Restless Dreams

by Pullen, Karen;

  Then I would sit by the window to watch the stars slowly rotate in the sky, clouds pass before the face of the moon. I wondered if Mama saw them too; maybe we watched together. Often, a pack of wild hogs came to dig for acorns beneath the giant oak in front of the house. Then, like Giles and me, Rudi was very quiet, holed up in his dog-house next to the chicken pen.

  LATE ONE MORNING Emma brought us a can of sardines, drizzled with vinegar. At the sight of the little black-eyed silver fish, I cried and refused to eat them but Giles said they tasted so good, mashed on a piece of toast, and after one little bite I decided yes, they were delicious. We were licking our fingers when came clank-clank-clank. My heart beat with a terrible fright and I began to cry, I couldn’t stop. Tante made Emma go in the hidey-hole with us, to calm me. Two soldiers stomped about below, talking harshly to Tante. Giles and I understood a little German—our grandfather had spoken German to our mother. The soldiers said Tante must give them butter, rabbit meat, and eggs every week. She will have to meet a quota.

  The hidey-hole was hot as an oven. We lay quiet until the stomping and the voices ceased. Clank five times. I sat up, dripping with sweat. My heart would not slow down.

  The soldiers took—no, stole—eggs, honey, jars of pickles and beans, and three loaves of bread that had been cooling.

  PASSING THE TIME was so difficult. I made paper dolls, drew pictures. We played checkers. Emma brought us arithmetic and history books. Giles taught me a bit of English and read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland aloud to me. We studied a book of maps over and over, planning where we’d go. After. We listed ways to kill Nazis. Sharp things to stab them with: knives of course, ice picks, spears, arrows. Hard things like hammers to bash their brains out. Ropes, scarves, wire, string to strangle them with.

  We talked constantly of after. After this, after the war, after the Nazis all died. It helped, to think about a future.

  EVERY WEEK, THE German soldiers, always the same two, came on motorbikes for Tante’s food. Spots was tall and pimply, Tiny Eyes had slicked-back black hair and, well, tiny eyes set back in his skull. After the first few times, as soon as Rudi began to yip and we heard the putt-putt of their bikes, Tante made Emma go into the hidey-hole with us.

  Emma would lie squished between Giles and me, her eyes closed, her cheeks pale. She smelled like sweat and starch. I lay rigid, too frightened to sleep, breathing a sort-of prayer, angels surround us. Anges nous entourent. I imagined enchanted glowing creatures, their silver swords poised to protect. I buried my face against Emma’s arm, silently wetting her sleeve with my tears.

  Giles too turned his face toward Emma, watching her with one eye as the other wandered upward to the spider-webbed ceiling.

  I thought she was there to shush us.

  WE WERE NOT the only hidden ones. Through cracks in the floorboards, we heard hushed talk about Allied airmen moving from farm to farm, eventually to Paris and escape routes into Spain. We were intensely curious but also afraid, because Tante, Opa, and Emma would tell us nothing, and their silence only added to my worry.

  Moving some boxes and bundles around in the attic, I found a wood rocking chair with arms and a carved back. One runner was missing, and Opa fixed it for me. I rocked all day, cradling my doll. Creak creak creak creak . . . Giles didn’t protest.

  OUR THIRD WINTER was frigid with lots of snow. Snow covered the farm, the road, and the barn with a pure white thick blanket. Another time, it would seem magical to us. But two feet of snow was no protection against Nazis, or a witch behind the chair, a floor of quicksand. The owl was just as loud, the dog just as nervous.

  On the evening before his sixteenth birthday, Giles was shoveling paths through the yard, to the road, the barn, the rabbit, and chicken coops, when Rudi began to bark. Giles ran into the house. A neighbor from a nearby farm had made his way through drifts and Opa let him in. We tried to overhear what they talked about, but they went outside, to the barn, without speaking.

  I went back to my sketches. I was drawing a bouquet of flowers for Giles, for his birthday. Tante promised an apple tart, and Emma was making over some clothes of her father’s for him.

  That night, Tante made us stay in the attic instead of coming down for chores, play, and warm milk. She didn’t explain, but said firmly, “Be very quiet.”

