‘Sometimes I wonder if I was born into the wrong family,’ I told Thea one afternoon as we sat in front of Anna Maria’s hearth, bare feet extended towards the embers.
‘Why?’ She was drowsy. I could hear it in her voice.
I hesitated. I knew that Thea thought all marriages were like her parents’： hands finding one another across tables or in passing, a constant homing of fingers. She never hesitated to wrap her arms about me in affection, and it was difficult for me to articulate the joy I felt each time she hugged me. I was no longer a child picked up by my father or permitted to crawl into my twin’s bed. My mother’s unpredictable kisses did not satisfy the longing I had to be touched, to be recognised as worthy of touch. I wanted to tell Thea that I was often so hungry for another body to acknowledge my own that I sometimes felt the weight of her arm slung around my shoulder long after I went home. Her cool fingers between my own left my skin burning. I wanted to tell her that sometimes I woke in the night convinced her hand was still in mine.
‘Your family does not ignore the body,’ I said eventually.
Thea rested her head on my shoulder.
Despite her initial trepidation, Mama tolerated my weekly absences from home in a way she had not since I was a child. Other than occasionally quipping that if I loved Anna Maria’s Sauergurken so much I should just live there and save her the effort of setting my place at the table, she held her tongue and said nothing when I continually came home late on Sunday evenings, face flushed with cold, as long as I was back in time to milk the cows with Matthias – the one day I was able to share the chore with him.
‘Do you think Mama is relieved to be rid of me?’ I asked Matthias one night. I had returned home from the Eichenwalds’ earlier than usual and had felt, immediately, that Mama was displeased to see me.
Matthias turned and opened his mouth, and I attempted to squirt milk into it. We both laughed as it hit him in the eye.
‘Do you even care?’ Matthias replied, wiping his face on his shirtsleeve. ‘You don’t have to sit and listen to Papa complaining about Calvinists all day.’
‘She can’t wait to marry me off and get me out of the house,’ I muttered.
‘Hanne, I doubt it’s you. She’s happy for me to head off with Hans, when Elder Pasche allows him to go. Perhaps she just likes the time to herself.’ He reached out and took my pail of milk, hooking it onto the yoke across his shoulders. ‘You’re lucky Thea never has to sit and study sermons to keep the Sabbath. Think of how Hans suffers.’
It never occurred to me that Mama might have been preoccupied with her own affairs until, one morning in late January, I found her hunched over in the orchard, a mess in the frost and one arm gripping the bare branches of an apple tree for support. She did not know I was there until I placed my hand on her shoulder. She was shaking.
Mama allowed me to help her into the house and ease her into a chair, even as she told me she was fine, that she had just had a funny turn. Even in the days following, when she stopped eating and heaved at the fatty smell of frying Leberwurst, she refused to admit she was unwell.
That Sunday I chose to remain home in order to look after her.
‘You would tell me, wouldn’t you?’ I asked, after a day of watching her run outside to throw up in the snow. ‘If you were truly sick?’ I was washing the dishes and, when Mama did not reply, I stood up from the pan of hot water and wrapped my arms around her middle.
Mama gently steered me back towards my chore. ‘Hanne, what I need now is a little rest and nothing more. A little space.’ She picked up her plate and scraped the uneaten food into Hulda’s pail.
I hovered at her side. ‘You could speak to Anna Maria. She makes all her own balms and medicines.’
‘Does she just?’
‘Yes. If you tell me what is wrong, she might teach me how I could cure you.’
Mama sighed and reached past me to pick up Matthias’s empty cup. ‘I would prefer you just did what I asked of you rather than dirty the kitchen making balms.’
‘I only stopped to ask you how you are,’ I insisted.
‘And I have told you that it is nothing.’
‘Mama . . .’
‘Truly, Hanne, if you are not going to clean, please just get out of my way.’
I was relieved when, by the end of February, Mama’s nausea eased and the colour returned to her face. It was only when I returned to the Eichenwalds’ cottage and gave them the reason for my absence that Anna Maria explained to me that my mother may have been pregnant and, if so, had lost the baby to miscarriage.