I didn’t even bother to answer him. As far as I’m concerned, he can get in his fishing boat and go to China.
The Violin
Like a whirlwind
out spins a waltz
from the window
and winds me
against my will.
By the speckled light of fireflies,
feet slippery with dew,
I dance on the darkened lawn
to my grandfather’s violin.
To make such music
you must break
yourself open like an egg,
and dazzled,
I dance on the shell.
If Grandmama is moody and sometimes angry, Grandpapa always seems to be the same. Each morning from my bedroom window I see him walking in the orchard. He is checking every tree to be sure it got through the night all right.
If something in the pictures he paints doesn’t turn out right, he sighs and patiently paints it over.
When the pump that brings in our water from the lake breaks down, he isn’t upset. He just goes into the pump house with his wrenches and works away until we hear the gurgling of water coming from the faucets.
It’s as though he keeps himself quiet and calm on purpose.
It’s only when he plays his violin that he is a different person. He looks very calm while he’s playing, but the music he makes is exciting. When I hear it I can hardly sit still. It fills the house and pours through the windows, sending the birds flying. Grandmama gets a smile on her face and, holding on to my hands, waltzes me around the kitchen.
The song she most often asks Grandpapa to play, though, is a sad one. It’s called “In der Ferne,” “In Far Away Places.” “So far away,” she sings, “so far away. How I long to be back home.”
Grandpapa shakes his head. “You want to go back to a Germany that is no longer there. You would not like today’s Germany.”
A letter from the Roths finally arrived. It came from Berlin. Grandpapa read a part of it:
We must leave Germany and our home and everything we have. Some of our friends say it will get better, but we are afraid to take a chance. There is a soldier posted in front of our gallery. He warns people not to shop there because we are Jews. Jewish students in the universities have been asked to leave. The labor unions have been shut down. People are afraid to talk on their telephones. We will try to reach Switzerland. From there we hope to get passage on a boat to America. We thank you for your kind offer to find work for us. How hard it is to think we might never be able to go back to our home.
“It will be a miracle if they escape.” Grandpapa sighed and picked up his violin again, but the music was sad. There was no dancing to it.
There was trouble in my garden, too. It’d been one of the dryest Augusts ever. It hadn’t rained in nearly two weeks. The snapdragons were hanging their heads, the beans had spots on them, the leaves of the tomato plants were all curled up into fists. I tried to water everything, but you have to carry the water a long way, and the big sprinkling can is heavy. Besides, the sun is scorching hot. I slouched upstairs and shut myself into my bedroom so no one would see me cry.
When I looked out of my window I saw my grandfather and grandmother wearing their big straw hats. They were filling a pail and the big sprinkling can from the pump outside of the kitchen. They carried the water out to my garden. They must have made about ten trips.
After supper I went out to look at my garden. The snapdragons were growing straight up. The tomato leaves had their hands open. When I put my hand on the ground, the earth felt damp.
Canning Day
Tomatoes by the hundreds
roll into the kitchen,
jump into the pots,
slip out of their skins,
crowd into jars,
peer through the glass,
their round baby faces
crying red tears.
All morning Grandmama and Grandpapa and I picked tomatoes. We filled one bushel basket after another. The tomatoes were warm and heavy in our hands. “Just the ripe ones,” Grandmama kept calling. Three of the tomatoes from my own garden were ripe. The sun was hot on our backs, and once by mistake I touched a tomato worm as big as ten caterpillars. It looked like a green accordion.
After the tomatoes were picked, Grandpapa went fishing with Mr. Ladamacher. “Canning day,” he said and hurried away.
The kitchen might have been a witch’s den. Pots of boiling water steamed on the stove. Tomato juice, red as blood, was everywhere. Grandmama looked like a witch with her hair flying out of its neat knot and her face smeared with tomato juice where she had wiped away the sweat.
At first all she said to me was, “Achtung! Look out! Don’t get in the way.” She was busy moving steaming kettles on and off the stove. After a bit she put a pile of scalded tomatoes in front of me. “You can take off the skins,” she said. “They come off easy.”
The skins just slipped off. While I was undressing the tomatoes, Grandmama told me about the farm her family had when she grew up. “The farm wasn’t next to our house like it is in this country. We lived in a village and had to walk out into the country a distance of two miles to get to our farm. It wasn’t even much of a farm, only a long strip of land. We grew cabbages and turnips and carrots and potatoes, thick lumpy things that gave us a lot of food for our work. At home we had a root cellar dug into the ground next to our house where we stored the vegetables. They lasted us all winter. We ate every potato, even when spring came and they turned green and tasted bitter.
“Land was hard to come by in the old country. If my friends could see this garden and orchard they would think we were kings. Remember, Elsa, if you can own your own little piece of land you will be all right.”
I began to understand why Grandmama was so happy when she was digging around in the garden. I asked, “Next summer when I come up, can I have a bigger piece of land for my garden?”
“So, you want to come up again next year. I’m glad to hear it.” Grandmama smiled.
