The Baker's Daughter

by Sarah McCoy

“Sand what?”

  “It’s ‘head out of the sand.’ ”

  “Exactly!” Elsie nodded. “I always thought you and Sergio would make a nice couple. It was the way he smiled at you.” She patted Jane’s cheek.

  Jane gave an exasperated grin, then took her piece of cake and sat beside Sergio, feeding him with her fingers.

  “One for you.” Elsie handed Riki a slice and started to cut another. Reba stopped her.

  “I’ll share with Riki.” She turned to him. “I eat dairy now.”

  “Really?” he said. “What else about you has changed since I’ve been away?”

  “A lot of things needed to,” she said.

  He took a fork from Elsie and gestured to a café table. “Care to tell?”

  After their last bite of cake, Jane put Sergio on the till while she and Elsie worked double time in the kitchen. Riki and Reba sat at the table a long while, sharing their slice down to the last chocolate morsel as one by one the day’s patrons filtered in.

  GARMISCH, GERMANY

  MAY 1, 1945

  The 6:00 p.m. train came and went with neither Elsie nor Josef on it. Josef worried that Elsie hadn’t received the message he’d slipped under the door, so he trudged back to the bäckerei, keeping to the alleys. He tapped on the back entrance. No one answered. Voices echoed around the building, and he followed them to the front where a handful of enemy Amis lounged. He hid in the shadows, the setting sun slowly expanding the dark perimeters.

  “Mighty kind of you, miss,” said a portly soldier with a fat bullet embedded in his helmet. “We’ve been living on hardtack, cigarettes, and chocolate for weeks. Good to get something fresh.” He shoved a roll in his mouth, pulled it apart with his teeth, and chewed. “You should meet our cook. Teach him a thing or two,” he muttered, then gulped. “Hey, Robby!”

  A dark-haired man with a burning cigarette dangling from his lip turned.

  “You need to learn to bake these—make some decent food for a change.”

  “Give me ingredients and maybe I will,” Robby quipped.

  “You got a pretty little town here,” said a slim, soft-spoken Ami who looked as Aryan as they came. “Climate reminds me of home. I’m from Gaylord, Michigan—you ever heard of it. North of Detroit?”

  “Shut up, Sam. We ain’t supposed to be fraternizin’ or talkin’ to these people. Not countin’ she don’t understand a word you’re sayin’,” said another.

  Josef craned his head around the corner to see to whom they were referring. There stood Elsie, a basket set on her cocked hip.

  “Lady gave us food that don’t come out of a cold can. She deserves at least a thank you,” Sam mumbled and readjusted his rifle on his back. “Besides, everybody’s heard of Detroit.”

  “Not if you’re German and don’t know the difference between hello and good-bye, never mind New York and Hollywood.” The portly trooper picked his teeth with a dirty thumbnail, then took another bite.

  “Hollywood,” said Elsie. “Jean Harlow?” She put a hand on her waist, cocked her chin up, and recited in near perfect English, “ ‘You don’t know the tenth of it. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve stood for. The first night I met the guy he stood me up for two hours. For what? A woman in Jer-zee had quad-ruplets, and it’s been that way ever since.’ ”

  The group went silent then burst into laughter.

  Josef leaned back against the cold building. A searing pain cleaved his skull. What was Elsie doing giving them bread? Talking to them—in a foreign tongue! He questioned whether it was another hallucination.

  “Looks like you’re wrong, Potter,” said Robby He stubbed his cigarette out on the cobblestone and tucked the nub behind his ear. “She knows more than you think. That’s right, Jean Harlow.” He nodded. “But personally, I’d peg you for Lana Turner.”

  Somebody whistled. Potter puffed up his chest and batted his eyelashes. The men laughed. Elsie laughed. Josef gripped the stone against his back, trying to keep the pounding in his head from knocking him over.

  “Libeled Lady?” said Elsie.

  “You sure are.” Robby winked.

  Elsie smiled and handed him a roll.

  He took it. “I could get written up as a Benedict Arnold for saying this to you but—to hell with it. Thank you. Danke schön.”

  “Bitte schön,” she replied.

  “Sure is an eager beaver. Ain’t like most of these German girls,” said Potter.

