The Baker's Daughter

by Sarah McCoy

  Elsie blew out her candles and the room went dark. “I’m happy to have made it this far!”

  Sergio flicked on the lights while Jane cut the cake in thick squares.

  “I made one of your favorites, Mom—spiced crumb cake.”

  “Spiced crumb cake?” asked Reba. “My granny used to make this. Is it German?”

  “No.” Elsie passed them all forks. “I learned the recipe from a friend, a chef from North Carolina. He was stationed in Garmisch after the war.”

  “You never told me that,” said Jane. “I figured it was an adaptation of a German cake.” She took a bite.

  “Proof—even at my age, I still have secrets.” Elsie scooped a heap of caramelized topping into her mouth. She chewed thoughtfully and swallowed. “Delicious. I could not have made it better.” She winked at Jane and took another forkful.

  Jane smiled. Sergio kissed her cheek.

  “So you bake German and American recipes—ever considered learning Mexican? You’d make a profit round these parts,” said Riki.

  Sergio nodded in agreement.

  Jane wagged a finger. “You can get flan or tres leches on every corner of town, but ain’t nobody’s got authentic German bread. That’s what makes us unique. We’ve cornered the market.”

  “Actually, I would like to learn,” said Elsie.

  Jane’s cake crumbled off her fork.

  Elsie shrugged. “Why not? You are never too old for learning a new trick. It will not be as good as my neighbor Maria Sanchez, but I don’t expect to open a Mexican bakery.” She turned to Riki. “Do you know how to bake?”

  Riki swallowed hard. “Not really. My recipe repertoire consists of one: pan de muertos. The bread of the dead. I used to help my mom make it for el Día de Los Muertos.”

  “The bread of the dead.” Elsie enunciated each word. “How appropriate!” She laughed alone.

  “Don’t be morbid,” said Jane.

  “Ach was! It is my eightieth birthday. I’ve lived long enough to know you can’t take your own mortality so seriously. We have a saying in Germany: Alles grau in grau malen. Don’t paint everything black. We have no right to when others have had it far worse.”

  Reba gave Jane a consoling smile.

  “The bread is actually a reaffirmation of life,” explained Riki. “Mexicans see death entirely different than folks in Western culture. We celebrate death and life as a continuum, a coexistence of sorts. We even eulogize it as an elegant woman.”

  “Catrina—Lady of the Dead,” said Sergio. “A beautiful, fleshless woman with a flowered hat.” He grinned; cinnamon sugar stuck to his lower lip.

  Jane brushed it away with her thumb. “Isn’t that uplifting.”

  Elsie ignored her. “I love flowered hats. After the war ended, I went to a strassenfest in Munich and wore a hat with red geraniums. I’ve not thought about that summer in many years.” She patted Riki’s arm. “This Lady of the Dead sounds like my kind of woman. You’ll show me how to make the dead bread. That can be your birthday gift. Jane and Reba will learn too.”

  “Us?” Jane looked to Reba.

  Elsie nodded. “You must teach your children their culture. German and Mexican. Same for you, Reba.”

  Reba choked on her mouthful of spongy spice.

  Riki smiled. “Deal.”

  “Prost!” Elsie lifted her glass of apfelsaftschorle, half apple juice and half mineral water. “To new friends and family! And, God willing, another year in this crazy world.”

  A slow tune came on the car radio. Reba and Riki parked in front of Reba’s condo on Franklin Ridge. She couldn’t put off telling him about San Francisco any longer.

  Leigh had called and left a message while Reba was at the bakery celebrating Jane and Sergio’s nuptials. The job was hers. She’d gone numb when she heard the news. Too much happiness packed into one day: seeing Riki, Jane and Sergio’s marriage, and then her dream job. It was everything she’d wanted. So why did she still feel like the sun had been eclipsed? She remembered Deedee’s words, Be happy, Reba. Promise me you’ll let yourself.