I grinned, too. Now that I thought about it, I had to admit I was happy, except for Tommy, who was a real nuisance.
Tommy turned up just as Grandmama was cleaning up. The whole kitchen was covered with jars of tomatoes.
“How come you made so many when there are just three of you?” Tommy asked.
“Ach, it’s not just for us. I make them for all of our children. Food isn’t that easy to come by these days.”
Tommy gave Grandmama a sly look. “I’ll bet they taste real good.”
“You can take a jar home with you, Tommy,” Grandmama said. “Now go out and play with Elsa while I make supper. I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
“You want to go down the gully?” I asked.
Tommy looked over the edge of the bank. “That’s just a ditch. What would you want to go down there for?”
“Well, you can stay here for all I care.” I started down. After a minute Tommy followed me.
He looked at the creek. “You got tadpoles,” he said. He reached down into the water. “Gotcha!” he said. He held out a squirming black tadpole. “It’s got its legs.” It was true. The tadpole had a pair of legs on either side of its tail. Tommy couldn’t keep his hands off things. He caught a big toad. He caught a frog. He caught a butterfly and put it in his pocket. He pulled up some snake grass to show how you could make a chain out of it. He turned over the logs to look for skinks, which are like tiny lizards. From the way they skitter away you can tell they don’t like to be looked for. He picked up stones and threw them into the creek. He built a dam in the creek with mud and sticks so the water piled up into a little pool.
“You’re wrecking this place,” I said. “You can just leave.”
“You don’t own it.”
“My grandparents own it.”
“Then they’ll have to tell me to get out.”
Furious, I started up the bank just in time to hear Grandmama call us for supper. Tommy must have heard, too, because he was right b
ehind me.
I was so angry I could hardly sit at the same table with him. But when I watched how hungry he was and how quickly he ate his dinner, I stopped feeling so angry.
For the First Time
Yesterday
a snake,
green
as
grass,
coiled
beside
the
blue-
berries.
Today
a foolish
hummingbird
hovering above
my flowered hat.
For the first time I remember
from one happiness to another.
The library in Greenbush is so small that in ten weeks I’ve just about read all the children’s books. I can tell which adult books it’s all right for me to check out by the way Miss Walthers smiles or frowns when I take them to the desk. When she frowns she usually says, “Why don’t you find something else, dear.” The only time she looked startled was when I took out the Sanalac County Road Commissioners’ Report. It turned out to be pretty surprising because it talked a lot about snow, and it was hard to believe that Greenbush ever had anything but summer.
A lot of the books I take out are about birds and butterflies and bugs. I like to match up the pictures with the things I see every day. I see a lot. I can’t believe I ever thought the country was empty. If you look hard enough there is something everywhere, and it is all surprises. Down in the gully I can watch the water striders skate over the top of the creek. Each strider makes five round shadows, one from its body and four from its legs. There are darners, their green and blue bodies so bright you think they must have lights in them. Once, before he saw me, I saw a muskrat bite off a bundle of grass and swim away with it.
On hot days I put on my bathing suit and sit in the lake with the water right up to my neck. I watch the freighters along the lake’s edge. They don’t seem to be going anywhere, but when you look away and look back again, they have moved. The gulls sail over me, holding almost still in the air. Everything is busy in a slow way.
In the orchard the branches are so heavy with ripening fruit that they nearly touch the ground. Some of the pears have fallen off the trees. You can hear the buzz of the wasps that come to eat them.
In my own garden the lettuce and peas have been gone for a long time, but we’ve had my beans for five different meals. My tomatoes are red and fat. In the big garden the corn that was only a few inches high when I first came is now over my head. Each afternoon Grandmama goes out and fills her apron with enough ears of corn for dinner. As we sit on the back porch shucking corn we can see the rabbits nibbling on the parsley. Grandmama shrugs her shoulders. “The parsley has bolted and is no good anyhow,” she says.
Even at night there is something. Last night when we turned on the porch light we saw a flying squirrel glide down from the poplar tree to the bird feeder. And there are things you can hear but can’t see, like the owl that hoots in the distance and the crickets singing in the dark.
When I wake up in the morning, I don’t think about going home anymore. Instead, I wonder if I will find something new that day, and I’m never disappointed. Even when I walk into Greenbush. Tommy must have told the other children in town that I’m not poison because they talk to me now. There’s a girl named Betty who’s just my age. We sit on the drugstore steps. I made her a bracelet out of shells. Today she brought her mother’s nail polish, and we put it on our nails. The color is Pink Passion. She says Tommy likes me, which is the most disgusting thing I ever heard.
Grandmother
I shadow her, surprised
at what her clever hands can do,
thankful for her silence,
for sometimes when she speaks
her words are sour as
green apples.
She scrubs the sheets
in rainwater
and spreads them on the lawn
to bleach, a field of snow
beneath the summer sun.
Her pansies pool
in deep blue lakes
while lilies sweep above
like soaring gulls
and waves of sweet alyssum
lap the ground.
