Authors: Lynn Austin
“I’d sooner kiss a mule,” I said.
“Be my guest,” he laughed. “Come on, I’ll even drive you over to the Schultzes’ farm in my Model T. They’ve got two mules. You can take your pick.” He took my arm and propelled me forward a few steps toward the street. I pictured myself flying down the winding river road in his motorcar with my hair streaming and the wind in my face, laughing for joy as the trees rushed past us. Then I stopped walking. I shook off his hand.
“No, thank you.”
“Suit yourself, Katze,” he said with a shrug. “There are plenty of other girls who’d love a ride . . .
and
a kiss.” He winked and strolled across the grass like a lanky tomcat to talk to Hilda Lang. For some reason, the sight of them laughing together made me furious.
“He almost kissed you,” Eva said breathlessly. “His lips were this close. . . .”
“Oh, go soak your head!” I told her and stomped away.
Two years before, Hilda Lang wouldn’t have given any of the Bauers the time of day. But somehow or other Gus had scraped together enough money to go into partnership with Arno Myers on a Ford motorcar dealership just as the Model Τ became the working man’s car, and the Bauers had been respectable ever since. Markus had quit school to work in the Ford garage, and everyone said there wasn’t an engine in the world that Markus couldn’t fix. He’d already earned enough money to buy his own Model Τ and a decent set of clothes for himself. I wondered if his feet were still three shades darker than the rest of him.
When I heard a cheer go up from the church lawn, I wandered back to join the party again. I was just in time to see Sophie and Otto say farewell to their guests as they prepared to leave. As I watched them drive away in Mr. Mueller’s buggy, I got a funny hollow feeling inside. Markus left in his car shortly afterward, giving Hilda Lang and her brother Peter a lift into town. I didn’t know why, but as I helped clean up after the wedding, I felt angry with all five of them for deserting me. I was outside, scraping plates and slamming dishes around, when Mama and Magda Bauer’s voices drifted out to me from the kitchen where they were washing dishes.
“Such a beautiful day,” Magda murmured, “and such a happy couple.”
“Yes, I pray that Fritz and I can find a fine young man like Otto for each of our girls.”
Mama’s words brought me up short. I didn’t need her and Papa to find me a husband! I knew they had arranged Sophie’s marriage, but I wasn’t at all like Sophie. She was five years older than me and very old-fashioned. Besides, she had been born in Germany where everything was done differently. I was an American.
“The Muellers are a wonderful family,” Magda agreed.
“You and Gus have always been like family to us,” Mama continued. “And we’ll become a real family someday, if the match works out between Emma and Markus.”
Me and Markus
? I dropped the plate I was holding and ran. I didn’t know where I was running to or who I was running from, but I had to escape from their terrible words. I didn’t want to believe they were true. I wanted no part of the life they were planning for me, but it sounded as though I had no choice. I would have to obey my parents as the Bible commanded and marry Markus, wouldn’t I? My life would slowly roll toward that future as inevitably as Sophie’s had.
I ran toward the barn, searching for Eva, then decided I didn’t want to talk to Eva, so I kicked off my Sunday shoes and ran in the opposite direction, barefooted. By the time I reached the churchyard, I was out of breath. I slipped into the sanctuary to rest and think, but I wasn’t alone. Papa was puttering around the nave, gathering up wilted garlands from the wedding.
“What’s wrong, Liebchen?” he asked as I flopped into a pew, breathless and shaken. I decided to come straight to the point.
“Are you and Mama going to arrange a marriage for me like you arranged Sophie’s?”
Papa looked puzzled. “Of course,” he said after a pause.
“Why can’t I pick my own husband?”
“Well, because it’s been done this way for generations and . . .”
“Why?”
Papa steepled his fingertips together the way he did when delivering a sermon. “For several good reasons. When you’re young, it’s much too easy to look for qualities in a mate that are superficial and unimportant to an enduring marriage. Parents who understand the commitment involved are better able to judge someone’s maturity and stability.”
“But what if I don’t want to marry the man you choose?Are you going to make me marry him anyway?”
“No, of course not. But I would hope that you’d give the young man a chance and not dismiss him before you get to know him.” He bent to pick a flower off the floor, then sat down in the pew beside me. “What’s this all about, Liebchen?”
