The Baker's Daughter

by Sarah McCoy

  “My oma and mom—Christmas 1944,” said Jane.

  Reba nodded to the photograph. “I can see the family resemblance.”

  “That was Garmisch before the war ended. She’s never been one to talk much about her childhood. She married Dad a few years after, as soon as the military nonfraternization laws lifted. He was stationed there eighteen months with the Army Medical Corps.”

  “That sounds like a good story,” said Reba. “Two people from totally different worlds meeting like that.”

  Jane flicked the cleaning rag in the air. “Isn’t that the way of it?”

  “What?”

  “Love.” She shrugged. “Just kind of hits you—BAM.” She squirted lavender and wiped the table.

  Love was the last thing Reba wanted to talk about, especially with a stranger. “So your dad’s American and your mom’s German?” She scribbled a helix on her pad and hoped Jane would simply answer her questions, not ask any more.

  “Yup. Dad was Texan, born and raised.” On mentioning her father, Jane’s eyes brightened. “After the war, he put in to get stationed at Fort Sam Houston and the army gave him Fort Bliss.” She laughed. “But Dad always said anywhere in Texas was better than Louisiana, Florida, or the damned North, for God’s sake.” She shook her head, then looked up. “You ain’t got family in New York or Massachusetts or anything, right? Can’t tell by accent these days. Have to excuse me. I had a bad run-in with a Jersey pizza baker. Left a sour impression.”

  “No offense taken,” said Reba.

  She had a distant cousin who went to Syracuse University and ended up staying in New York for keeps. Her family couldn’t imagine how anybody could stand the cold winters and conjectured that the bitter temperature imbued itself on the people, too. Reba had only visited the Northeast a handful of times and always in the summer. She was partial to warm regions. The people in them always appeared tanned and smiling—happy.

  “I’m from down south. Virginia. Richmond area,” she said.

  “What’s a ’Ginia girl doing out here?”

  “Lure of the Wild West.” She shrugged. “I came to write for Sun City magazine.”

  “Well, shoot. They recruit that far?” Jane flipped her cleaning rag over her shoulder.

  “Not exactly. I thought I’d start here and eventually make my way to California—L.A., Santa Barbara, San Francisco.” It was a dream that still made her restless with hope. Reba shifted her weight in the chair. “Two years later, I’m still here.” She cleared her throat. She was doing all the talking when what she needed was for Jane to start.

  “I understand, honey.” Jane took a seat at the café table and set her lavender cleaner on the ground. “This is a border town, for sure, a transient, crossover place, but some never get to crossing. Stuck in between where they were and where they were headed. And after a few years go by, nobody can recall their original destination anyhow. So here they stay.”

  “That’s quotable.” Reba tapped her pen. “But you’ve lived here awhile, correct?”

  “All my life. Born at Beaumont Hospital on Fort Bliss.”

  “So where are you headed if you’re already home?”

  Jane smiled. “Just ’cause you’re born in a place don’t make it home. Sometimes I watch the trains go by and wish I could jump on. Watch the planes scratch the blue and wish I was inside. Mom’s always called me a daydreamer, a stargazer, a rambler—whatever I am, I wished to God I wasn’t. Dreaming doesn’t do me a bit of good.”

  THE LEBENSBORN PROGRAM

  STEINHÖRING, GERMANY

  DECEMBER 20, 1944

  Dear Elsie,

  With news that Estonia has fallen to the Red Army, I write this letter with mounting anxiety for our good German forces and a heavy heart for the loss of our men. The compound here at Steinhöring and all the adjacent apartments have covered their windows in black. A handful of the girls lost family members—fathers and brothers. In addition, a number of Lebensborn companions perished, one of whom fathered my own twins. Poor Cristof. I only made his acquaintance the one time last spring. He was not yet twenty-two years old, skin still soft as a nectarine. Far too young to die. It makes me furious—this continued waste of life, this warring. I understand there is no better way to die than for the cause of our Fatherland, but I curse the foreign devils that spilt Aryan blood. We will not be trampled. This will only light a fire to our communal torch and Germany will be victorious! As the führer said, “The confidence of the German people will always accompany their soldiers.” And our confidence will remain steadfast.

