Girl with the Red Balloon (The Balloonmakers)

by Katherine Locke

  “That’s some sort of weird innuendo, isn’t it?” Mitzi muttered.

  I rolled my eyes. “How is that possibly innuendo?”

  Kai pointed a knife at Mitzi. “Your mind is exactly as dirty as I thought it was.”

  She grinned at him through a mouthful of toast. “The day my mind surprises you, Kai, is the day pigs fly.”

  “Darling,” he said, shaking his head. “It’d take more than flying pigs to surprise me.”

  “Ellie and I are going to head out to check the next Passenger,” Mitzi said suddenly, glancing at me. I nodded before I even knew what I was doing. Like we’d planned this. I didn’t want to be stuck in the house, and after Kai’s overprotective streak last night, that was a possibility. Maybe Mitzi knew that.

  Kai frowned but didn’t say anything against it. “I’m going to see Sabina.”

  “And snoop,” said Mitzi.

  He shrugged. “Maybe. If it’s empty. Hit and miss on weekends over there.”

  Mitzi gestured to my plate. “Eat up. We’re getting out of here.”

  I tucked a piece of toast into my pocket and shoved the plate back at Kai. “Done. Ready. Let’s go.”

  “Eager, eager,” he muttered, but began to eat the remaining toast as I went upstairs to dress quickly for the outdoors. He waited for us in the front hallway, dressed with a hat tugged down over his ears, making him look younger this morning. He caught me as I passed by him for the open door. His lips pressed against my cheek, warm and quick. He said, “Be good out there. Be safe.”

  I studied the veins of gold in his eyes, searching for something he wasn’t telling me. But his gaze was steady and clear. “We will. You be safe too.”

  He didn’t say anything to that, just let both of us out first and then locked the door behind us. A few blocks north, we parted ways. Kai and Mitzi exchanged a few quiet, tense words out of earshot, but both of them looked relaxed as Kai headed toward the workshop and Mitzi and I turned to head east across the city, far away from the wall.

  For a long time, we walked in silence and I didn’t mind. The warmth of the late-spring air tickled my skin, and it felt good to be outside in the sunshine. I compulsively checked for my papers, just in case we were stopped. Mitzi kept checking over her shoulder the first few blocks, but the farther we got from the house and the wall, the more she relaxed.

  Then she finally said, “We don’t have a Passenger.” As if feeling the weight of my glance shifting to her, she added, “I just figured while we could go outside, we should. The radio guys were rattled by all the deaths, even though they’re being covered up pretty well by the powers that be. Radio Glasnost doesn’t know about us, but they’ll report the deaths as suspicious. Everyone will know. And I…You have to understand me, Ellie, but I suggested to Kai that he take Sabina and get out of here. I don’t know if he’s going to be there when we get back. I wanted to give him the chance to leave without worrying about good-byes.”

  The most words Mitzi had said to me in one breath this whole time, and they were to tell me that Kai might not be there when I got back to the house. I almost stopped and I almost turned around and I almost ran back to the house, just to say goodbye. Almost. Almost. I had always been an almost girl. I almost had straight As. I almost had a boyfriend. I almost had a date to prom. I almost didn’t go on the trip. I almost didn’t end up here.

  Kai, with his golden-and-green eyes and his gentle, warm mouth. Kai, with his kindnesses when I was just a time-traveling stranger in his midst. Kai, singing as we walked. Kai, on the rooftops, sounding hopeful. Kai, in the tunnels, sounding lonely. I was the girl with the red balloon who shouldn’t be in the black-and-white world of Walls and fear and lies. He was a kaleidoscope boy born at the wrong time in the wrong place, too bright for here, too much for everywhere else. We were the almost rights together.

  And now he might not be there when I got back. I understood immediately why Mitzi had done what she did though. And I guess I could understand where Kai might be warring between protecting his sister and doing his job. If she was in danger, of course he should choose her. Of course he should take her out of East Germany to wherever she’d be safe.

