“Why, Robert,” I said, feeling a little cheered up, “that is the makings of a great sermon.”
As we walked home in the fading sunlight, a swarm of painted lady butterflies drifted past us. After noticing more than a few of them the last few weeks, I had read up on butterflies in the library. Painted lady butterflies winter in the desert, I learned. As caterpillars become adults in the spring, they migrate north in search of food and places to breed. Scientists placed their numbers in the billions. The billions!
“Did you know that these very butterflies will eventually fly north all the way to Oregon? Then their offspring will fly on to British Columbia by summer before heading back south again in the fall. We’ll see them again next winter.”
“Can’t say I ever knew that,” Robert answered pleasantly.
“The name I chose for my passport is Schmetterling. That’s the German word for butterfly.”
Robert cocked his head in interest. “Why are you so taken with butterflies?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Sounds silly. I guess it’s such a wonderful example of how something beautiful can come out of something as ugly as a caterpillar. Sort of biblical, don’t you think?” I watched one butterfly lilt in front of me and added softly, “My father’s name was Louis. That’s why I chose Louisa.”
Suddenly, Robert had a stunned look on his face. “I don’t know why it never occurred to me until just now. Louisa Schmetterling isn’t your name, is it?”
Slowly, I shook my head.
“Will you ever tell me what your real name is?”
“Perhaps. Someday.”
A gentle river of wind swirled past us. As William chased the painted lady butterflies, Robert looked at me and gently brushed hair away from my face that the breeze had lifted. Then he realized what he had done and looked embarrassed, as did I. My cheeks grew pink, and I turned away to watch William hop and jump as the butterflies scattered.
* * * *
Things grew quickly in the Arizona sunshine. One morning I went outside to my Victory Garden to stake my tomato plants, which were already leggy and sprawling.
Rosita came over to visit while I worked. She plopped herself down on the grass and pulled out a piece of paper. “Okay, so now I have made a list of all of the bachelors in this town. First, there is Ernest. Maybe not too cute, but he has a steady job. Muy importante. Next, we have Emileo. He is the Italian boy who works at the hotel. Very handsome, but he is a little too friendly with the ladies, I have heard. One of the good things about my job at the salon is that I hear lots of things. Okay. Next we have Tom O’Riley. He is a miner. He goes to my church. He is a good man. So a little on the old side. Next, there is—”
“Rosita! I am not interested in finding an American boyfriend.”
She looked shocked. “Why not?”
“Because I will be returning to Germany as soon as this war is over. Germany is my home. When Hitler is finally defeated, Germany will need all of the help she can get.”
“But what if Hitler isn’t defeated?”
I looked at her, astounded. “I can’t believe you said that! Don’t ever, ever say such a thing! Rosita, he must be defeated. Americans don’t understand how evil he is, how dark Germany has become. Hitler has committed terrible, horrible atrocities. Don’t even think that Hitler won’t be defeated!”
Rosita was taken aback by my strong reaction. But I felt surprised at her ignorance, too. At times, I felt so frustrated with Americans. They had committed their country to fighting Hitler, yet so many seemed naïve about the horror of Hitler’s diabolical ways. True, most did not know the depth of the terrible atrocities that I was aware of, but after reading the newspapers and listening to the radio for news reports, they had more information than they wanted to admit. Sometimes, I felt as if Americans just didn’t want to concern themselves with the suffering of others.
“Louisa, you and Father Gordon and his aunt and William, you all come to Sunday dinner at my house,” offered Rosita in a conciliatory tone.
“Oh, Rosita.” I sighed. “Forgive me for lashing out at you.” I looked at her, chagrined. “Robert’s aunt says that if anyone even mentions Hitler’s name around me, they end up feeling as if they walked straight into a buzz saw.”
Rosita laughed. I felt relieved, glad that awkward moment was behind us.
“About your dinner invitation, I would love to accept for myself, but I’ll have to ask the Gordons’. Reverend Gordon not Father Gordon, remember? Maybe you should just call him Robert. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. May I bring something?”
