The Baker's Daughter

by Sarah McCoy

  Oh, Hazel, there’s so much more I want to tell you, but don’t have the strength or courage to write. Are you ever coming home? I miss you. You always knew the right things to do. I wish I were more like you. Please write soon and give my Christmas greetings to Julius. Heil Hitler.

  Your loving sister,

  Elsie

  P.S. Does the Program inspect incoming letters?

  LEBENSBORN PROGRAM

  STEINHÖRING, GERMANY

  DECEMBER 27, 1944

  Dear Elsie,

  Today, I received your December 21 letter and laughed out loud at the story of Frau Rattelmüller. She’s always been odd. But we must remember her history. If my husband and children were burned in a house fire, I would go crazy too. I was only a small child but still recall how she wailed by their graves. They say each coffin held a scoop of ashes. Four whole people reduced to a few scoops, can you imagine? I wish Mutti and Papa hadn’t taken me to the funeral. I hate remembering. Sometimes I wish I could erase memories—–erase the past.

  I’m sorry Julius and I couldn’t come home again this year. With the fighting in the Ardennes, the Program banned all women and children from travel. How I miss you, Mutti, and Papa. You’re right. It’s been too long since we visited. Garmisch is full of old ghosts for me, but I promise to bring Julius for my birthday in the spring if all goes well with the war effort.

  As I wrote in my last letter, we honored the winter solstice with a wonderful Julfest banquet yesterday. Many more officers attended than expected, which pleased us greatly! One named Günther asked specifically for me. It caused quite a stir among the girls since he has only been partner to a privileged select. His Aryan ancestry is among the highest in all of Germany. And it showed. His mother hails from the Stern family—–of Stern-bier. He was quite interested in our family’s bäckerei and asked all kinds of questions. There are many similarities between the fermentation of wheat and that of bread. We had a lovely time. I hope he comes back again.

  More good news. I finally received an honorary card! All my fears about the twins were for naught. The Program only gives these cards to the best girls, so they must be pleased with the children’s development. The girl is quite hearty and fearless. She wailed through the entire SS christening, and when they held the dagger over, she reached for the blade! Everyone says she has a true Viking spirit. The boy is somewhat deficient, but so was I at first.

  With my honorary card, I am allowed to pay lower rent and have special shopping privileges. I haven’t been able to buy extra dirndl notions—–satin ribbon, lace, and pewter buttons—–in a year. Everything must go to the greater good of our nation, of course. But I must admit, my toes curl up with excitement knowing I can buy the finest fabric, threads, and hooks should I choose. It’s like Christmas all over again.

  I saw Julius on Christmas Eve. The children sang “Weihnachtslieder.” It was beautiful. I swear I could hear Julius’s voice high and pure above the others. I know that’s a shamefully maternal notion. Our boys’ choir is much better than Vienna’s, so they say. We hope to produce some of the best vocalists in the world, but we all admit there’s still work to be done. The natural aptitude is present, but the spark is missing. Perhaps Hans Hotter could come and provide lessons.

  After the performance, we were given an hour with the children. Father Christmas served thick slices of sugar-dusted Weihnachtsstollen, and the young ones ran around with it stuck to their lips and hands, leaving white fingerprints on our arms and skirts and faces. I haven’t felt that dizzy with happiness for months. Julius seems to be doing well. He said he loves his classes and has learned to click his boot heels in true party fashion. He’s quite the expert at it and gets a good laugh from the popping sound of leather. Then he strikes up his hand and yells, “Heil Hitler!” I’m amazed at how fast he’s become a little soldier.

  He asked again about his father. I still don’t have the heart to tell him, so I said he’s driving a Luftwaffe truck somewhere in Yugoslavia and can’t find a postman to deliver letters. He was pleased to hear this news and immediately asked for a toy truck. I offered him another piece of stollen instead, but took none for myself. I’m trying to lose the weight I gained from the twins.

