Under and Up Again

by Edith Noordewier Foley

  Oh God, the man who in the hallway once opened his raincoat scared me half to death. What a sad thing.

  The cafeteria was the place where I and my colleagues had lunch. A fun group of young people. I learned from them about all sorts of things. They talked about what happened in their lives and gave their opinions on what was going on outside of it. This was part of my education into American life. I was warned that the mayor was part of the Mafia, which meant one was careful about criticizing the running of town.

  46

  We realized that we were too isolated in our Charles Street apartment and started to look for something suitable. People we met and liked lived in the north of Baltimore, and there we found a place: ground floor apartment, living/dining room, and two bedrooms, with a nice kitchen and bath. I sewed curtains, and we liked it. A good move, we made friends with couples living there. A bus took me to work. I tried to plant marigolds but did not realize that they needed earth better than what surrounded the apartment. They did not look good. Going shopping was easier too in that part of town. I could walk to a shopping mall, not very large and at that time not covered. I found an item, other than food, I just had to have. They were three canisters, yellow plastic, with gold tops in different sizes, and lettering in gold indicating what they were to be used for: sugar, flour and coffee. Plastic was new and came in many good-looking designs, an extravagance because we were very careful with our finances. I discovered Robert Hall on York Road selling inexpensive clothing. I could always make adjustments, but I fit a size 12 just fine.

  Food shopping was done in an A&P not far from us. That was a surprise. In 1955, nothing was imported. All the food was grown or produced in the States. I was looking for lettuce, asked where I could find it, and was steered toward a display case filled with what looked like cabbages. No imported cheeses, nothing Italian, no frozen food. This I had to get used to—again, an exciting challenge.

  Everything was to be learned: how people communicate, other than language, attitude, humor, polite exchanges, customs, behavior.

  In order to find our equilibrium, we drove Sundays to Washington and spent the day in the National Museum of Art. We felt at home amongst the art. There was always an interesting lecture highlighting a special exhibit. A quartet played a concert near the fountain and a restaurant offered food. I still am in awe when entering the museum. Somehow, this is how the Romans in their glory days must have felt, I think. The entrance hall with their huge green marble pillars, the white marble hallways with their sculptures, and daylight shining in through the ceilings—this was good.

  On Saturdays, we explored Baltimore. We found ethnic neighborhoods, each with their own styles of houses, shops offering their typical goods advertised in their own language, and their churches. We discovered the rows of houses with their scrubbed white marble steps Baltimore was known for. These were Polish, Russian, and German parts of town, shiny and neat as a pin.

  In the northern part where the villas were, I ventured into structures under construction, not quite completed, to find out what the interiors looked like. A learning experience.

  The time had come to purchase a television set, black-and-white, and a record player. We were fascinated by Jackie Gleason, who had a fine way of playing a tune on his trumpet with his own orchestra as backdrop. That was also the period of excellent family-oriented television shows of which there are still reruns shown today.

  47

  Somehow, life slowly lost some of its glamour. After almost a year at Westinghouse, my husband had not been able to obtain the required security clearance. This meant that he could not be part as yet of the core of work he had been hired for. There was little verbal exchange between us, and my husband was sullen.

  I was unhappy and felt deserted.

  It was decided that I should go to Europe, visit my boarding-school friend, Ingeborg in the Netherlands, and my mother and sister in Berlin. I obtained a leave of absence from the Johns Hopkins library, a steamship reservation in tourist class was booked, and I left. This crossing was calm, and I enjoyed the company of my fellow travelers. This was entertaining. I have a photo of my winning a prize in a contest designing a crazy hat. After arrival, I was picked up in Rotterdam by Ingeborg’s husband and in his silver Mercedes Benz sports car we were off to Leerdam where Niels Burgers, the husband, owned a successful international lumber business and lived in the house of his father, a roomy house with a flower garden and tennis court. It was grand. In the afternoon, blankets were spread on the grass, and as a snack, yogurt was served with Dutch rusks. We were observed by two or three cats, the birds were singing, flowers spread their sweet aroma, and one could hear the small stream running peacefully by the property.

  Ingeborg and I decided to go to Amsterdam to look at the elegant shops and to enjoy coffee with a sweet. She also introduced me to a handsome tall acquaintance of hers who, to my surprise, immediately took a shine to me. Wow, this was something new. He took over and insisted that I stay, and he showed me Amsterdam. He was twenty-three years old, and I, twenty-five. He was getting his degree in economics from the University of Amsterdam, and he insisted that I just had to be his lady during all the planned festivities.

  There was a horse show in the Ascot style. Dress up was required in the British tradition. I spent a whole night designing and sewing the necessary clothing and dressing a fancy hat for the occasion. Hans introduced me proudly to his friends and generally spoiled me in a grand way. The horses and their riders performed well, and champagne was generously offered to the viewers. The ball turned out to be quite elegant, held at the Lido, one of Amsterdam’s finest restaurants along a canal. A band played our kind of music, and we danced, becoming oblivious to the rest of the world. I am afraid we fell in love. How wonderful this kind of feeling I had never experienced, and how terrible.

