“Pssst,” Elisabeth hissed. “Pay attention to where we’re going!”
Gisela looked ahead, then back at Elisabeth and down to the path. “I am paying attention to where I am. These are the only shoes we own. And you’ve stepped in shit.”
They arrived at a settlement of seven stone cottages—some with slate roofs, some with thatch—and made their way to the farthest one. Hugh swung the door open and lit a lamp. A cozy room emerged from the darkness and took on a glow. Hannie sat on a wooden bench to remove her shoes, and the girls sat on the floor next to her. Hannie wrinkled her nose. “Dear. Elisabeth.” She gestured to the child’s boots. She plugged her nose and told Elisabeth to leave them on the stoop.Gisela set hers, clean, next to Hannie’s and smirked at her sister. She, too, could play eager if it suited her.
“This is your home now,” Hannie said, gesturing awkwardly around the room.
Gisela thought of their father, their Vati, his calloused hands, the twisted mustache, his muscular thighs, how he would bounce the girls on his lap, a wild pony galloping away with them. He’d been forced to don the Nazi’s uniform and had never returned home. She shook her head to shoo the memories.
Hugh lit more lamps, revealing a kitchen with a cooker and fireplace under a ceiling timbered with high trusses. Along the back wall was an open stair to a low attic. “Hugh and I sleep there,” Hannie said, pointing to a room beyond an open door. “And you girls will be there,” she said, pointing into the beams. “Don’t worry. It’s snug and plenty for the two of you.”
“Die Fledermäuse,” Gisela whispered to Elisabeth, imagining the two of them hanging by their toes like bats.
“The nuns told us to encourage English. So, please, Gisela. Again, but in English this time,” Hannie scolded.
“We thank you ... miss,” Gisela said carefully, a reminder to her sister that she could speak when she chose, that she was nodummkopf. She rolled her shoulder at Elisabeth, who was still picking manure off the sole of her boot.
In the darkness of the loft, when Elisabeth’s incessant chatter about Hannie and Hugh and this strange cottage and the red-haired children and the maze of stone walls and the endless seaside finally ceased, Gisela had a chance to think in peace. She combed over their journey from Cologne, which began in rubble, in brick-and-mortar dust, doll parts and bent tricycles, dented pots and pans, blasted wires, twisted rebar, shreds of cloth from smocks and aprons. No one confirmed to them one way or the other what happened to their mother, only that shecould not care for them, though Gisela knew better, knew what she’d seen with her own eyes. They were told to be grateful they escaped with their lives, grateful to have shelter, grateful that the war was over at last.
From hospital, they were sent to a bleak children’s home in Meisenheim, and from there, they were carted off to the Rheinbach, where their father’s brother lived, far from the Balkans where his left arm rotted away in a ditch. Little help he was. His fields, like his neighbors’, lay fallow, the fear of triggering unexploded mines more paralyzing than hunger. He spent his days and nights rubbing the gnarled stub of his arm, bemoaning all he’d lost.
She and Elisabeth were forced to sleep in a tiny bed with their cousin Herbert, who groped and diddled between Gisela’s legs like he was feeling for berries to pluck. She’d squeezed her knees tightly, threw elbows at his temple, hissed at him like a snake, and prayed for morning. By day, he would leer at Gisela, licking the offending digits. After only two weeks, the uncle loaded the girls into a gasping truck and dropped them, and Herbert as well, at yet another orphanage.Tut mir leid—his apology hollow and resigned. Gisela was not sorry. She was grateful to be out of the boy’s bed.
At the orphanage, rumors of moving German children to Ireland swirled like schooled herring. They would be returned to their families once wounds had healed, once mines were cleared. Gisela heard that some older boys had been taken only a week before. They’d jumped at the chance, eager to escape cold houses with roofs blown off, naked and stripped fields, empty larders and cupboards, sorrow and anger that bled from the adults’ open wounds. “There, we will have food not bubbles in our bellies” went the rumors. “We will be clean. At least there is that.”
The uncle didn’t hesitate to sign her and Elisabeth over to the Irish Red Cross, who would spirit them away to Ireland. Herbert refused to leave, preferring the joyless orphanage. “You’ll see,” he said, fear chiseled so deep in his eyes it made Gisela cringe. “They’ll cook you like we cooked the Jews.”
She made a fist and hooked it smack into Herbert’s jaw. When he ran off crying, Gisela dusted her hands, done with Herbert.