  So you attended your first SS party? My little sister, all grown up. I’m sure you loved it. My first Hitler Youth ball with Peter was a dream. By the way, is Josef single? I can’t recall if you said he was married or not. I hope not, for your sake. But if he is, do not be disappointed. Perhaps they’ll ask you to join the Lebensborn Program. I’d certainly love your company. It can be lonesome here. Sentimental folly, I’m well aware. However, I miss the sound of sleep, the rhythm of someone else’s breathing. I guess I spent too many years sharing a room with you.

  I don’t sleep much these days. I try to imagine Julius across the compound in his tidy bunk bed and the sound of his steady in and out. It helps. I’m confident he will be a better man, a better German, because of my sacrifice. It is not too long before you could be a wife and mother too. You will see.

  I think of you often, Elsie, and send my love.

  Heil Hitler.

  Hazel

  3168 FRANKLIN RIDGE DRIVE

  EL PASO, TEXAS

  NOVEMBER 10, 2007

  Reba was disappointed with the interview that day. She’d come home and transcribed the recording with the hope that her steno notes had missed some illuminating statement. But there hadn’t been one happy word about Germany or the yuletide. Reba hadn’t a clue how she’d rig together a feelgood article out of what she had, and her deadline was less than a week away. Her Sun City editor had already left two messages on her voice mail.

  Reading through the transcription, Reba grumbled. Elsie’s comments had been so sporadic, but Reba couldn’t blame her entirely. She hadn’t been as professional as usual. Talk of weddings, fiancés, and love. Good Lord, what was she thinking? It was the Nazi thing. It threw her for a loop, and she never quite recovered. She’d forgotten all about writing a festive Christmas story; instead, she’d jumped into a World War II crime drama, dreaming of Elsie’s secret SS life. Now she reaped the consequences.

  She turned the tape recorder on. “You, Reba Adams, are seriously screwed.” She clicked it off and flung it into her purse.

  Frustrated and tired, she powered off her laptop. A nice, hot bath. That’s what she needed. She turned the tap as far to the right as possible, filling the tub up with steaming hot water, then she lit some candles. Something about the smell of matchsticks blown out reminded her of home, of summer campfires in the backyard and s’mores that tasted of a touch of pine.

  When Daddy was on a happy high, the world was perfect—a “once upon a time” place that eventually showed itself equally fictitious. Summer had been his favorite season, hers too. She seemed as light as the long day hours, and all her memories dripped with honey and sunshine. On the first chill of fall, when she’d wake to find her momma had put an extra blanket over her bed during the night, she’d shudder and feel her heart go as cold and dormant as the Virginia maples.

  “The trees are playing dead,” her daddy had once said while carrying her piggyback through the snowy woods behind their house. “Maybe if we tickle them, we could get them to give up the game.” With chapped fingers, he’d scratched the bark, put an ear to the trunk, and sighed. “Not a giggle. Quiet as a church.”

  He never knew the hours Reba later stood outside, tickling the trees and hoping to hear something.

  There was maybe one icy night a year in El Paso. Riki joked that the city had three seasons: spring, summer, and hell. It was the hard truth. She preferred that to the alternative. Reba’s hell wasn’t boiling; it was frozen.

  She threw on her hooded college sweatshirt while she waited for the bathtub to fill. On the way home, she’d grabbed a McDonald’s salad and still tasted the Ranch dressing in the back of her throat. Wine would help clean her palate. She went downstairs and found an open bottle of chardonnay, poured it, and tried not to
notice the stale pungency. It was late and the moon had risen round and full over the Franklin Mountains. She liked drinking in the moonlight. It made wine look magical, even in a tall water tumbler. Riki wasn’t home yet, not that that was unusual. But tonight, she felt like talking. She wanted to tell someone about Elsie and the Nazi Christmas party and watch their reaction.

  To cut the wine’s bite, she searched the cupboard for something sweet. A can of tuna, a box of penne, a half-eaten bag of vinegar potato chips, Raisin Bran with less than two scoops within. There wasn’t much. A pastel bag of Whoppers Robin Eggs lingered in the back. She took a handful. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d grocery shopped or the last time she’d been compelled to. She and Riki never ate together, and maybe that was part of the problem.

