The Copper Series

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  Just last spring I held a piano recital for my pupils. When it came time for Arthur’s turn, he was nowhere to be found. After a frantic search, we found him up in William’s tree house, throwing balls down for Dog to chase.

  After a great deal of persuasion and a threat of a spanking by his father, Arthur reluctantly agreed to come down from the tree house and play. He marched up to the piano, right in front of everyone, and just stood there.

  “Arthur, where is your music?” I asked with a sinking feeling.

  He reached a grimy hand into his overalls’ pocket, pulled out a balled-up page of music, and sat down to play Bach’s Minuet in G. Badly. I offered up a silent apology to Mr. Bach, high up in heaven above, hands clapped over his ears, no doubt. It actually hurt to listen to Arthur, but his music put his mother into rhapsodies of happiness.

  What really worried me was that Arthur had two younger brothers. Six-year-old twins.

  Today, I went to the piano and was surprised to find a letter waiting for me from Robert. I smiled. A promising sign. Perhaps we were finally getting somewhere.

  Louisa, I’m just not ready. Robert

  I slumped my shoulders and released an audible sigh.

  There was a part of me that wanted to write him back:

  Dear Robert, I might have replied, you might be annoyed with me, but I am annoyed with you, for being annoyed with me. Am I not a grown woman? Have I not proven myself to live a life of common sense? Good heavens, I was a Resistance Worker. I did not take any undue risks. And I still would make the same decision, to go to Germany for those few short weeks to bring Elisabeth home. I simply could not miss that opportunity.

  But I didn’t write it to him, and we remained stuck at an impasse.

  On the fifth morning after our argument, Robert and Aunt Martha were in the kitchen, talking. I went over to the radiator pipe and unscrewed it. Today, I did not feel a single twinge of guilt. “Crick in your neck, Robert?” asked Aunt Martha.

  “Oh, it’s that horsehair davenport. If I ever have some spare change, I am getting a new sofa. My mother bought that davenport secondhand when I was in college. I don’t know what she was thinking.”

  “She was thinking that there’s no reason to keep a stubborn man sleeping too comfortably on the davenport,” Aunt Martha responded back tartly.

  Then silence descended upon the kitchen. I could just see Robert stiffen his back in the Gordon Way. I couldn’t hold back a grin. Good for you, Aunt Martha!

  A few days later, before the heat of the day was upon me, I started turning the soil for a fall garden. My garden had expanded to a rather sizeable portion of the front yard. I had expected Aunt Martha to object as Robert built more beds for me and hauled in better soil, but I think she enjoyed the compliments the parsonage was getting.

  Our neighbor and friend, Ramon, stopped by with his daughter Esmeralda. “Hello, Louisa! Esmeralda wondered if Elisabeth might like to come to play.”

  “Really? Oh, I think she’d love it! Go in and ask! She’s in the kitchen.”

  Esmeralda scampered up to the front door and burst right in. I turned back to Ramon and smiled happily.

  “You feeling well, Louisa?”

  William had appointed himself the Town Crier, broadcasting news of our baby to every citizen of Copper Springs whether they were interested or not. “I am. Very well. Thank you for asking.”

  “Robert must be proud.”

  I cocked my head. “I hope so.”

  Ramon raised an eyebrow, but remained quiet.

  “I just…well…” Before I knew what I was saying, I spilled out the story.

  Ramon listened patiently, nodding at all of the right places. Scratching his chin, he quietly offered, “If my memory serves me right, the first Mrs. Gordon had a habit of not telling him things.”

  I leaned back on my feet. My heart dropped into my stomach. I had never once linked how Robert might have felt about my keeping something from him, after what Ruth had done. The sting of her betrayal lingered. I shook my head in dismay. How could I have missed that? “Thank you, Ramon. You’ve helped me immeasurably.”

  Esmeralda and William came out of the house together. “Where’s Elisabeth?” I asked.

  Esmeralda shrugged.

  “She wouldn’t come out to play,” William volunteered.

  I sighed. I should have realized that nothing would be easy for Elisabeth, including making friends.

