Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(28)
KLEINWALD, GERMANY.
SUMMER 1939
“I’m never going to become some haus frau, trapped in a little house with fourteen runny-nosed brats at my feet,” Hanna confessed as they treaded water in the cool depths of the lake. It was Saturday, and on Saturdays, the girls of Kleinwald met outdoors with their scout leader, Fr?ulein Volker, for sport of all kinds. On this morning, the girls were cooling off between hikes while Fr?ulein Volker tended to the calls of nature. A tuft of seaweed had lodged itself on the top of Hanna’s head like a hat. It lent her pronouncement an air of the absurd.
“But we have to do our part for Germany!” Klara protested. Sophie and Hanna had spent much of their summer with the Bund Deutscher M?del, or BDM, the German League of Girls. It was compulsory for all boys to join the Hitler Youth and for girls, the League. On Wednesday evenings, the League gathered at Fr?ulein Volker’s home to learn everything they would need to run a home and care for a family someday. Sophie didn’t mind the Wednesday sessions, but Hanna preferred the Saturday meetings. She was very athletic and daring, and this made her popular even if she was blunt.
“Fine. I’ll do my patriotic part as a film star. Or a spy. Or a pilot.”
“Girls can’t be pilots,” Klara scoffed. She excelled at scoffing. It had become a pastime for her along with gazing at her reflection in shop windows. She was pretty and only becoming prettier. It made her doubly insufferable. And slow on a walk through town.
Hanna showed off her perfect backstroke. “I heard of a woman who worked as a mail pilot in Africa. She had her own plane and everything.”
“Humph,” Klara answered.
Sophie was less animated about the Saturday hikes. Mainly because Fr?ulein Volker believed in hiking no matter the weather: “The weather will not stop our enemies! We cannot be weak!” And as much as Sophie loved being in the forest, she didn’t care for hiking with a soggy rucksack, as often happened in the spring months.
The girls of Kleinwald had belonged to the League of Girls since they were ten years old. Sophie’s parents had been reluctant to let her join. After the Great War ended, Sophie’s father had spent two years with the Bund, a commune dedicated to peace. He never spoke about his days on the Western Front except to say that “no one ever really wins a war; one only hopes to survive it.” Despite their reservations, Sophie’s parents understood that, without membership, Sophie would become a social pariah. But they reminded Sophie to form her own opinions, to read widely.
“When you read about the lives of others, you form a kinship. You learn to see the world not just through your own eyes,” her papa often said. “It exercises the mind—but also, the heart.”
Hanna and the rest of the girls crawled up the bank and began wringing out their clothes. “I heard if the boy looks at you in just the right way for a long time, you get pregnant,” Hedy said. She had a wide-open face that matched her capacity for gullibility.
Now that the girls had moved up to the Bund Deutscher M?del from the Jungm?delbund, there were new responsibilities, juicier gossip, and talk about sex. Sophie’s peers were eager for any information about that last topic. It was traded covertly like loose cigarettes, which they sometimes stole from their older brothers and tucked into their knee socks for sharing later in the woods while Fr?ulein Volker was seeing to her morning constitutional.
“I heard that, too,” Klara announced, checking her reflection in a compact mirror she’d secreted into her rucksack. Vanity was against the rules of the League.
“If that were true, we’d all be pregnant with Werner Schlosser’s babies. He’s a starer,” Hanna said on a stream of smoke. She passed the cigarette to Sophie, who pretended to puff and gave it to Gerda Vohner, a plump girl with sweetly freckled cheeks.
“What is the right way?” Hedy asked nervously.
Klara pinched her cheeks till they were rosy. “Just keep your eyes shut and you’ll be fine.”
Hanna’s eyes gleamed with new mischief. She grabbed Klara’s backpack. “Don’t look at me that way, Klara. Don’t. I beg you!”
Klara rolled her eyes. “Hanna. Honestly.”
Hanna untucked her white shirt and shoved the backpack underneath, moving it up slowly. “No, don’t look at me! Don’t—”
“I’m not looking at you!”
The backpack had reached its destination. Hanna struck a sideways pose, cradling her backpack-fattened belly. “Oh! Oh no! Too late! I hope it looks just like you.”
The girls burst into merciless laughter.
“What is going on? What is all this racket?” Fr?ulein Volker called out sharply as she marched up the hill from the woods. Hanna hurriedly ripped out the backpack and adjusted her shirt while Hedy stamped out the last of the cigarette and buried it in the dirt with the toe of her shoe. “Why aren’t you ready for the next hike? If this is the future of the Reich, we are in trouble. Up! Everyone up!”
Behind her back, Hanna made a monster face with claws, causing giggles among the girls.
“What is so amusing?”
“We were just overcome by the beauty of nature, Fr?ulein Volker,” Hanna responded sweetly.
“Nature provides,” Fr?ulein Volker pronounced, a benediction. Satisfied, she led them on, pontificating now about which plants were edible, which were good for the complexion, while the girls suffered and sweated and slapped at midges that stung their bare legs. Impertinent, Sophie thought, pulling up a word she had recently learned. Rudeness, but with a naughty mischief to it, as opposed to impudent, which was just a rude rude. Hanna was impertinent. It was part of her charm. Sophie didn’t covet much, but she did covet this part of Hanna. That easy confidence that told her she could when everything inside Sophie warned you shouldn’t.