  Reba had grown up in a roomy, southern-style kitchen as the heartbeat of her home. It was a safe place away from the wet bar in the den and the darkness of the bedrooms. Over cheese omelets and buttermilk biscuits, her momma welcomed the mornings in robe and slippers. In the afternoons, she drank peppermint tea year-round. It was her momma’s domain, a stable comfort, that Reba found herself drawn to despite herself.

  Only on his good nights could you find Reba’s daddy there. Then, he’d call his girls to the fridge to nibble leftover fried chicken and cold grits before bed. Her momma didn’t believe in eating after eight o’clock, and she pretended not to hear their laughter or see the bare bones in the garbage the next morning. Reba thought of her childhood like a coin, two sided and easily flipped: happy Daddy, sad Daddy.

  She was nine years old the summer Deedee left for boarding school, and it seemed overnight a shroud had been wrapped around her home. Reba stayed in bed for days, heartsick, and not falling for any of her momma’s attempts to paint the situation in Technicolor cheer. Finally, it was a sharp cry one evening that pulled her toward the lamplight of her momma’s bathroom. There, Reba found her blotting a bloody nose.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing,” said her momma. “I ran into the door.”

  It was well past 11:00 p.m., and her daddy was nowhere to be found.

  Momma balled the spotty tissue into her palm and quickly put a fresh one to her face. “Daddy’s gone for a walk. I want you to go back to bed and stay there. He’s in a mood tonight.” When she’d attempted to smile, the tissue hanging out of her nose hid it. All Reba saw were her eyes and the fear.

  She’d done as her momma commanded and gone back to her room where she lay in bed cracking her knuckles over and over, waiting to hear the click of the back door. When it finally did open, she held her breath as step by step her daddy moved up the stairs and into his bedroom. After half an hour of quiet, Reba finally allowed herself to sleep, but it was the kind that jumped at every creak and wind whistle.

  The next morning, Reba’s momma, already wearing day makeup, woke her. “Rise and shine,” she’d said. “We’re having pecan pancakes and how about a matinee movie later? It’s a girls’ Saturday. Daddy’s sleeping in.” Purple shadowed her eyes despite the cakey foundation. “I can smell the toasted pecans! Better get those out of the oven before they burn,” she’d exclaimed, and off she’d gone without another word.

  When Deedee came home for Columbus Day weekend, Reba pulled her into their old hiding place on the closet floor and tearfully explained what happened the weeks prior. It was the first time Daddy had ever hit Momma, and though he’d never laid a hand on them, it made Reba question if he might. After she’d finished the story, Deedee’s eyes had shifted down to the floor.

  “Sometimes I have trouble sleeping,” Deedee had said. “I dream there’s a snake in my bed, but I just say, ‘Stop, you old snake, go away, I don’t believe in you, you aren’t real’ and away it goes. Try that next time, okay?”

  It broke Reba’s heart that her older sister hadn’t immediately taken up arms in her momma’s defense, in her defense, too.

  “He hit her,” Reba insisted, but the tightness of her voice made her sound unsure.

  It’d been late at night, and how often had she dreamed things that felt so real she could’ve sworn to heaven they were?

  Deedee had simply nodded. “Try the dream trick. If it doesn’t work then we’ll …” Instead of finishing, she’d kissed Reba’s cheek and left her amid a pile of patent leathers, Mary Janes, and Keds.

  For years, Reba wondered “then we’ll what?” But she never again brought up that night, not even after their daddy died; and despite their close relationship, she’d since censored every word to her sister. She never told Deedee about their daddy’s medical file or the transcription she’d read; part of her was afraid to receive a similarly dubious response.

  Reba crunched a malted milk ball. Maybe she’d surprise Riki and make Momma’s southern-fried chicken, she thought. She popped another Whopper. But then, she didn’t know if Riki liked southern-fried chicken, and she hadn’t a clue what went into the recipe besides the obvious—chicken. She was pretty sure you couldn’t microwave it either. Reba took a sip of wine, closed the cupboard. No, preparing a bad meal would merely make matters worse.

  She went upstairs, peeled off her clothes, and slipped into the bath. The piping hot water dissolved the pink and blue sugar dye from her palms. Her breasts bobbed and looked bigger in the clear water, but so did her thighs and stomach. She considered it a fair trade-off. She set her tumbler on the tub ledge and dipped down deeper until she was eye level with the pirouettes of steam rising off the water like dancing phantoms. The chain around her neck glistened below the surface. She held the silver band up and swung it back and forth like a hypnotist pendulum.

