Wunderland

by Jennifer Cody Epstein

  “I’m six,” she muttered.

  “Six! My, what a big girl,” said the man, though Ava knew full well that she was small for her age. “And what do you like to do?”

  “Do?”

  “With your free time. What games do you like to play?”

  Ava looked uncertainly from him to Sister Agnes. She really didn’t know any games. Her Opi had started to instruct her in chess, but the bombing happened before he’d taught her how all the pieces moved.

  “Ava,” said Sister Agnes, “is our little resident artist.”

  “Isn’t that lovely!” exclaimed the woman. “Our Ina loved to draw too. She especially liked drawing flowers and kittens. We still have some of them up on our walls.” Kneeling next to Ava, she looked directly into her eyes. “What do you like to draw?”

  Ava bit her lip.

  “Go on,” said Sister Agnes, laughing in a way that sounded amused but which Ava knew actually signaled annoyance. “Don’t be shy, for goodness’ sake. Tell Frau Dunkel all about your pictures.”

  Ava licked her lips with her still-smarting tongue. “I draw food,” she said, still in her lowest voice. “Cakes and chickens and banana splits, especially.”

  “That sounds delicious,” the woman said warmly. “I don’t know about banana splits. But Humbert and I live on a big farm outside Norf, and we have chickens and baby chicks and a cow.”

  “A cow?” Despite herself Ava looked up again. Greta had lived on a farm during their time in the East, and still waxed rhapsodic about the food: real milk and eggs and fresh bread and fruit and honey. Sometimes there was even meat. At night, she’d tell Ava stories about the meals she’d had, the way Ava’s grandmother had told her bedtime stories in the life that, looking back, now felt like a fairy tale itself.

  Frau Dunkel winked. “She is a very skinny cow at the moment. Still, she gives us a little milk. And someday soon we might even manage to pull together a cake or two, if we have something nice to celebrate.”

  Her voice was gentle and low, and beyond her obvious interest in cake Ava found herself wondering whether Frau Dunkel ever sang lullabies. Her Oma had sung sometimes, at night: “Sleep Child Sleep” and “The Moon Is Risen.”…

  An image drifted past, her grandmother’s white hair and little diamond drop earrings. Her quavering voice, a room papered with Ava’s pictures of princesses and castles. A wave of homesickness and longing washed over her so powerfully that for a moment she was unable to speak.

  “Our Ina,” Frau Dunkel was continuing, “was a little older than you when she was taken from us last December.” From the corner of her eye, Ava saw the husband’s hand settle on his wife’s shoulder.

  “For a long time we were very sad,” the woman went on. “But then we realized that there are so many wonderful children who have no parents now. And…”

  “I also draw pictures of my mama,” Ava blurted.

  Frau Dunkel blinked. “Your mama?”

  “Yes,” said Ava. “And I’m not an orphan, because she isn’t dead. She’s going to come back for me soon.”

  Frau Dunkel raised her brows, looking up at Sister Agnes, and Ava saw the nun’s chin set in annoyance. “Ava’s mother was in the Wartheland at the end of the war,” she said, as though in apology.

  Frau Dunkel gave a nod. “Oh dear. I see.”

  “But she’s coming back,” Ava insisted.

  “Now, Ava. We’ve discussed this.” Sister Agnes’s voice was a tad too bright. “Given how much time has passed, it seems safe to assume…”

  “She’s not dead!” It came out a shout, so shrilly and abruptly that the entire barracks fell silent at the sound.

  “She’s not dead,” Ava repeated, her voice only slightly lowered. “And she wasn’t raped and left like a slab of meat in the snow.”

  Behind her, she heard Sister Agnes gasp, while Frau Dunkel, still kneeling, flinched. As the nun’s hand clamped on her shoulder Ava’s heartbeat thrummed in her eardrums, so loudly that it almost drowned out the clunk-clunk-clunk of Kapitän Ron’s big black boots marching toward them down the aisle.

  “What is happening here, ladies?” he asked, in his slow, cowboy-sounding German. “Why the shouting, squirt?” Squirt was what he called Ava and the other, younger orphans. He said it meant little in English.

