Grandma, Someday I'll Travel the World

By Elfie Rainals

In the first few years of her life, four-year-old Sandra Schmidt endured TB, the death of her mother and the abandonment of her father. It is 1938: Hitler runs Sandras homeland and soon much of the homelands of Germanys neighbors. She is raised in the safety of her grandparents home until the Americans and British start bombing Germany and her village. Sandra is struck by a piece of shrapnel and almost dies from infection. Her lifelong friend and Sandra wonder what the Jewish Solution is all about when her beloved grandfather is sent to a concentration camp for hiring Jews in the market he manages. He escapes with the help of a former employee who now is a warden there. After Sandras grandfather dies she lets an American GI trundle her off to New York, but doesnt like it there and runs off to California. But being beautiful doesnt guarantee you a job there. She struggles for a while, and after a few mishaps she lands a job as a Tour Manager to India. The tour companys management is impressed with her and offers her a permanent position. She always told her grandmother that: someday I will travel the world. Oddly enough, this will be her new profession, and she travels with American tourists for many years. The dream she had of traveling with the rich and famous had finally come true.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 31, 2008
• ISBN: 9781462834259

Elfie Rainals

Elfie Rainals The Author of this book also came as an Immigrant from Germany to the U S some years ago. For many of these years she worked in her original Profession as a Designer in the Fashion World and then traveled as a Tour manager around the world, until she had a bad accident and could not travel anymore. That’s when she decided to put her Friends life story into a book to amuse the Travelers with things that really happen, while on tour in foreign Countries. Being retired now, she still works part time as a Handicraft and Needle art Teacher for an Adult Education Centre in Southern California.

Book preview

1938

FRIDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 30, 1938

FOUR-POWER PEACE PACT SIGNED

Sudetenland Given to Hitler

Compromise Plan Adopted at Munich Calls for Nazi Troops to Begin Occupying Czech Territory Tomorrow.

MUNICH, Sept. 30, (Friday) (UP) Britain, France, Germany and Italy early today signed a compromise agreement for surrender of Czechoslovakia which, if it refuses to accept the terms, must face Germany without any help from France or Great Britain.

While a little Austrian psychopath bullies Czechoslovakia and creates disorder in Sudetenland, Berlin is tranquil. Citizens can attend any one of three hundred and fifty theaters or browse through twelve thousand periodicals. Life is good in Germany unless you are a Jew or four-year-old Alexandra Schmidt.

Sandra sits on a hard, wooden bench. Her feet do not touch the ground so her back hurts and her legs are cramping for what seems like hours. She just learned to tell time, but that doesn’t matter—she doesn’t wear a watch. She doesn’t own a watch because her father refuses to give her one, even though it is one of many items he carries in his line—the product line that takes him all over the area and keeps him from ever coming home.

If she had a watch, it would only verify what she already knows. She is fed-up with sitting on this bench. She knows that time is longer for a child than for an adult. Her father told her it is because if a child is one year old and is told to wait a year for something to happen—a birthday or something—that long, long year that the child waits is equal to the length of time the child already has lived, so the child lives a lifetime for that birthday to come.

But if an old man is told to wait a year, for a job promotion or something, and the old man is already sixty years old, then the old man only waits one sixtieth of his lifetime.

Her father explained the time thing to her mother once while he was sitting at her mother’s bedside in the dark bedroom at the back of the house. Her mother didn’t understand it, maybe it was because of the medication she was on, or maybe she was just bored from listening to her know-it-all husband go on and on with one piece of information after another. But Sandra thinks she understands the time thing because it seems she’s already spent a year on the hard bench.

Her father, Herbert Schmidt, told her to sit on the hard, wooden bench at the front of the house and watch the flowers grow. There are all kinds of flowers in the garden that her mother planted when she was not so ill. He begrudgingly kept them watered while her mother was alive and her father gives information about the flowers: Sandra, look, this is a tulip and this is a rose and this is a blah, blah, blah, he says. But now, the flowers are dying—you can still see their colors and tell the different flowers apart, but they are dying. The flowers haven’t been watered for days, not since her mother died, and Sandra knows they won’t be watered ever again. It is her father’s protest against God and every living thing left on earth.

Little, beautiful Sandra sits and watches, and watches and sits, and in her young mind she knows she is being lied to: flowers don’t grow fast enough for even a child with perfect 20/20 eyesight to see, especially if they haven’t been watered for many days. Why did God make it necessary for flowers to need water? They should be able to get water from the ground. Then these flowers could grow without an angry father watering them.

