The Copper Series

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  She looked down at the secondhand shoes on her small feet.

  I glanced up at her. “Don’t you think you should apologize for telling her she sinned by having so many clothes?”

  “No. She did sin. People in da vorld need da clothes, and she has too many.”

  “Elisabeth, you’re not in the camp any more. It’s over.”

  “Sprichst du nicht davon!” she spat at me. Speak not of it! She clapped her hands on her ears and scowled darkly at me.

  O Lord, give me patience! I prayed silently. I finished adjusting the rest of the clothes and then left her alone.

  At dinner that evening, William said, “Pass that d--- spinach, please.”

  Aunt Martha nearly suffered a heart attack. Robert froze his fork in mid-air. He glanced at me and raised an eyebrow. Then he said, “William, please don’t use that word.”

  “What word?” William asked.

  I glared at Elisabeth, who had an angelic expression on her face. When she felt my eyes on her, she quickly looked down at her plate and put her hand over her mouth to hide a grin.

  Robert cast a glance at Aunt Martha. “We’ll discuss it later.”

  “Okay.” William returned to eating then remembered something in his pocket. He pulled out the log from his latest spywork and showed me his notes. “Is this the kind of thing you did when you worked with the Resistance?” he asked me.

  “Vhat?” interrupted Elisabeth.

  “Elisabeth, didn’t you know Louisa was part of the Resistance Movement?” asked Robert.

  “No,” she said, cocking her head as she looked at me. “So you did do someting to fight the var. Not yust sit here in America and read da newspaper stories?”

  I didn’t think this day could get any harder with Elisabeth, but it just had. I couldn’t stand being at the same table with her another moment. I pushed my plate away. “Please excuse me,” I said. “I need some fresh air.” I went outside on the front porch, leaned against the railing, and watched the evening sky, fighting back tears.

  Robert came outside. He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close, tucking my head under his chin. “You can’t let her get to you, Louisa. She wants to upset you.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I think I might have made a mistake bringing her here. I think she’s upsetting the entire family.”

  “Actually, I kind of get a kick out of her.”

  I leaned my head back to search his eyes. “Really? You don’t mind her?”

  “No. There’s something rather endearing about her. And I can’t help but admire her. Imagine surviving a camp like that. That takes someone with an astonishing amount of inner strength.”

  He was absolutely right about that. “I’m glad you can see something good in her. Aunt Martha says she’s as mean as a snake.”

  “Well, she isn’t rude to me like she is to you. You’re the lucky one,” he added.

  I frowned at him.

  “Look at it this way, Louisa. She knows you’re committed to her. She knows you’re her family. You went all the way to Germany to prove that to her. She feels safe with you. She’s counting on you. Ironically, that’s why she treats you badly.”

  “Do you know what bothers me the most? She acts as though she’s the only one who has suffered in that war. And to be fair, she has suffered more. I can’t deny that.”

  “I think she wants us all to feel some of her pain.”

  “I worry that she has been hobbled, that she’ll never be whole again. Sometimes I think there’s a part of her that’s missing now. She has no understanding of anything or anyone except how it affects her.”

  “I don’t think it’s missing. I think it’s frozen.” He watched the changing sky for a few moments. “Have you ever told Elisabeth that you tried to find her and her mother?”

  “No. Any time I bring up it up, she puts her hands on her ears and tells me she doesn’t want to hear it.”

  “I wonder if that could be why she seems so angry with you. She thinks you could have saved them if you had tried.”

  “But I did try.”

  “I know that.” He brushed some wisps of hair off of my forehead. “Did you ever meet that boy she talks about so much?”

  “Danny? No. I wish I had. I didn’t realize how important he was to her.”

  “No kidding. Sounds as if he gave her the determination to survive the camp.”

  “I’ve had the same thought. All I know about him was what—” I stopped abruptly. I had never mentioned Karl’s name to Robert and had no plans to. “The case worker said they were still trying to locate a relative of Danny.”