“You just come and bring a big appetite.”
I smiled at her. “Okay, Rosita, so who else is on your bachelor list?”
Happily, she chattered away, detailing the positive and negative points of each single man under the age of ninety in Copper Springs, until Esmeralda called to her to come home. After the sun rose high in the sky, it became too warm to work. I went inside to wash up and told Miss Gordon about Rosita’s dinner invitation.
“Please give her my apologies,” she said.
I turned to look at her. “Is there any reason you are unable to go to Rosita’s home?”
“I have too much to do.”
“You take a nap on Sunday afternoons.”
“Then that is what I’m going to be busy doing.” She marched upstairs with the clean towels she had just finished folding.
I knew exactly why she was too busy to accept Rosita’s invitation.
On Saturday, I baked a cake that I used to make for my father. I covered it with a dishtowel to take over to Rosita’s for dinner tomorrow as Robert came into the kitchen to listen to Walter Winchell’s commentary on the radio.
“Smells good. Can I have a slice?” He lifted up the dishtowel.
I shook my head. “Ah-ah. Don’t touch. I made it to take tomorrow to Rosita’s. My father used to call it ‘the forgiving cake’.”
Robert walked over to get a coffee cup and started to fill it. “Why did he call it a forgiving cake?”
“Because no matter what I did to it, it still turned out well.” I filled up the sink with warm, soapy water to clean up the dishes I’d used.
Robert picked up a dishtowel to help dry the dishes. “So are you more like your father or your mother?”
“Oh, definitely, my mother. She and I never seem content to leave things well enough alone.”
“Yep,” he nodded in friendly agreement.
I frowned at him but couldn’t hold back a grin. “My father was the peacemaker in our family. Like you.”
He took the last dish from me and dried it, then handed me the dishtowel. “Louisa, do you have any relatives left at all?” he asked, his voice kind.
I glanced over at him. “Well, my father had a cousin in München, in Munich, and she had a little daughter who played the piano like I did. Better than I, actually. They went into hiding a year ago.” I had tried to trace their whereabouts, to provide care packages and money to them, but I could never find a single lead. A good sign, I hoped.
I took the dishtowel from him and hung it carefully on the dish rack to dry, just the way Miss Gordon liked it. I looked around the kitchen to make sure I had left it in pristine condition for her. This was the first time she had let me use the kitchen without supervision. Satisfied that it would pass inspection, I said, “Robert, why is your aunt so prejudiced? You’re not. Sometimes I don’t even understand how you could both be from the same family. You’re nothing alike.”
“Well, Aunt Martha has never lived anywhere else, never even traveled further than Tucson or Phoenix. She has a set view in her mind of the way people are. It’s hard to change, I suppose, at her age.” He picked up his coffee cup and took a sip.
“She has such brittle requirements for everyone. Who isn’t she against? She doesn’t like Mexicans, Catholics, Jews, she doesn’t like divorced…”
Robert winced.
I clamped my mouth shut. Up to that moment, up until his reacti
on, I didn’t really know he and his wife had divorced. Even though I wondered about this mysterious woman often and was aware of the damaging effects her absence had created in this family, it had never really occurred to me that she and Robert were divorced. A divorced minister, no less. I felt terrible. I hadn’t meant to insinuate anything. Would I never get it right? Would I never think before I spoke?
“What I meant is that Copper Springs has a great deal of diversity; she’s been around people of different races and cultures all of her life,” I said feebly, trying to deflect my thoughtless remark.
He poured the rest of his coffee down the drain. “Well, sometimes that can reinforce stereotypes, too. If all she has ever known about a Russian, for example, is a Russian miner who gets drunk every Saturday night, then that’s what she thinks they’re all like. Give her time. She’ll come around.”
He flipped on the radio, and we heard the familiar words of Walter Winchell as he began his commentary with his usual catch phrase: “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. North America and all the ships at sea. Let’s go to press.”