  It was late, after curfew, when Rudi started to bark again. Strangers. “Something’s going on,” Giles said, and we crowded together to peek out the window. A half-moon cast a dim light over the yard, crisscrossed with shoveled paths. Two men walked into the yard. Opa went outside, hushed the dog, and led the men into the barn.

  “Nazis?” I asked. “Should we get into the hidey-hole?”

  “No. Civilians,” Giles said. “Wait and see.” His voice was a man’s, now.

  One man came out of the barn and walked away. Opa returned to the house. We put our ears to the floor to listen, and heard Emma ask, “Who is he?”

  Opa said, “An American airman. He has a concussion.”

  “Oooo,” Tante said. I could almost see her pursed lips and frowning eyes.

  Giles and I looked at each other with big eyes. An airman! An American!

  “He will stay here at least a few days,” Opa said. “Then he’ll be taken to Paris.”

  “The Germans will be looking for him,” Emma said.

  “Of course,” Opa said. “But Adrian burned his parachute and clothing, and we have hidden him well.”

  “He will want to eat,” Tante said. We heard the crackle of potatoes dropped into hot oil. Tante made the best fries.

  “I want to see him,” Giles whispered to me.

  I nodded. An American airman!

  THE NEXT DAY we were crazy to see the airman but Emma said, “It is too dangerous, for him and for you. What if he was captured? He might tell about you two.” She had helped me bathe, and was trying to comb my hair, not an easy job. It was so long, almost to my waist, and tangled easily. But she was patient, working on it strand by strand.

  “He wouldn’t tell,” Giles said. “He is a b-b-b-brave man.”

  She looked up at him, shook her head, then went back to combing.

  “Don’t tell him we’re Jewish,” I said. “Tell him we are your sister and brother.”

  “P-p-p-please?” Giles begged.

  “No. It’s not safe for you or him.”

  I was wildly disappointed, sick of being safe.

  SO, THE NEXT afternoon, when Tante and Opa had gone somewhere on the train, and Emma was in the garden, Giles and I crept out of the house and dashed into the barn. Cats scattered as we tiptoed around looking for the airman, going from stall to stall, climbing to the loft, peeking into cupboards. We couldn’t find him! Emma caught us coming out of the barn.

  “Idiots,” she said. “What are you doing?” She carried a pan of rabbit meat.

  Giles shrugged. “Nothing. Just looking in the b-b-b-barn.”

  Emma looked us up and down. Giles had grown a good six inches taller, and his pants barely covered his knees. “What did you find?” she asked.

  “Cats,” I said. “Many cats.”

  “Good. Now back inside. I’ll bring you some stew later.”

  Just then, Rudi’s sharp yip-yip and the rumble of a motorbike coming down the road jolted us into a panic, and we ran across the yard, inside, and up into the attic. Giles pulled up the ladder, and we squatted by the window and opened the curtain a tiny sliver to see who it was. Tiny Eyes, by himself. He banged on the door and Emma let him in. We crept into our hidey-hole. My heart thumped the way it always did when a Nazi soldier was in the house.

  “Is he looking for the airman?” I whispered.

  “He asks her for the food,” Giles told me. He frowned. I could hear arguing and Emma yelling, “No, stop.”

  “What shall we do?” I whispered. “What’s he doing?”

  We heard thuds, like chairs falling over, and Emma screeched, “No, no!” The soldier yelled, “Quiet, you bitch!” and more thuds then sudden
ly she was silent.

  “Has he left?” I whispered.

  Giles was so red I thought he would ignite. He opened the door to the hidey-hole. “Stay here,” he said.

  But I followed, scrambling down the ladder. Whatever was happening, I wanted to be part of it.

  The soldier was on top of Emma, on the floor, struggling with her. He had one hand around her throat, and the other pulling on her clothes, and she squealed and squirmed, pushing against him. His pants were down and his bare bottom shoved against her. It was a horrible sight and as I started to cry, Giles lifted Tante’s big black fry pan and swung it onto the side of the soldier’s head, knocking his face into the floor. Giles whammed the fry pan into the soldier’s head over and over as Emma wriggled away and her noises changed from squeals to sobs, just one or two, then she stopped. Emma was as tough as they come.

