The Baker's Daughter

by Sarah McCoy

  She turned to make sure Tobias was safely hunched in her shadow before opening her bedroom door and making her way down the steps. Though she rolled the blinds each night, she still feared Gestapo surveillance, so she had designed a system for their morning kitchen routine. She stationed Tobias on the floured wooden table, underneath which they stored the giant iron pot Mutti used for soups. Whenever Elsie perceived any hint of danger, she’d whistle and Tobias slipped into the pot and closed the lid. This was only during the morning preparations. Half an hour before opening, she made sure he was locked safely in her room again.

  Rumor had spread that her parents were personally escorted to Steinhöring. No one dared ask what the business was about. Too many had left town already with unknown destinations, and people liked it that way: unknown. So they ordered their usual, ignoring her parents’ absence, and took their bread home where they could eat and whisper among themselves.

  Elsie had taken to closing at lunch, something her papa never did. When she locked the door from noon to half past one, she received no complaints. This allowed her ample time to punch down the risen dough batches and check on Tobias.

  While he’d been hiding in her room for a month, it was only in the last few days that Elsie finally felt at liberty to speak openly with him. The first time she heard him say more than a handful of words was over a bratwurst the night before.

  “It’s forbidden,” he told her and turned away from the plate.

  But it was all Elsie had to give. Lamb, beef, chicken, and fish were nonexistent. It was winter and wartime. Had he forgotten he was a Jew hiding in her home? This wasn’t the Romantik Hotel. She would have taken the sausage back and eaten it herself if it hadn’t been for Tobias’s elbows. No matter what he put over them, they stuck out like bird wings, reminding her that while parts of him had plumped since Christmas, he was still painfully frail.

  In the last week, he had developed a slight wheeze, no louder than a mouse’s chirp. When it paused, Elsie worried the chill had finally crept under his thin skin and frozen him solid. He needed hardiness. A diet of bread and winter vegetables wasn’t doing the job. She grew up with Jews in the community so she understood the gravity of her offering, but it still frustrated and outright annoyed her that even now, in the midst of bloodshed and death, their customs took priority over his life.

  “Eat. In times like this, God can’t be so hardheaded,” she told him.

  He crossed his arms, tiny elbows bowing out.

  “Please,” she begged.

  “I cannot,” he insisted.

  She’d huffed with frustration and momentarily contemplated physical force to get the meat down his throat, but she couldn’t bear the thought of hurting him.

  “Tobias, if you don’t eat something more than a turnip, you’re going to …”—she rubbed the thudding in her temples, then faced him—“die. And I don’t want you to die.” Elsie pressed, “You’re my friend. I care what happens to you. So please eat. If not for yourself, then for my sake.”

  Tobias gulped and tucked his chin to his chest.

  Elsie held out a piece of the sausage staked on the tines of her fork. “Please.”

  He whispered a prayer to himself in Hebrew. The cadence of his voice as lyrical as when she read the poetry of Robert Frost.

  “God will fill me up,” he said.

  Perhaps, Elsie thought, but the human body was made of corporal stuff—flawed and sure to betray even our most earnest desires for immortality. From what Elsie had experienced of God, she knew he was more forgiving than any religion and more loving than any laws. She wished she could convince Tobias of it.

  He considered the divided link on the plate. “My mother cut herself at dinner once while slicing my Chorissa,” he began. “Her finger bled and left a scar. Right here.” He rubbed his index finger. “I always felt badly for it, but she said the marks on our lives are like music notes on the page—they sing a song.”

  Elsie put the fork down. It was the most she’d ever heard him say, and suddenly, he was not merely Tobias the boy anymore. He had people, a mother, somewhere. While Josef had told her about his parents, they didn’t seem real, just as Tobias hadn’t seemed real until he was.

  “Where is your family?”asked Elsie.

  He’d shrugged. “I don’t know where my parents are, but my sister is at the camp.”

  She thought of Hazel, and a sharp pang threaded her chest. “What is your sister’s name?”

  “Cecile,” said Tobias.

  “Older or younger?” Elsie asked.

