The Kingdom of Childhood

“There. All straight now. Take it off.”

Eva shrugged out of the dress, which Kirsten caught as it fell. Judy watched the young woman, clad only in her bra and girdle, as she stepped down off the table and lit a cigarette. She shook out the match and raised an eyebrow at Judy.

The sewing machine clattered on. Judy turned and walked into the kitchen, which smelled, in a way that tingled in the back of her throat, like sauerbraten. Very quietly she turned off the burner beneath the Dutch oven, watching the small blue flame diminish and then disappear. But that was too obvious. Kirsten would know she had turned it off to be spiteful. It would be better if she turned the gas back on but left the burner unlit, so it would look like a problem with the stove. Kirsten would know better, but have no proof.

She turned the dial back to its previous setting, hearing the very quiet hiss grow ever so faintly louder.

“Mausi.”

She looked at Kirsten, whose gaze was locked on the rattling machine.

“Bring me the basket from the storage room. The one that has the thread in it.”

Judy stared at her impassively. “Ich verstehe nicht.”

Kirsten looked up. “Yes, you do. You know what thread is.” She tapped the spool at the top of the machine.

With a reluctant shift of her shoulders through the doorway, Judy headed down the hall to the storage room. The basket, frilled at the top in calico, sat on the shelf directly ahead. She passed it and turned the corner of the small, L-shaped room. She kicked at an old typewriter sitting on the floor, then ran her hand along the winter coats hanging from the rod: her father’s khaki trench coat, her mother’s camel’s-hair coat that fell to her ankles and was now certainly too small, and her own green wool coat with the deep cuffs. She pressed her face into it and hoped to smell winter.

“Judy!” called Kirsten.

There was a murmuring of conversation. The other girl’s voice rose, and Judy heard the creak of footsteps moving across the floor. A moment later she heard a shriek.

Kirsten sounded alarmed. “What is it?”

“The gas is on, but the burner isn’t lit. My God.”

Judy stepped between the coats and, although hers hung mostly above her head, wrapped herself in its bottom. A moth fluttered out. She ducked against its gray, flapping wings, and then thought, of course. Her mother had not been in a state to put it in mothballs. By next winter it would be full of holes.

“Judy!” shouted Kirsten, this time with far greater urgency.

She spun around in the coat as if it were a cocoon, pulling until it came down from its hanger and wrapped around her torso. Below it her summer skirt lifted from her spinning, floating in a circle, like a dancer’s.

On the last day of school, as soon as the bus dropped her off, Judy took off at a run down the country road toward her home. Her rucksack, empty but for a single book, thumped against the small of her back with each footfall. The trials of home were, for a few precious moments, forgotten. She carried two parting gifts from her teacher, who knew she would not be back for the following school year: the Struwwelpeter book, which she carried in her pack, and a large gingerbread heart with Viel Gluck written on its face in jaunty pink icing. A good-luck wish for our newest friend, her teacher had declared, smiling upon Judy fondly. The heart, wrapped neatly in wax paper, she cradled against her body as she ran. She wanted to share it with Rudi, because she knew he liked gingerbread, and also because it was a heart. It smelled mouthwateringly of cinnamon and confectioner’s sugar. When the barn came into view she picked up her flagging pace, crunching gravel beneath her saddle shoes as she cut across the driveway, then criss-crossed the perfectly manicured front lawn.

She shrugged off her rucksack by the gate and let herself into the barnyard. The barn door was ajar, buoying her hopes that he would be there. The white hens ignored her, scratching in the dust for hidden bugs. From an open window she heard Daniela’s strident voice, an argument with her mother or father in vehement German that carried on the gusty breeze. The wind sucked the edges of the curtains outward, twisting them wildly like waving hands.

A metal rake stood propped beside the partly-opened barn door. Judy was thin enough to slide in without moving it, which was fortunate, because the hinges were old and tired and the heavy door usually stuck in a rut of mud. She gripped the gingerbread against her chest and stepped inside, pulling in her breath to call for Rudi; but before she could speak his name, she saw him right before her.

He was there, seated on a straw bale with his back to her, his shirt in a heap on the ground; straddling his lap was the girl who was Kirsten’s friend, wearing the flower-sprigged dress Kirsten had sewn for her, its white crinoline flaring out on each side of Rudi’s waist like two chrysanthemums. She was facing him, and Judy could see now that Rudi’s disregard for the crucifix that hung above them was absolute: he kissed her with his hand behind her head and his mouth pressed hard against hers, so ardently that all the gentleness Judy knew of him was gone. The girl’s hands traveled across the creamy skin of his back, her pace languorous, and when they circled around to the front of his pants he dropped his head back and disturbed the silence with a noisy, quivering sigh.

Judy took a large step back. One shoulder at a time, she retreated out the barn door. She let herself out through the wooden gate and threw the gingerbread heart into the mud. At home, Kirsten stood at a living room window, cleaning it with ammonia sprinkled onto a crumpled page from the Stars & Stripes. The bow of her apron bobbed at her hip, and her feet were bare.

“Guten Tag, Mausi,” she greeted Judy.

“Guten Tag,” Judy replied. She looked into Kirsten’s eyes and wondered how it is that a soldier fights and a savior suffers, but a woman, in lying down, rules everything.

12

Zach was a Pisces. I discovered this while rooting through his school file, not long after. It should have come as no surprise—I had already suspected as much by his nature, and his March birthdate only confirmed it—but I felt chagrined nonetheless. Sixteen and a half, and solidly so. I had hoped he was nearly seventeen, as if it made a difference.

Say no, I remembered imploring him. Because I knew the wrong was in my intention,