  “I hate this place,” I whispered, stopping in the street. Mitzi stopped to face me, and I couldn’t look at her, at my own misery mirrored in her eyes, under the fringe of her ridiculous hair. This was my pain. Anger built in me, pouring from the knife to my heart, dripping everywhere. I squeezed my hands into fists.

  “I hate this place. Nothing good comes from here. Nothing.”

  “Ellie,” Mitzi said, sounding nervous. She looked around, but I didn’t care who heard me.

  “It’s so incomprehensible. Why am I even trying to help? Why does any of it matter? It always comes back to people being evil. And you know what, Mitzi? A lot of evil people are your people.”

  Mitzi’s eyes flashed, and she stepped toward me until our noses nearly brushed, so close I couldn’t focus on her anymore, but I couldn’t make myself step away. “Yes, of course, this is because we’re in Germany and I’m German. How could I forget? How could I forget that you and Kai have this strange, distorted tunnel vision when it comes to history and my country? Ellie, I’m sorry about what happened to your grandfather and his family. But I wasn’t there. It wasn’t me.”

  “I’m not asking you to shoulder the blame. Just look around and say that it happened and it was because average people couldn’t stand up to power. And it happened again, didn’t it?” I snapped.

  Mitzi’s voice sizzled with anger. “I spend most of my days helping people to the other side. To a place with freedoms. That’s what I do. I believe that on the other side of this, I’ll be here to make my country a better place. A place where anyone can be anything. You can be self-righteous some other time, Ellie Baum, but not to me. Not right now. I’ll never compare our suffering now to the Holocaust, but I’m not my grandparents.”

  I knew how Germany was in my proper time period. It was a better place for a lot of people, but right now, it still seemed awful. I didn’t know what was right. If Mitzi was right or if I was right. I didn’t know if I could blame Mitzi for what she couldn’t control. Maybe not. And maybe my words had been twisted and wrong, but I didn’t know how to explain the knot in my chest. That history felt like it repeated itself, and the perpetrators were always familiar.

  But Mitzi wasn’t in my head. Mitzi was still here, still hearing my inability to articulate everything tangled inside me. She pointed straight at me. “I’m not apologizing to you, Ellie Baum. And I’m not apologizing to Kai and Sabina Holwell. You are from the outside. You can leave—yes, you. We told you we can get you to West Germany and you can be safe, even if in the wrong time. And Kai is leaving.

  “But I have to stay. I am queer, in East Germany, surrounded by outsiders who do not understand that I—and my countrymen, all these volk—are clinging to resilience. Stop telling me this is the only evil place on earth. Stop telling me that I am evil because of where I am. I’ve forgiven the people around me because I must, Ellie. You cannot move forward to do good without reconciliation. I believe that. You can keep your judgments. I am only trying to help.”

  She didn’t ask for my forgiveness, and I wouldn’t have offered it. She didn’t apologize, and neither did I. But I nodded, and she stepped away from me. We walked together all over the city in silence. We both got ice cream on a platz and meandered through to a park as it began to rain. We sat on a bench and fed the pigeons until we had no more toast. We didn’t say anything more.

  There was nothing more to say.

  When we got back from the walk, the house was empty. Kai was gone. The dishes were done and the table wiped clean. The papers on the table were gone.

  There was a note, scribbled on a piece of paper in Kai’s tight handwriting.

  E,

  M told you, I’m sure. I am still glad it was you. And you’re the only time traveler I’ve ever said that to.

  K

  M,
r />   You have always been the best of the best. I’ll see you again.

  K

  Mitzi and I stood in the emptiness of the house until it swelled up inside me, bursting at the dams of my chest and leaking through the spaces between my ribs. I went up to my room and shut the door, flopping face-first on the bed.

  He was really gone.

  Kai was gone, and Mitzi and I were still here in East Berlin. One of us was in the wrong time period. Someone was using bad magic on balloons that were killing people, and there was just her and me to figure it out now.

  For the first time, I believed I might be here for good. That I might not get home. I might now be an East German citizen, like my fake papers said.