  Reba returned Leigh’s call, accepted the job, and asked for the latest possible start date. Leigh hadn’t budged much. “First Monday in February,” she’d said. Reba gave the Sun City editorial staff notice and put the condo on the market with a local realtor. She boxed up what she could and offered the rest to her neighbors, paid the utilities through the month, canceled her subscription to El Paso Times, and emptied the cupboards. She’d told almost everyone about her impending departure except Riki. Things had been going so well. She didn’t want to burst the bubble.

  Writing the date atop Elsie’s birthday card, she realized she’d have to start the drive to California by the weekend. Elsie’s birthday party wasn’t the appropriate moment to break the news to him; however, now didn’t feel right either. This was her chance at big-time journalism. She had to make him understand and had just gotten up the nerve to speak when he turned down the radio.

  “Can you imagine being eighty years old?” He scratched his five o’clock shadow. “She’s seen so much.”

  Reba nodded, deciphering how she could segue to San Francisco. “A real adventurer. Not afraid of the unknown.” It was the best she could come up with.

  Riki nodded.

  “What I mean is—all her life, she went for it, whatever that ‘it’ was.”

  He cocked his head.

  She was spiraling and needed to get to a definitive point. “It’s inspirational. Makes you want to—to take the bull by the horns, you know?”

  The radio played a low jingle through the pause in conversation.

  Finally, Reba blurted out, “Riki, San Francisco Monthly offered me an editorial position. It’s a top-notch magazine. A dream job! I start right away.”

  She stared hard at the neon lights of the radio station: 93.1. The car idled loudly. She didn’t dare face him.

  “You’re going?” he asked.

  “It’s what I’ve always wanted.”

  “Uh-huh.” The car heater whizzed and popped. “San Francisco. You’ll be on the water.”

  Reba nodded. “The bay. You could come.” It was a weak offer, but she wanted him to know she’d considered.

  He breathed in deep and held it. “My life is here. I can’t pick up and leave.” He blew out the air. “I’m happy for you, Reba. Really I am.” He put his hand on hers.

  She turned and saw that he meant it. His eyes were soft and painfully earnest, and instead of feeling relief, the sadness within welled up.

  STRASSENFEST

  LEOPOLDSTRASSE IN

  SCHWABING

  MUNICH, GERMANY

  JULY 28, 1945

  “They got pretzels with mustard over there!” Robby yelled above the oompah band. He bobbed and weaved through the crowd, pulling Elsie along by the hand. Sam and Potter trailed behind with tall pints of frothy pilsner.

  Elsie tasted bile at the thought of spicy mustard. She’d been feeling poorly for a couple weeks. At the end of her night shifts, she barely had the strength to wave to Robby from the kitchen galley and bicycle home. She was exhausted from sunup to sundown, and her lack of appetite wasn’t helping. The butcher received a new shipment of pork, thanks to the Americans, and Mutti was able to buy long links of sage sausage—Elsie’s old favorite—but the smell of grease from the kitchen made her nauseated, and she hadn’t craved a single bite. Mutti brushed it off as “working too hard,” which they all were; but after so many months of paucity, it was strange to now have no hunger for the very foods she once desired most.

  A day off, that’s what she needed. The R&R kitchen was closed that Saturday so a leaky water pipe could be replaced. Elsie asked Papa if she could take the day off from the bäckerei, too. Robby and a couple friends were catching the train to Munich for a summer street carnival. Since the Nazis forbade celebrations unconnected to the party, no town had been able to host their traditional events in years. Deep down, Papa missed the old ways as much as everyone.
He consented for her to go with a friend from the Von Steuben, though no such friend existed.

  The morning of the festival, she’d slept longer than usual and it helped. She awoke energized and seemingly restored, even eating a plate of boiled ham for breakfast, though it tasted off.

  Mutti surprised her with a new dirndl beautifully embroidered with delicate poppies and trimmed in matching red. It was the material Hazel had sent.

  “You need something new to wear to the festival,” Mutti had said and smoothed the dirndl’s seams between her fingers. “I know red was your sister’s favorite, but she would want you to have it. With your eyes, you can wear any color and look beautiful.”

  It was the first time Mutti had ever praised Elsie’s beauty over Hazel’s, and Elsie understood all too well: Mutti didn’t believe Hazel was ever coming home.

