Secrets She Kept

by Cathy Gohlke

  “Did you tell him?”

  “I waited the year, hoping he would recover more, and if he recovered—when he recovered—we could find her, go to her.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “Perhaps, if Lieselotte had been here . . . I wrote to the American base in Oklahoma where Lieutenant Sterling was stationed, but the letters were returned, with scribbles across them: Moved—Left No Forwarding Address.”

  “You must have found her—sometime.”

  “Ja. Three, maybe four years later I spoke to an American soldier stationed in Berlin. I told him I was trying to reach an old friend—Lieutenant Sterling and his wife, Lieselotte. He pitied me. He said it was hard for German brides in America and knew she’d be comforted to have a friend write from home.”

  “By then Mama and Daddy’d moved to the mountains of North Carolina.” Joe wasn’t my father. Why didn’t he return Mama to Lukas and Marta, like he promised?

  “Ja, I do not think Joe wanted me to find her. I know he did not.”

  I pulled the banded group of envelopes from my purse—the envelopes I’d carried with me ever since Ward Beecham had given me the key to Mama’s safe-deposit box. “These came from you?”

  Marta turned the envelopes around, adjusted her glasses, and read the return address. “Where did you find these? Lieselotte kept my letters?”

  “No. I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t want Daddy—Joe—to see them, or maybe she kept them hidden somewhere else. I found these envelopes in her safe-deposit box after she died, but no letters. It was part of the trail that led me to you. But Carl’s parents said that you and Lukas had moved. Is he . . . is my father still alive?” I’d been desperate to know, afraid to ask. Once the answer came it could not be undone.

  “I am sorry, Hannah. In the camp, Lukas contracted tuberculosis. So many developed diseases—no sanitation, no medicine. After the war there was not enough help. He struggled to get home. He fought to recover, and lived a few years . . . but what shall I say?” Marta wiped the moisture from her eyes. “I am not surprised Lieselotte never told you about your father, but I am sorry she did not. He was a very brave man, a good man. He saved many lives, but he could not save his own.”

  My father . . . my own father—a good man, a generous and loving man. If only I’d known you. If only there was time for us. But you’re gone. Oh, Mama, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you come back? What made you stay away? You hated Joe—I know you did! “Did she write back to you?”

  “Ja, at first. She was astonished to learn that Lukas lived. Lieutenant Sterling had told her that he’d gone in search of Lukas and his family, but that we had all perished in the war. Because Lieselotte believed that, she believed the rest. Lieutenant Sterling convinced her that the child she carried could only be born alive if she received treatment and that the treatment she needed could only be found in America. He promised to return her to Germany if she ever wanted to come.”

  “But he didn’t return her.”

  “Because it was not true. It was a lie to make her marry him.” Marta set the photographs on the coffee table. “Lieutenant Sterling spoke some German, but Lieselotte spoke so little English before she left Germany. How was she to know? She trusted him. Anyway, who could she ask for help?

  “Of all the things he was guilty of—lying and stealing another man’s wife and child—I think Joe Sterling did love you. Lieselotte wrote me that.”

  “I don’t understand why he wanted to marry her. Mama couldn’t have been that beautiful after so many months in concentration camps. Why did he concoct such a story?”

  “War makes men mad. Mad men do mad things.” Marta shook her head. “I only know what Lieselotte wrote—that he was injured in the war and could not have children of his own. Somehow, he believed that if he married this pitiful, pregnant woman he’d rescued, he could not only become a father to her child, but in some way he could redeem his part in the horrors of that war, redeem the lives he’d stolen by saving this one—these two.”

  “Mama hated him. I never understood, but now I see why. Why didn’t she leave him? Why didn’t she return to Lukas?”

  “Don’t you know?” Marta smiled sadly. “Perhaps that is because you are not yet a mother.” She leaned back against the settee. “She wanted to leave. She begged him for a divorce and to help her return to Germany. She wanted to take you, bring you to Lukas, even knowing he was ill and not likely to recover. She wanted to be with him, her first love and her husband. But Joe Sterling refused. He said he would keep you, that she would never be allowed to leave the country with you.” She shrugged. “His name was listed as the father on your birth certificate. He had every legal right to keep you.”