When her father comes out to find a larger suitcase in the shed, she murmurs: I can’t see the flowers grow. You just lied to me to keep me sitting on this hard bench. No one can see flowers grow especially if you never water them.

I always water them, her father says, I’ve just been very busy and sad and angry. Besides, you can see flowers grow. You can see them grow if you sit very quietly and don’t say a word, and if you’ve been a good girl. You have been a good girl, haven’t you Sandra?

Yes! I’ve been a good girl! Sandra says. I’m always a good girl. Grandma says I’m the ‘goodest’ girl in the whole wide world.

I’m glad your grandmother thinks so, he says as he carries an empty suitcase toward the back of the house, because you’re going to be with her for a long, long time!

Other children may be naughty, but Sandra is always a good girl. She once took a pair of pretty earrings from her mother’s jewel box and her father slapped her so hard that big welts stayed on her tiny behind for days, and he yelled at her mother for trying to protect the child from his wrath.

But she is a good girl. But what has it gotten her? Her beautiful mother died. Little Sandra knows she died even though everybody wants to tell her she is just away for a while. Sandra knows her precious mother died and went to heaven. Her father will wait until the day of the funeral to tell her.

Her mother has gone to heaven to be with the angels, because God needs her for something—some important chore. God must need her more than Sandra needs her, she thinks, but no matter how hard and long Sandra racks her tiny brain (and she has lots of time to do that on the hard bench) Sandra can think of no reason that makes it more important for a mother to be with God then to be with her lonely, frightened child—a daughter who now is left with only a very dominant, ill informed, father.

Sandra is wearing her black dress, the one her father brought home for the funeral. The dress is made with a full skirt and small, dark red flowers along the hem. Sandra thinks it should be all black without flowers, because flowers appear too happy for a funeral day. She has a big, big pain in her heart because it is broken and no one can ever fix it or put it back together again.

Her mother died slowly, very slowly, over a long period of time, especially when time is measured by a child who is always waiting for her mother to get well and come back home and hold her and hug her.

Her mother came home from the clinic several times over the three years before death took her, but she was mostly lying down in bed or on a cot in the garden with all the beautiful flowers. She was like the flowers, the most beautiful mother ever. Sandra is certain that beautiful people are not supposed to die or even get ill, that beauty is some kind of protection against illness and that beauty is a special gift from God.

Her father says that there is no God, that there can’t be one or his wife would still be alive and taking care of him, but her mother always told her to pray and pray and pray and that all her prayers would be answered.

Sandra prayed for months on end that her mother would get well and come home, that she would take her shopping for a new dress to wear to Grandma’s house where they both could go to be away from her father, Herbert Schmidt.

Nobody likes Herbert, she thinks, he always knows everything better. That’s why he’s such a poor salesman. Somehow Herbert sold her mother on being his wife. How’d he do that? Sandra thinks. She was so very beautiful, and a good housewife thanks to Grandma’s upbringing.

Her mother never looked like she was dying, but she and Sandra never played or danced or took walks together like other mothers and daughters do. Never did they go across the city and to the parks and schools and places where Sandra’s friends went with their mothers.

The other children would laugh at her, or worse, they would feel sorry for her and bring her cookies baked by their mothers who feel sorry for her, or they would invite her to mother-and-daughter things where their mothers will try to act like her mother but none of them can.

Sandra strokes Greta, her doll. Sometimes Greta speaks to her, but only in a whisper. Sandra knows that dolls can’t speak, but in her mind Greta has started talking to her. There was only her father to talk to her and he wouldn’t, fathers are like that. They have more important things to do than to talk to little girls, like talk to grownups all day long so when they get home to their lonely little daughters they have no more to say.

But dolls, like Greta, are supposed to talk to little girls. That is their job given to them by God. Sandra believes in God. Somehow she knows that a good and gracious God would create dolls like Greta just so lonely, little girls can have someone to talk to, someone to tell their dreams to and someone they could hold. God would make special dolls for motherless children like Sandra.

Greta is a special doll, but Greta is tired of talking. They talked it over and over so many times that now it seems that Greta agrees with everything Sandra says. Either Sandra is a genius or Greta is just being nice or maybe being practical because Sandra can throw her out anytime she wants or worse: Sandra can just leave her in the closed toy box.

She would never leave Greta in a closed toy box because that’s how Sandra feels she lives—in a closed box. This house has lots of toys but she never gets to go out. Her father just closes the lid and gives the key to his old mother. One good thing about going back to Grandma in the village where she’s been living on and off since her mother got sick, is leaving her father’s mother and maybe Sandra will never ever have to live with her again.

