Authors: Ursula Hegi
Quickly, Frau Abramowitz lifted Thekla from her desk. “Go to your mother now.”
—greedy like her mother—grapes, stolen grapes like water, green and cool and light—
—
Nein nein jetzt nicht. Weg damit—
No no not now. Away with this—
—and already no longer remembering but knowing it can come back—
Frau Abramowitz flung open the glass doors to her garden. In the cold rain she picked violets.
Mutti
rinsed a crystal vase and filled it with water for her. After Frau Abramowitz arranged the violets in the vase, she set it on top of her piano and fussed with her little picture frames. The oldest photo was of her husband’s mother, Judith, as an infant in a wicker carriage outside the arched front door of this house.
*
It was that very photo Judith Abramowitz had kept by her bedside during the final months of her life—not pictures of her husband and children, only this one of herself—because in that final paring down her most enduring link was to herself. Instead of wearing the quilted bed jacket her daughter-in-law, Ilse, had bought for her, Judith Abramowitz asked for her silk piano shawl with the white fringes, and she draped it around her shoulders and breasts and arms.
During the past year she’d given thought to choosing the most beautiful piece of glass she could find, hoping its beauty would ensure the beauty of her death once Fräulein Siderova arrived to read poems to her in her final hours. When that day came, Sonja Siderova could see that Judith Abramowitz was afraid of encountering her
Vater
after death. Still, she kept reading, and in her voice, Judith recognized the wisdom of one who had crossed countless times, one who could guide her, too, on that passage until she was ready to continue on her own. She yielded, let the fear be until it let her be, until she saw how it had all passed in one blink, from the baby in the wicker carriage to this old woman who—although motionless in the shimmer of folds and fringes of the shawl—felt herself moving with startling grace.
*
Three nights and three days the rain came in torrents, silver and steady, too steady for Thekla to go outdoors and find a treasure for her
Vati
. So she searched indoors. On the second day of rain, she brought him
Mutti
’s rosary. As she tugged the wooden beads, one by one, through his slack fingers, it came to her that his hands were like the carvings of an apprentice toymaker, not of the master toymaker he was. It wasn’t right. She yanked at the beads, a flicker of prayers that would shorten his stay in purgatory and give him a soft chair in heaven.
On the third day of rain, she brought
Vati
a photo from inside the lining of
Mutti
’s sewing basket. Thekla was good at finding things—too good,
Mutti
liked to say—because whenever something was hidden, it would tug at Thekla’s mind till she had to go find it.
She laid the picture into
Vati
’s hands. It was of Frau Abramowitz holding a baby, both floating in the air. But the photo was all blurry from Frau Abramowitz’s tears. Why was she crying? Why—
Behind her a sharp breath.
Mutti.
Who snatched the photo away.
But
Vati
was still staring at his palms where the photo had been just a moment ago.
Thekla’s curls felt heavy from the damp air.
“Where did you get this?”
Mutti
cried and hid the photo under her apron. “Don’t you go snooping for this again.”
That’s why Thekla had to get a new picture for
Vati.
She drew it for him. Of Noah’s Ark. Two of each kind to save during the flood. The animals were easy. And so was choosing the woman:
Mutti.
But then for the man? Herr Abramowitz or
Vati
? Thekla’s throat hurt from thinking. She’d seen the Rhein flow into her street. Had heard stories of other floods that had come inside houses and drowned people and carried away what belonged to them. If she took
Vati
on the ark, he’d sit in the middle of it, hands dropping from his bony wrists like dead things. But Herr Abramowitz was strong and fast. He could build the world all over again.
Mutti
covered her mouth when Thekla showed her the drawing. “Don’t let
Vati see.
”
“But I’m taking you on the ark . . . and Herr Abramowitz—”
“Your
Vati
would be sad.”
“—and a girl and a boy and giraffes and cows and bees.”