Later that night, the house was so hot from the day’s heat that we sat on the porch. The parsonage had a swamp cooler in the attic, but Miss Gordon said it couldn’t be turned on until it was hot enough to melt butter. I didn’t quite agree with her, but she said I didn’t know how hot “hot” was yet.
She brought out fresh lemonade for everyone. As she handed me a glass, she pointed to my arm and asked, “What’s that?”
She was referring to three small scars, evenly placed a few inches apart from each other in a row on my left upper arm. “Nothing really,” I answered.
“What on earth could have made scars like that? It looks like someone came at with you a hayfork.”
I crossed my arms, covering the scars, more than a little embarrassed by her persistence.
Miss Gordon reached for my arm. “And they’re not so old, either.”
She was right. They hadn’t completely healed. “Just some battle scars,” I said, hoping she would drop the topic.
Now Robert noticed. “Louisa, what happened to you?”
“I got them when I was escaping through France.” I took a sip from my lemonade. They both looked at me, waiting for me to continue. I didn’t really want to say more; dark memories of Germany left me feeling edgy. But they kept staring at me, waiting for me to elaborate. “I had made it through Switzerland and was in Chamonix, France. They say that is where downhill skiing began. It’s a beautiful village. Someday, after the war, you should try and visit Chamonix.”
Robert had that look on his face which communicated clearly, without saying a word, to please get to the point of the story.
“So,” I hurried along, “there was a very kind farmer who helped me get to Beaune. He transported me in a hay wagon. Beaune is a medieval town, another beautiful French village. We passed by some German soldiers sitting on the roadside. I was hidden under the hay in the back of the wagon. The soldiers stopped the farmer’s wagon and poked a pitchfork through the hay, just to make sure no one was there.”
Miss Gordon gasped. “How did you keep still?”
“Sheer terror. Fortunately, the pitchfork hit my arm, and the soldier thought he had hit the bottom of the wagon, so he let the farmer pass on.”
“He could have put out your eyes…or worse,” she noted.
I gave an uncomfortable laugh. “I am sure he would have preferred to have done just that, rather than to have let a German refugee get away. But…you are exactly right. It could have been much worse. For the brave farmer, too. I was one of the lucky ones. A narrow escape, yes?” I stood up to go get William from Robert’s lap and take him upstairs to get ready for bed.
William’s bedroom was directly over the porch. The windows were open to let the breeze in, and as I tucked him into bed, I could hear Robert and his aunt talking about me down below. I knew I shouldn’t have listened, but it was just too tempting.
“Can you imagine? I marvel she never mentioned it. She chatters like a magpie about everything else,” said Miss Gordon.
“Not about everything. You have to ask her about her life in Germany; she doesn’t bring it up. I think it was harder than we could ever know,” added Robert. “Did you know the Nazis killed her father?”
“What?” Her voice sounded filled with disbelief.
“Aunt Martha, have you ever even asked her about her family? Did you know she studied classical piano at the university? Or that she worked with the underground to fight Hitler?”
It was true. She had never shown any interest whatsoever in my background. Good for you, Robert! I wanted to call out through the open window but didn’t.
“I’m amazed she wants to return.” Robert’s voice broke the quiet.
“What do you mean, she wants to return? When?”
“As soon as the war is over.”
Miss Gordon set her glass down. “Must be why she listens to those gloomy news reports so often.”
“Probably so. She has a map of the world up in her room. She marks the progress of the Allies with dressmakers’ pins as they infiltrate Europe.”
I heard Robert refill his glass of lemonade as Miss Gordon said, “I thought she liked it here. She seems happy enough.”
“I don’t think it’s about being happy here. I think she feels that she belongs in Germany.”
“She’s wrong. That was then and this is now. She’s lucky to be in America.”
Robert gave a short laugh. “Well, if you feel that way, why don’t you treat her a little more kindly?”