  The soldier lay still. Blood poured from his head. “He’s dead,” Emma said, but when Giles nudged him with his foot, the soldier moaned. He wasn’t dead. More blood. Oh, so much blood. The soldier’s pants were clumped around his ankles, and I couldn’t help seeing his stiff penis, like a mule’s, in its hairy nest. Disgusting. Poor Emma.

  She was all right. “You two saved me,” she said. “He didn’t get very far.” She took our hands—Giles’s all bloody and sticky and trembling—and we stood, joined in a circle, over the soldier’s body, until she kicked him, then I gasped and kicked him too. Oh, how Emma and I kicked that Nazi soldier until our shoes were bloody. We tried to be quiet, choked on strangled laughter, excited, though I wanted to shriek to the heavens Filthy Boche! Dead Nazi! Giles backed away, watching us celebrate. When the Nazi stopped moaning, Emma and I turned to Giles to praise his bravery, but he stood rigid and the color was gone from his face.

  “They will hang us from trees for this,” he said. “Your mama and grand-père too. They will find the airman and shoot him.”

  “No. He will help us,” Emma said, and she darted outside.

  We listened to the soldier gurgle through his broken nose. “You were brave,” I said to Giles. He ignored me and walked back and forth.

  Emma came back with the airman. He was sandy-haired and stocky, and there was a big lump on his forehead. At the sight of the Nazi, he took out a cigarette and lit it.

  “Nice job,” he said. “Who are you?” His French was very good.

  “I am Giles, and this is my sister Leni,” Giles said.

  “That’s a Nazi soldier,” I said. “He was hurting Emma and Giles hit him!”

  “Good for Giles,” the airman said. “Let’s get rid of the bastard.”

  “Get rid of the bastard,” I yelled. Emma grinned. She went into her bedroom, came out with a sheet. The airman and Giles rolled the Nazi onto the sheet, wrapped him up. He was still breathing. They dragged the bundled soldier outside, and I watched through the open back door as they heaved him through the yard, past the chicken pen, the garden, the bee houses, the sheds and into the woods.

  Emma fetched cloths and a bucket of water. “We have to clean this up,” she said. “They’ll be looking for him.” I set to work, frantically sopping up bloody water, emptying the bucket, filling it again, over and over. We washed the floor, cupboards, our shoes, the wood stove, chair legs until every speck of blood was gone. She wrung out the cloths, put them into soapy water along with the small rag rug that lay before the sink.

  We sat by the attic window, hip to hip, and waited. I lay down onto Emma’s lap, but my muscles felt tight and shivery and I couldn’t rest.

  It was dark when Giles and the airman came back. They stopped in the yard and pumped water to wash, and I climbed down the ladder and ran out to them, crying, so glad the Nazis hadn’t caught them and hung them from a tree.

  “Where’s your mom? The old guy?” The airman asked. He squatted to rub Rudi’s ears.

  “They will be back late tonight,” Emma said. “Come in, have something to eat.” She cut bread, spread butter and jam.

  “What did you do with the Nazi?” I asked.

  Giles and the airman shared a glance. Giles said, “We took him very far into the trees, burned his clothes, then waited.”

  “For what?”

  “For the hogs to smell his blood.”

  The airman shook his head and said, “We got pigs back home, but I never saw them do a man like that.”

  A feeling of glee stabbed me. Glee on top of terror and exhaustion, and I couldn’t help it, I let go of a warm gush of pee, pee I’d been unable to release all day.

  “Poor girl,” Emma said. “But that will explain the wet rags, and the clean floor. Now go up to bed.”

  THE AIRMAN LEFT with the motorbike.

  “Where’s he going?” I asked.

  “To ditch it,” Giles said. “So no one will know Tiny Eyes was here.”

  “Is he coming back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I pulled a blanket around me and curled onto the rocking chair. I was wide awake, worried about the airman. When Rudi woofed softly, I peeked out the window; the moon was bright enough to see Tante and Opa, returning in the mule-driven wagon. Emma had said it was better that they didn’t know what happened, and we should say nothing to them.

  Then I must have slept because the next thing I knew, the hatch to the attic was opening and the airman was climbing through it. “Hey there, kids,” he said. “There’s German soldiers coming up the road and the old man told me to hide up here with you two.”