*
Her mother must have shown Herr Abramowitz the drawing, because he sent the paperhanger, who pasted yellow wallpaper on the walls of Thekla’s bedroom and, along the top, a water-blue border of Noah’s Ark. All around her room: the ark and Noah and his wife and two of each kind of child and two of each animal, all in a row till it came to the ark again and the people and the animals.
Now that the flood was in Thekla’s room, it felt urgent that she choose who was to be on her ark. But soon, mold bloomed from the lower edge of the border, a sign that the flood was receding. Now she wouldn’t have to leave
Vati
behind. She was relieved.
But Herr Abramowitz said the paperhanger must have done something wrong and made him come back to remove the border. Thekla screamed and stomped till
Mutti
took her by the wrists and pulled her outside.
“I have to save
Vati
from drowning.”
Mutti’
s lips trembled. “What did he tell you?”
“The flood—”
“None of us will drown.”
Mutti
lifted her into her arms.
After
Mutti
sent the paperhanger away, she filled a pail with water and soap, climbed on a chair, and scrubbed the mold away. But Thekla was glad when it grew back in lush shadings of gray, lit by green and yellow, purple even.
E
VEN AFTER
Michel Abramowitz would have children with his wife, Ilse, he would never attach to them with this all-consuming love he felt for his firstborn, Thekla, a love that carried as much bereavement as bliss. And yet, there was the relief at the convenience of not having to be near her all the time, and the delight he could bring his daughter when he’d step inside her kitchen as if he lived right outside her front door. While Michel filled the house with food and with his deep laugh, the toymaker would retreat into the cave of his body.
Ilse argued that it caused talk where talk could be avoided, but he wanted to provide for his child, and Almut encouraged that, though she did not encourage him in other ways. She’d thank him, politely. Always, now, polite and aloof with him, as if all he’d ever been to her was her employer, as if she wanted him to believe he had only imagined her mouth
verführerisch—
seductive.
Of course the townspeople speculated that he was Thekla’s
Vater
. It was easy to figure out why Almut Jansen kept working for his family: jobs were scarce, and she was treated better than most
domestics. But why did Ilse Abramowitz tolerate her? Granted, Almut’s darning was exquisite, her ironing flawless, but that hardly outweighed having her in the house six days a week. How did Ilse Abramowitz tolerate Almut Jansen’s hands on the clothes she wore next to her skin . . . washing, sewing, folding? Her husband’s clothes, too. Perhaps, some reasoned, Ilse kept her on because Michel wouldn’t let her dismiss Almut. But those who knew Ilse well said she was too smart for ultimatums. More likely, she’d made a trade with her husband: Almut could work in their house as long as he kept away from her.
*
Thekla liked to hold the pail with wooden clothespins while
Mutti
lifted the damp laundry from the basket. The freckles on
Mutti
’s arms didn’t reach the undersides, puffy and white. She could wring out more water than anyone else. Each piece of clothing she’d snap into the wind and, in its billowing, fasten that shape to the washline by a hem, say, or the ends of sleeves. Though she washed everything with Henkel’s Persil, the Abramowitzes’ laundry was brighter than the Jansens’ and claimed more space on the line, while the Jansens’ shirts and nightgowns were bunched at the far ends.
Every morning Thekla went with her to the Abramowitzes’ house. It stood tall across the street from the pay-library, grocery store, and tailor shop. Whenever
Mutti
carried the basket with the Abramowitzes’ ironed laundry, Thekla would hold on to its edge, from Hindenburg Strasse to Schreberstrasse, through the Abramowitzes’ arched door, into airy rooms that were bright even on cloudy days, and up the stairs to the big bedroom.
One afternoon, when
Mutti
knelt by the dressing table to arrange the clean laundry inside, Thekla scooted around her and sat on
Mutti
’s bent knees, felt the hard belly behind her. Baby-belly from the stork. Storks lived on the highest rooftops.