“I wasn’t eavesdropping on purpose, honest I wasn’t, but I heard Mama and Aunt Magda say that I’m supposed to marry Markus. Is that true, Papa?”
When he sighed wearily I was sorry I had quelled what little joy he had found that day. “I’ve known Gus Bauer since I first arrived in America. Your mother traveled on the boat with Aunt Magda. They’re our oldest and dearest friends, and we share a great deal in common. Family traditions and a common background provide a good basis for marriage. And Markus is a bright, hardworking boy who—”
I clapped my hands over my ears. “No! I can’t stand Markus! I’ve known him since we were little kids!”
“But you aren’t children anymore, and if you give Markus a chance, I think you’ll see how much he’s changed since he’s grown up. Neither one of you will be ready for marriage for several years, but when the time comes, I hope you’ll be as fair to Markus as you would be to any other suitor.”
“I don’t want any suitors at all! I don’t want to get married and live in Bremenville!”
Papa stared at me in silent confusion. I saw lines around his eyes and gray hair at his temples that I’d never noticed before. He looked so bewildered that I felt I had to explain what I meant. Before I could stop myself, my secret tumbled out.
“I’m going to join the Chautauqua, Papa. I’m going to travel all over the country and play the piano.”
“Emma,” he said quietly. “God didn’t give you such a fine musical talent to waste on the Chautauqua.”
“Oh, Papa . . . I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
“But I do understand.” His tired eyes met mine and I saw a well of wisdom and sorrow in them. “You feel like there’s a fire burning inside you that could light up the night with its brilliance if only you could release it. Making music gives you such joy that you want to share it with everyone you meet so that others can sing the songs you hear in your heart.”
“How . . . how did you know?” I felt as though Papa had looked into my heart and read its secrets.
“Because that fire comes from God, Liebchen. Whether you burn to play the piano or to preach the Gospel, He plants the desire inside each of us to be used for His purposes.” Papa reached for my hand and took it in his. “On the night of the Chautauqua, you experienced the power of music. But you don’t have to travel the show circuit to unleash that power. There are other means of expressing the song God has put in your heart.”
“Then you’ll really let me play the piano, Papa? You won’t make me marry Markus and live in three rooms behind the Ford garage?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he said with a sigh. “Finish school first, Liebchen. Then we’ll pray about what comes next.”
In 1916, a group of Germans blew up a munitions arsenal in New Jersey, and the attitude of most Americans toward the war in Europe began to shift out of neutral. A year earlier I’d learned to play the popular tune “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier,” but now many Americans were eager to send their boys over there to kill those “filthy Huns.” Such talk wasn’t common among our own church members, of course—we were still a mostly German congregation. But after two more factories moved into Bremenville several years earlier, the town’s population had grown to include a large number of
Irish immigrants. They had even built their own church—St. Brigit’s Catholic Church—across the river from ours. They hated Germany and all things German.
By the time I was seventeen, my figure had finally begun to fill out in all the right places. I wasn’t as pretty as Sophie and Eva, who had Mama’s upturned nose and Papa’s clear blue eyes, but I was passable. I had inherited Papa’s oval face and long, straight nose, and some unknown relative’s gray eyes. I would never be as petite and curvaceous as my sisters, but I liked my tall, willowy shape the way it was. It was my hair that I hated. It wasn’t blond and curly like all three of my sisters’, but plain and straight and the bland color of wheat toast. I didn’t have the patience to pin it up on my head and make it look good, so one day I had it bobbed, like all the city girls were doing.
“What on earth will Papa say?” Eva worried all the way home. “You look like a suffragette!”
“Good! I had to do something different to prove to him that I don’t belong in Bremenville.”
“Don’t say such things. Where else would you belong but here with your family?”
“Listen, Eva. It’s fine for you and Sophie to get married and live here, but I’m not getting married. I’m going to play the piano all over the world.”
As it turned out, Papa had just learned that morning that thousands of women and children were starving to death in Germany because of a terrible famine, so he and Mama wouldn’t have noticed if I had shaved my head bald. All the boys from church noticed, though, and they fought over my basket at the annual church picnic the following Saturday. Hilda Lang’s father auctioned off the picnic baskets to raise money for missions that year, since Papa didn’t think he could cope with a lot of foolish fun and festivities.