Herbert’s mother is not bad, but she wants to turn Sandra into a little primadonna who will behave and sit still all day long, but Sandra likes to run around, play hopscotch and catch me with Greta.

When half an hour passes and none of the flowers grow even a fingertip or half a fingertip or anything at all, Sandra goes to look for her father. The house is spooky-quiet but she makes herself brave, straightens her shoulders, moves to the bottom of the staircase and looks up: the first room is an empty guestroom so it looks really, really spooky.

Sandra knows her father won’t be in that room, because it is the room her mother used when she came home and it is isolated from the rest of the house.

The next room is the master bedroom and she is never allowed in that room because maybe her father might be in his under shorts and undershirt and no decent young lady is supposed to see her father in his under shorts and undershirt.

She is trying not to cry, trying not to make her father yell at her again, because his yelling is becoming louder and scarier than ever, especially for a little four-year-old girl.

She knows in her mind that the funeral means her mother finally has died. That’s what her father says: well, she finally died. Sandra knows that sounds wrong. But that’s what he says and he keeps saying it to anyone who wants to listen.

She heard many people say the same, as if they all wanted her mother to die—or get well—one or the other. Berta Schmidt had been dying for as long as Sandra could remember.

For her age, she can remember pretty well, and especially anything to do with her mother. She had contracted tuberculosis, and was sent to some kind of clinic for people who suffer from that illness Sandra never got to visit her when she was in the TB clinic. She was in a very famous one, in Davos, and it was in Switzerland. The doctors at the clinic believed that the high altitude of the Alps created the fresh air needed by the patients. They were to take in the fresh air and make it cure their TB. But Sandra’s mother breathed in the air for a long, long time and it didn’t cure anything. And for all anybody knows, the mountain air might have made her mother get worse.

The clinic was new and modern. Her father’s insurance paid for some of it, but the major part was paid by her grandfather who visited her mother as often as he could. He always came back and told Sandra that her mother was getting better and that she sent her love to Sandra and grandmother and all her friends, but Sandra would look at her grandfather’s sad face and know that things were not going well.

The week before her mother died Sandra’s grandfather told her that her mother was coming home and maybe would be there for Sandra’s fifth birthday party, but he lied. It was a good lie because it was done to make a little girl feel good, if only just for a while. Her grandfather told good lies, but her father told bad lies. And he squeezes his money until it squeaks, Grandpa says.

We should bring her back to Germany, there is a clinic in the Odenwald at Winterkasten, her father said to her grandfather.

She will not get well there, she will have no chance if we bring her back here, grandfather said. No one ever survives in a German TB clinic. They should be called Terminal Clinics, like Hitler’s concentration camps. In fact you probably have a better chance in one of the camps.

It’s not your decision, I’m her husband. I’m the one suffering the financial hardship.

She is my daughter, I will pay the bill. You keep your money and use it for Sandra, grandfather said.

What will people say if I don’t pay something, Herbert said. My customers will all call me a cheap and uncaring husband. He rubs his forehead.

What will people say?

Don’t worry what people say. I’m going to pay the money to keep her in the best clinic in Europe. You do what you want, but you’re not bringing my daughter back to Germany. I will use all my power to stop you. Don’t even think of going against me!

Sandra’s mother cried at each of the last visits of her husband and father about not being able to see her beloved Sandra, and she begged to see her once more before she died, but the doctors said Sandra would get the TB again (she had TB for a while) if she made the trip. Sandra’s father says her mother caught TB cleaning rich people’s houses. He says it came from the dust and germs, that she would not have gotten TB had she just stayed at home and nurtured Sandra and him.

But her mother wanted more things than her father could provide. He provided just the basics—no new clothes, no new cars, no new house. So she worked for the rich people, but still there were no new clothes, no new cars, and no new house, because she gave all her money to Herbert so he could deposit it all in his business bank account so the busybody banker would tell everyone in the city how well Herbert was doing.

If I ever clean other people’s houses for money, Sandra thinks, I will never give all the money to some stupid man to put in the bank to impress other people.

During the first years Sandra’s mother didn’t give all her money to Herbert, in secret she saved just enough to carry her daughter to the shopping district to buy her an ice cream and a tiny necklace that Sandra still, after all these years, hid under the neckband of her jumper.

Her mother caught TB from the lady where she worked. This lady had contagious TB and didn’t know she gave it to any of her employees.

All the young ladies of the village want to become employees of a rich person’s household to get training for chores and ways they could apply at their own homes, and to use if or when they get married.