  “Ee-ager bea-ver?” repeated Elsie.

  “Ha!” Potter slapped Sam on the back, knocking his bread from his hand. “Fast learner.”

  Sam picked it up and cleaned away the dirt on his sleeve. “Maybe we should give her something. Pay her for the meal?”

  “Good thinking.” Robby dug in his side satchel and pulled out a rectangular bar. “Being a baker, she’s gotta like chocolate.” He handed it to Elsie.

  She turned the bar round, then tore back the paper in strips. Her eyes lit up. “Schokolade!” She took a bite of the side. “Ist gut!”

  “Now we’re talking,” said Robby. “What else you boys got?”

  “Pack of cigs,” said Sam.

  Robby took the pack and offered her one. “Smoke?”

  She selected one of the thin fingers. Somebody threw Robby a lighter, and he lit the end for her. She sucked and blew out a curl of smoke with the ease and sophistication of a movie star.

  Josef couldn’t believe his eyes. Elsie was a completely different woman. Even the way she stood, so confident and bold. Not at all the dainty girl who clung to him at the Weihnachten ball.

  Suddenly, she set to mouse coughs, and the men came round the sputtering Elsie.

  “You okay?” asked Sam.

  Elsie took deep breaths. “O-key, o-key?” she repeated like a squawking blue jay, then handed the cigarette to Robby. “Nein.” She took another bite of the chocolate bar, then wrapped it back in the package and slipped it into her basket. “Thank you.”

  Again, the men broke into laughter.

  “She’s a trouper.” Potter scratched his belly and readjusted his gun over his shoulder.

  “Wie ist your name?” asked Robby.

  “Elsie Schmidt,” said Elsie. “Und sie?”

  “Sergeant Robby Lee.” He bowed.

  “Cook extraordinaire,” added Potter. “I’ll admit, given the time and rations, this boy can make a mean pork barbecue.”

  “North Carolina, born and raised.” He took a drag from Elsie’s cigarette. “It’s in the blood. My momma ate nothing but barbecue the whole time she was pregnant with me. My baking is a little rusty, though.”

  Elsie held a roll up high. “Brötchen.”

  The two locked eyes, and even from the alley shadows, Josef felt the electricity between them. An ache shot through him. There was no ring on her hand. After everything he had done for her, how could she have so quickly abandoned him and their country? Traitor, he thought, and suddenly the voice that cut his mind in two was not his own but Herr Hochschild’s son. His muscles tightened from head to toe; his breath stopped. He closed his eyes, unable to fight the spasms and the tunneling of his vision.

  ARMED FORCES R&R

  CENTER

  19 GERNACKERSTRASSE

  GARMISCH, GERMANY

  JUNE 26, 1945

  “Add Kirschwasser to cream,” instructed Elsie in English. “Stir to stiff.”

  Robby nodded. “Gotcha.” He whisked.

  “More oomph!” She motioned with her arm for him to do it harder.

  He picked up the pace. Beneath his olive-drab undershirt, his biceps moved in rhythm with the sweet filling, round and round the bowl. Elsie tried not to notice, not to imagine the familiar flesh beneath. So she focused on shaving chocolate with a carrot peeler.

  She’d made schwarzwälder kirschtorte a thousand times, but never before had sifting flour and pitting cherries seemed so provocative. It was irrational and absurd—this was a normal kitchen with an oven and pots and pans. Nothing alluring or risqué ab
out it, except that it was an American kitchen with Robby Lee in it.

  “How’s that?” Robby held the whisk right side up. The cream remained a perfect whorl.

  Elsie swiped a finger through the twist’s top curl and licked. “Gut. Taste.”

  Instead of sampling the filling, he put a hand behind Elsie’s neck and kissed her sticky lips.

  “Sure is,” he said.

  Elsie elbowed him back to his bowl. “We have to bake a cake,” she told him in German.

  “Ein kuchen. Jawohl, fräulein.” Robby laughed and saluted.

  Elsie had been coming to the Armed Forces R&R Center since it opened. Within a week of occupation, the Americans turned the Nazi compound across town where she’d attended the Weihnachten ball into a G.I. playground. Soldiers across Europe came on vacation passes to ski, hike, play cards, and eat food that didn’t come in a C-ration. The town was swarmed with smiling men wanting a day or two out of the trenches.

