Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(59)

“I don’t know about the period blood, though,” Jenny said. She could barely buy tampons without blushing.

“No. It’s honest. If boys can sing about their bodies and sex, why can’t we sing about ours?” Lena demanded.

“Genau,” Anke said.

Zehra was looking at Jenny strangely. “Why did you sing vergib mir?”

“Oh. I don’t know. I saw it written in Frau Hermann’s notebook. I meant to look it up. Why? Is it bad?”

“Hard to say without context,” Zehra said with a shrug.

“What does it mean?” Jenny pressed.

“Forgive me.”

It had been written across the entire page. Jenny wondered what it meant. Was this part of her work with the patients at Die Eichel, like writing a letter to yourself? Or had Frau Hermann been asking for forgiveness and, if so, what had she done to need it?

“I like it as a lyric. It’s ironic,” Lena said. “Okay. What’s next?”

They rehearsed for another hour until Lena said rather suddenly, “I have to go to work.”

“Can I come with you to the bakery? I’d like to get something for my sister,” Jenny asked.

“No. I need to walk a bit and clear my head, come up with more songs,” Lena said. She waved without looking back. “Tschüs!”

“Don’t take it personally. That’s just Lena,” Zehra said, extricating herself from the drum kit. “Anke, help me fix the bicycle, ja?”

With Lena gone and the other girls occupied, Jenny felt awkward and out of place. She slipped into the dark of Lena’s makeshift bedroom and fell back across the unmade bed. The scent of Lena’s minty shaving cream lingered on the pillowcase. Jenny breathed it in. She rolled onto her side, coming face-to-face with the photograph of the serious-looking blond boy. It was the only picture in Lena’s room that hadn’t been torn from a punk magazine. It definitely did not come with the frame.

Jenny brought the picture into the rehearsal space. “Who is this boy?”

Zehra looked up from the bike chain and frowned. “You should put that back.”

“Why?”

“It’s special to her.”

Jenny got a sick feeling. Maybe he was a boyfriend after all. “Okayyy. What’s so special about it?”

“That’s Andreas,” Anke said. “Lena’s brother.”

Lena had never mentioned a brother. “Does he live here in Berlin?”

“No.”

“Are you going to keep being cryptic?” Jenny’s annoyance caught the girls off guard. She thought she saw a flicker of respect in Anke’s eyes.

“He’s in Prenzlauer Berg,” Zehra said.

“Isn’t that East Berlin?” Jenny asked.

Zehra said something fast and low to Anke in German. Anke put up her hands in a way that translated easily—“sorry, whatever.”

“You should ask Lena about it,” Zehra said.



* * *



“How come you didn’t tell me you have a brother in East Berlin?” Jenny said when Lena returned a few hours later, filthy and, predictably, without the pastry.

“Who told you that?”

“You’re avoiding the question,” Jenny said.

“Okay. So now you know.” Lena peeled off her top and trousers and left them in a pile at her feet. Jenny turned her head but stole glances at Lena’s naked stomach, the swell of her breasts above her bra cups, the dark triangular outline pressed against the front of her underwear.

“But if he’s in East Germany … I don’t understand.”

“Look. I need to take a shower first, okay?”

Fifteen minutes later, Lena came back, draped in a towel, her hair strangely flat and the ends dripping water onto her shoulders. Stripped of her usual punk armor and makeup, she seemed small and unremarkable. She pulled on a pink satin robe, a thrift-store find with a giant brown stain across the front like a cabbage rose, and sat on the bed next to Jenny as she rummaged in her trousers for her silver cigarette case and slid out a hand-rolled one, tapping it twice against the wooden floor to pack the tobacco. “I was born there.” She lit the end and took a long pull, letting her words trickle out on a stream of smoke. “My mother knew a man in the West. He had a car that had been fitted with a special compartment for hiding things, you understand?”

“A smuggler?”

Lena nodded. “It took months to arrange. The compartment was small, and the man could not take us all at once. So, we go one at a time. Andreas was twelve and tall for his age. I was eight. Still little. So, the man took me first. They made me crawl inside. It was so dark I could not see. I could not move. For hours like this. Finally, I fell asleep or I think I would have started screaming. And when I woke up, I was in the West. My cousins here took me in. And then we waited. For my mother and Andreas.”

Lena sank into herself a bit, grew quiet. She was not the Lena of Sophie Scholl. Tapping her ash into a coffee mug cloudy with soured milk, she continued, “One of my mother’s friends turned out to be IM. You know what this means?”

Jenny shook her head.

“Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter. An ‘unofficial collaborator.’ An informant. Over there, you never know who is a true friend or neighbor and who is reporting on you to the Stasi until there is a knock at your door and the police want you to come in to ‘clear up a few facts about a case.’ The friend had informed on my mother. When the smuggler came back, he was detained. They tore apart his car and found the hidden space and took him away. After that, the Stasi came for my mother. ‘Where is your daughter?’ ‘With family in the countryside.’ ‘You’re lying.’ They arrest her. Put her in prison.” Lena was quiet for several seconds. Down the hall, someone flushed the wonky toilet, which burbled and hissed through a hidden network of ancient pipes. “She died there, two years ago. They said it was her heart.” Lena dragged hard on the cigarette. “They always say it is the heart.”