The German Wife(61)

After a few minutes, Jürgen returned to the house, already unbuttoning his shirt.

“What are we going to do?” I asked him. He shrugged sadly.

“There isn’t much we can do if the police aren’t interested in helping us. We thought about a roster of men to watch the street and try to catch the perpetrator, but there seems little point—what would we do with them once we did? The men are in agreement that the best strategy is to paint over it and hope the culprit gets bored of the game.”

I stood on the porch and watched as Jürgen got to work, carefully rolling paint over the words on the street. The events of the previous night, and now this, left me unsettled and confused. I was trying to keep perspective, reminding myself I’d expected a transition period where things might be uncomfortable—but then a man rounded the corner into our street, on the sidewalk opposite our house. I’d seen him before, on that first day as we arrived from the bus station. Maybe he had to pass through our street as he walked to and from work.

The man stopped a dozen or so feet from where Jürgen was painting over the graffiti. Jürgen looked up at him and offered a nod in greeting, which the man did not return. He just stared at the road for a long moment, his face twisted into a smirk. Then the stranger continued casually on his way.

I waited until he was well out of earshot before I walked down the porch stairs and onto the front path. As I approached Jürgen, he turned back to me and shrugged.

“I thought being in a neighborhood with the other German families would be for the best, but it seems there are some downsides to everyone knowing which street we all live on.”

“Yes, I’d say there are some downsides,” I muttered. “I saw that man the first day we arrived and he was no less hostile then.”

“It will get better. This is still new for everyone. The town will adjust to our presence here in time.”

“I hope so,” I said softly, extending my hand. Jürgen took it and squeezed it gently. “And this time, at least we’re together through the struggle.”



26


Lizzie

El Paso, Texas
1937

After two long years in El Paso, I had finally carved out a life for myself. Everything started to turn around when I stopped waiting for a door to open for me and started looking for ways to force one open.

I set my sights on a housekeeping job at the Hilton, and because a sign in the front window assured me they weren’t hiring, I started lingering in the laneway near the staff entrance. From a distance, I noticed staff coming to that back door with their arms loaded with trash, struggling to carry it to the industrial bins a little way down the lane, then having to rest the trash on the ground while they shifted the heavy lids off the bins. A second set of hands made that whole process so much easier, so I turned their problem into an opportunity and appointed myself the Hilton’s unofficial trash assistant.

I did this for weeks, right through the worst of a bleak winter, wearing multiple layers so I didn’t freeze. Henry thought I’d lost my mind, until the day the housekeeping manager came to the door and greeted me by name. She didn’t offer me a job right away. Instead, she let me clean the staff room and work in the hotel laundry, places where I’d never see a guest or their belongings.

“I can’t pay you,” she said bluntly. “But I can promise if you’re reliable and prove you’re trustworthy, you’ll be at the front of the line when a position does come up.”

And six weeks later, when one of the maids quit to get married, my hard work paid off. We had one hundred and thirty guest rooms to service and I was the first to raise my hand to complete a task, even if it was onerous or particularly filthy. That ingratiated me to the rest of the team. I wouldn’t say I made friends at work, but I certainly earned the respect of Mrs. Thompson and the other maids—and more importantly, I learned to fit in.

The housekeeping job brought enough income for me and Henry to move back into the rooming house, but better accommodation wasn’t the magic fix for Henry’s mood I’d hoped it would be. His charm had always defined him, but it was impossible to charm his way to employment when he always seemed to find himself at the back of a line of desperate men.

My brother had never lied to me before, so I took him at his word when he said he’d been out looking for work during the day, but I wasn’t surprised his job search was going badly. Even now that he had access to laundry facilities and a washroom, Henry wasn’t cleaning himself up. It perplexed me as much as it frustrated me.

“Maybe if you...you know, got up a little earlier?” I suggested. Then I drew in a deep breath. “Maybe you could shave too. I could give you some money for new clothes—”

“Don’t judge me, Lizzie,” he snapped. Henry had never been one to speak harshly to anyone, especially me. Something was changing in him. There was a dullness to his eyes.

The rooming house was vastly more comfortable than the homeless camp, but I figured that if I had a deposit for rent in advance on an apartment, we’d be well-placed to move once Henry found work. Within a few months, I had a little bundle of bills in that envelope. I was devastated the day I came home from work to find it gone.

“You shouldn’t have left money in the room,” Henry said when I told him we’d been robbed. I recoiled, stunned by his sharp tone.