  “Here, dear.” Mutti handed over the dress. “Take this before I ruin it with flour,” she said, though she had yet to begin baking. “Promise to show me how it looks on before you leave.” Mutti shut the bedroom door behind her.

  Elsie laid the dress on the bed so that the brown skirt spread wide like a peacock tail. Hazel would’ve been lovely in it. A striking garment, it was as if Mutti had threaded the fabric of her heart onto each sleeve and hem. Elsie hadn’t worn anything so fine since Josef’s gown on Christmas Eve. This, however, was more precious than all the chiffon of Paris, all the silk of Shanghai, all the wool of Castile, because of everything it had survived—everything they had survived. She slipped out of her muslin robe and undid the dress’s waistline. Snaps of electricity arced between her gauzy slip and the copper buttons.

  In the mirror, she admired herself, astonished that the dress made for Hazel’s measurements fit her to a T. Her figure had blossomed over the past few months. Even with her recent lack of appetite, her chest and hips were rounder and fuller than ever before. She buttoned the dirndl, dotted her wrists with rose shampoo, grabbed a matching hat from the closet, and gave herself one last inspection. She was ready. Almost.

  The outfit needed something. Pizzazz, like the American poster girls in the R&R Center. A flash of red fluttered in the outdoor window box. Red geraniums against the summer breeze. She pinched the largest cluster at the base and stuck it in the brim.

  Now, someone in the carnival crowd knocked her hat askew. The bloom fell and was smashed by clogged feet. Elsie readjusted once they reached the Johanns’ bäckerei booth. The artfully arranged pretzels looked like they’d spent too little time in the soda ash bath and too much in the sun, in her opinion.

  “Two.” Robby made a peace sign with his fingers.

  “Nein,” Elsie protested.

  “You’ve got to eat something.” Robby frowned. “Are you bent on getting pie-eyed?”

  She’d drunk an entire beer stein alone. The malt magically settled her stomach. She craved another, but knew it unwise. Her head already felt a blissful airiness. Papa told her that dark lager, like dark chocolate, had that effect.

  “They’ve got fried kreppels. How about one of those?” pressed Robby.

  Petite sugar dumplings floated on tufts of brown paper, leaving slick shadows beneath.

  Her mouth watered. “Ja.”

  Robby ordered one pretzel and one kreppel. Sam and Potter were content with their beers and distracted by two busty girls wearing frilly, low-cut dirndls.

  The kreppel was warm in Elsie’s palm. She bit expectantly only to find the sweetness cloying. Gulping down the morsel, she handed the remaining portion to Robby. “Take.” She screwed up her nose and waved it away.

  “Not up to Schmidt quality?” he teased.

  “Schmidt?” interrupted a woman in line behind them. She was round in the belly with a similarly pregnant pustule on the tip of her nose. “Hazel Schmidt?”

  Elsie tried to focus past the blemish. “My sister,” she clarified.

  “Oh! Then you must be familiar with Josef Hub?”

  The kreppel nearly came back up. She tried to walk away, but the woman followed.

  “He was looking for your sister. Did he ever find her? He was the commander of her fiancé’s unit in Munich. Peter Abend?”

  Elsie turned so that Robby was to her back. The woman did the same and continued.

  “I used to be a Naz—an archive secretary in Munich. Never forget a name.” She rubbed her belly. “Josef and I were acquaintances before I met my husband.” She pointed over her shoulder to a corpulent man waiting in line. “Josef asked me to pull the file on Hazel Schmidt, which of course I never would have done. That was classified information then.” She straightened her shoulders defensively. “We lost touch. I wondered if he ever found her.”

  “When was this?” Elsie’s heart fluttered, hope alive.

  “Hmm …” She tapped her fingers on her belly bulge. “1941-42. I can’t remember. It seems like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?”

  It did. Elsie recalled the first time Josef strolled through the bäckerei doors in his starched uniform, tall and dignified; it was like a scene in a dark movie theater, out of focus around the corners.

  “So much chaos when the Reich fell. I haven’t heard from Josef in months,” said Elsie.