  “They fought. They fought nearly all the time. Or they were silent.”

  “He went for you, for your mother, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Once Lukas knew your mother lived, that you existed, nothing could stop him. He recovered enough to work—a full year—before he saved sufficient money to go to America. He told me only that he saw Lieselotte and that he spoke with Joe Sterling. He never said what happened, only that she could not return to Germany, that it was right she did not come.”

  Marta sighed. “Whatever happened between them, or with Joe, it broke his heart. The letters from Lieselotte stopped. I wrote again and again, but my letters were returned, unopened, marked Refused. I knew Lieselotte would not have done this. It was not her handwriting. And she’d said my words and news of Lukas were lifelines for her. Eventually I gave up. I stopped writing.”

  “I must have been five or six by then.” What tickled the back of my memory? The tramp. The tramp in the mountain grocer’s. The man Mama bought food for, the one who lifted my chin . . . the man she cried over for hours. Could that have been Lukas . . . my father? Did he see me? Did he see his mother in me? Did he know who I was? “She stayed for me.”

  “Ja, she stayed for her precious daughter.”

  “No wonder she hated me. She must have wished over and over that she’d aborted me.” I kept you from the man you loved—Mama, I’m so sorry!

  “What? Nein, nein! Lieselotte loved you with all her heart. She said it was you that kept her alive through the hell of Ravensbrück, the hope of you that kept her going to the end at Dachau. She wrote this to me!” Marta grabbed my hands and shook them. “You gave her the will to live, Hannah. That is the greatest gift there is in the face of despair. It is love!”

  42

  HANNAH STERLING

  MAY 1973

  Dear Hannah,

  When your letter first arrived I was angry. I could not believe my brother would do such a thing. Joe loved you, and I think in his way he loved your mother. I knew all along that Lieselotte was pregnant when she and Joe married, and that she married him so she could come to America. I thought she was a gold digger, but even I know that’s not fair. Your mother never cared anything about money. It was people and their needs, though she had a mighty stiff way about her.

  Joe told me he’d checked, and that Lieselotte’s first husband had died in the war. He said he never wanted you to know and that I was not to talk with Lieselotte about any of it—the war had been so hard on her and she’d lost all her family.

  In the end, all I can say is that I don’t really know why he lied, except the war changed him. I could never get close to him after that like we’d been before. Joe was a good man in so many ways. You know that. You know he loved you.

  I’m so sorry for the part I’ve played in this, Hannah. I’m so sorry that I didn’t treat Lieselotte better. If you will forgive me I promise I’ll do better, at least by you. I’ll be a kinder, gentler person—less ready to judge things and people I don’t understand.

  I understand that you’re this Marta woman’s last living relative. But you’re mine, too. Please come home, honey. I miss you so.

  Lovingly,

  Aunt Lavinia

  I set Aunt Lavinia’s letter down. I needed to separat
e Aunt Lavinia from Daddy Joe and all he did. I believed that she was sorry for the part she unwittingly played. I knew how easy it was to judge people based on bias and incomplete pieces of information. I’d done exactly that to Mama. Such mixed emotions and so many memories to sort through, to try to separate Daddy Joe’s interpretation from what I really saw in Mama.

  But it was time to go home. I’d done nearly all I’d come to do. I’d found my grandfather, though that had turned into something far different than I’d hoped or imagined, something I could not—would never—forgive him for. I’d found my true parents—as much as a person could—through Aunt Marta. And I’d grown fiercely proud of them both.

