I didn’t mean to doze, but the highs and the lows of that day drained every bit of strength from my body and sleep simply overtook me. Sometime later I was startled awake by a loud sound. I sat up, confused and bleary-eyed, then cast my gaze around the room.
Mother’s body was on the bed beside me. Henry bolted upright too, his eyes as red-raw as the skin on his face.
But Dad was nowhere to be seen. I went to slip off the bed to look for him and to investigate the sound, but Henry put his hand out to stop me.
“No,” he whispered. “No.”
“But where is—”
“Stay here,” he hissed, and something about his tone scared me so badly, I did. I watched him run from the room, my heart starting to race with a fresh wave of confused dread. Then I finally looked at Mother.
The sun was rising outside and she was bathed in the delicate light of a new day—casting a pinkish glow over her skin. I touched her cheek, telling myself we got it wrong and she was still there—but her skin was cold and she was really gone. How on earth would we go on without her?
Not all of us would.
Some of us wouldn’t even try.
And then I knew what the sound had been. I scrambled from the bed after Henry, running through the house and over the dusty porch, stumbling through the mounds of soft earth that had been dumped all over our home and yard.
I came to a screaming halt when I rounded the corner of the house closest to the bench seat and that Texas live oak. The sun was rising behind the tree, casting vibrant shades of pink and red and gold over the new morning.
In silhouette, I saw the outline of that battered tree and I saw the bench beneath it, and then I saw my brother on his knees in the dirt, cradling my father’s body in his arms.
19
Sofie
Huntsville, Alabama
1950
“How was her day?” Jürgen asked as he walked into the house that afternoon. I was sitting on the couch, Felix on one side of me watching the television, Gisela on the other, crying miserably into my shoulder. I looked at him pointedly, and his face fell. “What happened?”
“Kids here don’t eat real bread!” She wept.
“Uh…” Jürgen gave me a confused look. “Americans eat a lot of bread, Gisela. Maybe you’re confused—”
“Their bread isn’t brown. It’s white. It’s different and they were all laughing at me because I had the wrong bread. I didn’t know any of the words my teacher said and Mrs. Schmidt’s children said they weren’t allowed to play with me and then none of the other German children wanted to play with me either and the American children already hate me so I sat by myself and I hate it here!”
Later, once she’d calmed down a little, we retreated into his bedroom and closed the door.
“I spoke to Claudia today,” I told him. “She told me she doesn’t want her children mingling with ours. She said it’s one thing for Klaus to work with you, but that she has come too far to protect her children from Nazi ideology to allow them to ‘mingle’ with the likes of us.”
Jürgen rubbed his face wearily.
“Should I talk to her? Or to Klaus?”
I thought about the anger in Claudia’s eyes and I shook my head.
“No. Not yet, anyway. But if the German children won’t play with Gisela and the American children won’t play with her, she’s going to be miserable.”
“Let’s just give it a little time. We can start with her lunch—if eating our food is really such a big deal, we’ll go to the grocery store right now and buy some American food.”
“I don’t even know what American children eat.” I winced.
“Then maybe we need to find you an American friend,” he said pointedly.
And all of a sudden, I remembered Avril Walters.
“Mama!” I heard Gisela cry from the front yard the next morning.
“Sofie, can you come here, please?” Jürgen called. I was in the bathroom doing my hair and I sighed, frustrated with the interruption. What were they doing back already? They’d only walked out the front door a few minutes earlier. Avril Walters was due in an hour and I needed to wash the dishes before she arrived.
“What is it?” I called, as I walked to the front door. I glanced in at Felix, who was sitting just a foot away from the television—eyes wide as he stared at the screen. He seemed determined to sit in front of it every waking moment. I wasn’t thrilled about that but reassured myself that at least he was hearing some English.