  48

  To visit my mother and sister in Berlin, I took the train from Amsterdam in the morning, arriving in Berlin in the late afternoon. This train showed on the side of each wagon with metal signs where the train was going and the stops it would make. The final destination was Moscow. Berlin was still an island within the Russian zone. The city itself was divided into the Russian zone behind the impenetrable “wall,” the British zone and the French zone. The part of Germany as a country in which Berlin was located was occupied by the Russians and ruled by them. The after-war made it necessary for them to build a barrier between the east and the west. The east was everything occupied by the Russians—Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Germany—and was run by them with suspicion and iron control. I hid all my reading material and tried not to look too interested in the landscape we traveled through. Their agents passed by in the corridor to keep an eye on the passengers. Some were in uniform and some in black leather jackets. Readily recognizable. They had boarded the train just before the border. My American passport was taken, and fortunately, there was nothing inside to raise their suspicion of the purpose of my travels, and again returned. This now was no-man’s-land. Nobody could have helped me should they have decided that they would take me off the train and arrest me for some trumped-up charge.

  Then we rode through the border, a high fence with a half kilometer of carefully raked sand behind it and outlook posts with soldiers and their drawn rifles.

  The apartment of my childhood, with its grenade hole, had been repaired, and Mutti and my sister were delighted to see me step out of the train to take me home. Things had changed. The trams had disappeared, but the park was there again. I enjoyed Mutti’s cooking. She was surprised that I mostly asked for the everyday dishes: Harzer Käse, a sharp Bavarian cheese, and the various delicious German sausages. We enjoyed the balcony as of old and had much to talk about over the traditional coffee time. Mutti was not happy about Hans. In her mind, I had done well marrying an established gentleman and making it all the way to America, away from the still suffering Europe. And then what did Hans, a student,
have to offer? Hans came to visit, however, and together with the young children of the Dutch consul, we traveled as diplomats in a diplomat’s car through the “wall” to see the other side of Berlin. Well, we were young and did not realize the danger we put ourselves in.

  There was some kind of market, and I saw for the first time sophisticated Russian women in uniform but beautifully made up. We were interested in Russian records. The Russian choirs are wonderful, and I bought one. We communicated in French, which I later learned was the language of the upper class in Russia.

  Hans returned to the Netherlands, and I listened to all the reasons why I had to return to the States from Mutti and her friends. My heart was breaking; here was something I had to do again. Hans returned to Holland.

  I tried to put this dilemma out of my mind by meeting with acquaintances of my sister who felt that they needed to entertain me. I ended up riding in the back of a motorbike and riding in a boat on the Wannsee. The last acquaintance did not behave. At his house after the boat had been secured, he entertained me and tried to rape me. Well, fortunately, without damage to me. But I was shaken. It took me until a few years ago to understand that men are not after your mind and your kind intentions. Did I mention before that the president of the office where I had worked had tried the same thing? I had been so honored to have been invited to his house, thinking that his wife would be there. Growing up without a father or brother, in the very unusual circumstances as the war, knowledge of the masculine mind-set was totally missing. I was and stayed very naïve.

  49

  The time had come, as had been decided by all but me, for me to return to my husband in the United States. I saw Hans in Amsterdam at the train station. He did not at all like my stories about motorcycles and boats. I sailed across the Atlantic to the States. My husband was glad to see me. He noticed my reserve, however, and began to ask questions.

  I finally broke down; I simply had to tell him about Hans. He kept on pressuring me. He deserved to know the truth. After all, I had come back to him. He, however, was furious to the point of slapping me. That was not allowed. When he had gone to work the next day, I packed a suitcase and pulled the door shut behind me. I am not sure where I went, but I ended up in a furnished apartment on North Calvert Street close to the Johns Hopkins University. The job at the library was gone. I had stayed away too long for the job to be kept open. I made an appointment and was accepted as a secretary with Pan American World Airways on the corner of Charles and Fayette streets. That was a break because I had no money whatsoever. I remembered the dedication of the Dutch consul in Berlin and got in touch with the Dutch consul in Baltimore. He was active as consul mostly to clear ships arriving at the harbor. But he patiently listened to my story and kindly lends me $100.

  Pan American needed to train me, and I was sent to New York to headquarters. I stayed at the Barbizon Hotel for Women, a hotel for single ladies, and attended the classes dutifully. Bob Myers had a way to instill enthusiastic salesmanship into his pupils, which I never forgot. The training took three months, and I took it in New York City. The word was out that a television channel was looking for contestants for their show The $64000 Question I think it was called. I applied and was accepted. We were trained by giving us lists of questions and their answers to remember. I was dropped because I said that this might be a good place to mention Pan Am. Later the program was in deep trouble because the training that took place beforehand drew attention. The show was cancelled, but the expression “That is a sixty-four-thousand-dollar question” lingers on in today’s language.