  “Another time, Louisa,” Ramon said reassuringly, as he followed the children home.

  I went in to the house, wrote another letter to Robert, this time with a sincere apology, and a promise to not withhold information from him again. Later that afternoon, I found another letter on the piano.

  Dear Louisa,

  Why don’t you start by telling me your real name

  Sincerely, Robert

  This time, he added a salutation. Perhaps the glacier was thawing.

  I went over to the study, knocked on the door and opened it. He looked at me without expression. “Annika. Annika Schumacher. That’s the name I was born with. When I went to University, I took my mother’s name so I wouldn’t be identified as a Jew. Jews weren’t allowed to attend University.” I turned and opened the door to leave, then turned back again. “But my real name is Louisa Gordon.” And I closed the door quietly and left.

  Later that night, as I was reading in bed, I heard a gentle knock on my door. He poked his head in. “I can’t sleep on that lumpy sofa another night.”

  I leaned over and pulled back the covers on his side of the bed. Robert was half-smiling, a good sign. Our fight was over.

  * * * *

  “I don’t vant to go to no d--- school.” Until that improper remark, there had been a resonant peace in the parsonage this morning.

  Robert nearly dropped the orange juice pitcher he was holding, Aunt Martha spun around on her heels with jaw wide open, and I, accustomed to Elisabeth’s colorful language, darted my eyes nervously between them. Only William remained unperturbed, reading the comic strips in the newspaper. “Elisabeth! Stop using that word” I scolded.

  “Vhat vord?” she asked innocently, eyes wide open.

  Aunt Martha threw the spatula in the kitchen sink and went outside to hang laundry, slamming the door behind her.

  I frowned at Elizabeth and hurried behind Aunt Martha. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” replied Aunt Martha, pressing her lips together in that way I loathed. “Where did she learn those awful words anyway?” She glared at me accusingly, as if I had taught her them myself.

  “From the sailors on the ship. She was so eager to learn English that she picked up every word she could remember from them.”

  Disapproval radiated in waves from Aunt Martha. “Can’t you do something about her English?”

  “Her English?” Was she serious? What about Elisabeth’s temper? Or her pain? Or the fact that she didn’t trust anyone? Or that she never laughed? Or cried? I walked closer to Aunt Martha and picked up a clothespin that she had dropped on the ground. “There are so many things about Elisabeth we need to do something about. It’s overwhelming. She needs time, Aunt Martha. Time to understand what a family is like.”

  She put the clothespins down and looked straight at me. “And how do you expect her to learn when you kowtow to her every demand?!”

  Kowtow? What did that mean? I refused to give her the satisfaction of asking. Unfortunately, she caught the puzzled look on my face.

  “I meant that you spoil her.”

  “Well, right now she needs some spoiling.”

  With that, Aunt Martha rolled her eyes to heaven.

  “I’m trying to develop a relationship with her. I’m not ignoring her behavior. It upsets me, too.”

  She glared at me. “I’ll tell you what else upsets me. Her voice.”

  “I know.” It was true. Elisabeth’s German accent coloring her broken English was very guttural and throaty. “German can be a harsh sounding
language.”

  “Do you mean to tell me that entire country talks like they’re clearing phlegm from the back of their throat?”

  I had to look down to keep from grinning. “Well…I guess that’s one way of describing it.”

  “Thank goodness you don’t sound that way.”

  Thank goodness, indeed! I’m not sure I could have coped with one more category of displeasure from Aunt Martha.

  Later that morning, I took fresh coffee in a thermos over to Robert’s office. Wincing, I filled his coffee cup and said, “I’m sorry about breakfast.”

  He only smiled. “Well, Elisabeth has a way of jumpstarting the day.” He took a sip of coffee. “Can you stay for a few minutes? I have some gaps about Dietrich I hope you can fill.”

  I poured a cup of coffee and sat down across from him.

  He had a pen and notepad in front of him. “Dietrich and I became acquainted in 1931 while he spent the year at Union Theological Seminary. What happened when he returned to Germany?”