  “Younger. She is five and likes blue ribbons. She cried when they took them from her.” He picked a rough fuzz ball on his wool stocking.

  “Who took them?”

  “The soldiers.” His eyes went flat as dusty silver coins. “When we were getting off the train. They tore them from her hair. She cried. A soldier hit her, and she fell onto the tracks.” His hands balled into fragile bird nests trembling in his lap. “I tried to stop them. I tried to pick her up, but I couldn’t. There were too many people pushing and yelling and the train whistle was so loud. She couldn’t hear me calling.”

  “Tobias, I’m sorry.” A lump formed in Elsie’s throat.

  He turned to her and his expression lightened. “A lady carried her into the camp. She’s there. I saw her once when I was singing. She does buttons in the sewing room. But she really likes ribbons.” He gave a wan smile. “One day I’m going to buy her new ones.”

  Elsie imagined a child with bouncing brown curls held back by robin’s-egg-blue ribbons like the ones she and Hazel wore as girls. “I’m sure she’d like that very much.” Her breath caught. She swallowed hard. “I have a sister, too. Hazel. She’s older than me and has three children. One is your age. His name is Julius.”

  His eyes widened with interest.

  “You and he are alike,” she continued. “You both love to sing.”

  He looked away and ran willowy fingers over his shorn head, sprouts growing back in dark patches. “I shouldn’t sing anymore,” he whispered. “When I sing, people get hurt.”

  Elsie remembered what Josef had said about Tobias singing for the camp detainees.

  “You sang for me, and you saved me,” she reminded him.

  Tobias didn’t lift his gaze.

  She took his hand in hers; skin, thin as baked pastry. “One day, you’ll sing for a great crowd. They’ll stand with applause and throw roses at your feet.”

  Tobias looked up, eyes soft and hopeful in the bedroom lamplight.

  “Promise me, you will?”

  “But how can I promise what I do not know will be?” he asked.

  “I have faith in you. If you say it, you will do it,” she said.

  He needed to believe in something. She needed to believe too.

  He seemed to dream on that a moment. Then he turned to her with great resolve and said, “I promise.”

  Without giving herself time for thought or fear, she leaned forward and kissed his forehead. “Thank you.”

  Afterward, she’d gone down to the kitchen and carefully removed every fleck of mold from the Quark. Papa’s favorite, Mutti had been rationing the cheese for his breakfasts, but they were gone and Elsie didn’t know for certain when they would return. So she scraped it up and spread it thick in a brötchen for Tobias. Then she ate the cold sausage. It sat uneasily in her stomach, and she felt it still this morning, heavy like a river stone in her gut.

  A morning woodlark trilled in the distance. Tobias helped her empty risen batter onto the wooden board.

  “Let’s make two batches,” she said. “Tomorrow we’ll sprinkle water over the extras and heat them in the oven. Nobody will know the difference. I’ll start the brötchen.”

  She went to the semmel dough and sunk her hands deep into the velvet bloom. The paste stuck to her fingers and between the gems of the diamond-ruby ring. Mutti’s smooth gold band had no such crevices. It was a ring fit for a baker. Elsie’s was not. It was made for someone e
lse—for a songstress or a banker’s wife. Someone with manicured hands and Yardley Lavender on her wrists. Elsie’s hands were dry and cracked, and since the Grüns’ store closed, she smelled of yeast and sweat. How she missed their floral soaps, French eau de toilettes, and citrus colognes. The vial of rose shampoo in her hiding place was too precious to waste on an arbitrary washing; instead, she’d place the open bottle below her nose and imagine its scent surrounding her.

  The kitchen temperature increased. The wood burned musky in the oven, and Elsie fell into the comforting rhythm of rolling palm-size brötchen. By the time she’d completed a dozen, the bleary blue of coming dawn had crept into the shadowy kitchen. It was then that she noticed the oven woodpile: two thin logs deep. She’d forgotten to restock. The wood outside was wet with snow and would need time to dry in the kitchen before burning. If she didn’t bring it in now, they’d never keep the oven aflame. Her hands were covered with gobs of dough. Tobias had set the pretzels’ baking powder bathwater on the stove to boil and was rolling up his sweater sleeves in preparation. The wood was just outside the back door. He could snatch an armful or two. Daylight had yet to break. No one in town would be up and out at this hour.