“I treat her just fine. Same as anyone else. Well, it doesn’t matter. That war isn’t going to be over anytime soon.”
That’s where you’re wrong, Miss Gordon. I could almost smell Hitler’s defeat.
* * * *
After church on Sunday, I pleaded with Miss Gordon one more time to join us for Rosita’s dinner, but her mind was made up.
Rosita had prepared an elaborate feast, with foods I had never seen nor heard of, flavors and textures that were completely new to me. Tamales in corn husks, nopales or cactus leaves, empanadas in pastry dough, enchiladas verde. We lingered around her dining room table for a long time after the meal, enjoying café con leche, while William and Esmeralda played checkers together.
Either Esmeralda seemed to be able to understand William’s attempts at words or they had worked out a way to make their intentions understood to each other. They were good companions. I hadn’t realized that Robert was fluent in Spanish until he and Rosita carried on a long conversation. It would have been a logical assumption, though, living just a few miles from the Mexican border.
Maybe it was better that his aunt didn’t come. Robert looked relaxed.
Once or twice I caught Rosita watching us, with a curious look on her face. She followed me in as I took the dishes to the kitchen. “I think that Father Gordon, he is sweet on you.”
I practically dropped the dishes in the sink.
“Rosita! Please don’t say that. He is just a kind man.” I peeked quickly into the dining room, hoping Robert hadn’t heard her. Rosita was not going to leave my marital status, or lack thereof, alone.
“I am not so sure about that,” she said in a cloying sing-song voice.
Just then, there was a knock at the front door. Robert, closest to the door, went to answer it. Miss Gordon was standing there along with Ernest from the telegraph office holding a yellow Western Union telegram in his hand, a solemn look on their faces.
“Robert,” Miss Gordon said soberly, “Ernest has some news to deliver for Rosita and wanted you to be there when she received it.”
Rosita came to the door, smiling, and then, as if in slow motion, as she seemed to grasp the meaning of why Ernest was at her door, her countenance changed completely. She collapsed into Miss Gordon’s arms.
To her credit, Miss Gordon seemed to know just what to do in such a crisis. I certainly didn’t. “Help me get her inside, Louisa.”
Ernest handed the telegraph to Robert, who read it to himself and then explained it to Rosita. Ramon, Rosita’s husband, had been badly injured in the battle of Attu.
“Rosita,” Robert started gently, “it describes a little information about his condition. His injuries were compounded by the bad weather. He suffered from frostbite.” He paused. “Ramon’s legs were both amputated at the knee.”
A heavy silence filled the room. Rosita hugged herself and began to rock back and forth.
On the radio, just last night, I had listened to reports of an important battle going on over a small Japanese-occupied island called Attu, in the Aleutian Islands. The U.S. military was alarmed that the enemy might use Attu and other neighboring islands as a staging area for attacks on North America, plus an enemy presence on American soil was an embarrassment. The radio announcer described the battle as a difficult campaign, made even more difficult with the bitter Alaskan cold. The island was now fully back in American hands, but at terrible cost. Over 2,100 American soldiers were injured, 500 killed, trying to save this little island, much of the casualties from exposure to the cold.
Hauntingly, I recalled hearing the news correspondent say that grown men were heard crying out for their mothers.
Robert went on to explain that apparently Ramon was now on a hospital ship but would eventually be sent home. At that point, Rosita broke down and wept loudly as Miss Gordon held her.
“You just remember that he is alive, dear, that’s all that matters,” Miss Gordon soothed.
I eyed Miss Gordon with the beginning of admiration. That no-nonsense way of looking at life, which so often made me bristle, was now just what Rosita needed to hold on to, giving her the handles to grasp this terrible news about her husband and not let it overcome her.
Robert walked Ernest to the door, then he and I wordlessly cleaned up the dinner dishes. Just thirty minutes earlier, we had been enjoying each others’ company, lingering at the table after a pleasant meal. The war had reached in to this home and altered all of that. How quickly life could change.
The Copper Series Page 8