She and Elisabeth traveled by train to England, by mail boat from Liverpool over relentless chop. A good half of the children had thrown up into the churning sea, onto the splintered deck, onto their own feet. When they’d lost sight of land, Gisela had collapsed into Elisabeth’s lap, clutching a stuffed rabbit she’d taken from the orphanage, her face against an empty, gurgling belly. Elisabeth rested her hand on Gisela’s hair, and the stroke of it felt like their mother’s, as if her ghost sailed with them.
Elisabeth snuggled against her now in their Irish loft, her whimpered breath, her very person, a reminder to Gisela that they would never escape war, that it would always follow them. Gisela’s eyes grew heavy in the thick darkness. She gripped Elisabeth’s arm. The old women on the street had spat at Mutti, called her “Rabenmutter” when she left the girls at the bakery for hours, when they wore tattered clothes. Was Mutti a ghost? Gisela did not know for certain. But she knew that if she closed her eyes, she would dream the same dream.Mutti will tell me and Elisabeth to put on our good dresses. The dresses are stiff and itchy, but Mutti says people must know that she cared for us. “Even in the end,” she will mumble over and over. Mutti is hollow, the bones in her cheeks and jaw sharp as an ax. Her dress hangs from her shoulders, her lumps and curves gone to hunger, her eyes dark and empty. I will dream of sitting on the couch in my good dress, dream of Mutti whispering to me that I must look after Elisabeth, as if I am capable of mothering! She will put a long finger to her lip, one that once played piano so sweetly, hush me, and then I will hear that deafening clank of the bolt turning when Mutti locks us in. If I dream, maybe Mutti returns with bread and a smile. Then I will know I’m dreaming. In real life, Mutti never comes back.
A man’s snoring honked up through the floorboards, snapping Gisela from her shallow dream state. For a panicked moment, she forgot where she was. A night bird hooted, and she remembered.This is Ireland.
In the collection of seven cottages, only two other families had children at home. The O’Kanes, closest to the road, had three boys, and the Beattys, the one girl. “Young families don’t want to live in the clachan anymore,” Hannie said, explaining with careful English and pantomime. Gisela tried to follow, put the gestures together with the lilting words. She wanted to learn, but she wanted to sleep too. She thought of the barracks in Wicklow and the young nurse who taught them with sweet, sad songs, her hands white and smooth. The drowsy sound of the girl’s voice had lulled Gisela, transporting her along gentle currents in the melodies to distant fields where small free birds flew. Hannie’s hands were rough from husks and the hoe, with tiny cuts in the callouses, her voice pitched and busy. Gisela knew there would be no time to rest or sing with Hannie.
“They up and leave soon as they’re grown. Even our boys, gone to Dublin now.” She picked up a picture in a rustic frame of two squinting boys in black pants and loose vests. “Seems only those Dalys want to stay here and tend the fields and make babies. How the world is changing.”
Bright and early on the first full day in their new home, the Beatty girl, Fiadh, arrived with her mother Jean. Fiadh had square shoulders and brown hair and long freckled arms like her mother. She kept her head down and her hands clasped behind her back, though Gisela caught her sly glances while her mother and Hannie greeted one another.
“And here are our little Germans,” Hannie said, flinging the door open so they could step outside. “Fiadh. This is Gisela and Elisabeth. They don’t know much English. It’ll be up to you to teach them.”
Like a hare, Fiadh sprang to life. She grabbed Gisela’s hand then Elisabeth’s, swinging them to and fro. “You’ll be my friends now. We’llhave fun and make trouble. Those O’Kane boys won’t have seen this coming, that’s for sure.” She snatched Elisabeth and turned her so they were back-to-back, arms locked. Elisabeth squirmed and twisted to get away. “Hold still! Mam, who’s taller, me or Elisabeth?”
Her mother picked up a stick, leveled it on Fiadh’s head. “You are, by an apple, I’d say.”
Fiadh dropped Elisabeth’s arms. “How about Gisela?”
The girl grabbed her like a ragdoll, jostling her into position. Gisela felt Fiadh’s shoulder blades match to hers, the bump of the girl’s ass against her own.
“This one’s closer to you, a plum maybe. But you’re a bit chubbier than the two of them,” Jean said, poking Fiadh’s stomach with the stick.
Gisela stood in awe of the unlikely playfulness between Fiadh and her mother, as if they were friends. And this Fiadh could make her mother laugh! Gisela could hardly remember the last time she saw her own mother even smile.
Fiadh put her hands on her hips. “Mam!” she said, her voice good natured and bright.
“Give them time with Hannie’s cooking, and you’ll be Irish triplets!” Jean said, and the three of them laughed and laughed.