  Instead of wallowing in despair, the Program is committed to making the upcoming holidays the most spectacular ever. I am helping to organize the decorations for the Julefest feast. Already we have a number of commended officers who have accepted the Program’s holiday invitation. Our soldiers need companionship and support now more than ever. We are foraging the local communities for whatever meats and vegetables we can procure, and I’m determined to provide good quality bread and pastries like those in Papa’s kitchen. I have yet to find a baker who can match the Schmidt recipes and feel as though I’ve swallowed hardened mud after eating the things these Steinhöring bakers make. I miss home and our family so very much.

  With the birth of the twins, I have had little time to spend with Julius. I hope to do so now that the babies are in the Lebensborn nursery. I’ll only admit this to you, sister, but I worry for them. They are both smaller than Julius was at birth. I hope that is simply a consequence of sharing a womb and soon they will grow round and healthy as any Aryan child. I can’t be perceived as producing inferior offspring. Already, it has taken far too many years to conceive again. The only reason I was allowed to stay was because I proved to be a faithful daughter of the Reich.

  The officers enjoy my company, though I will not and could not tell even you the things I have had to do to remain by Julius’s side at the Program. Some of these men, while outwardly dignified, have debauched expectations in the bedroom. You are a virgin, Elsie, you do not know, and I pray every night that a compassionate German man will make you a wife before a mistress. That was the hope for Peter and me. I think of our last Christmas together when he asked for my hand by giving us the kitchen cuckoo clock and placing the gold band on the wooden figurine’s head like a crown. What a glorious Christmas Day! The cuckoo chimed and out came the ring. Mutti and Papa were so proud. How simple and happy life was then.

  How are the Christmas preparations coming? Does the bakery continue to have many customers despite the lack of rations? One of the girls here has family in Berlin, and she said there is barely a burnt crumb to be had. Berliners are bartering gems and gold for unleavened bread and dried pork skins. I suspect these rumors are lies spread by spies to scare the faithful. Things are in short supply here, but one can still buy a sweet cake and a stein of dark beer on any given day. What is it like in Garmisch? How are Mutti and Papa? I must write them soon. I send them my love and the same to you.

  Heil Hitler,

  Hazel

  SCHMIDT BÄCKEREI

  56 LUDWIGSTRASSE

  GARMISCH, GERMANY

  DECEMBER 21, 1944

  Dear Hazel,

  Good Saint Thomas Day! The bäckerei is so busy this time of the year. With only the three of us to knead the dough, work the oven, stock the shelves, and manage the till, I can’t find a moment to enjoy the Christmas cheer. And then there are customers like Frau Rattelmüller who make it almost unbearable. Such a pest! Always complaining and making rude remarks about my hair being a mess or I’m lazy or asking if I still have yesterday’s dirt under my fingernails. (Which I do not. I scrub them every night!) She makes such a scene to Mutti and Papa, still treating me like a child. That’s the donkey chiding the other for having long ears. She’s acting so peculiar lately.

  She used to come round at the normal hour like everybody else, but not anymore. 5:30 in the morning and she’s at our back door, peeping in the windows, banging her cane when she knows goo
d and well we’ll always opened at six o’clock. I believe she’s gone senile. Not to mention that a dozen brötchen is a gluttonous amount. Doesn’t she know there’s a shortage of flour and milk! You should see the SS rations Papa has resorted to using. The powdered milk and flour bake hard as brick. Many customers have complained of finding pebbles in their rolls and almost breaking a tooth. So now I have the added chore of sieving all the supplies we receive. Frau Rattelmüller swears if she cuts her gums and dies of infection, her blood will be on our hands. But it’ll take more than a pebble to bring down that old witch. I suspect she’ll be showing up for the next century munching her way through all our bread and bang-bang-banging that ridiculous cane. We’ll never be free of her.

  This morning I was fed up to my ears, so I woke up early with Papa and forced myself out of bed despite the chill. (It’s colder this winter than last. Too cold for even the snow to melt into ice on the eaves. Remember that December we ate icicles dusted in sugar. You told me that snow sprites dined on them every night, and I believed you because I wanted to … even though I knew there were no such things.) I was downstairs with a tray of hot brötchen when Frau came hobbling up the street in her long coat and cap.

