footfalls of others beside him, but he didn’t turn his head. He didn’t look left or right but kept his eyes on his shoes, skimming from the wet mud to wet cobblestone to the sandy path of the Kurpark and back to his own street.

  His stepmother and brothers were still at the lending library, where they went once a week. Hans put the vegetables in the pantry. He washed himself fast with lukewarm water from the top of the stove. He ran upstairs. He put the sunflower seeds on Ani’s bed. But his heart kept thumping and he didn’t know how to calm it. He pulled out the atlas and traced a different route for his father, going south to Rudolstadt, and then east to Bad Vilbel, through the Black Forest. Then maybe a short leg by train, and then what? What was taking Vati so long?

  He heard the thuds of the Dillmans returning, heading upstairs to their apartment. He curled in his knees and held them tight. His eyes traced cities and roads, but in his mind, he saw Frieda Dillman’s bare breast. He laid his head down on the atlas, as if listening to it. After what seemed like hours of waiting, he dozed, waking only when he heard the lock to the closet door click. He bolted up.

  “Ani,” he said. “I’m in here.”

  “I heard what happened to Frieda Dillman,” said his stepmother’s voice. “I heard you were part of it.”

  There was a coldness in her tone that he’d never heard before. He faced the white-painted door, words of apology and explanation stuck in his throat.

  “You’ll stay there and think about what you’ve done,” she said.

  His eyes fell on the sunflower seeds. “Can Ani come in?” he said, his throat rusty. “I have something for him.”

  “Ani will sleep in the study with me and your brother,” she said. “God help us, there won’t be an air raid tonight.” He heard his baby brother gabble to himself as she carried him away. The vocalizations sounded almost intelligible. Hans strained to hear them. He thought he heard good boy, good boy, but then it sounded like nonsense afterward.

  Liesl carried the key to the living room and set it down on a shelf, beyond Jürgen’s reach. She let him pull himself up on her, his head banging into her knees as he balanced on the floor. So she’d finally put her foot down. Liesl wished she could tell Uta. She wished she had the energy to be proud or relieved, but she didn’t.

  Locking Hans up merely produced another thing to wait for: the moment when she let Hans out. She would add it to her expanding list: for Frank to return, for the raids to end, for Ani’s health to be restored. It saddened her to realize that she’d seen enough of Ani’s behaviors—the twitching, the stumbling, the conversations with the invisible—to know what triggered them, and if she kept Ani away from loud noises and crowds, she could minimize his outbursts. What else could she do but lock him up, too? Her aunt’s reply had been kind, but Liesl could read between the lines: There simply wasn’t room for them all in Franconia. And wouldn’t it be safer to stay put in a small spa town?

  Was it safer? Liesl’s constant dread of raids, of the American invasion, made it hard to focus. She found herself stunned by the simplest tasks, changing Jürgen’s diaper or lighting the stove, her mind blanking on the steps it took to finish. According to the radio, the Americans were less than a day’s train ride away now, and within weeks, they would be here. The Americans. She had first formulated an impression of them from seeing Gone with the Wind when it had played at the spa. In Gone with the Wind, the Americans had worn blue and gray uniforms and ridden horses. The Yankees seemed seedy in comparison to the Confederates, who’d fought nobly for a bad cause. Afterward Liesl and Uta had argued whether or not Scarlett O’Hara deserved what she got: a handful of earth, a red sky.

  I don’t think she’ll ever be happy, Liesl remembered saying.

  I don’t think she wants to be, Uta had replied.

  The Americans weren’t fighting on their own land now, against their own people. They had no faces. They hid inside their tanks and planes and shot their bombs. They were marching on the Rhine. The banks of the big slow river were crawling with men from both sides, and reports from the north and west were full of death. Dams broken, a flood in the Ruhr, trapping whole German divisions against the onslaught. Boys and old men from nearby villages taking their places behind the Wehrmacht with their pheasant rifles and rusty revolvers. How long could they hold out? The clocks ticked faster every day. The squeaky bicycles outside sounded as if they were crying.

  And now this. Liesl had come back from the lending library to a
sobbing Frau Dillman, standing in the threshold of the Winters’ apartment.

  “There you are,” Frau Dillman said, turning. Her face was blotchy with rage.

  “Go get us some firewood from the coal cellar,” Liesl told Ani.

  He looked at her as if he didn’t understand.

  “Go,” she said.

  She waited the endless moments it took Ani to enter the kitchen and clomp down the basement steps before she ascended with the baby to meet the other women. She was certain she’d done something wrong in the house (left the water running somewhere?), but when she saw Frau Winter’s cool expression, she faltered. She gripped Jürgen tighter.

  The story emerged in shrill tones and gasps: The neighbor boys, including the Winters, including Hans, had attacked her daughters.

  Attacked where? Frau Winter wanted to know.

  And how?

  And who?

  “Surely not my sons,” said Frau Winter. With each question her face looked narrower.

  “Frieda said it was all of them,” said Frau Dillman. “But by name, she mentioned ‘Hans Kappus.’” She held out the cloth she’d wadded in her hands. A flimsy coat, with a jagged tear in the cotton.

  Just then Ani returned with the load of firewood. “Bring it upstairs, and get some more for tonight,” Liesl choked out. The women didn’t say anything as the boy shuffled up the stairs, clinging to the rail with his one free hand, but Liesl could feel their judgment. “That’s a good boy,” she called after Ani. He did not turn or quicken his steps. Finally he went into the apartment, clicking the door behind him.

  Frau Winter fingered the loose threads briefly and then dropped her head. “Your daughter,” she said quietly. “She is . . . untouched?”

  “I think so. My other girls say so,” Frau Dillman said, wiping her eyes.

  “That is good. Then I won’t kill my boys. Just beat them senseless,” said Frau Winter, turning away. “I’m very sorry to your Frieda,” she said with her spine to them. Her narrow shoulders slumped. She went into her apartment and shut the door.