She gathers fruit
and traps it
in glass jars, rows
of red and yellow lanterns
glowing on the pantry shelves.
Her bread dough swells
and puffs and browns
to perfect loaves,
for everything
my grandmother touches
with her hands
undoes her angry words.
Grandmama has been in an angry mood for two days. This morning she scolded me when she saw the Pink Passion polish on my nails. She snapped at Grandpapa when he was late for breakfast. I don’t know why she’s so cross. I was about to disappear down into the gully to keep out of her way when I remembered my mother telling me to watch my grandmama’s hands. Instead of running off, I decided to spend the day following Grandmama.
She started out in the kitchen making bread dough. White clouds flew up into the air as she shook the flour into a bowl. She stirred so hard the bowl skittered around the table. As she kneaded the dough, she picked it up and slapped it down against the pastry board as if she were angry with it. Finally she threw a towel over it and set it on the warm part of the stove to raise.
It was washing day. Grandmama dipped pails full of water out of the rain barrel. She strained out the little bugs that hatch in the water and boiled it on the stove. When she put soap into it, the suds exploded into foamy bubbles that caught the sun. She emptied some of the sudsy water into a small pan and let me wash the napkins and doilies. She put the washboard into her bucket and scraped the clothes up and down on the board until I thought they would fall apart. They went through the ringer not once or twice but three times! We spread out our washing on the grass where the sun would make it white.
After the wash was done, it was time for the garden. She seemed really angry at the little tufts of green she was yanking out of the flower beds. I asked her what they were. “Crabgrass and chickweed,” she said. I saved both of the words.
In the kitchen the bread dough grew until it pushed up the clean white towel that covered it. Grandmama shaped the dough into loaves and let it rise again. Then it went into the oven, and the whole house smelled of fresh baked bread.
After lunch we all picked peaches. I picked the ones on the lowest limbs of the trees. Grandmama reached up into the branches. Grandpapa stood on a stepladder. “Handle the fruit gently,” he said. “Peaches bruise easily.” One by one we lay the fragrant fruit into a bushel basket. When all the ripe peaches were picked, Grandpapa carried the basket into the kitchen. Grandmama boiled up a kettle of sugar syrup. By dinnertime two dozen jars of gold fruit were lined up on the kitchen table.
We had thick slices of the fresh bread with our dinner. For dessert we ate the peaches that were too ripe to can. The peach juice ran down our chins, and we all laughed. Whatever had made Grandmama angry in the morning had disappeared into the clean clothes and the bread and the garden and the jars of perfect peaches.
That Wild Berries Should Grow
That wild berries should grow
and fling their thorny shoot
above your head and jail you
while you steal their fruit,
that they should let you go.
I picked blackberries with Grandmama today. I was used to picking raspberries and gooseberries in the garden, but the blackberries grow way at the back of the field. Raspberries and gooseberries grow in neat rows that Grandpapa keeps trimmed. Blackberries grow in a tall tangle of briars. The shoots were higher than my head and covered with thorns that tore my dress and scratched my arms.
I would have given up, but the berries were so plump and juicy. And they were free — a gift.
We wore straw hats so that our hair wouldn’t get snagged and strapped pails around o
ur waists so that our hands would be free to pick the berries. In no time the bottoms of our pails were covered, and the blackberries began to heap up. Our hands were stained purple and so were our mouths. While I picked I could hear Grandmama singing a song. She wrote down the German words for me and told me what they meant:
Mit den Händen: klapp-klapp-klapp,
mit den Füssen: trapp-trapp-trapp,
einmal hin, einmal her,
rund herum — das ist nicht schwer.
Noch einmal das schöne Spiel,
weil es mir so gut gefiel.
Einmal hin, einmal her,
rund herum — das is nicht schwer.
With the hand: clap, clap, clap,
with the foot: tap, tap, tap,
this way once, that way once,
turn around — now that’s not hard.
Once again the happy game,
because it feels so good to me.
This way once, that way once,
turn around — now that’s not hard.
She pointed me in the direction of a bush where the ripe fruit hung in thick clusters. “Over there, Liebchen.” Liebchen means “sweetheart.” It was Grandmama’s kosename, “cozy name,” for me. She seemed so happy that it was hard to remember that sometimes she is cross. Just like the blackberries, I thought, you had to get past the thorns to taste the sweet fruit.
We got home with the blackberries just as Grandpapa returned home from Greenbush. He had gone into town to buy a part for the water pump, which had stopped working. Something went wrong with the pump about every week. Then we had to use water from the rain barrel or drag up pails of water from the lake. “Look what I have,” he called to us. He was waving a letter. “It’s from Switzerland. Kurt and Ruth are safe. Now we must make plans. They can have one of my apartments.” He meant the same apartment building where my parents and aunts and uncles live.
“What about a job, Carl?” Grandmama was heaping the blackberries into a pot to make jam. Even if the world was coming to an end she would still be working.
“I’ll call the art school. Both of them could teach. In these hard times there won’t be much money, but if things get a little better someday they might have their own art gallery again.”