“Hello, Kitten,” Ozzie purred.
Katja went from crying to giggling as he blew bubbled lips on her tummy. A curl flopped down over her eye, and he massaged her scalp with his fingertips. Ozzie lived all week for this moment with Katja. He could deal with First Sergeant Petty talking down to him and assigning him menial tasks if, at the end of the week, it meant that he’d see the joy on his daughter’s face. He had long since reached the point when he could not remember his life without her.
“Just a few days.” Jelka stood, smoothing down her cotton dress. She had lost the baby bulge around her waist and in her cheeks. Only her breasts were still swollen.
She stood on tippy toes and kissed his jaw, then rubbed away the red lipstick with her finger. She smelled of the vanilla-scented Drene shampoo that he had brought her. “I missed you,” she said, smiling.
The space that had grown between them since he’d found out that she was married had slowly dissolved. Somehow they had found a comfortable rhythm of pretending like her spouse did not exist.
“Yeah?” He grinned. “Well, I got you something.”
Ozzie repositioned Katja in the crook of his arm as he rummaged in his jacket pocket for a package of Lucky Strikes and a Mr. Goodbar with peanuts, her favorite American candy.
“You are too good to us,” Jelka said as her mother, Maria, shuffled out of the back room and nodded at him. Ozzie used his free hand to pass Maria the provisions he had bought for her. Coffee, sugar, and a few potatoes.
“Danke.”Maria patted his arm and carried the goods into the kitchen.
“Ma made pea soup with speck and dried beans,” Jelka said. “Are you hungry?”
Ozzie nodded. “Always.”
He propped Katja up on the sofa between two throw pillows. He had his camera draped around his neck and put the viewfinder to his eye to watch her through the lens. She was a lovely child. Long lashes and dark eyes that followed Ozzie around the room.
“You never take a picture of me,” Jelka said, pouting. “Are you ashamed?”
Ozzie pulled the camera from his face. He had been careful with his film but realized that Jelka was right. He should have a picture of them both. “Okay, come hold her.”
Jelka’s face lit up. “Let me change her first.” She swooped Katja up and disappeared into the back room. When she returned, Katja was wearing a white dress, and Jelka had reapplied her lipstick.
The mother-and-daughter duo looked beautiful, and the way Jelka held his daughter with tenderness melted Ozzie’s heart. “Okay, ready?” he asked, aiming the camera.
“Maybe Jutta should take a picture of the three of us.” Jelka smiled, then called to her younger sister in German before Ozzie could protest. “Show her how to take the photo, please,” Jelka said.
Ozzie held the camera to his eye and mimicked what to do for Jutta, who nodded her understanding of the task at hand. Ozzie then sat on the sofa next to Jelka and put his arm around her shoulders.
“Teeth,” Jutta said, and both Jelka and Ozzie chuckled. Flash.
“Take one more,” Jelka said to Ozzie. “One for you and one for me?”
Ozzie nodded, and Jelka conveyed the message to Jutta. She held the camera to her eye again and snapped.
Jutta placed both Polaroid pictures on the coffee table, and all three of them watched as the photographs developed.
“Nice.” Jutta pointed.
“Thank you,” Ozzie said, patting the young girl on the hand, then he reached into his pocket and handed her two chocolate morsels.
The pictures developed, and he let Jelka choose which one she wanted to keep for herself. The other he slipped into his breast pocket until he could add it to his collection back at the barracks.
“Eat?” Maria clapped, then motioned a pretend fork into her mouth. That was the way she communicated with Ozzie, one or two words in English and a lot of hand motions.
Ozzie nodded.“Ja, danke.”
By June, nine-month-old Katja was pulling herself up by grabbing on to the coffee table, and when she saw Ozzie, she babbled, “Dadadadadada.” Slobber pooled at her chin as she showed off her four teeth.
Ozzie had made it a habit to read American books to Katja onthe nights he was with her before bed. He had just finished reading his latest purchase from the commissary,Curious George,when Jelka walked into the living room carrying a basket filled with Katja’s laundry. She sat next to him on the sofa and let her thigh rest against his as she folded the diapers, undershirts, and cotton dresses into piles on the coffee table. The radio was on in the kitchen, tuned to the local German news. Jelka’s parents were asleep in the back room.
“I received another letter from him,” she whispered.