  “Don’t sit under the apple tree,” she hummed to herself.

  She thought of Elsie all dressed up to spend Christmas with the Nazis. She said some were “even good.” Good Nazis? Wasn’t that an oxymoron?

  “Sounds like someone’s had a good day,” said Riki. He leaned against the bathroom door.

  Reba dropped the ring with a plunk and brought her knees to her chest. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  He sat on the tub’s edge. “It’s nice to see you …”

  “Of course it is. All guys like naked chicks.” She wrapped her arms around her shins. A wave of hair stuck to her cheek.

  Riki pulled it behind her ear. “Well, that’s true, but I was going to say happy. It’s nice to see you happy.”

  He had brought the metallic coolness of November in with him. Her skin goose-bumped. She let go of her legs and stretched them out long to the spout side where the water was piping hot. Her toes tingled.

  She offered her tumbler to him. “Got old chard on tap.”

  “I’ll pass. It’s been a long one.” He yawned. “We have a young mother and her two kids in detention. Found them over on the Westside. A resident called—some lady from North Carolina.”

  “God, I miss their pork. Have you ever had Carolina barbecue? It’s nothing like Texan. More sauce, less smoke,” said Reba, trying to head the conversation off at the pass. Every day, Riki walked in the door with another heartbreaking story; she didn’t want to be weighed down by any more sadness tonight.

  “The kids were so scared,” Riki continued. “I know it took that woman all she had to get across.” He shook his head. “This is one family I wish to God I didn’t have to send back.”

  Reba toed the spout. “It’s your job. It’s for the good of our country.” She repeated what he’d said to her a hundred times before.

  “I know but lately …” He thumbed a twitch between his eyes. “It isn’t the same as it was a couple years ago—groups of men sneaking over to make some money and then go back home. Now it’s families. Women and children. They’re all really no different from you or me, only they were born on the wrong side of a river.”

  “You are different.” She sat up too fast, and water sloshed over the side of the tub. “You’re an American with a college education. They’re illegals breaking the law. You can’t categorize yourself the same. You’v
e got to … I don’t know, emotionally distance yourself. It’s like me with my interviewees. I can’t get my job done if I make it personal.” Her nipples grew hard from the cool air, so she slid back down in the bath.

  The faucet drip-dropped. She sipped the wine.

  She’d done her research on immigration legislation. That was how she’d met Riki, after all; and hadn’t he been the one to go on record that the law could not be bent for anyone? He was a man who saw the world in black and white, and she’d always found security in that. Suddenly shifting to gray scale was discomforting.

  “You’ve got to step away. You can’t get all touchy-feely with people,” she went on. “You’re the one who ends up hurt in the end—or at least that’s been my experience.” She squeezed liquid soap into a pink sponge. “Get my back for me?”

  He took the sponge. “That’s a bit naive, never mind insensitive, don’t you think?”

  She pushed a barge of bubbles to the side. “It’s the truth.”

  “Is it?” He scrubbed her shoulders in circles. “Sounds more like fear. If you put up fences around yourself, you’re doing more harm than good. Everybody needs somebody, Reba.”

  “Very John Wayne of you,” she said and turned completely around so her back was to him. “Sure, everybody needs somebody, but it doesn’t mean you have to be their hero.” She swallowed hard.

  Part of her wished it could be that simple—to ride off into the sunset without fear of disappointment—but she’d learned a long time ago that trust was made of fragile stuff. The heroes galloping across the horizon appeared tarnished and mediocre at best in the lamplight of their living rooms.

  “Maybe I want to.” Riki dipped the sponge in the water and squeezed it down her spine.

  “Then you’re in the wrong line of work.” Reba blew out all the air inside her chest, then took the sponge from his hand. She didn’t want to get into this tonight. She hadn’t the energy. “That German lady I interviewed today at the bakery.” She changed the subject and scrubbed her ankles. “She told me she was involved with a Nazi during the war.”