  “Hope they find one soon. Everybody needs family.” Robert turned to go inside. “You know, Louisa, you treat Elisabeth as if she’s made of spun sugar. I think she’s a lot tougher than you’re giving her credit.”

  I stayed outside a little longer, watching the sunset. Lord, take over, I prayed. Remove this tension and frustration. Fill me with your peace and power. As the sun slipped behind the mountain, the Lord did not disappoint me.

  * * * *

  The next day, after receiving a few more blunt remarks from Elisabeth that punctuated breakfast, Aunt Martha looked out the kitchen window at Elisabeth and William as they hung laundry outside on the clothes line. “She’s da vorst,” said Aunt Martha.

  I burst out laughing. “You’re right! She is da vorst.” Laughter was a tremendous gift. How ironic that Aunt Martha, a woman of little humor, reminded me of that.

  All day, I mulled over Robert’s remark that I treated Elisabeth like spun sugar. I decided that I was going about this the wrong way. Trying to love Elisabeth through unbending kindness wasn’t working. In fact, it only made her sharp tongue a little keener. Loving Elisabeth meant giving her clear limits.

  At breakfast, she gave me a chance to try my new parenting method.

  “Who made dis pancake?” Elisabeth demanded.

  “I did,” I shot back. “Don’t you like it?”

  “It’s da vorst,” Elisabeth said vigorously. “Yust like eating a tire.”

  I leveled my eyes on Elisabeth’s and stared straight at her. “Don’t eat it, then.”

  Robert and Aunt Martha watched the exchange between us in astonishment.

  “I did not say I vould not eat it. I only said it vas da vorst pancake ever.” Nonchalantly, she resumed eating. “Maybe da vorst pancake in da vorld.”

  Afterwards, as Aunt Martha washed dishes, she turned to me and asked, “Weren’t you a little hard on her?”

  “I think the time has come,” I answered, putting the glass milk container back in the refrigerator.

  “Hmm.” She turned back to the sink. “And to think I thought you couldn’t mash a mango.”

  “I would have no trouble mashing a mango, Aunt Martha. Any mango,” I replied with great confidence. I would have to remember to look up “mango” in the dictionary later.

  After that morning, I noticed a slow, glacially slow, improvement in Elisabeth’s behavior. I felt quite encouraged, thinking we were actually making some progress. That feeling of well-being lasted just a few days, evaporating when I heard Aunt Martha shriek hysterically. I ran upstairs. Aunt Martha was in Elisabeth’s room, pointing at the bed as if a dead body might be stuffed underneath. “Look! Look what’s there!”

  Gingerly, I crouched down and reached under the bed, pulling out a pillow case full of rotting food. “Oh no.” My heart sank. Elisabeth had hoarded food on the ship, too, but I thought it was just an isolated situation because she was in such a temporary environment.

  “That girl is the limit! She is the limit! Such waste! No wonder Dog is always trying to get in here.”

  Out of the pillow case I pulled bruised apples, shriveled oranges turned green with fuzz, moldy bread.

  “When has she been getting this food?” asked Aunt Martha.

  I cringed. “I thought I’ve heard someone downstairs in the night.”

  “What would make her behave so peculiarly?”


  “Not so peculiar when you remember that she spent the last year starving.”

  I looked under the bed again and found another filled pillow case. Aunt Martha took the pillow cases and emptied them into the garbage, with a flourish.

  I went into my bedroom and took out newspapers that I had saved from my trip to Germany. They had pictures of the camps, taken by American news reporters as they followed Allied soldiers into the camps. I also had a transcript from Edward R. Murrow as he went through Buchenwald just after it was liberated.

  “Aunt Martha, this is very upsetting, but please read this over. Buchenwald was where Dietrich Bonhoeffer had been held for a while. And look at these pictures I took of Dachau with William’s camera. That’s the camp where Elisabeth was imprisoned.”

  She frowned at me but sat down at the kitchen table and read the following:

  Edward R. Murrow's Report From Buchenwald

  Legendary CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow described the scene at Buchenwald when he entered the camp after liberation:

  There surged around me an evil-smelling stink, men and boys reached out to touch me. They were in rags and the remnants of uniforms. Death already had marked many of them, but they were smiling with their eyes. I looked out over the mass of men to the green fields beyond, where well-fed Germans were ploughing...