  “It’s my fault.” Frau Dunkel climbed awkwardly to her feet, smoothing her floral skirt with two hands. “I upset her, I think.”

  “Oh no.” Sister Agnes’s voice was as light and as calm as always, but her fingers conveyed another message, gripping Ava’s shoulder with steely strength. “Not at all. Ava knows better than to speak like that. In fact, I think Frau and Herr Dunkel deserve an apology.” She shook Ava lightly. “Don’t you agree, Ava?”

  Ava stared at the floor, mute. She hated apologies, especially when she’d done nothing wrong. Her stomach felt like a clenched fist.

  “Well?” said Kapitän Ron. He sounded cross now, and when Ava hazarded a glimpse at him his hazel eyes were narrowed. “Say you’re sorry, squirt. These good people are just trying to help you.”

  “Entschuldigung,” Ava muttered.

  Sister Agnes shook her slightly. “Louder, please. And look up.”

  Swallowing, Ava tilted her head back and looked up at Frau Dunkel’s thin face. The expression on it now fell somewhere between horror and pity, as though she’d just discovered that Ava had horns, or a hidden third leg. From behind her, Ava heard Maja snicker.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  * * *

  A half hour later she sat quietly, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes fixed on the Mother Mary statue perched just above Mother Superior’s white-winged head. Apart from the requisite Evening Devotion, Ava didn’t generally pray outside of Mass. It was clear to her by this point that if God existed, he was either deaf to or uninterested in her requests: that her grandparents and their house would return miraculously. That her mother would return from whatever mysterious, silent place she was now. That Maja would, like the cruel stepsisters in Aschensputtel, have her black eyes pecked out of her face by vengeful pigeons.

  Now, though, something in the Virgin’s gently vacant gaze gave rise to one last heartfelt, desperate request: Please, Ava asked her silently. Please let her be alive. Please let her come back soon and take me home.

  “Well, Ava.” The Mutter Oberin’s words were tight and terse. “I understand that you spoke very rudely to our visitors.”

  Ava squeezed her hands together hard enough that her knuckles grew nearly as white as the statue’s smooth, pale cheek. “I was only telling the truth.”

  “And what is that?”

  Ava looked up rebelliously. “My mama isn’t dead.”

  “But you said more than that, didn’t you.” The nun leaned back in her chair, eyeing Ava over her glasses. Her face was as creased as a walnut shell: rumor had it she was at least a hundred years old. She’d been known to beat children with a heavy volume of Starck’s Prayer Book, kept specifically for that purpose.

  Ava bit her cheek and said nothing.

  “I understand,” the Mutter went on, her voice lowering in tone in a way that made it more unnerving than if she’d shouted, “that you said your mother had not been…not been violated.”

  “Violated?”

  The Mother Superior cleared her throat. “It means—the word you used to the Dunkels. The thing you said hadn’t happened to her.”

  “Raped?”

  Frowning slightly, the nun nodded.

  “That’s because she wasn’t.”

  “It doesn’t matter if she was or was not. We do not speak in that way here. Ever.”

  Ava scuffed the toe of one shoe against the floor, feeling the sole pull back slightly where the seams had worn away. On rainy days her feet soaked right through. Until the next Red Cross clothin
g shipment arrived, however, there was nothing that could be done.

  “What on earth made you think it was all right to say such things?” the Mother Superior went on. “Where did you even get those awful ideas?”

  Ava shook her head mutely. She knew better than to rat out Maja; in her half year spent roaming Berlin’s rubbled streets the latter had seemingly perfected every surreptitious torture trick in the book. The last girl who’d tattled on her had been so fiercely pinched in retaliation that her arms resembled those of a black-and-blue leopard.

  “Ava.” Mother Superior let out a short sigh. “Look at me. I must make one thing very clear to you.”

  Ava stared at her bare, grubby knees, knowing full well what was coming. Knowing, too, that it was wrong. Wrong-wrong-wrong.