Sandra’s mother, thanks to grandfather’s connections, was accepted in the house of a Jewish brewery owner. It was an honor to work there. The house was huge and took much work; but there were many employees and every one of them had coughing spells. When Sandra’s mother started to cough she thought nothing of it before Sandra caught TB and the doctor announced that Sandra’s mother gave it to the little child.

Sandra’s mother was sent away, but little, heartbroken Sandra was isolated in the house and stayed in bed until she became well. Her paternal grandmother looked after her while Herbert traveled selling his merchandise. Her other grandmother and grandfather came to visit every Sunday and then took her to the village for a while, to have a nurse administer medication that was supposed to cure the deadly disease. After eighteen months Sandra was healthy again, but her mother was still sick in some far away clinic.

All because she worked for a Jew, or so her father said. But Grandpa said: I work with lots of Jews, not one of them ever gave me cause to think they were anything but loving people. But the evening paper had a different story about Jews and the Jewish brewer. As it turned out, the lady of the Jewish brewery house infected two of the employees in her charge other than Sandra’s mother. The brewer and his wife left the country and immigrated to America before they could be held responsible for three deaths. The Nazis announced that the Jewish brewer did it because he knew his wife was dying and he wanted to use the disease to murder as many Germans as possible before she withered away and died—a stupid announcement for more of the Hitler propaganda.

Sandra finds her father in her room packing the last of her things. He is crying and rubbing his tears on his sleeve. He turns when he hears her enter. Sandra! I told you to stay on the bench, he says and wipes his eyes again on his rough coat sleeve. You never listen—just like your mother, just the same. She never listened and now God punishes her and you and me, because she never listened to her husband. It is a commandment that a wife must listen to her husband. He wipes his eyes again. Or maybe the communists are right: there is no God.

He picks up the bags and carries them to the front of the tiny house. He goes back and kicks one of Sandra’s toys under the bed. It is one of her favorite toys, bought by her loving mother on their last trip to town, the last trip before they discovered Sandra’s TB and her mother was taken to the TB asylum. Sandra! her father says. Do you realize how wicked your mother was to leave us all alone to take care of ourselves? I can’t take care of us. I must travel in order to put food on the table. Your mother didn’t think of that when she worked herself to death. Did she? Did she!

He brings the third piece of tattered luggage to the front of the house. With Sandra following he returns to her room. Do you want to take anything else?

Sandra motions toward the bed: I want the baby clown under there. She points under the bed.

Her father lets a long sight escape from between his pursed lips. He grabs Sandra’s tiny hand and jerks her toward the front of the house. Go sit in the car until I’m ready!

Her father is still crying. But is he crying for her mother or is he crying for himself? Most everything in Herbert’s life is about him. Everything and everyone else is a big inconvenience. His wife has been a major inconvenience with her sickness. Now Sandra has become major inconvenience. He will foist her off on his dead wife’s father, and good riddance. He will visit her a couple times a year so people won’t talk, say he is a ruthless bastard or something like that He isn’t ruthless, he is just practical. He doesn’t have the time or the money to raise Sandra properly. The old man has lots of money; he can raise Sandra in the proper manner. The old man and his wife can be there for her. When Herbert is settled in with a new wife he can bring Sandra back to the city.

That is another thing: the city is becoming too dangerous. The British will come. They will bomb and bomb and bomb. The British will bomb the cities—they won’t waste their precious bombs on the countryside. Sandra will be safer with her grandparents in the village.

In his mind he knows he is a coward and never rocks the boat. His most important task now is to decide which side he should take or if his best chance of survival is to take no side and remain neutral.

Sandra walks slowly toward the overused sedan. She can see her reflection in the dirty automobile door; even make out the giant tears silently racing down her beautiful face. The dirty reflection makes her face look like a photograph that has been stomped on by a jackboot.

Her mother is gone. Gone from overwork (so her father says), gone as God’s punishment (so her father says.) Many years later, Sandra understands her mother’s death. Maybe her mother died to escape her father, to escape her father’s pessimism, his hate of everybody and everything. Now Sandra has a chance to escape that, and she will go away from the dirty city to the village to be with the people she loves the most, her grandmother and grandfather.

Maybe if her mother lived in the village (her grandmother’s village) she would still be alive, still be able to comfort her and protect her from her father. Now Sandra is escaping him, but first she will have to endure the verbal barrage her father will spew on her tiny shoulders as he drives her to her safe haven.

Grandma and Grandpa will be waiting for her with open arms. They won’t shout and holler at her unless she does something very, very wrong. She will have to almost burn the house down to have them punish her or swat her. They won’t follow her around the house and talk about what a bad mother Berta Schmidt was, how she never thought of her daughter and husband, only herself and how that’s why she worked herself to death.