  Before she had a chance to knock her cane, I opened the door. “Good morning, Frau Rattelmüller.” I smiled wide as Lake Eibsee. “Your brötchen has been waiting for you. Dear, dear, I pray it isn’t cold. You must’ve been visited by the dream gnomes to have slept in so late.” I looked over my shoulder to the cuckoo for emphasis. “Why, you are almost a minute past.”

  That sent Papa into a fit. He laughed so loud it echoed round all the pans in the kitchen and made Frau mad as a honeybee. She bought two loaves of onion bread instead of her usual. Mutti said Papa ruined a whole batch of lebkuchen with his salty tears. But it was worth it. How I wish you had been here! You would’ve laughed yourself to crying like you used to do when Papa wore his jester cap in the Fasching carnival. Mutti was not so pleased. She told me not to play with the old woman. She’s hanging by a thread, she said. But I told Mutti that Frau has been playing with me for far too long already. Besides, this is wartime. Who isn’t hanging by a thread!

  Mutti, being Mutti, pulled out the currants that very minute and made thomasplitzchen buns to take over to Frau’s as a peace offering. She’s there now as I write.

  I wonder what you’re doing in Steinhöring. I miss you terribly. Can you believe you’ve been gone six Christmases? Feels like an eternity, and this war seems even longer. There’s nothing new here. The Zugspitze Mountain is a bore. Nobody’s skiing this season anyhow. I wish we could go back to sea. Remember that summer trip to the coast of Yugoslavia when we were girls? Walking the pebble beach and eating cold cucumbers in the sun? We were so happy then. It feels a hundred years ago. Not that we could go back now. War, war, war. It’s everywhere, and I’m sick of it.

  On to happier tidings: Did you hear the news? Our friend Josef Hub was promoted to lieutenant colonel and transferred to the Garmisch SS. He is rumored to dispatch information from the Mountain Troops to Reichsführer Himmler. Imagine that! But he’s not like the others. His rank hasn’t changed him a bit. He still comes to the bäckerei and eats raisin kuchen with Papa every Saturday. Mutti swears he has the bluest eyes in the country, but I told her there are plenty of perfectly blue eyes all around. She’s just partial to Josef for all he’s done for us.

  How is Julius? You said they enrolled him in a special kindergarten for future officers. Papa nearly burst his buttons when I read that part to him. He’s so proud. We all are, of both of you.

  Don’t worry about us and the bäckerei. The SS rations are small and of poor quality, but they are more than any other baker in town. Josef and Papa have a deal. The Gestapo bring SS flour, sugar, butter, and salt to the back door on Sunday afternoons, and Papa takes a cart of bread to headquarters each Monday. Business couldn’t be better. I know I shouldn’t complain about the long hours when so many of our countrymen are facing harder times than us.

  Did Mutti tell you? I’m going to the Nazi Weihnachten party. Josef said it is time I attend one. He gave me the most beautiful ivory dress. Though the tag has been cut out, he said it came from Paris. At first I thought I oughtn’t to accept, but he gave Mutti an iridescent clamshell compact and Papa a rosewood pipe. So I assume these are our Christmas presents. Quite extravagant! Not having any family of his own, Josef dotes on Mutti and Papa like his own parents, God rest their souls. His company has been a godsend, and I hope it means more sacks of sugar and presents! The dress is proof of his good taste.

  I’ll have Papa take a photograph before I go to the party. I want you to see the dress. I’ll write again at Christmas. I hope you get this letter soon. Mail is moving slow, these days.

  Heil Hitler.

  Your loving sister,

  Elsie

  SCHMIDT BÄCKEREI

  56 LUDWIGSTRASSE

  GARMISCH, GERMANY

  DECEMBER 24, 1944

  Elsie, hurry! You don’t want to keep Herr Hub waiting,” Mutti called from downstairs.