  “Tobias, we need firewood.” She lifted a hand to the door.

  He stared at her a long moment.

  She smiled reassuringly. “Crack the door and check first.”

  He nodded, opened the door an inch, and peeked through. “No one,” he whispered.

  Elsie’s heart sped up. “Slip into my boots and be quick.” She infused her voice with confidence to make up for her lack of it.

  He pulled the boots on and carefully unlatched the chain, pausing a second longer than Elsie thought he should.

  “Hurry!”

  His breath plumed in the frosty air and then he was gone, a white mist in his wake.

  Elsie squeezed too hard on the dough ball, flattening it to a disc. She counted the balls on the sheet: one, two, three … six, seven, eight … ten, eleven, twelve. She checked the door. It didn’t take her but ten seconds to fetch an armful of kindle. She tried to continue but lost track of which she’d counted and which she hadn’t, so she slid them all into the oven. The coals blazed bright orange. She evenly spaced the rolls inside and latched the door. Her cheeks and forehead burned. Tobias still hadn’t returned.

  “I should have gone myself,” she muttered. Gummy bits of excess flour clung to her fingers. She didn’t bother washing, moving fast to the back entrance.

  Tobias greeted her at the threshold. “Is this enough?” His elbows trembled with the weight of five logs.

  Elsie ushered him in, and he put the wood beside the oven. She sighed away her worry. When suddenly, there was a rapping sound. Frau Rattelmüller was at the back with the door wide open.

  EL PASO BORDER PATROL STATION

  8935 MONTANA AVENUE

  EL PASO, TEXAS

  NOVEMBER 26, 2007

  Half a dozen CBP and El Paso PD vehicles rumbled down the concrete path meant for joggers, bicyclists, and El Pasoans taking their children for twilight strolls along the Rio Grande. It was empty now, and at the sound of the convoy’s approach, the ducks waded to the underpass’s shady banks; a white crane flapped its way to a secret nest in the river thicket.

  They’d gotten a tip-off from a neighbor: the padlocked trailer had new occupants. Smugglers typically kept illegal aliens in safe houses for one to three days before transporting them into the desert where they were dropped off at dusk to walk miles through the wilderness; thereby, circumventing highway checkpoints in the dark. On the other side, the smuggler would pick up the survivors and continue north.

  Time was limited. The CBP had to do a roundup now or risk missing the group entirely. The El Paso Police Department helped assist in the arrests.

  Riki and Bert led the motorcade. In the passenger seat of the truck, Bert checked his pistol magazine—the standard issued H&K P2000, a German semi. He holstered it at his waist.

  Riki shifted in his seat. It was standard operational procedure, but loaded guns had always made him ill at ease. He’d seen one too many men get twitchy and draw their weapons prematurely, channeling Wyatt Earp, no doubt. Only the people in their sight weren’t gunslingers and outlaws but farmers and masons.

  “Are we ever going to get those rubber bullets?” asked Riki. The ammunition stunned the victims, giving them a solid punch without penetrating. These weren’t menacing criminals. The CBP’s duty was to prohibit their entry into the United States, not kill them.

  “What’s the point?” Bert shrugged. “Guy’s coming at me, I’m stopping him dead in his tracks. Damned if I’m going wait till he throws a fireball in my face.” He cinched the sides of his bulletproof vest. “Carol’s rather fond of it.” He grinned. “And I’ve gotten used to it myself.”

  Riki kept one hand on the wheel and scratched the base of his five o’clock shadow with the other. “A lot of women and kids these days though. Guns scare them more than they help.”

  Bert gave a caustic laugh. “That’s the point! Scare them so bad they won’t break the law twice! Don’t go soft on me, Rik. Americans today are a bunch of bleeding hearts. Oh, human rights, human rights, they whine. What about the rights of the law-abiding people of our country? What about them, huh? So easy to sit around talking all philosophical-like when you’re eating a cream cheese bagel in New Hampshire, but out here—shit.” He sat up quick.