Maybe Sandra’s father should work a little harder—why not? Men are supposed to do that, work hard so that their women won’t need to work but stay at home and love their daughters—daughters with beautiful faces, curly blond hair, and beautiful, sparkling, but tearful, blue eyes.

Sandra knows a car moving at high speed down the highway is a bad place to be in—there is no place to go, no place to run to. For hours she sits and listens to the hate her father chews up and spits out toward the dirty, rain-spotted windshield.

Sandra, you are too young to realize that what I’m doing is a very brave thing, her father says. I’m giving you up to your Grandma. She can give you a better life. I can’t raise you without a woman around to teach you how to become a good person and properly serve a husband. Not like your mother! She wanted only to serve other people. You will be raised properly. Your Grandma will teach you how to sew and cook and knit, and you must only use that knowledge to serve your own family, not other’s.

As he drives to the outskirts of the city, he stares at boxcars traveling along rusty tracks that parallel the road. The boxcars have either red or yellow tags pasted on the front upper right corners. He heard from a Nazi acquaintance that the yellow tags signified those boxcars headed for work camps and the red tags head for . . . he really doesn’t care where they head for. It is not his affair. What if Hitler is killing Jews? He can’t stop it. So why let it concern him? He works with lots of Jews—they all try to screw him, but no more than the Gypsies. Rumor is that Hitler plans to gas the Gypsies as well. If he plays his cards right, he can take over some of the Jewish businesses. The big mercantile in Frankfurt will make someone a millionaire, or damned near.

After the war, he thinks, who is going to own everything that belongs to the Saperstein brothers—aren’t they Jewish? Who is going to win the war? Maybe the Americans will get into it. His cousin is in New York. A smart thing to do is maybe send a letter that says he is, has been, and always will be against the Nazis and the ‘Commies’. But what if the Nazis intercept the letter? For now he’ll need to play both sides. He must be looked on as a friend of whoever wins. And this time he will marry rich. His wife was a beauty, but her beauty was of no use to him—they were never together.

They made love once a month before she was poisoned with TB. He could never bring himself to touch her after the TB took hold. It made him ill to think of touching her, and maybe her coughing in his face and giving him the hideous disease. He went to Vera the Gypsy and paid her to fulfill his fantasies once a month.

For many months now he’s been flirting with Marie, this one merchant’s daughter. She’s beautiful, but not of age. In fact many years from being of age. But she will boast a huge dowry when she turns eighteen and marries. So for now he will play the grieving widower. He is grieving, but his grief is for his misfortune not his dead wife’s. First he must get rid of Sandra.

Sandra is grateful for her father’s silent treatment. This treatment lasts but a few moments and then he begins to tell her all the things her Grandma and Grandpa have done wrong, and how her Grandpa thinks he is such a big cheese when he is just some tiny mouse. Her ears ache. She keeps wondering just how far it is to Grandma’s. The time when she went there with her mother it was a very short ride, but she didn’t ride with anyone in the car spewing out hatred. She grits her teeth. She tries to think of her mother over the sound of her father shouting. Her mother was like the most beautiful angel, in fact, no angel could be as beautiful, and no matter what her father says there is a Heaven and her mother is there sitting at the side of God waiting for him to give an order to go back to earth and give love to her little girl.

Nothing I have done should give God the right to take my wife from me. God knows how hard I work. I’m a good neighbor. I go to church as much as any one who comes to the Sunday morning service. Two years ago, I even served as one of the layman on the Church’s council on the war. This is another reason I’m being brave: I would like to be with you, but that would mean keeping you in the city, and that’s where it will be the most dangerous. Moving you to the countryside should keep you from harm’s way. When the British and the Americans come, and they will definitely come, you will be away from it all. They will land on the coast. You will be too far into the interior for any one to worry about you.

The engine sputters. Her father’s attention shifts to the many gauges on the dashboard of the trashy car.

Daddy, Sandra whispers, I’ve got to go to the bathroom!

I told you to go before we left, he says.

I did. But now I need to go again.

Well, you wouldn’t need to go to a bathroom, he says, If you were a boy.

Well, I’m not a boy, and I need to go real badly.

Her father looks around at the deserted land that borders the crumbling road. If you were a boy, he says, you could go right out there.

Mama told me that it isn’t right doing that.

They drive another fifteen minutes until Sandra thinks she will burst and wet the cloth seat of her father’s pride and joy (she should be his pride and joy) but then he steers the bucket of bolts into a tiny gas station at an intersection just miles from her grandmother’s village.