My basket fetched the highest price, but when the winner came to claim the privilege of sharing it with me, I was surprised to discover that Markus Bauer had bought it. I shook my head in disbelief.
“What’s wrong with you, Katze?” he asked with a crooked grin. He was tall and muscular and twenty years old, with the swarthy good looks of a movie idol.
“You could have had your pick of any girl in town!”
“I know.”
“So why did you pick
me
? We’re practically cousins, for goodness’ sake.”
“I saw the way all the boys fluttered around you like moths, and I made
up my mind to beat them all to the flame.”
“I don’t know why they were acting like that,” I said as I bent to spread my picnic cloth on the grass beside the church. “I didn’t do anything to encourage their attentions. I don’t care one fig about any of them.”
“Not here, Katze,” Markus said, snatching up the cloth. “Follow me.” He headed toward Papa’s orchard away from all the other picnickers.
“Wait . . . where are you going?” I had to hurry to keep up with his long-legged stride.
“Considering the outrageous price I paid for this lunch, I deserve a little privacy when I eat it,” he said. He spread out the picnic cloth behind an apple tree and flopped down beside it, stretching out like a hound dog before a fireplace. “I expect to be hand-fed, you know,” he said with a lazy smile.
“Then you bought the wrong girl’s basket,” I replied. “Maybe Hilda Lang or one of your other adoring fans would be willing to feed you, but not me.” I knelt down on the opposite side of the blanket from him and began laying out plates and food from the basket.
“That’s what makes all the boys flock to you, you know . . . that saucy attitude of yours. You don’t flirt and sigh like all the other girls or act as though your main concern in life is to trap some poor fellow into proposing.”
“Of course not! I don’t intend to get married until I’m much older. In fact, I’ll be leaving Bremenville one day soon.”
“Is that right?” he said with a grin.
I threw a piece of fried chicken onto his plate. “Why do I always get the feeling that you’re laughing at me, Markus Bauer?”
“I’m not laughing, Katze . . . honest I’m not.” But no matter how hard he worked to pull down the corners of his mouth, he couldn’t disguise the laughter in his dark eyes.
“You are too. You’ve been laughing at me ever since I was a kid.”
The laughter in his eyes suddenly died. “You’re Pastor Schroder’s daughter,” he said quietly, “not Gus Bauer’s. You have no idea what it’s like to be really laughed at.” He picked up his piece of chicken and began eating. I was afraid that I’d ruined the afternoon and hurt his feelings, but as he took a second bite he said, “Mmm, this is good. Did you make it yourself?”
“No, Eva did. I’m a terrible cook. If those boys who bid for my picnic basket knew the truth about me, they’d all run in the other direction.”
“They’re not after you for your cooking,” he said, swallowing a bite of his dinner roll. “They’re intrigued with the challenge of winning your cold, cruel heart.”
“Ah, so that explains it! I knew it wasn’t my looks.”
He swiped his napkin across his mouth, then laid it beside his plate. “You honestly don’t know, do you?” he murmured. I was astounded to see that Markus was even more handsome when he was serious than he was when he was smirking.
“Don’t know what?”
“That you’re beautiful, Emma.”
“I am not.” But I saw by his expression that he meant it. I looked away, afraid that I was blushing like a foolish schoolgirl. He took my face in his hand and turned it toward him again. His fingers felt rough as he caressed my cheek.
“Beauty is more than perfect features, Emma. You have an inner fire that draws everyone to you, the way flowers turn toward the sun. You walk into a room and the place comes alive at last. You sit down at the piano and there’s laughter and song. You don’t need anyone or anything because you know exactly who you are, and you’re complete all by yourself. You
are
beautiful, Emma. All the more so because you don’t even realize it.”
I felt as though I should say something in return, but I didn’t know what to say. I had known Markus all my life, but for the first time I caught a glimpse of how vulnerable he really was. For all his outward swagger and handsome charm, he was a hurt little boy inside, hiding his pain and his family’s shame behind pranks and laughter.