  I nodded. “He taught in Berlin until he was forbidden to teach in 1936. After that, he directed an underground seminary for the Confessing Church—a secret community of German pastors who opposed Hitler. He had a profound influence on others. He wrote quite a bit during that period, too. But when the seminary was discovered, the students were immediately inducted into the army.”

  He leaned forward in his chair, interested. “So is that why he ended up back at Union Theological Seminary?”

  “Yes. The invitation came just at the right moment. Many were encouraging Dietrich to leave Germany. He was being heavily censored. He was forbidden to preach or teach or publish. So he went to New York.” I tried to think of the dates. “I think that was 1939.”

  He scribbled down a few lines on his notepad.

  “No sooner had he arrived when he decided to return to Germany, no matter what came of it. He took the last ship to sail for Germany before the war.” I stopped for a moment, swirling the coffee in my cup. “He felt that unless he was right alongside the German people during the war, he would have no right to lead them after the war.” It made me sad to think of Dietrich during this time. If only he had stayed in the United States. If only he hadn’t returned to Germany.

  “I saw him right before he left,” Robert said, interrupting my muse. He poured a second cup of coffee, raising the thermos to see if I wanted a refill. I shook my head.

  Curious, I asked, “What were you doing in New York?”

  “We were…” he hesitated. “The timing…it was just a coincidence that brought us…me…to New York.”

  Us? Could he have meant Ruth? Robert never spoke of her. Could that mean Dietrich had once met Ruth? I cocked my head to listen carefully.

  He swirled in his chair a little so he wasn’t facing me. “I had a call to serve as a minister to a church in New York City, so I agreed to go and deliver a sermon.” He glanced sideways at me, as if he wasn’t sure if he wanted to continue. “Dietrich happened to have been in church that day, so we went out to lunch afterwards. That was when he asked me if I would sponsor someone from Germany, if he ever needed my help.”

  I remained silent, profoundly touched at how God had been weaving our lives together, years before we met.

  He cleared his throat. “So I was offered the pulpit.”

  I nodded.

  “But…I turned it down.” With that, Robert ran out of steam. He didn’t need to say anything more.

  I could guess how this story played out. Ruth wanted Robert to live in New York. She wanted a more exciting life than the one they had in humble Copper Springs. I could imagine how angry she must have been with him when he turned down that opportunity. Not much later, I realized as I started to add up the years, William was born. And soon after, she began a relationship with Friedrich Mueller.

  “Maybe I’d better go see if Elisabeth and William are annoying Aunt Martha.” I could see it was difficult for Robert to remember back to those years, for his own reasons, and recalling memories of Dietrich during that deteriorating situation in Germany churned me up inside. I picked up the empty thermos and kissed him on the cheek. “Perhaps we can only manage brief discussions about Dietrich.”

  He gave a short nod of agreement but reached out to squeeze my hand.

  After lunch, I told Elisabeth to hurry and brush her teeth so we could go.

  “Vhere go ve?” She looked up at me from her bed where she was reading.

  “Where are we going?” I corrected. “That’s how you should ask that question. Not ‘where go we?’ You can’t translate an English sentence from German construction.”

  She scowled, but she paid attention. Elisabeth was trying very hard to learn English; she had already made huge strides. On the ship, she mixed German and English in sentences when she didn’t know the English words. Now, even if she didn’t get the right word, she rarely resorted to German anymore. I couldn’t help but admire her determination.

  “So vhere are ve going?” she asked.

  “Over to Rosita’s. She has some hand-me-downs from Esmeralda to give you for school.”

  “Vhat is dat?”

  “Hand-me-downs?” With delight, I realized it was the first American colloquialism that I’d ever used. Frankly, the first one I understood. “Dresses that Esmeralda has outgrown.” Even though Esmeralda was younger than Elisabeth, she was much taller and filled out, more like her mother’s generously sized figure.

  I sat on a bed while Rosita cleaned out Esmeralda’s closet, tossing outgrown clothes into a large pile on the floor. Esmeralda was downstairs trying to teach Elisabeth and William how to play “Go Fish” with a deck of cards.

