“Go on, while you have me to keep an eye on the children for you.” Julia ruffled Anke’s hair.
Ethel’s eyes narrowed as her pen scraped against the notebook page. She wrote August 23, 1951, and then scribbled the words “The Brown Baby Plan,” and started outlining her idea.
CHAPTER 21Mannheim, Germany, September 1949
OZZIE
By the start of June 1949, the white petals of the common hawthorn hedges outside Ozzie’s bedroom window were in full bloom. Each morning as he dressed for work, they made him think of Jelka, who had also flowered with the season. Since she could no longer disguise her bulging belly with layers of clothing, she had been fired from her job at the bar. She had no husband and carried an illegitimate child. Now, instead of Ozzie sending thirty-five dollars home to his mother, he had decreased it to twenty-five and sometimes twenty dollars, depending on Jelka’s needs. He had very little savings left, because he had given most of it to Rita so that she could remain in school.
Sometimes Ozzie imagined that, by a stroke of luck, the pregnancy would go away. That the child wouldn’t come. That he could somehow return to the States and pick up with Rita where they’d left off. Other times he thought about what it would be like to stay in Germany with Jelka and raise their child away from America’s bullshit.
While he wasn’t drinking and partying at the club, he had managed to get into a few craps games on post, and the wins from his gambling helped ends stretch until they met.
On the Tuesday after a Labor Day barbecue, a short guy from his platoon delivered the message he had been waiting on: “Philips, a girl is waiting for you at the gate.”
Ozzie had been servicing the brakes on a truck and didn’t know how he’d sneak away without Petty finding out. They had been in a place of neutrality, and Ozzie hadn’t been in trouble since the Saturday morning when he had overslept. Jelka was so close to the end that he expected the messenger was from her. He spied Satchel replacing a windshield wiper and whispered his dilemma.
“Go, I haven’t seen Petty around, but be quick. I’ll cover for you.”
Ozzie removed his oil-stained gloves and then jogged to the gate just left of his motor pool. When he reached the entrance, a girl of about ten or eleven stood at the curb, wearing Jelka’s trench coat.
“Osbourne?” she asked. She had the same big eyes as Jelka.
“Yes.”
“Jelka had the baby,” she said in a monotone way that suggested she had practiced those words in English the whole way. “I will take you.”
Ozzie felt joy tangled with fear well up in his throat. He looked down at his hands, and they were shaking.
“Okay, wait here.” He motioned for her to stay put. As he clambered back to the motor pool, his belly flipped nervously. He had a child in the world. A baby with his DNA. How could he be a father when he was barely legal himself? Ozzie slipped back into his work station. “Have you seen First Sergeant Petty?” he asked one of his unit friends, who was carrying a bucket of rags to the laundry.
“It’s late on a Tuesday. He’s probably at the NCO Club, drinking himself silly. You know Tuesday is their midweek hangout. Two-for-one beers.”
Ozzie had been so shaken by Jelka’s sister’s arrival that he had forgotten it was Tuesday. The club brought in live entertainment, and he had heard that the cheeseburger special was a crowd favorite.
Satchel slid from beneath the car. “Everything all right?”
“Jelka had the baby.”
Satchel clapped him on the back. “Congratulations. We need to break out the cigars. You know Morgan’s been saving them special.”
The air around Ozzie felt surreal. “No, not now. I’ve got to go. She’s waiting on me.”
“Go. If anyone asks, I’ll say you went to the infirmary or something.”
“You sure?”
“I’ll take care of it for you.” Satchel shook his hand. “You just entered a whole new world, brother.”
Until now, Jelka had never invited Ozzie to her home. They’d met either at the bar or at the rooming house. Ozzie had tried to start a conversation with her sister, but after a few words, it was clear that her English wasn’t as good as Jelka’s.
They walked for over thirty minutes before she turned off the road. The sky was gray, and he heard church bells ringing in the distance, one, two, three, four, five. It was quitting time at work. His friends would be heading to the showers and then to the mess for dinner. But Ozzie was going to meet his child. He suddenly realized that he didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl. He started to ask Jelka’s sister but decided to wait. Either way, he was a father. Either way, his life was forever changed.
They passed a pasture with cows, and the stench of manure hit Ozzie in the gut. He followed the girl down a narrow path through a wooded area that opened to flat land lined with four cottages. The girl turned to the green cottage on the far right. The brown wooden door was chipped and squeaked when she opened it. The front door opened into a cozy living room. Jelka sat on a pea-green sofa with a baby’s torso and legs peeking from underneath her blouse. She peered up at Ozzie with a timid smile. She looked exhausted but also matureand matronly. He often forgot that she was two years older than he was. In that moment, she looked it.
“Come,Mein Prinz. Meet your daughter.”
A girl. Ozzie had a daughter. He peeped at her face as she fell away from Jelka’s pink nipple, and he took a seat next to them. Jelka dabbed the baby’s mouth with a cloth and then placed her into his arms. When he looked down into her face, he felt a swell in his chest. She was pale with pink lips, and she had his mother’s nose. They called it the Philips nose, a bit wide, with flared edges. Her hair stood up in little spikes. She was so fair, it seemed hard to believe that she was his child, but when he turned her ears over between his calloused fingers, he saw a tinge of brown on the tips. The older women on his block had always said that Negro babies needed a few days for their skin to bake fully.