  And I’d be stuck here without Kai. I didn’t cry right away, not until I came down the next morning and he still wasn’t there. I tried not to cry in front of Mitzi, but once the tears started, I didn’t think I could stop. Mitzi bought us chocolate, and we watched terrible East German television while breaking off tiny corners, neither of us willing to take a big piece. I fell asleep with my head on her shoulder.

  Chapter Twenty–Seven

  TRUST ME

  Łódź Ghetto, Poland, April 1942

  Benno

  Mama and I wrote a request for relocation back into Germany, where we hoped to find Ernst. Where Mama hoped that she’d find Ernst. She had started talking about finding him like that’d be the miracle we were all waiting to occur. I didn’t say anything, just like Papa hadn’t said anything when Mama thought Ernst would be here in Łódź, waiting for us, when we left Berlin. I just kissed Mama’s head and helped her write the letter.

  Our request was denied.

  Everyone’s requests were denied. A woman down the hall had a baby, but the baby wasn’t named on the relocation for the family. She requested a delay on her relocation until the baby was old enough not to need her. Her request was denied too. I didn’t know what they expected the baby to do. No, that was wrong. I did know what they expected the baby to do. Die. They didn’t care. They didn’t care at all. We took up space for people moving here, so we needed to be moved, just after I’d finally started to believe I could survive the war here.

  Our relocation date was my birthday, but I didn’t say anything. There was nothing to make a fuss over this year. I turned seventeen, and so many people would be forever the same age. Ruthie’s hair ribbons were still under my pillow, and on the last night, I remembered them and tucked them into my pocket.

  We lined up at the trains. The sun shone brightly, just like in my dream. It was so bright and warm that I took off my jacket, laid it over my elbow, and stood there in my shirt that used to be white and my Shabbat trousers, waiting with Mama and our relocation notice. Mama leaned against me, quiet but fearless. I didn’t think she was resigned. If anything, Mama seemed more determined than ever. She told me the night before that we wouldn’t be pulled out of our rooms like screaming cats. We’d go down there and hold our heads up high. We’d take whatever was put in our path.

  “You’re never given anything more than you can handle, Benno,” she told me as we took our bags to the trains.

  She used to say, “God never gives you anything more than you can handle.”

  God was absent even from Mama’s mind now.

  She said, “It’ll be a fresh start. Maybe I’ll get the same work, and you did well building furniture. Perhaps they’ll let us take the same jobs.”

  I said, “We could survive like that.”

  And she smiled, and then she reached into her pocket and took out something, pressing it into my hand. “Happy birthday, Benno. My darling boy.”

  I never found out where she acquired a lump of sugar, but there it was, in the palm of my hand. I thought I might cry. I hadn’t seen or tasted sugar in weeks. I didn’t want anyone to see it, or take it away, or shoot my mother, so I slipped it straight into my mouth, lifting my face to the sky. The sun melted over my skin, the sugar over my tongue.

  Nothing more than you can handle.

  “Benno,” said a familiar voice. I opened my eyes, and the girl in the purple dress was there, standing in line. She smiled at me, but it didn’t reach her dark eyes. She lifted her own wedding invitation. “I didn’t want to forget.”

  No one else seemed to see the girl. I looked at my mother to see if she saw this well-fed, rosy-cheeked girl in the clean dress standing among us like a beacon where she did not belong. But no one turned their heads. Mama just watched at the fence as children were sent off without their parents and loaded onto a train. I couldn’t listen to them anymore.

  I looked at the girl and then closed my eyes. Figment of your imagination. You’re hungry. You’re hallucinating, Benno, I told myself.

  We loaded onto the trains, and the doors slid shut, shrouding us in darkness. I felt a cool hand slip into mine, and I stiffened as the girl whispered, “Benno, do you trust me?”

  Mutely, I shook my head.

  She said, “Benno, you must trust me.”

  Then she told me a story of a girl born in Poland to a wealthy family. But she was strange and difficult, and they locked her away for years before sending her to an institution. But then she wrote her way through the locked door, just kept writing until the words glowed on the paper and the lock melted away, falling from the wood like it had never existed at all. When her family saw her, they called her a witch and ran from her screaming. But she wasn’t the only one. She found a few other people whose words turned golden on the paper, and with them, she began to learn what her hand could do with the power of a pen, what her blood could do when it was used as ink.

