The Plum Tree (5 page)

She scanned the wooden fence that surrounded her family’s vegetable garden. On this side of the road, after the weathered barn and starting with her house, the row of homes and barns sat back from the street, leaving a rectangle of open space that allowed for front courtyards and sidewalk gardens. Her parents’ garden filled the corner created by the end of the weathered barn and the length of their woodshed and house, and took up their entire front yard. It wasn’t a tenth as big as the Bauermans’, and there were no steppingstones, hidden statues, or stone fountains, but it provided the produce necessary for her family’s survival. Besides that, it was a source of pride to her mother, the patches of orange marigolds, yellow strawflowers, and blue snapdragons neatly planted between leafy rows of turnips, beans, potatoes, and leeks. Her father had even built a stone walk down the center and hung a bell on the garden gate, which was directly across from their front door and flanked on either side by plum trees.

To her relief, there were no warnings hung on their garden fence. She didn’t want ugly posters to spoil her family’s hard work, and she was certain her parents wouldn’t want them either. Her parents’ home was a three-story fieldstone and half-timbered house, handed down through the generations by her mother’s family. Once a week, the stained-glass window in the upper half of the front door was washed and polished, the three hallways and two sets of wooden stairs between each floor brushed and mopped. The sidewalks were always swept, the garden always weeded. Even the winter storage room off the first-floor hallway was impeccable. Empty glass jars, waiting to be filled with produce or homemade jam, and cans filled with homemade liverwurst were neatly arranged on paper-lined shelves. In the small cellar, wooden bins, used to store apples, potatoes, turnips, beets, and carrots, lined the whitewashed walls.

A barn shared the roof and south wall of their house, which shared a roof with another barn, which shared a roof with their neighbor’s house. The timber and stone façades on this side of her block were bare, devoid of Nazi propaganda, but across the street, the church sat on higher ground, and another poster hung on the stone retaining wall, next to the stairway opening.

Breathing hard, Christine scanned the windows of the surrounding houses, trying to decide if she should run across the street and tear down the poster. But an elderly gentleman, Herr Eggers, was leaning out his window, smoking his pipe and watching her. Not knowing if he was a member of the Nazi Party or not, she couldn’t take the chance. The last thing she wanted, when things seemed finally to be going her way, was to be turned in for destroying Nazi property.

Instead, she hurried along the stone walkway between her house and the garden, pushed open the front entrance, and slipped inside, leaning against the heavy door to make sure it was latched and locked. In the first-floor hall, she slipped off her shoes and hurried past her grandparents’ bedroom, then took the stairs two at a time. The smell of fried onions filled the house, and she knew that Oma would be in the second-floor kitchen, frying
Bratwurst
and
Spätzle
for
Mittag Essen,
the midday meal. If Christine was going to change and leave again without being pestered to take time for lunch, she had to get in and out without being noticed, because Oma’s self-appointed mission in life was to get people to eat.

Christine tiptoed down the narrow corridor of the second floor landing, hurrying past the closed doors of the kitchen and front room with her shoulders hunched. She unbuttoned her coat and crept up the next set of stairs, careful to sidestep the squeaky first and third boards. When the kitchen door opened below her, she froze.

“Christine?” someone called above the sizzle of onions and the crackle of the wood-fired stove.

“Mutti?” Christine said, her throat suddenly hard. She went down the steps and stopped on the landing, gripping the banister with one hand. “What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you,” Mutti said. “
Bitte,
come in here and sit down.”

Christine moved from the bottom of the stairs, searching her mother’s eyes as she entered the warm kitchen. Mutti closed the door behind her, took the pan from the fire, and set it aside.

For as long as she lived, the smell of cinnamon and sugar-glazed gingerbread would remind Christine of her mother’s kitchen. The cast iron woodstove dominated one flower-stenciled yellow wall, massive and black next to a pile of split firewood. Kitty-corner to the stove, French doors led out to a balcony on the side of the house, created by using the roof of the woodshed. Opa had built a railing around the balcony, and it was protected between the house and the high wall of the weathered barn next door, the perfect spot for stringing a clothesline and for starting vegetable seeds in the spring. Along the opposite wall of the kitchen, a porcelain sink and high oak cupboards ran beside hinged casement windows covered by eyelet curtains. The push-out windows looked over a stone terrace and fenced backyard, home to brown chickens and a cluster of pear and plum trees. The enclosed area next to the back wall of the house was home to three brown dairy goats and their occasional kids, with an entrance to their indoor shelter, a converted cement-walled room next to Opa and Oma’s sleeping quarters.