  A girl at the hotel invited me along to an outing on Long Island where her lawyer boyfriend had a summer residence. I was lonely and went along. Again this was not good. The boys expected the ladies to entertain them. I was spared, fortunately, because these men were powerful and dangerous.

  I passed the Pan Am end exam and came back to Baltimore to my job. A Pan Am uniform was ordered, and I fit right in. Everybody was nice and had a good sense of humor. However, my typing was not a success, being slightly dyslexic, which, I realized much later, resulted in my having to repeat the letters over and over again. We used typewriters in those days, threading the original with the needed copies into the roll of the typewriter with carbon paper in between. A typing error resulted in carefully erasing the original and the copies. A tedious activity.

  It became clear that my typing time was over. I was placed in the sales department out front facing the public, behind a counter with a world map behind me on the wall showing the routes the various planes were taking. It was just up my alley. My various languages came in to play and my knowledge of Europe. I will not forget the “around the world” project. I pointed to all the places Pan Am was flying, easily found on the wall map. The breaking point for the airfare was Rangoon, with all the stops one wanted to make going either eastbound or westbound. Dips into the Southern Hemisphere became more complicated. The suggestion was then to do an around-the-Pacific trip, flying from the west coast via the South Pacific islands. Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and back to the west coast and then home. We made hotel and tour reservations. No computers; it was all done by Teletype. This was part of the job too: appearing on television shows and presenting awards with the governor of Maryland. It was wonderful, and I felt successful.

  Our boss, a lusty man, announced with great satisfaction that we had reached the one-million-dollar sales figure. I was proud.

  50

  My first encounter with God was when I sat at the scrubbed wooden table across from my grandfather at his farm in Pomerania. He was eating breakfast, a porridge made of oats. He cut a slice as big as a man’s shoe sole off the home-baked bread and covered it with dark brown syrup from sugar beets as accompaniment to the porridge. No butter; butter was considered a spread of its own. Before starting a meal, he said a prayer, which I do not remember, but what did impress me was that we had to stop eating when a thunderstorm happened. “God is angry,” he would say. He said very little, ever. I only saw him at mealtime. He was busy with his sons in the fields. I knew that he sang in the church, and when the highly respected minister visited, that was considered an occasion of importance. He looked at me with his blue eyes across the table and wiped his broad white mustache.

  My aunts, who were busy around the house and tending to the small animals, did the cooking, baking of bread, and the drying and storing of fruits for the winter. Sundays, a sheet cake was baked, a typical dense German cake with Streusel on top. It tasted of butter and vanilla, delicious. Grandfather would dunk his piece in his coffee.

  Everyone at the farm lived in the shadow of God’s wrath or blessing. My aunt Frieda, the oldest, had a treasure of sayings that applied to any occasion, mostly predicting dire consequences of one’s poor behavior.

  Back in Berlin, I remember the church by the Lietzensee park, a simple building. We did not attend services; that was dangerous under Hitler, who had his philosophy of the German Übermensch. Jesus did not belong. And besides, as foreigners, we had to watch our steps. The church had been spared from the bombs, however, and religious teachings were begun there right after the war’s end, which I attended in order to be confirmed. There was again the realization that there was a power available, when Mutti, at moments of great danger, would exclaim with intensity, “Lieber Gott, steh uns bei.” It was this realization that there must be this Gott who was protecting us. When the Russian troops arrived at the village where we had gone to elude the bombings, I was standing at the window upstairs in the little bedroom of my aunt’s house where we lived, and prayed. I knew that He and I were not in close contact, but at that moment, He was needed. “God,” and I was really concentrating now, “let me live, even if it is only,” and here I was looking very far into the future, “until I am fifty-seven years old.” He saw me through the raping and the killing, but when I reached the age of fifty-seven, I knew that I had to pay up. At the time, I was attendin
g a course at church and finally admitted to what I had bargained for. “You cannot bargain with God,” it was explained. I was very grateful.

  I was still wearing my hair in braids because I was fifteen years old in 1945 and that was proper. A dark blue dress was found, adjusted, and a white color attached. The confirmation took place in a church I had never seen before. We were about twenty youngsters to be confirmed. After all the doctrines I had been exposed to, I had a reluctance to accept a new one, but because of my grandfather, I thought that this needed to be part of my life. I received a confirmation document with a text I had to select from the New Testament and became a confirmed member of the Lutheran Church. Mutti had lost the drive, Mica was too small, so I did not continue formal attendance of the services at our little church by the park.

  Fifty years later, I received an invitation to attend the celebration of the first class to be confirmed after Hitler; I had been part of it. I was touched, had had no idea.