  A Hispanic man stood on the path directly across from the division of trailer homes Riki had scouted two weeks prior. Bert flicked on the truck’s police lights. The guy took off in a sprint down the trail. Riki slowed the truck near the targeted double-wide, and Bert opened the passenger door.

  “Looks like we got a runner.” He swung himself out. A sandy mushroom rose from the braked tires. “10-33!” He said into the handheld. “Going south along the Rio. Should be easy to spot. Hispanic male in a green jacket.”

  “10-4, this is Chief Garza. Sending one of our cars to rope him in.”

  A police car whizzed by in pursuit.

  “Copy,” said Bert. “Let’s get in the house and see what we got.”

  Reluctantly, Riki drew his pistol from its holster.

  A gray, windowless van parked outside. The trailer was still padlocked, but now the boards had been removed from two small windows.

  “Nice find, Rik.” Bert pulled his cap lower on his forehead and extended his steel baton. “Bet we got us a real rat’s nest here.”

  The men in the following CBP and El Paso PD cars joined them, then quickly dispersed around the trailer.

  “Van’s empty,” called an agent.

  Bert and Riki headed to the front door with a handful of armed men at their heels.

  Riki pounded with his fist. “Open up! Abierto!”

  Without waiting for an answer, Bert smashed the padlock with his baton butt, and it broke free from the rusty aluminum. Chief Garza jammed a metal comb into the door frame and cracked it open. Within a minute, they had infiltrated the house.

  Inside, people lined the walls and huddled next to one another in the corners.

  “Abajo, abajo!” commanded Riki, pointing to the dirty mattresses on the ground.

  The immigrants did as instructed, instinctively lying like canned sardines, facedown.

  “Put your hands up!” Bert thwacked his truncheon against the wall. “Up, goddamnit!”

  “Ponga sus manos,” interpreted Riki.

  The women flung their hands in the air superman-style; the men laced them behind their heads.

  Agents and officers raced through the rooms, herding people into the main living space.

  “Any more?” asked Bert.

  “I think this is all,” said Chief Garza.

  “How many?” Riki assessed the space, so full of bodies that the room’s temperature had risen considerably. He was drenched with sweat; his uniform clung to his back like sheets of hot wax.

  “Twenty-five. Thirty, maybe. Not sure,”
said Bert. “A shit ton.” He collapsed his baton and tucked it in his belt. “Don’t know how these people can stand it.” He wiped the perspiration from his nose. “One crapper, no food, cockroaches, and black widow nests everywhere you turn. It can’t be worth it. We’re just going to send them back where they come from and that has to be better than this.” He picked up his handheld. “El Paso, do you copy? We’re going to need a damn bus.”

  A young man in a Timberland T-shirt dared to lift his head from the mattress.

  “You—do you speak English?” Riki asked him.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Mexico,” he answered quickly.

  Riki nodded. Guatemalan, Honduran, they could be Chinese, but they’d all claim Mexico, hoping to only be deported a mile across the border and not any farther. Riki understood the game.

  “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Where’s your family?”

  He shrugged.

  The girl to his right started to cry, and Riki noticed her eye was split and swollen.

  He knelt to her. “What happened, señorita?”

  She whimpered and turned her face away.

  “Bert,” Riki said over his shoulder. “We need to get the medic kit from the truck. Looks like this girl—”

  Suddenly, the seventeen-year-old sprang to his feet, waving a Buck knife. He kicked Riki square across the jaw, slashed the bulletproof vest of the CBP agent to his right, then made a dash for the door.

  The room spun sideways and split open wet as Riki fell back against the trailer’s corrugated metal siding. A childhood memory returned afresh: eating warm watermelon in the back of his father’s pickup. Initially, his parents had been day croppers, reaping fields in Canutillo and selling the produce on I-10. For their work, the local farmer gave them lodging on his land and a percentage of the earnings. Now again, Riki tasted the melon’s sweetness on his tongue, the steely truck bed beneath his back. He spat. The seeds suspended before him, floating black spots in a sea of pink.