In the mirror,
Mutti
kissed the top of Thekla’s hair. “That woman
always wants what’s mine,” she whispered and glanced toward the open door. “She’d love to keep you here without me. But she knows I’ll take you with me wherever I go.” When she tossed her head, one of her hairpins slipped from her coiled braid.
Thekla picked it up.
“Always after me, ‘Do this and do that right now. . . . ’”
Thekla was puzzled. At home
Mutti
was the one to say, “Do this and do that.” And Thekla obeyed. But in this house Frau Abramowitz said to
Mutti,
“Do this and do that.” And
Mutti
obeyed.
In church everyone obeyed the priest. On the church steps, too.
*
After mass, last Sunday, Thekla had found a feather in the puddle by the church steps where
Mutti
stood with Herr Pastor Schüler.
“If you keep praying, God will hear you,” he said to her. His body was little, but his voice was so big it could save your soul.
The old pharmacist edged closer. “Excellent sermon, Herr Pastor Schüler.” His voice was the best in the choir, melodious and steady.
“Thank you.” The priest beamed and scratched his chest through his vestment. Powder drifted from beneath, settled on his shoes and on the ground by the edge of the puddle.
Mutti
stepped aside.
“I’m still waiting for your husband’s medicine,” the pharmacist said to her.
“He has enough for a week.”
“Good. I’ll send the delivery boy once it gets here.”
“Thank you.”
Mutti
reached for Thekla’s hand. As soon as they were out of the church square, she whispered, “Those priests, they lie.”
Thekla’s feather was still wet when she lifted
Vati
’s hands and curved his fingers till they had to close around the feather. The rim of his white shirt was frayed but clean between his hairy-blond wrists and the black sleeves of his good suit. His left thumb twitched
as it tested the fine strands.
Falling then, Wilhelm, falling . . . and getting smaller and water in his mouth. . . forever falling
—
*
Mutti
pulled her other hairpins from her braid, turning it into crinkly angel hair. She pushed it from her cheeks, studied her face in the mirror of the dressing table. “That woman already has wrinkles. Her mother had skin like that.”
Thekla stretched herself tall until her brown hair was below
Mutti
’s chin. Laughing,
Mutti
shook her angel hair, let it ripple around Thekla’s face, and touched the ends of her hair below Thekla’s nose in a blond mustache. Thekla giggled, leaned against
Mutti
’s apron, soft from countless washings. The baby-belly squirmed.
Suddenly three heads in the mirror—
Brown, blond, brown.
Frau Abramowitz’s head above
Mutti
’s, Thekla’s below.
Till
Mutti
stood up and was the same as Frau Abramowitz. In height. But not in clothing because Frau Abramowitz’s belly—big like
Mutti
’s belly, big from the stork—was under her silk dress as if her baby were already wearing silk. In that awkward silence, Thekla could feel the inequality, and though she didn’t yet have the word to define it, she would recognize it from now on, separating the rich and their servants, from whom they expected compliance, gratitude.
Frau Abramowitz did not open her arms for Thekla the way she did when she was alone with her. She had such a sad face that Thekla made herself smile at her—she was good at making others smile back—but Frau Abramowitz didn’t.
Mutti
bent to kiss Thekla’s ear, whispered, “That woman’s smile muscles are broken.”
So that’s what it was. Except it wasn’t. Confusing. Because sometimes Frau Abramowitz smiled at Thekla. Like when she was alone with her. Or when she read to her. Or when she taught her how to
count in the foreign languages she knew from her travels and told her she was a natural striver.
Mutti
reached up to braid her hair, and as she wound it into a coil, her arms were like the arms of two different mothers, freckled on top but pale underneath. Thekla waited for the freckles to slide so that
Mutti
’s skin would be all the same color.
*
Thekla’s brother Elmar was born the following week, Ruth Abramowitz five weeks later. Thekla felt grown-up because she was the helper now.
When Frau Abramowitz saw Elmar in his wicker carriage outside the pay-library, she kissed his forehead, stroked his chin. “What a beautiful boy,” she said.