  I asked to see one of the barracks. It happened to be occupied by Czechoslovaks. When I entered, men crowded around, tried to lift me to their shoulders. They were too weak. Many of them could not get out of bed. I was told that this building had once stabled 80 horses. There were 1200 men in it, five to a bunk. The stink was beyond all description.

  They called the doctor. We inspected his records. There were only names in the little black book - nothing more - nothing about who had been where, what he had done or hoped. Behind the names of those who had died, there was a cross. I counted them. They totaled 242 - 242 out of 1200, in one month.

  As we walked out into the courtyard, a man fell dead. Two others, they must have been over 60, were crawling toward the latrine. I saw it, but will not describe it.

  In another part of the camp they showed me the children, hundreds of them. Some were only 6 years old. One rolled up his sleeves, showed me his number. It was tattooed on his arm. B-6030, it was. The others showed me their numbers. They will carry them till they die. An elderly man standing beside me said: "The children were enemies of the state!" I could see their ribs through their thin shirts...

  We went to the hospital. It was full. The doctor told me that 200 had died the day before. I asked the cause of death. He shrugged and said: "tuberculosis, starvation, fatigue and there are many who have no desire to live. It is very difficult." He pulled back the blanket from a man's feet to show me how swollen they were. The man was dead. Most of the patients could not move.

  I asked to see the kitchen. It was clean. The German in charge...showed me the daily ration. One piece of brown bread about as thick as your thumb, on top of it a piece of margarine as big as three sticks of chewing gum. That, and a little stew, was what they received every 24 hours. He had a chart on the wall. Very complicated it was. There were little red tabs scattered through it. He said that was to indicate each 10 men who died. He had to account for the rations and he added: "We're very efficient here."

  We proceeded to the small courtyard. The wall adjoined what had been a stable or garage. We entered. It was floored with concrete. There were two rows of bodies stacked up like cordwood. They were thin and very white. Some of the bodies were terribly bruised; though there seemed to be little flesh to bruise. Some had been shot through the head, but they bled but little.

  I arrived at the conclusion that all that was mortal of more than 500 men and boys lay there in two neat piles. There was a German trailer, which must have contained another 50, but it wasn't possible to count them. The clothing was piled in a heap against the wall. It appeared that most of the men and boys had died of starvation; they had not been executed.

  But the manner of death seemed unimportant. Murder had been done at Buchenwald. God alone knows how many men and boys have died there during the last 12 years. Thursday, I was told that there were more than 20,000 in the camp. There had been as many as 60,000. Where are they now?

  I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it, I have no words.

  If I have offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I'm not in the least sorry...

  Edward R. Murrow - April 16, 1945.

  Aunt Martha finished reading and looked at me with a grave face. “I…knew it was bad…but…I had no idea.”

  “I know. Not many people knew about these camps. And not many people want to know about them.” Including Aunt Martha. She had heard news reports just like I did, but she just hadn’t given it much thought. Until now.

  “Have you shown this to Robert?”

  “Robert saw all of this when I returned. I should have shown you when I first arrived. It’s just…terribly hard to stomach. I don’t even want Elisabeth to know that I took those pictures.” I gathered the papers and turned to go upstairs. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t hide food in her room anymore.”

  Aunt Martha stood up and went over to the kitchen window, gazing outside at Dog, tied up to the tree, looking woeful as Elisabeth and William played hopscotch on the driveway. Then she turned back to me and said crisply, “Just make sure she doesn’t hide food that needs to be refrigerated.”

  I glanced at her, astonished. For once, she sensed the spirit behind the rules. “I’ll do that, Aunt Martha.”

  I had found something else under Elisabeth’s bed. It was one of Esmeralda’s skirts, but not one that Rosita had given to us. One that Elisabeth had taken without permission. When Elisabeth came back inside, I was waiting for her upstairs. “We have to have a talk.” I held up the skirt.

