Wunderland(99)

“Look what you’ve done!” snapped Ava, angrily pushing Greta’s thin leg away.

“She doesn’t want to be bothered,” Theresia explained glumly.

“Oh, yes, she does. Ava! Don’t be a goose.” Greta poked Ava in the ribs lightly. “And don’t worry about the house. I’ve something much more important to tell you.” Her eyes shone like rounded raindrops on a leaf.

“What?” asked Ava, cautiously.

“Deine Mutter,” Greta said breathlessly.

Ava yanked her arm away. “Sie ist tot.”

“She’s not dead.” Greta laughed, the same light and patient laugh she always laughed, no matter how rudely or curtly Ava behaved. “She’s here.”

Ava’s mouth suddenly felt as dry as though she’d taken a bite out of her own building. “What?”

“She’s here,” Greta repeated. “In the office with Mutter Oberin.”

It was as though the air had been sucked from Ava’s lungs, from the sandpit, from the whole coldly bright day. “My mother?” she repeated, the words thick and foreign-feeling on her tongue.

“Yes!” Greta clambered to her feet, yanking Ava up with her, not bothering to wipe the sand from her bare legs. “Come on! Don’t you want to see her?” Leaping from the sand pit with the lightness of a blonde, bony rabbit, Greta started racing back toward the chapel. Ava remained behind for a moment, simply staring after her. Her tongue felt frozen inside her sand-dry mouth, her feet rooted to the sand pit’s shifting floor.

Brushing her hands together, Theresia clambered to her feet. “Aren’t you going to follow her?” she lisped, through her few remaining teeth. “Don’t you want to see your mama?”

Mama, Ava thought.

And then she, too, was running—skipping, stumbling, racing—as if for her very life.



* * *





Ten minutes later, she was sitting in the same oaken chair, in the same dark office in which six months earlier she’d been told by Mutter Oberin her mother was dead. And miraculously, sitting directly across from her in the other big oaken chair, was Ava’s mother, looking very much alive.

Ilse had pale white skin and perfect posture. She had eyes the color of storm clouds and braids the color of cornsilk that wrapped around her head like Greta’s, only thicker and cleaner-looking. She wore clothes that had no holes or patches, and that fell smoothly over her frame in a way that suggested there was actually flesh and fat underneath. She felt familiar in the way that Ingrid Bergman was familiar: a face Ava couldn’t quite place but knew that somehow she knew. And even if her mother’s first reaction upon seeing Ava had not been the whirling embrace of Ava’s dreams—even if, instead, she had almost seemed to flinch, and instead of saying ich liebe dich she’d said nothing at all—she was still the most beautiful woman Ava had ever seen.

Now she was studying Ava with a kind of troubled intensity that left Ava unsure where to direct her own gaze. “She’s grown up so,” she said, sounding almost frightened for some reason. “She looks…”

“Yes?” Peering over the tops of her glasses, Mutter Oberin waited to hear how Ava looked.

But Ilse just shook her head, seemingly unable to finish the sentence. Running a hand over one of her braids, she asked instead: “Are they all so thin?”

“This winter took a particularly hard toll on us,” said Mutter Oberin, a little stiffly. “We’ve managed to scrape by somehow, and now that the weather is nicer we’ll be able to supplement with our own vegetables and things like nettles and dandelions, when they come up.” She nodded, looking the younger woman over. “The Americans seem to have treated you well enough.”

Ilse flushed, which made her even prettier. “I suppose so.”

An uncomfortable pause followed. Then Mutter Oberin cleared her throat. “Ava,” she said. “I know it’s likely a big shock. But isn’t it wonderful? Don’t you have anything to say to your mother?”

Ava blinked, her gaze still fixed on the vision, half afraid that if she spoke it would vanish.

“Hallo,” she said finally, almost whispering.

“Ja, hello.” The woman stared back. Her jaw—square and strong and almost like a man’s—tightened slightly.

“That’s it?” said the head nun, laughing in her dry, coughlike way. “Ava. Show her your drawing.” And to Ava’s mother: “She worked on it for weeks.”

Ava looked down at the image, which she had in fact worked on for weeks, back in the days before she’d decided Ilse was dead. Titled Meine Familie, it showed herself and Ilse and a dog she hoped they might one day maybe have. Ava and the dog were both dark-haired and smiling; Ilse was golden-haired and smiling, and above them all was a smiling golden sun. It was Greta who’d remembered the image and fetched it out from under Ava’s bunk.

Now, hopeful and shy, Ava held it out and watched as Ilse took it in her stocky, strong fingers. For a long moment her mother stared down at the slightly wrinkled picture, her face utterly stripped of emotion. Then she nodded and gave Ava the picture back.

“It’s very nice,” she said. “I like the cat.”

“It’s a dog,” Ava corrected, but her mother had already turned back to the Mutter Oberin. “I assume that there will be some paperwork?”