  When the war ended, her family all hoped to hear from Hazel. Elsie expected her to walk through the bakery doors any hour, but she didn’t; and with each passing day, their hearts grew more certain of what their minds refused to imagine. Rumors swirled of men, women, even whole families killed by foreign bullets or their own hand. The Lebensborn Program and all its members had disappeared overnight. Even those who spoke of it with high regard months prior now shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders. It infuriated Elsie, who saw it as another act of betrayal. She bit her tongue whenever Papa brought up Josef.

  “What’s the news? Did you check the mail?” he’d ask daily, as if nothing had changed and the post was running routinely. “Josef might’ve sent word.”

  She hadn’t heard from Josef since his scribbled note and imagined him on the shores of Argentina or Brazil, someplace far from Germany. He would not make good on his promise to find Hazel. He had no remaining authority. There was no German authority. Berlin had been obliterated. Whatever archives might’ve been were piles of dust.

  She hadn’t heard from Frau Rattelmüller either since that icy day by the woodpile, before the Allied troops invaded. The Americans confiscated the frau’s home and made it into a makeshift officer’s quarters. At first, Elsie had feared for the old woman’s life and the lives of her hidden boarders, but the house had not been ransacked by the Gestapo as they had the bakery. Elsie had gone to check, peering through the open windows. There was not one crumb on the floor. Not one cat hair. The pillows on the parlor couch sat comfortably in their usual places; the Hummel figurines aligned just so. The house had been purposely abandoned.

  Elsie hoped Frau Rattelmüller had joined her Jewish friends after all, and it brought her great peace to imagine Cecile might be in the care of such kindness. It would have brought Tobias solace, too, she thought. She missed him profoundly. Her room felt as if its heart had been extracted, void of the quiet beating that had become a natural rhythm. Her consolation was that despite the thorough searches of the town and forests, the Americans had not reported the body of a small boy. He got away. She had no doubt of that and only hoped that one day she might hear from him again.

  Julius never spoke of Tobias or Kremer’s attack. He never spoke of those grim April days at all. Something in him had changed. He was still a brooding boy, but the affectation of his former self had greatly diminished. He did as he was told without argument and seemed to have a natural aptitude with numbers. He helped Mutti count the money in the till and was excellent at gauging the dough segments to make an exact baker’s dozen. They were all glad to see his interests expanding; his toy soldiers were piled in a milk pail, abandoned.

  In an attempt to usher in normalcy, Mutti enrolled Julius in Grundschule as soon as the local elementary reopened; but it was nothing like his Lebensborn education. He sulked for two days because the teacher sat him next to a girl with a strawberry birthmark across her forearm. Papa explained that skin colorations had nothing to do with a person’s character. It was a lesson lost when two black Amis came into the bäckerei and Papa refused to serve them.

  Elsie thought it foolish to turn away any coin. A full till meant full stomachs for the patrons and themselves. Without Nazi patronage, the bakery’s accounts suffered. Weeks after the American occupation began, neither old nor new customers had come through their doors consistently. Though Papa never said a word, Elsie could tell by his gruff demeanor that something had to give. Since no one else was amenable, she took it upon herself and asked Robby if they could use a practiced baker in the R&R Center’s kitchen.

  Military regulations were strict, however, and German citizens were suspect. Robby’s commander said he couldn’t run the risk of underground agents infiltrating the kitchen and conspiring a mass poisoning; but Robby convinced him she was harmless and might even make the men’s recreation a bit more recreational. A seventeen-year-old who looked like a pinup girl was an easy sell, though his superior warned him not to get too chummy. Military nonfraternization laws had been established. Any soldier found engaged in unprofessional socialization with a German was threatened with sedition charges. Luckily, the US War Department was an ocean away. Robby gave his commander a wink and a nod, and three days later received an authorized, semiofficial work permit for Elsie to be hired as a waitress.