The evening and midday meals,
Vesper
and
Mittag Essen,
were eaten in the front room down the hall, but for breakfast, the entire family squeezed around the corner nook in the kitchen, the children on the booth’s cloth-covered seats, the grandparents and parents on the short wooden benches. The scratched, pockmarked table, covered with a green and white oilcloth, had a large drawer in the center that contained mismatched silverware, a glass saltshaker, and a crusty brown loaf of the daily bread. At this cozy corner nook, the morning coffee and warm bread with jam were savored, the dough for noodles and bread kneaded, the garden vegetables cut and sorted, and in the winter, when the kitchen was the warmest room in the house, it was where the family laughed and played games. And today, Christine had the feeling, it would be the place where she learned bad news.

Trying to slow her hammering heart, she slid into the booth, one hand in the pocket of her coat, fingers gripping Isaac’s stone. Oma had done laundry that morning; the smell of lye soap lingered in the air, and the windows were still moist with condensation. Mutti sat down across from her, her blue eyes and the soft lines of her face unnaturally hard, her lips pressed together. She was wearing her house apron over a nut-brown dress, a dress normally reserved for work at the Bauermans’. Christine watched her mother fold her calloused, oven-scarred hands on the table in front of her, and felt beads of perspiration spring out on her forehead.

“We will no longer be working for the Bauermans,” Mutti said, an uncharacteristic tremor in her voice.

Christine stiffened. “What? Why?”

“There are new laws,” Mutti continued. “One of the laws forbids German women to work for Jewish families.”

For a fraction of a second, Christine relaxed, realizing that the news had nothing to do with her and Isaac. Then she remembered the posters outside.

“Is that what those ridiculous posters say?” she said. “I’m not going to let some stupid law tell me where I can or can’t work!” She stood, ready to bolt, but Mutti caught her wrist and held it.

“Christine, listen to me. We can’t go to the Bauermans’. It’s against the law. It’s dangerous.”

“I need to talk to Isaac,” Christine said, pulling away and heading toward the door.

“Nein!”
her mother shouted. “I forbid it.”

Christine wasn’t sure if it was the odd trace of fear or the determination in her mother’s voice, but something made her stop.

“Herr Bauerman has been forced to abandon his office in town,” her mother continued, her tone softer now. “He’s no longer allowed to practice law. If you’re caught going over there, you’ll be arrested. The Gestapo knows we work there.”

Christine said nothing. She just stood there, willing it not to be true. Her mother got up and put her hands on Christine’s shoulders.

“Christine, look at me,” she said, her eyes watery but stern. “One of the new laws also forbids any relationships between Germans and Jews. I know you care for Isaac, but you have to stay away from him.”

“But he’s not really Jewish!”

“It wouldn’t matter to me even if he was. But it matters to the Nazis, and they’re the ones making the laws. We have to do as we’re told. I have permission to go there now, one last time, to pick up our pay. We’ll need the money. But you’re not going with me, do you understand?”

Christine lowered her head, covering her flooding eyes with her hands. How could this be happening? Everything had been so perfect. She thought of Kate and Stefan, happy and oblivious to all that had changed, their only concern Kate’s overprotective mother. And then she had an idea. She wiped her eyes and looked at her mother.

“Will you take a note to Isaac for me?”

Mutti pressed her lips together, her forehead constricting further. After a long moment, she reached up to brush Christine’s hair from her forehead.

“I suppose that won’t hurt,” she said. “Write the note quickly now, I don’t have much time. But until things are back as they should be, you’re not to see him.” Christine started to turn, but her mother held her arm. “You’re not to see him. Do you understand?”

“
Ja,
Mutti,” Christine said.

“Hurry now.”