I’m only stopping because I need gas. He steps from the car and looks back at her. We are almost there, he says. "You just sit there until we arrive at your Grandma’s house. It is more ladylike to do your business in a private home not in a place on the road like this.

But I need to go so badly, she says. Please!

He throws up his hands. Okay! Go! But you best be finished when I’m done getting the gas.

He doesn’t come around and open the door for her even though he knows she’ll struggle to open it by herself. Sandra grasps the thin door handle in both of her small hands. She jerks down hard. The door springs open and pulls her from the high-clearance automobile. She slips down the running board and skins her bare knees. She begins to weep silently so as not to alert her father, as she walks by herself toward the lavatory shed at the back of the gas station. Her mother had told her to never go anywhere by herself.

But Sandra moves toward the shadows of the back shed. The only bad man she can see in the area is her father. Sandra closes the shed door but she doesn’t do her business. The shed is filthy and it smells—a real damp smell, like dirty, wet socks; and the shed is spooky. You can’t see into the corners. Sandra shouldn’t go anywhere by herself—her mother was right.

But now her mother won’t be with her to tell her not to be frightened. Her father isn’t concerned or he wouldn’t let his little girl go to some dark, smelly shed to do her business by herself. He would lead her by the hand and peek into the shed to make sure no bad men or monsters lurked in the shadows. And then he would wait for her until she finished. He would say: Sandra? You okay, in there? and wait for her answer. But here she is with all the monsters waiting for her to lift her dress bottom.

Sandra darts out the door and runs smack in to a tall, thin stranger.

Hey! the stranger says. What’s a child like you doing back here by yourself? Where’s your mother?

Sandra heart jumps into her throat. This is the man her mother warned her about. She should tell the man that her mother is in Heaven, watching over her, and that he will be severely punished if he harms a little girl. But her father doesn’t mind if a tall, thin man harms her. Instead she runs the wrong direction and stops dead at the rusty rail tracks.

One of the boxcars that passed along side Herbert’s tattered car earlier is burning. The flames dart toward the dusty sky. Hundreds of people huddle in the center of a farmer’s field. Policemen with guns stand at the gates of the field. Sandra thinks what odd transportation. Her father will know why hundreds of mothers and fathers and their children use such a strange way to get from the city to the village. She turns and runs back past the stranger to her father and grabs onto one of her father’s legs.

Sandra, he says, that was quick. You didn’t need to go very badly. Get back in the car. No more stops.

She pulls herself up on the running board and into the car. Her doll just sits and looks at her. Greta knows something is wrong. Sandra always tells her doll all her secrets, but she had neglected to tell Greta that her beloved mother left them both and now was in Heaven. Greta will not be able to take the news. Greta is only a doll and dolls are not brave. Sandra must be brave for both of them.

Her father slides into the driver’s seat and sits on one on Greta’s arms. He grabs the doll and the arm pulls lose from Greta. Stuffing spills out onto the seat and he throws the tattered doll in the back seat. Sandra screams and scrambles into the back. She retrieves Greta and begins to cry.

Her father turns. Sandra! Forget that stupid doll. I’ll get you a new one the next time I come back to see you at your Grandma’s.

I don’t want a new one, she cries. You will just hurt it, too. Finally he turns into the road to the village. Sandra recognizes the fields with all the potato plants and the asparagus rows; something this region is famous for. Her little heart jumps when she sees some children with bicycles on the road. Her father blows the horn and yells for them to go further to the right. She sees the church steeple at the end of the road and knows it is only minutes to her grandparent’s house.

Her grandmother comes running to the gate when she hears the car coming. Sandra is hugged and kissed by all the relatives, and they cry about her mother’s death two days ago. But when her grandfather picks her up and carries her toward the house, Sandra knows she is home. When her father comes to say he is leaving and will be back for the funeral (which he sloughed off on Grandma), Sandra doesn’t care. She doesn’t care if he comes back for the funeral or not—not if he ever comes back. When she starts up the stairs with Grandpa, she sees the little girl from next door. Lena peeks from behind her mother and watches Sandra’s every move.

Lena is her age and temperament. This is the first day of a life-long friendship They come to know each other’s every thoughts and moods and they are together most days from early morning until the shadows lengthen into the late afternoon.

Berta Schmidt is buried in the little village. Sandra is in the funeral procession that follows the coffin to the cemetery on the hill. All the relatives come back to Grandma’s house for coffee and cake and everyone wants to hug Sandra and she becomes more and more annoyed. All Sandra wants to do is sit on her Grandma’s lap.

Her father approaches. My poor, little angel, come to your father.

Sandra buries her face in her grandmother’s neck.