  “So how is it going, Louisa?” asked Rosita.

  “Harder than I thought it would be,” I answered honestly.

  “She looks like a tough cookie.”

  “She is. Inside and out. I hope her looks will soften when she starts to put some weight on. And when her hair grows. We’ve already been to the doctor. He’s put her on a diet to gain weight.”

  “I didn’t know there was such a thing!” Rosita laughed, patting her round bottom.

  Just then, the girls came upstairs. Elisabeth’s eyes grew as round as saucers as she saw the pile of clothes on the floor. She looked up at the closet, which was still overflowing with clothes. “Dat is a sin!” she announced, pointing at the pile of clothes.

  The very Catholic Rosita gasped. “What is a sin?” Quickly, she pulled out her Rosary beads from her skirt pocket.

  “To make such vaste. Is a sin!”

  “Elisabeth!” I scolded, but she turned and ran down the stairs and back home. I looked at Rosita. “I’m so sorry. She doesn’t know…she’s been in such a terrible environment…please don’t take that comment seriously. She doesn’t understand how she can hurt people.”

  The pained look on Rosita’s face crumpled into the big toothy grin I loved so well. “Louisa, welcome to parenthood.”

  We gathered up the clothes into a few bags, and William helped me carry them home.

  “Did Elisabeth say something bad?” he asked, looking up at me.

  I stopped to look directly at him. “Not bad. Just not…good.”

  “I think she does that a lot.”

  I smiled. “I think you’re right.”

  “But I found something good.”

  “Really? What?”

  “Aunt Martha hasn’t said anything mean about Dog since Elisabeth came to stay with us.”

  It was true. Aunt Martha had been so busy complaining about Elisabeth that she had hardly noticed Dog’s latest indiscretions. Just last night, he had rummaged through the garbage can, but all that Aunt Martha said was, “You’d think no one ever fed that creature.”

  Thinking about Dog filled me with sadness. It was starting to look as if we might have to find a new home for him. Elisabeth was terrified whenever he came near her, so we kept him outside, on the line. When I mentioned my worry to Robert, he looked stricken. He said he
would keep Dog with him in the church study during the day. But that wasn’t fair to Dog. He was meant to be a boy’s dog, not a minister’s footstool.

  I didn’t know what to do about this situation; Elisabeth’s fears were very real. She had already had a few bad dreams about Dog, waking up in a cold sweat, shouting “Das hund!” The dog!

  I looked down at William’s sandy-blond head, holding two big bags of clothes in his little arms. He had a way of catching me in the heart. “William, do you know you’re my boy?”

  He nodded up at me solemnly. “And Elisabeth is your girl.”

  I gulped. I really didn’t feel much love for Elisabeth, only a sense of familial obligation, and a steadily growing annoyance. But love? Not yet, but I was working on it. To William, I nodded enthusiastically.

  When we got home, I took the clothes and a box of straight pins into Elisabeth’s room. “I’d like to have you try these on so I can tailor them to you. School starts in just a few weeks, so I’ll need to get busy adjusting them for you.”

  She acted disinterested but got up to see the clothes. She pulled off her shirt and pants to try on one dress. I forced my eyes away from her body. It was nearly skeletal. I could count her ribs, and her scapula looked more like chicken wings than shoulder blades. It melted my heart toward her.

  As I pinned up the hem on one dress, I said, “This reminds me of when I first arrived in Copper Springs. Rosita gave me clothes to wear. I didn’t have very many, and the ones I brought with me from Germany were threadbare.”

  “Dey are rich,” she announced.

  “No. They’re not rich. They’re like we are.”

  “Den vhy she give me da clothes?”

  “Rosita is extremely generous. Kind-hearted, too. She has provided a great help to you, Elisabeth. Did you know we haven’t even been able to buy new shoes in America?”

  “Vhy not?”

  “There was a ban on shoe making and all kinds of other things so every resource could go toward fighting the war. You wouldn’t have these shoes to wear if it weren’t for Esmeralda.”