Page 29

Ulla continued without acknowledging Melia.

Melia tapped her manicured nail on it. “This car looks familiar. Like the one in our garage.”

Ulla colored the car’s doors with a light green Crayola.

Melia sighed. “I suppose we will have to find some way to communicate. German is my first language, but my friends have nieces and nephews that grew up speaking German at home and English outside. You see, liebchen—can I call you liebchen? The word is like, ah . . . ” She tapped her plump lips. “Like sweetheart in English.”

Ulla stiffened.

“As I was saying, I know something about learning different languages, and Ulla—” She said Ulla’s name in a manner that made Ulla pause and obey as though Melia had said it in secret.

The woman smiled wide enough to perhaps swallow all the world’s problems. But her eyes caught Ulla’s when she took a dark green crayon and whispered, “I promise not to tell anyone that you understand English. I want you to trust me.”

Ulla froze a beat too long, making her guilty. She found another blue Crayola and looked at the name. C-E-R-U-L-E-A-N. She began to fill in the sky.

Ulla whispered, “Liebchen.”

“Hmm?” said Melia, coloring the grass.

“You can call me liebchen.”

Chapter Fourteen

Ulla

Melia’s husband was named Shorty, and he introduced himself later that evening. Shorty was anything but short.

“Do you want to know why they call me Shorty?” He knelt down, but dramatically said, “Wait, wait! I have something stuck up my nose!” He screwed his pointer finger into a nostril up to the hilt, enough to poke his brain. Ulla screamed. Melia cuffed Shorty on the head. He pulled his finger out and apologized. When he displayed his outstretched palms, Ulla noticed the fleshy stump at his knuckle. “Look,” he said in German, chuckling, “it’s shorter than the other ones!”

He asked Ulla if she liked cars. She didn’t need to answer him. Her inflated chest did. He took her to the garage in the alleyway. The sun waned, leaving a soft glow in the chilled air. He hefted the door, cranking it with a squeaky grind.

Ulla gasped a breath cloud at what was inside. She blinked her stunned eyes at Shorty. “Porsche?”

“Look at you, little one. That’s right, a Neunelfer,” he said. “Brought it with us from Germany about five or six years ago, but it was in rough shape from the trek across the ocean. It took us a long while to find the best car mechanic.” His eyes glimmered. “Do you know what makes a Porsche special?”

Ulla continued to stare at the car and said, “The engine is in the back which means you don’t have to brake when you go around turns.”

Shorty gave a hearty chuckle and squeezed her shoulder.

The Porsche had no tires and was propped on a hydraulic lift. It was a green-gold color, like a juicy apple. “This is my mamma’s favorite car,” she whispered to Shorty, feeling her eyes sting. Her mother had once loved a Porsche at Thomas’ auto shop. This Porsche. Ulla was certain of it. “I think she fixed this car. Not very long ago.” Right before we left Peter.

Ulla thought of the hours she’d spent watching her mother underneath cars, as if she were half-car/half-human. Her mother always knew what a car’s problem was based on the sound of its engine and the way the ignition turned over. She taught Ulla names like carburetor, spark plug, crankshaft, flywheel, mounting rods, and compressor, as if they were common words for a child. She’d accompany her mother every day in their T-bird to 5th Avenue Auto Repair to fix cars. The garage was Ulla’s classroom. Alongside books and puzzles, her shelves held rows of tools she could name and describe.

Peter had given Ulla her very own portable Snap-on-Tool set for her seventh birthday. It came complete with all the bolts and wrenches needed to fix a car. She remembered her mother had sobbed and yelled at him, saying that was a ridiculous gift to give a seven-year-old—and then she kissed him. The kind of kiss her mother only gave Peter when she thought Ulla wasn’t looking.

She and her mother had fought terribly that night while Peter slept. Over whether Ulla could drag that toolset with her when they fled. She wondered where the toolset was now. She wondered about Peter. Does he miss us?

“Would you like to work on it with me?” Shorty asked.

Ulla’s heart lifted. She made a tent over her mouth to keep the grin from leaping off her face.

Melia and Shorty had no children of their own but plenty of friends that came and went and had been kind to Ulla these past weeks, always slipping her candies. They spoke in the gruff, confident tones of German. “Guten Tag” Ulla easily recognized along with “Auf Wiedersehen.” Every Sunday, after morning service at their Lutheran church, a group of them would come for dinner. Ulla learned that Germans used the word dinner for lunch and supper for dinner. Wednesday nights were supper nights with their friends. The air would fill with the aroma of fried onions and potatoes that mingled with hot sugar. They’d play card games like Wist and Rummy while Melia cooked kneophla and warmed a pan of caramel rolls that she and Ulla would spend weekends baking. This was Ulla’s favorite activity apart from working on the Porsche with Shorty. She’d watch Melia push up the sleeves of her shirtdress and flex her sturdy forearms to work the ball of dough into a flat pizza. Ulla would spread butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon, before rolling it up like a sleeping bag. Melia cut the dough into snails, handing them to Ulla. “This is the best part.” Ulla would sink them into the gooey caramel filling that coated the pans.

But one Wednesday, no one came to supper. Ulla brushed her teeth, put on her flannel nightgown, and heard voices gather downstairs. Not the familiar voices of German, but voices she did not recognize, accents of strangers. Ulla crept in her socked feet to the top of the stairs to listen.

“Won’t take long, ma’am,” said one man, his voice deep.

She heard Melia say, “I don’t feel right about this.”