  “You had a good hiding place in the barn,” Giles said. “We couldn’t find you.”

  “I wasn’t in the barn. I was off in the woods having a smoke because the old man told me not to smoke in the barn. Anyway, what’s the plan up here?”

  “Follow me,” I said, and opened the cupboard to our hidey-hole. We crawled in, latched the door, and lay down with the airman in the middle, squashed together in a sandwich. My head was under his arm, and I could feel his heart thump, his ribs move as he breathed. He smelled of cigarettes, of hay, and leaves.

  Rudi barked hysterically as motorbikes pulled into the yard. Bam-bam pounding on the door, then sharp voices questioning Tante about Tiny Eyes. She would be in her nightdress and robe, black braids hanging down.

  “No, no soldiers were here today,” she told them. “Should I wake my old father and child?”

  The soldiers stomped through the kitchen, into the small parlor, then outside. As Rudi barked and barked, I guessed they were searching the barn. We lay in silence until we heard the motorbikes putt-putt away.

  “We’ll live another day, guys,” the airman said. “Say, how long you been hiding here?”

  “Almost three years,” I said.

  “The war’s almost over,” he said. “We’re bombing the shit out of Berlin.”

  My brave brother Giles smiled, and I felt my muscles uncoil, for the first time since I put on all my clothes for the car ride from Lille. I stretched a little to get more comfortable, and rested my head on the airman’s chest. His heart had slowed, but I could still feel it thumping beneath the scratchy wool of his shirt. Anges nous entourent, I breathed, closing my eyes to conjure up flickering lights, tiny silver swords.

  The airman asked what I had said.

  “Anges nous entourent,” said Giles.

  “Indeed they do,” the airman said.

  Have You Seen Her?

  I REMEMBER EVERY detail of that last morning. I’d fixed pancakes and bacon for the three of us. Our seven-year-old, Connor, rocked in his squeaky chair, humming, lost in his crazy-boy thoughts. When sunlight struck a crystal hanging in the window, scattering rainbow flickers around the kitchen, he reached out his hands to catch the flying jewels. He hooted his excited-monkey noise until I silenced him with the last piece of bacon.

  After a twelve-hour patrol shift, Greg looked drained, even with the rainbow glimmering across his face. Budget cuts had reduced the police force, but not the workload. Just as many folks gone adrift as ever.

  “I’ll take
him to the beach park this morning. You get some rest,” I said.

  Greg kissed my ear. “You’re a keeper,” he said, his breath sour and warm. He started loading the dishwasher but I shooed him out of the kitchen.

  AT THE PARK Connor would swing happily as long as I kept pushing him, and though after the thousandth shove on his bony bottom I was exquisitely bored, it was a good day to be alive, to enjoy the ocean’s sparkle, the cries of gulls, the fresh iodine-smell of the sea.

  We were alone until a girl sat on the swing next to Connor. Pleased at the diversion, I was a bit puzzled at her appearance out of nowhere; I hadn’t noticed her approach though the area around the swings was open space. Her golden hair was long, dirty, and tangled. She wore a grimy white dress and black leggings with lace trim, and was barefoot. If cornered in a witness box I would put her age at ten, though she was slight and could be any age, even twenty. Alone, thin and dirty—at first, I felt a pang of sympathy.

  Though she hadn’t made a sound, Connor twisted toward her, dragging his feet to slow his swing. He smiled. Was he smiling at her?

  Then a miracle occurred. “Hi,” said my nonverbal son. “I’m Connor.”

  You can’t imagine what joyful emotion flooded me at this instant as I realized that he’d spoken to someone. This girl had triggered something in him that a dozen therapists had tried and failed. He was being social.

  She turned to us. Her features are hazy in my memory but there was something compelling about her and I stared at her until I realized what it was. Her eyes were solid black, reflective like marbles. Her eyes were all I noticed about her face.

  When my gaze dropped to her dirty bare feet, my vision blurred. Were those claws? I blinked. No. Scaly, pointed toes. I felt pity, curiosity, and revulsion, and hoped my feelings didn’t show. Though I was happy—and proud!—that my son had made a connection with another person, I had trouble believing what I saw—the strangeness of the girl’s eyes and Connor’s recognition of her were too far from my everyday normal.