  “Your mother,” the Mother Superior continued, “has not been heard from since before the end of the war. Indeed, she wasn’t even present at your grandparents’ funeral. We have waited over a year for her, or another relative, to contact us. Your photograph is in every Red Cross office in the sector. I understand that it’s painful, but you must accept that your mother isn’t going to come back.”

  “She is.” Ava kicked the wooden rung on the Unruhestuhl. “Even Greta says she is.”

  “Greta is a child,” the Mother Superior said sharply. “There are certain things in life that only adults can understand. But there is more involved here.” Leaning forward, she looked Ava in the eyes. “You know that there are many, many girls and boys in Germany who don’t have family or a roof over their heads. The mission given to us by God is to take them in and find them homes. But we can only do that if and when we have space. And even then we can barely care for them, especially since the Allies won’t give food or clothing to Germans. Not even German children.” She paused. “Do you understand what I am saying?”

  Ava shook her head. The gesture felt strangely passive, as though she were a puppet and someone was making her move with strings.

  “Every child that comes to our doors has a right to our care and protection. But we can only give it for a little while—just until we find a safe, good place for them.” She sighed. “We’ve now had two fine opportunities to find such places for you. But both times, you have rejected them outright.” Planting her hands on her desk, the Mother Superior heaved herself creakily to her feet. As she made her way around the desk Ava shrank against the chair’s hard oak back, though the dreaded prayer book was nowhere to be seen. But the Mother Superior merely perched herself in the other chair and placed her hands on Ava’s bare thighs.

  “If you don’t leave,” she said, “it means we can’t help another child. And do you really want that? To deprive another little girl of food, of clothes, of a home?” She leaned closer, so that Ava could smell the combination of mint tooth powder and the cod oil she took daily for her arthritis: a sick-sweet blend of pristine and putrid. “Do you really want to do the same thing to another child that the Americans and the Russians and the British did to you?”

  Ava felt powerless to look away. What she wanted to say was Yes. Yes, I do—just until my mother comes. But somehow, all she could do was shake her head.

  Mother Superior nodded. Releasing Ava’s legs, she sat back. “I didn’t think so. So tonight, you will apologize to Sister Agnes and Kapitän Ron for your behavior. And for Evening Devotion you will pray both for forgiveness, and that you might be lucky enough that a kind couple like the Dunkels will make you their daughter.”

  Daughter. Every cell in Ava’s body wanted to shout out: No! No, I won’t! But as the nun held her gaze she once more found herself unable to do anything but nod.

  “Gut.” Rising to her feet, the Mutter Oberin gestured for Ava to stand as well. “Now go back to your bunk, please, and spend the next two hours before supper thinking about what we have discussed.”

  Pushing herself to her feet, Ava smoothed her threadworn dress over her thighs and followed the nun to the door. As she was opening it, however, a soft knock sounded and Sister Agnes stuck her head in.

  “Do you have a moment for some discharge paperwork?” she asked.

  “Of course!” The Mother Superior’s voice seemed almost relieved. “Who is the lucky child?”

  Beaming, the younger nun pushed the door fully open while beckoning behind her with her free hand.

  “Danke,” said a familiar voice.

  Ava looked up to see Frau and Herr Dunkel poised in the hallway. Between them, holding both their hands, stood Maja.

  As the two girls stared at one another, for once Maja’s gaze held none of its usual loathing and scorn. Joy and wonder had suffused her pinched features with a softness that Ava had never seen there before.

  “Oh my dear! Congratulations!” Sweeping past Ava, the Mother Superior enfolded the older girl in her arms, a smile spreading across her withered cheeks. As she turned to the Dunkels, Ava looked up to see Sister Agnes looking down with a strange expression, one brimming with both pity and self-satisfaction. You see, it seemed to say. I told you so.

  * * *

  “Is it a castle?”

  “No.” Tongue tip tucked between her lips, Ava carefully scraped off the top layer of her structure. Theresia pulled her thin cardigan more tightly against the April chill and jutted out her lower lip. A recent arrival to the orphanage, she was five but looked three, and even younger when she smiled since half her teeth were missing. Like other recent additions at the orphanage she’d lost her parents to the Schwarzer Hunger brought on by a winter colder and longer than even Mutter Oberin claimed to have ever seen. (“He is punishing us for our sins,” she’d explained at one Sunday night sermon, though when asked what those sins were she’d just shaken her head.)