Sandra! You’ll come when your father calls, he says. Then he reaches out and grabs Sandra under her tiny arms. Sandra turns around and slaps him right in his face. He drops her back in her grandmother’s lap and storms out of the house. She is just like her mother! he shouts.

She pushes off from Grandma’s lap and gets on her feet. Her heart feels like it has been hit with one of her Grandpa’s hammers. Her stomach is churning and feels like it did the time she ate some bad lamb at her aunt’s house, and her head throbs as if an extremely bright light flashed from her father’s eyes and now settles in her brain. Coughing, she staggers toward the door, and before she reaches the doorway she vomits on her grandmother’s floor. She holds no sense of herself as a person. Her father destroyed her with his words, but more so with his flight. He abandons her for good this time. She looses her identity as his daughter, her identity transfers to Grandma and she becomes her Grandma’s daughter.

Hey! she screams. Hey, we don’t care, do you hear me? Do you hear me? We don’t care what you say! Grandma and I . . . we don’t care! She stops at the doorway.

Sandra’s grandmother runs to her with a wet cloth and wipes it across Sandra’s mouth and pats her head. Now, now, Sandra, her grandmother says. Calm down. Let’s go back into the house.

Grandma? Why does he hate me, so?

He doesn’t hate you, Sandra. He hates himself.

Now the tears begin to run down Sandra’s cheeks. She can no longer stop the flow. Can no longer pretend she has a father like the other fathers of her friends and cousins and the children in the storybooks. Her voice goes hoarse and she clings to her grandmother as they re-enter the house full of silent relatives. Her grandmother takes her up the stairs to her own room and puts her on the oh-so-soft bed. She sits beside Sandra and strokes her hair.

Sandra, child. Your father is a troubled man. Grandma says. He blames all his ills on the world and everyone in it. Or he blames God. He blames anyone and anything so he won’t have to blame himself for his problems and failures.

But he hates me, Sandra says, and I hate him. A little girl shouldn’t hate her father.

"No she shouldn’t, and she doesn’t. You don’t hate him. You’re too young to hate anyone.

I should hate the Devil, Sandra says.

Yes, you should hate the Devil.

And I should hate the tall man at the toilet shed, Sandra says

What tall man? She takes Sandra’s shoulders and turns her—they sit eye to eye. What tall man?

When we came here, I had to do go to the bathroom real badly. Father said I should be like a boy and do it along the road. But finally he stopped at that station before we came here. He told me to hurry while he got some gas. I went by myself to the back of the station. Mama told me to never go by myself. But I really had to do my business. So I opened the shed door. It smelled like Papa’s dirty socks—even worse, Sandra puts her thumb and fingers to her nose. It was so scary. I went in but I knew that there were monsters in the shadows to watch me lift the bottom of my skirt so I couldn’t do my business. It was too scary so I ran out of the stinky shed and bang, right into the tall man.

Did the tall man hurt you? Grandma said.

He scared me.

Did he touch you?

No, just to stop me from banging into him, Sandra says.

You’re never to go anywhere without me, Grandma says, from this moment on. Do you understand?

Yes, Grandma.

And I’ll give your father a piece of my mind next time I see him.

Sandra has lost her mother and now her father and now she is lost. Every day Sandra’s aunt and Sandra go to the cemetery to water the many flowers that surround the grave of her mother, but Sandra is lost—maybe just for now—maybe lost forever.

1939-1943

FRIDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 1, 1939

(a) GERMAN ARMY INVADES POLAND

Battles Rage Along Border

Cities Bombed as Fuehrer Orders Troops to Meet Force With Force on Frontier; Harbor Blockaded and Neutral Ships Warned.

WARSAW, Sept. 1. (U.P.) Germans bombed Warsaw at 9a.m. today (11p.m. Thursday) (P.S.T.) Simultaneously the Polish government announced today that Germans had bombed five other places, including the railroad station at Czew and the town of Rypnic, as well as the town of Putzk near Czew. The Warsaw Foreign Office immediately charged Germany with aggression against Poland.

BERLIN, Sept. 1. (Friday) (AP) The German army was ordered to meet force with force, and Poland was declared dangerous territory for foreigners and the seat of the Jewish International Conspiracy at 5:30 a.m. today 8:30 p.m. Thursday, P.S.T.)

THURSDAY MORNING, JULY 11, 1940

(b) BRITISH GRIMLY WAIT START OF BLITZKRIEG

Swarms of Enemy Planes Routed in Raid. Believed Prelude to Threatened Invasion; 37 German Aircraft Shot Down or Disabled

LONDON, July 11 (Thursday) (A.P.) England, on guard and ready, watched through the dawn today without any indication along the coastal no man’s land of Nazi invasion which Commons was warned last night might come at daybreak.

SUNDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 29, 1942

(c) REDS KILL 10,000 IN NEW NAZI ROUT

Russians Put Five Divisions to Flight in Northern Drive.

MOSCOW, Nov. 29 (Sunday) (A.P.) The Russians announced today that a surprise offensive on the northwest front had killed 10,000 German troops.

The Germans fight a lost war. There is a funeral every week for some cousin or another; some close to Sandra’s heart and many whom she only met once or twice or never but knows of them from stories told her by her grandparents.

The war is stupid when you think of the results, Sandra thinks. You dress young, handsome men up in beautiful uniforms and teach them how to march perfectly in rows and then you march them directly toward death. Nothing is worth that. No amount of land or payback for past grievances—nothing is worth that.

At the last funeral Sandra attends, a closed casket represents the cousin who was slaughtered. He is only twenty-two years of age, but his body is so damaged by a Russian mortar that they can’t put enough of him together to allow an open casket. The women can’t stop crying. The ones left behind suffer the most. Sandra suffered too, when her mother died and now mothers all over Germany were suffering.

Every night Sandra prays that the war will stop, but it just goes on and on as another cousin dies. There will be no cousins left at the rate they are dying. Or when you go to a family gathering, all the young men have sustained injuries: Kurt without a leg, his brother without an arm and a hand, the Burger’s son is blind, and others are deaf or insane. Nothing is worth this. Sandra hears some of it from her grandparents.

But then Lena’s father says that Hitler is a genius and that he will not put Germany in a bad position as far as the war is concerned, or as far as anything is concerned; but he thinks that Hitler needs to put more effort into the Jew problem here at home and in the international community.

Jews hoard all the capital of the world. They own all the banks or at least ninety percent of them around the world. They also are behind most of the publishing houses around the world so most of the information the world population reads is tainted by the Jewish view of the world. And they own most of the movie production companies and the distribution companies that distribute those films and the theatres that show the films.

Sandra and Lena listen and listen and begin to agree that Jews cause all the trouble, but the fact is that Lena and Sandra don’t know what a Jew is or what they look like or sound like. Unless those were Jews Sandra saw behind the shed when the boxcar burned. Lena’s father describes them as little, fat, big-nosed people who, like the French, never wash. But many Germans are little, fat, and big-nosed. So Lena and Sandra decide that they will just ask whomever they meet if they are Jewish.

Hey mister, Lena shouts. Are you a Jew?

Do I look like a Jew? The man says.

What does a Jew look like, Lena says.

Just look for a target on their back. The little man says.

They walk a little further toward school and stop another man. Are you a Jew? they ask the man.

Are you with the Gestapo? the man says. I think not—you’re just very rude children trying to cause trouble. Go home. The man rolls his fruit cart uphill toward the center of the village.

We’re not going home, Sandra shouts after the man.

We’re going to school! They both shout in unison.

Lena and Sandra listen to both sides of the Jew Problem but they concentrate on more pressing issues, and finally they are almost ready for the second grade. They go hand in hand. Their clothing is almost identical and they both have pierced ears holding tiny earrings. Lena wears little blue earrings and Sandra wears red hearts on her earrings.

Stop, Sandra says as she lets loose of Lena’s hand. We are never going to be apart, you know?

I know, Lena says.

Sandra reaches up and takes the earrings from Lena’s ears. She puts them into Lena’s hand.

What are you doing? Lena says.

Sandra takes the earrings from her own ears. We’re going to trade earrings as a badge that we will always be together. She puts her earrings in Lena’s ears. Then reaches down and takes Lena’s earrings from her hand and puts the little blue earrings in her own ears. Now, I have a badge and you have a badge.

Lena smiles, takes Sandra’s hand, and they start back toward school.

When they get home the elders noticed the switch.

I did not approve of her giving away her earrings, Sandra’s grandmother says to Lena’s mother.

Well, she didn’t give them away, Lena’s mother, says. She traded them for Lena’s. Sandra got the better deal, I must say.

I think not, Grandma says. Those little blue nothings cannot be worth half as much as the intricate workmanship of the red hearts.

But Lena and Sandra insist the trade stay. And, stay it did for a lifetime. They hold hands as they skip up the wooden stairs to Sandra’s bedroom.

I thought school would be more fun, Lena says.

It was fun, but I thought we would learn some new things, Sandra says.

Everything the stupid teacher tries to teach us we learned when we were six. The class is supposed to be for seven year olds not six year olds.

But Sandra, Lena