  Elsie fumbled with the buttons on her kid gloves. She’d worn them only once—years before at her First Holy Communion. They made everything she touched feel like newly risen dough. At communion, she’d kept them on when the Lutheran minister handed her the chalice. The smooth cup against gloved hands felt truly divine; the bite of red wine, not so much. She’d instinctively put a hand to her mouth after tasting the tart sacrament and stained her right fingers. Mutti thought it a sacrilege and soaked the gloves in water and vinegar for nearly an entire day. Still, the index finger retained a slight blush.

  Elsie dabbed a last bit of rouge on her bottom lip and smeared it round, checked that all her hairpins were hidden and blinked hard to make her eyes glossy bright. She was ready. It was her first official Nazi event—a coming-out party—and she couldn’t make a better appearance. The dress, ivory silk chiffon trimmed in crystal beading, hung at just the right angle so as to give the illusion her breasts and hips were rounder than their actuality. She puckered her lips at the mirror and thought she looked exactly like the American actress Jean Harlow in Libeled Lady.

  Her older sister, Hazel, and she had spent one whole summer holiday sneaking into matinee showings of pirated Hollywood films. Libeled Lady was a favorite of the owner who also operated the reel. He ran it twice a week. Elsie had just completed an abridged English language course in Grundschule and eagerly plucked familiar words and phrases from the actors’ lines. By the time school resumed, she was performing whole scenes for Hazel in their bedroom adorned in Mutti’s feather hats and fake pearls. So accurate in her English clip with its musical up and downs, Hazel swore she could’ve passed as the American blond bombshell’s doppelgänger. That was before Jean Harlow died and the Nazis closed the cinema for displaying American movies. The owner, like so many, had quietly disappeared.

  Shortly thereafter, the Bund Deutscher Mädel was made mandatory, and Elsie and Hazel participated in replacing all the beautiful theater posters of Jean Harlow and William Powell with stark images of the führer. It was their local BDM’s community service project, and Elsie had loathed doing it. In fact, she hated most everything about the BDM. She failed at all the “wife, mother, homemaker” training activities except baking, and she detested that her Saturdays were spent in group calisthenics. While Hazel thrived and grew more popular, Elsie felt oppressed and stifled by the uniforms and strict codes of conduct. So at the tender age of eleven, she begged Mutti to work in the bakery. She’d overheard her papa discussing a new assistant to work the front of the shop, taking orders and helping customers. She’d eagerly jockeyed for the job. It would mean a reprieve from the BDM for her and save their family from paying out their earnings. While Papa agreed, he championed the national agenda and made Elsie promise to learn the Hitler Youth’s Belief & Beauty doctrine from her older sister. She had, to some extent, but then Hazel became engaged and the BDM forbade participation of girls who were ma
rried. When her pregnancy was revealed, she moved to Steinhöring. The BDM didn’t admit mothers, either. Thus, by the time Elsie reached the proper age to practice the principles, there was no one to teach her, and the war had made her participation in the bakery paramount. She didn’t see the value in the BDM’s “harmonic cultivation of mind, body, and spirit” if her family was struggling to make ends meet.

  Now, a few hours before an official Nazi party, she wished she’d paid more attention to the BDM lessons of her childhood. It was like trying to conjure the taste of a fruit you’ve seen in paintings but have never eaten. She wished Hazel could give her solid advice. Elsie’s only instruction on the art of glamour came from those faraway memories of a starlet sashaying about the silver screen. Tonight was the first time she had ever been escorted by a man, and she couldn’t afford to make a mistake.

  “You dance divinely,” she whispered in English to the mirror and visualized William dancing with Jean, the image all silver-tipped and shimmering.

  “Elsie!” Papa called.

  Elsie quickly pulled her burgundy cape over her shoulders and took one last look in the mirror, liking the sophisticated woman she saw, then she proceeded downstairs.

  At the base, Mutti, dressed in her best edelweiss-embroidered dirndl, swept crumbs out of sight. The rough broom bristled the burnished floor.

  “I doubt Josef’s attention will be on the doppelback crumbs. Leave the mice a Christmas present.”

  Mutti stopped sweeping when she saw her and put a fist to her hip. “Ach ja, you’ll stand up well with all those fine girls this evening.”