  Aunt Marta gave me all of Mama’s letters to read—she’d saved and pressed each one, hoping that one day Mama might return or bring me to see her. But that never happened. I pored over them, trying to absorb each word, to finally hear my mother’s true voice. Her last letter had been written just before Lukas came to find us in North Carolina. I read the final paragraphs again and again:

  All the years of our separation I have prayed for this, imagined this, dreamed this—that Lukas would be found alive and together we would one day hold our precious daughter, that he would see his mother’s eyes in her small face, even as I do, that we would rock our Hannah to sleep between us.

  And now that Lukas himself might make my dream come true, I must stop him.

  Marta, Joe will never let us go. If I ever tell Hannah about Lukas, Joe said he will leave me and take her where I will never find her. If I tell Hannah what Joe did to make me marry him, he will deny it and turn her against me. Already he coddles her and turns her head, telling her he loves her more than I do, that there is something wrong with me—that I cannot love, that I am closed off, that the war did bad things to me. How I hate him. How I hate the person I have become with him.

  I am glad Mutti Kirchmann cannot see me now. She would grieve the darkness of my heart.

  I am sick as I write this, Marta, and I am afraid. Every day I am afraid I will do something to lose my daughter. I dare not draw her close for fear of Joe’s taking her away. I would run and find a means to return to Germany and to Lukas—my only love—in a moment, except for Hannah. I cannot leave or risk my precious daughter—our precious daughter. So many secrets . . . secrets I must carry to my grave.

  This will be my last letter to you, dear sister. Joe has forbidden me to write again.

  Tell Lukas not to come. Tell him I am sorry beyond measure, and that I love him with all my heart. I will love him forever.

  Your sister,

  Lieselotte

  “Our precious daughter . . .” Mama—my poor, dear Mama. How I misjudged you! But why didn’t you return to Germany after Daddy died? Was fear so braided into your being by then that you couldn’t? Was it because we had no money? Did you know Lukas had died and couldn’t face returning? Did you try and not know how to find Marta? I had a thousand questions that could never be answered, not this side of heaven.

  But I know now that you loved me, Mama. That you put me first—even before Lukas. That you kept all these secrets because you loved me is more than I can comprehend. I’m so sorry I didn’t know you better, that I didn’t love you more.

  Aunt Marta promised to visit me in America. I’d introduce her to Aunt Lavinia. My two aunts, my last living relatives. Carl promised to visit too, and to go with me to New York and Woodbine to meet with the remaining men and women my grandfather and Dr. Peterson had so terribly abused—a promise and plan we finalized during a walk through the Tiergarten.

  “Herr Eberhardt’s promised to investigate further the families we couldn’t locate,” I told him. “He’ll return what he can, place a few pieces with museums, then handle the sale of those things not returnable, as well as the sale of the house. He’s going to help me send the proceeds to Israel for Holocaust victims.”

  “This is good, Hannah. It is a relief that Herr Eberhardt is a good man.”

  I shook my head. “Grandfather was so cunning. He hired an honest man to handle day-to-day matters and create a facade of normalcy. Donating the money seems the best solution. But there’s still that family to visit in Israel. Are you game?”

  “It is not a game.”

  “That’s an American expression.”

  “Ah, another one.”

  Sweet Carl. Funny Carl. How I would miss him. “I want to visit Yad Vashem while we’re there. There’s not enough documentary evidence to have Mama declared one of the Righteous Among the Nations—not officially. But I want to write her name, Lieselotte Kirchmann, on a stone and leave it there, in the garden. It might mean nothing to others, but I’ll know it’s there. And maybe Mama knows.”

  Carl squeezed my hand in understanding. “I am honored to go with you. And I am glad—relieved—you will allow someone else to help you carry this burden.”

  “I’m willing to let Herr Eberhardt do this mostly because I don’t know what else to do, and I think returning all we can would have pleased Mama. I think Herr Eberhardt hopes it will bring some sort of redemption for his part too. I guess that’s what we all want—some sort of redemption.” I closed my eyes and turned away. Even Joe thought he could redeem his part in the war by marrying Mama, by playing his idea of Daddy Warbucks to me. In some twisted version of the universe I understand that . . . but, oh, how I hate it. How I hate that he kept Mama and me from Lukas! The consequences of so many things can never be undone. And then there was Grandfather . . .