  She worked the dinner shift, but told Mutti and Papa that she got a job washing dishes at the Von Steuben restaurant. Papa grumbled at that. The Von Steuben had earned a fast reputation for catering to rowdy American soldiers who stumbled in for steins of dark ale, bratwurst, and oompah music. It was distasteful to think of Elsie among the patrons, but he soon relented, considering the pay and the fact that she was only a dishwasher. The truth would be harder for him to accept, and she simply didn’t have the energy to argue over it right now. They needed the money, and this provided it. She’d tell him eventually. Meantime, she hoped he never questioned why her hands weren’t raw and sore or why she consistently smelled of molasses, onion, and tomatoes. Robby’s barbecue was the center’s weekly special.

  She didn’t like taking orders and carrying trays of hamburgers, fried potatoes, mac and cheese, and other dishes labeled “Home Favorites,” but she did enjoy the time in the kitchen. After hours, Robby taught her more English than all the lines of Libeled Lady, and how to cook American food. In exchange, she taught him German recipes.

  Robby’s first lesson was American apple pie, which was basically Papa’s versunkener apfelkuchen, give or take an ingredient. She showed him how to make bienenstich, bee sting honey cake. He said he’d never tasted anything like it, and Elsie was glad for that. Next, Toll House cookies. Robby argued that they weren’t the same because they used military-issued chocolate instead of his favorite Nestlé chocolate. The cookies weren’t anything special, in Elsie’s opinion. Sugar dough with chocolate bits thrown in haphazardly. Too sweet for her palate.

  So the days went: early mornings in the bakery and long nights in the R&R kitchen. She liked spending time with Robby, and it hadn’t taken long for their butter and sugar to come together outside the mixing bowl.

  The chocolate cakes were baked and cooled. Elsie cut each through the diameter. “Kirschwasser.” She dosed the four moons with cherry liquor.

  “This stuff might as well be German holy water.” Robby put his arms around her waist and kissed the back of her neck. Her arms and knees went weak, and she let the bottle glug into the soft center.

  Before the wars, the Lutheran Church proclaimed sex outside of marriage as sin. Virgins were championed in life and fables; girls of lesser reputation were shamed and ridiculed; children born out of wedlock were shunned as bastards. But all that had changed. Hazel was regarded as a Nazi broodmare; commended, revered, and now, simply ignored as an unsightly artifact of war. Sure, everyone in Germany had regrets; acts no man could right or cleric forgive. Piety was out of fashion, and Elsie had quickly learned that her youth and beauty would either be put to others’ devices or her own. Never again would she be powerless. What she did with Ro
bby had nothing to do with him and everything to do with herself.

  She set down the Kirschwasser bottle. “You will ruin the kuchen,” she warned, then grabbed Robby by the shoulders and yanked him closer.

  “What’s the next step?” he whispered under her grip.

  “Fill layers mit creme,” Elsie commanded and nodded to the bowl of whipped white.

  “And then?” He ran his fingers across her collarbone.

  Her cheeks were hot, her dress too tight. “Icing.”

  “And then?” He undid the buttons of her bodice.

  She could breathe so much better with the front of the dress open, the cool air on her bare skin. The heat of her cheeks rushed down her center like molten chocolate, satisfying her hunger without restraint.

  “Schokolade und …” He kissed the ridge above her breasts. Her skin goose-bumped. “Cherries.”

  She shoved the bowl and cakes aside as Robby lifted her onto the counter.

  ELSIE’S GERMAN BAKERY

  2032 TRAWOOD DRIVE

  EL PASO, TEXAS

  JANUARY 30, 2008

  “Happy birthday, dear Elsie. Happy birthday to you,” they sang.

  Elsie sat at the café table, face aglow in the candlelight of the largest cake Jane could manage to bake secretly.

  Reba and Riki came together. They’d reconciled since Jane’s wedding day but had decided to take things slow. He stayed in his apartment downtown, but Reba no longer had to guess in which building he lived. She went there often, bringing dishes she’d cooked at home, and they finally ate together.

  Jane and Elsie were giving her a crash course in Baking 101. Her cinnamon sugar kreppels were a hit. Riki said they reminded him of churros his father used to buy him from street vendors in Juárez. Reba’s farmer’s bread was less successful. The yeast hadn’t bloomed, and it came out as hard and flat as cardboard. Riki commended her effort and said they could pretend it was a large, rectangular tortilla. They’d laughed and eaten the bread with homemade salsa and queso fresco. Reba hadn’t felt so light in all her life.