The German Wife(45)

I was already growing a little tired of Henry’s insistence that things were going to turn around, but it would do me no good to discourage him. I scooped up my suitcase and pointed to the west.

“I saw a camp of homeless folk that way,” I said wearily. “Let’s see if we can find somewhere to sleep down there.”

Days began to blend into weeks, but I was too tired to keep track of how long we’d been in the city. We found ourselves a cast-off square of canvas and Henry fashioned it into a kind of tent, strung across rope between a tree and the side of a bridge, in a camp full of other makeshift tents. We slept on piles of old newspapers I collected from trash cans while Henry lined up at a church, waiting to be given someone’s old blankets.

Henry and I traversed the city knocking on every door asking for work until we knew its dead ends the same way we’d once known every field on the farm. At the end of the day, we would meet up at a soup kitchen for dinner.

At night, as we lay top-to-toe beneath that tent, I’d think about Mother. I knew what she’d say if she was still with us. She’d remind me that I was strong. A survivor, she’d say. She’d tell me to have faith. She’d tell me to keep going, even when it felt hopeless.

But while I waited and I prayed and I tried to be patient as I persevered, I came across an emotion I’d never felt before—I started to feel lost.

I knew downtown El Paso back to front after a few months, but I still couldn’t figure out who I was in that place, or who I was meant to be.

I’d been knocking on doors in the industrial district one day, and I was running a little early to meet Henry at the soup kitchen for dinner. I didn’t want to stand in the line on my own, so I was dawdling when I found myself standing opposite the new Hilton hotel—the tallest building in downtown El Paso. I scanned the opulent front entrance, then cast my gaze up over twenty-one astounding stories to the rooftop balconies.

Just then, a woman emerged from the laneway beside the building. I recognized the exhaustion on her face—I’d seen it in the mirror a hundred times. That was the look of someone who had worked an honest day’s living, who had made it to the end of the day tired, dignity intact.

I knew that feeling. I wanted to feel that kind of tired again so bad, I could taste it.

That exhausted maid emerging from the hotel represented the first glimmer of familiarity I’d experienced in months. She might have laughed if she knew how inspired I was by the bags under her eyes and her slumped shoulders, her feet that dragged through sheer weariness.

But when I saw her, I also saw a way forward. I’d spent months trying to find work, finding every door I knocked on remained closed. Something had to change.

I was going to master city life, just as I’d mastered every skill I’d ever needed on the farm. I still didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I had just decided where.



21


Lizzie

Huntsville, Alabama
1950

As I pushed open the door to the restaurant, I studiously avoided looking at the Whites Only sign hanging in the window. Ever since Sofie Rhodes mentioned those signs, I was keenly aware of them everywhere I went.

I was late again that day. I’d noticed that one of Henry’s shirts on the clothesline had stains on it, so I took it back inside to treat it with turpentine. Henry did his own laundry—one blessed habit he’d picked up in the Army—but advanced stains like paint were beyond his skill set. He didn’t like me to baby him, so even once I got the paint out, I had to quickly rewash the turpentine smell out of his shirt and hang it on the line so he didn’t notice I’d interfered.

It had been hard to motivate myself to shower, fix my hair, and put my makeup on after that. Some part of me always wanted to skip those lunches, but forcing myself to go had become an ingrained habit. Now my heels echoed against the tiles in the restaurant as I walked briskly to the table where the Fort Bliss women sat.

“We almost started without you!” Becca said lightly. I reached to smooth my hair and forced a smile.

“Sorry,” I said. “Busy day.”

I paused to hug her and Juanita, then Gail and even Avril. When it came to Avril, I was polite all of the time, warm when it suited me, and never trusting. I had learned that lesson the hard way, once upon a time.

The five of us swapped notes on the move—who was still unpacking, whose kids were enjoying the new school, who had the worst neighbors. And then Becca sighed happily.

“I’m so glad we all wound up here together after all,” she murmured, lowering her voice. “It feels like we moved from an emerging city to a dying small town.”

“My new neighbors are so excited that we’re here,” Gail said, smiling to herself. “One of them says Huntsville will one day be known as ‘rocket city.’ Maybe we’re arriving right at the start of something amazing.”

“And what does your new neighbor think about these Nazis?” Becca asked pointedly. Gail shrugged.

“She doesn’t seem too troubled that some of us are German. Besides, Trevor said that they aren’t actually Nazis. He said they just had ordinary government jobs in Germany. It’s not their fault the government happened to be run by the devil himself.”

“I just find that so hard to believe,” Becca said helplessly. She glanced at me. “Right from the beginning you said there was something rotten about the whole arrangement, didn’t you, Lizzie?” I’d never hidden my concern or displeasure at the program Calvin was working on, but as he’d requested, I never told anyone why. I tried to shrug noncommittally.