  “I’m still so ashamed, so angry with Grandfather,” I confessed to Carl. “I feel that for all the strong Kirchmann blood I carry, and for all the good my mother did, I’ll never get rid of the grime of my grandfather. I can never do enough to make up for what he did.”

  “No, you cannot. There is no way you can fix what he did, or all that came afterward. You will not get rid of the grime you feel until you forgive him. For your own sake.”

  “I can’t forgive him. I can’t even think of him without having nightmares. I’ll be glad to get out of that house. I’d just as soon burn it and his memory to the ground.”

  “Hannah—”

  “Look, Carl, I appreciate all that you’ve done. I never would have gotten so far without your help. I care about you—I do. But please don’t tell me I should forgive him or that I should quit trying to—”

  “To earn your mother’s love? To be as strong and brave as she? Will that in some way make up for Herr Sommer’s crimes?”

  I pulled my hand from Carl’s arm. “No. But all my life I’ve wanted to do something my mother would be proud of. This is the closest I’ve come. Until I met Aunt Marta, I’d no idea that I was what kept Mama in America. Because of me she stayed with a man she never loved, a man who, for all his outward kindness, had lied to and tricked her, then cut her off from those who loved her—whom she loved. She was never able to be with her real husband—my own father. How do you think that makes me feel?

  “Nothing I can do—not in my whole life—will be enough to make up for that. And nothing Grandfather could do—even if he’d lived another hundred years—could make up for the horrible crimes he committed. I hate him. I absolutely hate him!”

  “Hannah, Hannah, you must—”

  “Carl—stop. I don’t want to argue with you. We must agree to disagree on this.”

  “For your own sake, Hannah, you need—”

  “I need for you to back off, Carl. Please, please don’t fight with me about this.”

  “I’m not fighting, I—”

  “No more. I’m going back to the house to pack.”

  “Let me drive you.”

  “Space, Carl,” I warned, backing up. “I just need a little space.”

  I threw my coat across the bed, pummeling it with my gloves and scarf. I kicked my shoes across the room so hard they bounced off the wall. I’d been hard on Carl. I didn’t want to hurt him, didn’t mean to hurt him. I cared for him. But his insistence that I forgive Grandfather rang insane. The man
had committed—willfully—the unforgivable. I couldn’t comprehend the magnitude of the wickedness he’d done to my family, to Herr Horowitz and his family, to so many others. How many lives are destroyed when we do one wicked thing? And he never repented, never tried to undo any of it!

  If I don’t stay angry, I’ll crumple, and that I refuse to do.

  I spent my last week going through Grandfather’s desk and personal papers and met twice with Herr Eberhardt to deliver the last of the valuables I found in the house. He apologized, so very sorry for the way he’d been duped by Grandfather and Dr. Peterson and for his suspicion of my motives. He would make certain Dr. Peterson never succeeded in making a claim against the property. I left a humble lawyer and a good friend when I shook his hand good-bye.

  The last morning I spent packing. My plane wouldn’t leave Berlin until seven thirty that night. Carl had promised to drive me to the airport, though I’d not heard from him since our argument. We’d planned an early dinner together beforehand, but I didn’t want to end on a strained or sour note, certainly not with another disagreement. I left a message with his landlady to cancel. I hoped he understood.

  By noon on the day of my departure I set my bags by the front door. I’d walk out the way I came in.

  At twelve thirty the phone rang.

  “Hannah!” Carl sounded way too excited for a man who’d been turned down for a dinner date.

  “Carl, I didn’t expect to hear from you this early.” The frost in my voice made me wince, but he seemed not to have heard.

  “There is someone I want you to meet before you leave—someone you’ve got to meet.”

  “Thank you, but I don’t want to meet anyone else. I’m tired and ready to go home. I’ll see you in time for our trip to the airport.” The receiver was halfway to its cradle when I heard him call again through the line.