  “So you did know him. A good man.” She cleared her throat. “Such a shame.”

  The summer sun blazed hot despite Elsie’s hat.

  “A shame?”

  “You’ve heard the news?”

  She shook her head. Her ears burned.

  The woman looked to her husband, then leaned in close. “They found him and a group of SS officers on a docked boat in Brunsbüttel. Mass suicide.”

  Elsie blinked hard. Her vision tunneled.

  “Everyone had been shot—a bloody mess. But not Josef. His was lethal injection, so they say,” she whispered.

  Elsie sipped in the air, but it did no good. Acid rumbled up her throat and before she could turn away, she vomited on the woman’s wooden clogs.

  Robby rushed to her side. “Elsie?”

  She knelt to the ground and gripped the blades of grass to steady herself.

  “I’m sorry. It’s the drink,” Robby explained to the woman. “She’s been sick all week. Hasn’t been able to stomach much.”

  The woman stamped the pottage of fried dough from her toe. “It’s fine. Reminds me of myself not too long ago—terrible pregnancy sickness with this child.”

  Elsie focused on a bright dandelion, its yellow bud wide open. Her head still spun, but the din of the crowd quieted. She put a hand to her stomach. Impossible.

  EL PASO BORDER PATROL STATION

  8935 MONTANA AVENUE

  EL PASO, TEXAS

  —–Original Message—–

  From: reba.adams@hotmail.com

  Sent: February 14, 2008 6:52 P.M.

  To: ricardo.m.chavez@cbp.dhs.gov

  Subject: Thinking of you

  February 14, 2008

  Happy Valentine’s Day, Riki!

  I tried your cell but you must be finishing up at the station. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to watch the sun turn the sky all our favorite sherbet flavors. How many did we count that one time—thirty-three different sky scoops? That’s two more than Baskin-Robbins. My favorite will always be passion fruit pineapple marshmallow cream. That scoop right above Sunland Park, New Mexico. So if you see it tonight, give it a little taste for me.

  It’s a different kind of sunset here on the bay. A little watered down in my opinion. But the apartment is beautiful. My editor, Leigh, helped me get the place—fully furnished, too. There was a long waiting list at this apartment complex, but one word from her and they bumped me to the top. You’d like it. You can see the water from my balcony. Leigh’s a real ballbuster in the office. Kind of reminds me of Elsie with an organic, Napa wine, locavore twist. Hoping this is just hell week and things ease up after I’ve been initiated.

  My first story assignment is on the new trend in nightclub-restaurant hybrids. Interesting. Leigh says she wants me to get my feet wet in the city scene,
but the majority of my work will be in the editing room, not the beat. I’m wondering what exactly that means.

  San Fran is a lot bigger than El Paso, that’s for sure. A lot bigger than Richmond, too. I went walking downtown yesterday. I thought I’d see a couple city staples—the Fisherman’s Wharf, the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory, the Boudin Bakery. I bought a bread roll in the shape of a turtle. Seriously, it was the spitting image, and it tasted about the same. Bland as pond water. You’ll have to tell Elsie that nothing compares to her brötchen—not even the famous big-city bakeries.

  Have you been by the bakery lately? I’ve called a few times, but (no surprise) got the answering machine. Elsie should really open an e-mail account. The spam filter siphons out all the porn and Viagra ads. You tell her that.

  Miss you.

  Love, Reba

  SCHMIDT BÄCKEREI

  56 LUDWIGSTRASSE

  GARMISCH, GERMANY

  AUGUST 2, 1945

  Elsie made her way upstairs to change for the night shift. The American R&R Center was preparing for a crowd, a bomb squadron on weeklong leave. The whole unit was busing in from Fritzlar, Germany. Robby asked Elsie to help in the kitchen in addition to her waitstaff duties; she’d reluctantly agreed. She dreaded the busy night ahead. It’d already been a long day in the bäckerei. Papa had gone to Partenkirchen where a flour mill had reopened, leaving Elsie as head baker for the day. She was thoroughly exhausted with only an hour to change clothing and bicycle over to the R&R Center.