  For some reason, Theresia had fixed on Ava as her new best friend, a designation Ava found irksome rather than flattering. She had no interest in making friends these days—and certainly not tiny, toothless ones who wouldn’t stop asking her questions and had terrible breath to boot. Still, Theresia trailed her around the orphanage, nestling beside her at mealtime and perching uninvited on Ava’s bunk. This morning, the younger girl had actually offered Ava half her breakfast ration of dry bread and margarine after Ava complained she was still hungry. It was an offer that took all of Ava’s might to refuse, which only served to make the whole thing more annoying.

  “Why isn’t it a castle?” the smaller girl was asking now. “It looks like a castle.”

  “Because it’s a house.”

  “What kind of a house?”

  “Just a house.”

  “Can I help build it?”

  “No. And stop bothering me.”

  Scowling, Ava shifted so that her back faced her interrogator and blocked her project from Theresia’s meddlesome sight. The latter let loose a short, hurt sigh before resuming her own project, a hole she’d been struggling for the past half hour to claw into the still half-frozen sand. Ava huddled over her building again, focusing this time on the arching hole of the doorway. As she’d told Theresia, it was not a castle but a house, one as close in style and appearance to what her Oma and Opi’s had been as Ava could manage. Since the weather had finally warmed enough for them to play outside coatless (though few of them had coats in the first place), this had become her new obsession: molded versions of food items that she wanted to eat, and of buildings in which she’d like to live. She had crafted sand-cakes and sand-cottages, sand-pretzels and sand-palaces. She built them with a focus so intent that it sometimes made her dizzy, so single-minded that she often missed the bell that signaled the end of playtime. When she did hear it, she’d stand up and stomp her creations back into their original grit, an act that felt both transgressive and deeply satisfying.

  She turned her attention to the roof, using the spade’s tip to etch in the illusion of overlapping tiles. She was just trying to decide where the chimney should go when she heard someone callin
g her from somewhere behind her: “Ava! Ava!”

  Looking over her shoulder, Ava spotted Greta flying toward her from the direction of the chapel, her cheeks pink, her face bright with delight. Frowning, Ava turned back to her structure.

  Since Maja’s adoption a half year earlier, their relationship had changed. Ava hadn’t exactly stopped talking to the older girl. But she had stopped seeking her out; had stopped climbing into her bunk at night for whispered tales of mythic foods and famous paintings. It helped, of course, that since Maja was gone Ava no longer needed Greta’s protection from her. But Ava herself had changed too. She knew better, now, than to let herself dream of things that would never come to be—and better than to believe people like Greta, who encouraged her to dream of them.

  “Ava!” Greta called again.

  “Ava?” Theresia echoed, poking Ava’s shoulder with a sandy finger.

  “Leave me alone.” Turning back to her house, Ava began carefully carving out a chimney, not looking up until Greta hurled herself into the sand pit between Ava and the younger girl, her left knee knocking into a carefully lathed wall in the process.

  “Look what you’ve done!” snapped Ava, angrily pushing Greta’s thin leg away.

  “She doesn’t want to be bothered,” Theresia explained glumly.

  “Oh, yes, she does. Ava! Don’t be a goose.” Greta poked Ava in the ribs lightly. “And don’t worry about the house. I’ve something much more important to tell you.” Her eyes shone like rounded raindrops on a leaf.

  “What?” asked Ava, cautiously.

  “Deine Mutter,” Greta said breathlessly.

  Ava yanked her arm away. “Sie ist tot.”

  “She’s not dead.” Greta laughed, the same light and patient laugh she always laughed, no matter how rudely or curtly Ava behaved. “She’s here.”

  Ava’s mouth suddenly felt as dry as though she’d taken a bite out of her own building. “What?”

  “She’s here,” Greta repeated. “In the office with Mutter Oberin.”