  Her eyes darted to the skirt. “No talk. I’m tired. My stomach hurts,” she said, flopping on her bed.

  “Elisabeth, you took something that didn’t belong to you.”

  “So vhat? Dey are rich.”

  “They’re not rich. They’re our friends. And it doesn’t matter whether they’re rich or whether they’re our friends. You stole something.”

  She sat up slowly on the bed and fixed her eyes with a level stare. “I not steal noting. I organize tings.”

  “What are you talking about?’

  “I vas da organizer in dat camp.”

  I sat down on the bed next to her. “What do you mean by organizer?”

  “I found tings for people.”

  Oh! She was the scrounger. That shouldn’t have surprised me. She was a clever and observant girl. Shrewd, too.

  “I organized da lunch from da guards. I could have been shot.”

  “You were hungry.”

  “So vas dat stealing?”

  I looked at her large, inquisitive brown eyes. “Elisabeth, you needed food. There’s a difference between wanting something and needing it.”

  She pointed to the skirt in my hands. “I need dat.”

  “No. You want that skirt. You have to take the skirt back to Esmeralda and apologize to her. And tell her that you won’t take anything from her again.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Vhy did you come and get me?”

  I clapped my eyes on hers. “Don’t you remember? I told you I wanted you to know you are not alone.”

  Elisabeth glared at me, but she got off the bed and we went over to the Gonsalvez’ to confess the day’s crime.

  Chapter Seven

  The judge had been coming around the parsonage rather frequently, even if Robert wasn’t home. He would drink coffee in the kitchen and chat while Aunt Martha would iron or wash dishes, a part of the family. Robert thought he was just lonely, but I had a feeling there was more to his visits.

  Tonight, as the judge walked into the kitchen just in time for dinner, he sniffed the air. “Martha, I don
’t believe incense in a cathedral could be any more pleasing than the scent of chocolate lingering in the air.”

  Aunt Martha cast him a shy sideways glance and blushed. She blushed!

  We actually had a surprisingly insult-free evening with Elisabeth, who loved Aunt Martha’s chocolate cake. Aunt Martha even gave her two slices. “Tante Marta, you are da best cook.” Eyes glinting, she added, “But Louisa is da vorst cook.”

  “True, but not reassuring,” I agreed, laughing with the others.

  “You’re absolutely right, Elisabeth. We’d be up the creek without a paddle if we didn’t have Aunt Martha,” agreed Robert, humor lighting up his eyes.

  “Well, I’m not going anywhere,” chided Aunt Martha, looking pleased.

  Afterwards, Robert and the judge sipped coffee at the table while Aunt Martha and I washed and dried dishes. William and Elisabeth had gone upstairs.

  “You’re quiet tonight, Judge,” Robert observed, passing him the cream pitcher.

  The judge stirred cream into his coffee. “For the longest while, Elisabeth reminded me of someone but I couldn’t quite place whom. It just hit me. She reminds me of Alice.”

  Aunt Martha dropped a glass into the sink, shattering it. Robert shot a warning glance at the judge, whose eyes went wide with surprise and concern, as if he suddenly realized the magnitude of his remark.

  “Who’s Alice?” I asked, pulling a dry tea towel out of the cabinet. A reasonable question, it seemed.

  Robert kept his eyes on his coffee, frowning. His mouth tightened; finally, he said, his voice flat, “Alice was my sister.”

  Now I nearly dropped the dish I was wiping dry. “Your sister? You have a sister?”

  “Had. I had a sister.”

  “Now, Robert,” said Aunt Martha.

  “I need to get some work done tonight,” he said abruptly, departing quickly through the kitchen door.

  I looked at Aunt Martha. “Don’t look at me,” she warned. “She’s his sister.”

  I turned to the judge, who only shrugged and made a quick exit.

  Briefly, I thought about leaving it alone. I really did. But then I dismissed it. I put down the tea towel and walked over to Robert’s office, knocking gently on the door before opening it. He didn’t look up as I came in. I stood behind him and wrapped my arms around his shoulders.