Christine ran upstairs to her bedroom and closed the door. A few days earlier, she’d decorated the multipaned window in her room with fall leaves, a different species glued to each thick square of swirled glass: gold beechnut, yellow oak, red maple, and orange hickory. It all seemed so childish now. Now, the sparse room reflected the way she felt, bone-cold and empty as a cave, the cool drafts of the coming winter already making their way through the invisible crevices in the fieldstone and mortar walls and the undetectable cracks in the thick, dry timber. A pine armoire, her narrow bed, and a wooden desk and chair were the only furniture, and the threadbare rug on the tiled floor did little to ward off the chill.

She took Isaac’s stone out of her pocket and held it in a fist over her heart while she searched her desk. Two sheets of leftover school paper were folded near the back of the drawer, and she found a stubby pencil between a stack of old books and her aged Steiff teddy bear, which used to growl when she squeezed his stomach but no longer uttered so much as a moan. She tucked the stone into the front right-hand corner of the drawer, took a book off the shelf, and held it beneath the paper. Then she sat on her bed and stared at the blank sheet, blinking through her tears. Finally, she wiped her eyes and began to write.

Dearest Isaac,

This morning, I was so happy. But now, I’m frightened and sad. You were right about everything you tried to tell me about Hitler and the Nazi discrimination against the Jewish people. I apologize for not taking you more seriously. My mother just told me that we can no longer work for your family because of another new law. She says we can’t see each other. I don’t understand what’s happening. Please tell me that we’ll find a way to be together. I miss you already.

Love,

Christine

She folded the letter into a wrinkled envelope she found in one of her books, sealed it, and took it to her mother.

“
Bitte,
set the table,” Mutti said. She hung her apron on the back of the kitchen door and shoved her arms into her black wool coat. “The
Wurst
and onions are finished. Cover the pan and leave it on the edge of the stove to stay warm.” She opened her handbag and slid the letter between her change purse and a pair of gray gloves. “If I’m not back within the hour, start without me.”

Christine stood in the hall and watched her mother hurry down the steps, fear and anger pressing into her stomach like a slab of cold granite. It wasn’t like her mother to fidget with her scarf and the collar of her coat, and the hard heels of her shoes clacked down the front hall even faster than usual. After Christine heard the front door close with a heavy thud, she made her way into the front room.

The front room doubled as the family and dining room, with an antique maple sideboard that held books, dishes, and tablecloths, an oak dining table and eight mismatched chairs, a horsehair couch, an end table for the radio, and a wood- and coal-burning stove. On the wall between the two front windows overlooking the garden and the cobblestone street was her mother’s treasured tapestry, an embroidered landscape of snow-covered Alps, dark forests, and running elk. The wall hanging came from Austria, a souvenir from her parents’ honeymoon. The only other decoration in the room was a cherry regulator with a gold pendulum that once belonged to Christine’s
Ur-Ur Grossmutti,
great-great grandmother.

Oma was sitting on the couch, darning a sock from a tangled pile of leggings and undergarments that sat in her aproned lap like a multicolored cat. Her silver hair was braided and pinned in a neat circle around her head, her veined hands working in a steady rhythm. Beside her, the radio crackled and squawked, a man’s commanding voice announcing more rules and regulations from the Führer. When Oma saw Christine, she turned off the radio, put down her needle and thread, and patted the couch cushion.

“Come sit by me, good girl,” she said. “
Du bist ein gutes Mäd-chen
. Did you see your mother?”

“Ja,”
Christine said, falling into the couch beside her.

“It’s another sad day in Germany,” Oma said.

Christine leaned against her, searching for comfort in her soft shoulder and familiar smell of lavender soap and rye bread. It was Oma who had taught her and Maria how to knit and sew, and Christine had fond memories of sitting next to her on the couch, working the yarn and cloth into doll clothes and miniature blankets while Oma hummed church hymns. Growing up, Christine had always looked to Oma for solace, whether to dry tears from a skinned knee, or to soothe a bruised ego from the rare parental scolding. It wasn’t that her mother was cold or insensitive, but she was too busy, cleaning, cooking, and trying to keep food on the table for a family of eight. Oma would sit with Christine for hours, her soft, papery fingers caressing Christine’s flushed cheeks and brushing stray hair from her furrowed brow.