  She whispered to me, “Benno. My gift, our gift, is freedom. We set people free.”

  I closed my eyes and shivered as the train rolled along the tracks, and then, all too soon, the train came to a stop. I heard someone shouting in German, and the girl’s hand tightened around mine.

  She said, “You must trust me, Benno.”

  I didn’t say anything back, but my heart hammered in my chest.

  Chapter Twenty–Eight

  PLOTS HATCHED ON ROOFTOPS

  East Berlin, German Democratic Republic, May 1988

  Ellie

  I stayed in bed the day after Kai left. I lay on my side, making paper doves out of old newspapers. I thought when I got up eventually, he’d be there, but he wasn’t. When I finally dragged myself down for something to eat that evening, just Mitzi was waiting for me. She silently handed me my coat. I just put my hands through the sleeves and buttoned it as I followed her out the door. We went north, parallel to the wall, back to the rooftop. I hadn’t been there in more than a week. It took my breath away again to stand against the chimney and look out over West Berlin, with all of the twinkling lights.

  “I know you aren’t going to forgive me,” she said quietly.

  “It’s not your fault,” I said after a long pause. I sighed and bumped my shoulder against hers. “It’s right. Sabina’s more important.”

  Mitzi slipped her arm through mine and said, “To Kai, she is. And that’s enough for me.”

  “You were in jail once, right?” I asked, remembering the first time I met her.

  She snorted. “Yeah. Kai got me arrested. He did not get me out. I’m the one who flirted my way out. Remember that because he lies about that all the time. It’s a long story, honestly. I don’t worry about getting caught anymore.”

  “Stasi or rogue Schöpfer,” I laughed, not missing the part where she assumed I’d see him again. My chest was too tight to dissect that right now. “Take your pick, right?”

  Mitzi winked at me, untangling our arms. “There you go. Nothing to do but laugh and go about your life at this point.”

  She sat down cross-legged, and I walked to the edge of the roof, entranced by freedom, by the West being so close and so unfathomably far away, until I heard the clatter of glass. Mitzi shook out a bag full of nail polish with a flourish, and I squealed loud enough that I had to cover my mouth, and we bo
th giggled until there were tears in our eyes. Maybe it was just a matter of perspective, but honestly, I didn’t think I’d ever be that excited about nail polish.

  “I can’t tell you how I got hold of this,” Mitzi said mischievously.

  I turned the bottles over in my hands. At home, Amanda and I would paint our nails together. Now I was here painting my nails with Mitzi. It felt like forever since I’d done all the mundane things of my life, like grocery shopping or getting a haircut. I never thought those things were important before, but that was because I had them. Now I didn’t and I missed them.

  I missed putting on makeup and playing with colors. I liked painting my nails. Amanda and I used to paint each other’s nails after Shabbat services on Saturdays. I hadn’t gone to Shabbat services in three months either. My heart ached a little bit when I thought about that.

  I picked up the gold. “This would look amazing on you.”

  “Are you kidding? Like I need to stand out any more. You should do the gold,” Mitzi said, gesturing to her hair and picking out a no-less-eye-catching magenta. “Besides, I want it to clash with my hair, not complement it.”

  I traded the magenta in her hand for lime green. “Mission accomplished. Gold star for me.”

  “Gold star?” Mitzi turned over the nail polish in her hand and gave it an appreciative nod.

  “A reward system for little kids. You get a sticker when you meet a goal,” I said and picked up the magenta. I lifted it against my hair. “Does it clash?”

  Mitzi made a face at me. “Of course not. Your hair is amazing.”

  “Your hair is teal.”

  She uncapped the polish. “True.”

  I wanted to see Mitzi when the wall came down. Maybe I’d still be here. Maybe I’d cross with her on that night, just to say we did. As much as I wanted to go home, my heart fluttered in my chest as I thought about history being made in front of me.