HEIDI POPEK - GROWN UP THINGS

Heidi Popek lives in New York.  Her work has been published in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Play of Mind, Affaire du Coeur; online at sayitatyourwedding.com and mothersalwayswrite.com.  She believes we are all in this world together, so choose kindness.

GROWN UP THINGS
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I am sitting at the kitchen table thinking I have never hated anything as much as algebra.  As if I’m ever going to use it beyond junior high school. It’s tempting to fill in the mimeographed worksheet with random numbers so I have something to turn in on Monday. 
 From the open kitchen window I hear the neighborhood boys laughing and shouting at each other, racing their bikes down the narrow side street.  I’m so jealous. My parents have rules: homework as soon as I get home from school, dinner promptly at five-thirty, help with the dishes, take a bath, and if I’m lucky, an hour of television before lights out.  And it’s usually what my parents want to watch.
My mother is at the stove, stirring a pot of chicken stew with a long wooden spoon, her head tilted to the cadence of the street noise.  “Don’t those youngsters have homework, Frieda?” 
It’s time to change the subject before she asks about my homework.  “I’m hungry. Can we eat before Papa gets home?”
My mother checks her wristwatch and sighs.  My father is never this late. She slivers a wedge of red onion on the chopping block; purple crescents tumble into green leaf lettuce in a glass bowl, followed by tomato and cucumber slices, a handful of olives.  She looks at me and says, “We wait ten more minutes and then we start without him.” 
Just when I thought I was off the hook, my mother says, “Now put away the algebra you haven’t finished and set the table.  Papa will help you with the problems later.”
“Maybe he stopped at the store,” I say, my hands full of placemats and silverware.
“For what, Frieda?” 
“I don’t know, but Brenda’s father stops for cigarettes and candy all the time.”  
My mother smirks and rolls her eyes in my direction.  “What would Papa need cigarettes for when he doesn’t smoke?”
“But that’s not true,” I say, placing a loaf of sliced rye bread on the table.  “There’s an old picture in the photo album with German words on it, and Papa was wearing a uniform.  He was leaning against a big tank with a cigarette in his hand.”
“Remember when I explained that Papa was a soldier?”
“Yes, but…”
 “Sometimes soldiers smoked during the war because it was all they had, Frieda, a small pleasure.”  She checks her watch again before sliding her hands into her apron pockets. “It helped them cope, but that was a long time ago, and Papa doesn’t smoke now.”
It occurs to me that I’ve never heard my parents speak in depth about the war.  I’d almost forgotten my father had been a German soldier, like some vague fact I’d once read in the encyclopedia at school.  Now I remember the tattered black and white photo of him, deep shadows framing his eyes as he squinted into the distance. On the reverse, in my mother’s neat lettering, “leaving Berlin in forty-two.”  He’d been nineteen years old.  
My mother has a far-away look on her face.  I don’t understand. When I speak, my voice is a whisper. “What sorts of things did the soldiers have to cope with?”
Slipping into a chair, a soft look in her blue eyes, my mother says, “With grown up things, Frieda.”  She places her hand over mine, her fingers warm and gentle. “But the war is in the past; we don’t talk about it now, and never in front of Papa.  Verstehen?”  
I nod my head, not really understanding at all.  
“Good,” my mother says, “now hand me your bowl.”
As I taste the first spoonful of stew, gravel crunches under tires. The familiar sound of jazz music declares that Papa is home even as I jump up to look out the window.  
Papa never comes home late from work, not like my friend Brenda’s father.  My mother says it’s shameful, the way Bud Baxter bellies up to the bar at the corner pub while his family eats cheap TV dinners, all they can afford, on tray tables in front of Walter Cronkite each evening.    
Papa and Mr. Baxter work together as carpenters.  Mr. Baxter used to ask Papa to stop for a beer after work, even though Papa always declined the offer.  Papa says drinking beer with coworkers is a bad idea, but Bud never gets the hint. One day he’d almost given in to Bud.  The heat had felt like a blast furnace, and the thought of an ice-cold beer in a dark tavern was tempting. Papa laughed so hard, telling my mother how he’d told Bud that Mama served dinner at five-thirty sharp, and he was too smart to be late for her good cooking, afraid he would come home to a little aluminum tray of mystery meat warmed in the oven, and if it was all the same to Bud, he would drink his beer at home.  After that day, Mr. Baxter never asked Papa to join him again, and Papa was always home for dinner, like clockwork.   
I hear Papa taking off his work boots in the foyer off the kitchen.  He smiles when he enters the kitchen, his face suntanned from outdoor work, but his eyes, crinkling under light brows slanting to his temples, are missing their usual spark of enthusiasm.
“Frau,” he says, patting my mother’s shoulder as he peeks under the lid of the stew pot.  
 “Hans,” she says, her tone measured, “why are you late?  It’s Friday. Did you get laid off?”
“Nein.”  Papa says, emptying his pockets into a small bowl:  keys, loose coins, a cough drop, a thin leather wallet.  Sawdust sprinkles trail him across the kitchen floor.  
Mama frowns at her clean kitchen floor. “What then?”
“Trouble, Frau.”
Papa lays his hand on top of my head, smoothing my long hair. “Schatz,” he says, kissing me on my forehead.  He smells like wood shavings and spearmint gum.   At the sink, he rolls up his sleeves, lathers a Lava bar up to his elbows, scrubbing his fingernails with a small brush like a doctor prepping for surgery.  
“Hans?” My mother is nothing if not persistent. “What trouble?”
 Papa dries his arms with a blue towel, dropping his head back as if something interesting was happening on the ceiling.  “The usual,” he whispers, closing his eyes. He slides his clean hands down his face, across his bristled jaw. When he opens his eyes, he looks at my mother for a long time.  
In that simple moment of silent communication, I realize my mother knows why Papa is late.  She told me once that married people have silent conversations, that one day I would understand.  
But I need to know, now.  “What’s going on?”    
“Frieda, sit down and eat, before it gets cold,” my mother says.  She ladles stew into a bowl for Papa. “Pass the bread and butter.”
“I wish someone would tell me what’s going on,” I say, watching the steam twist and turn above my bowl.  “I’m not a little child.”
Papa sits back in his chair, places his bread on the wide rim of his bowl.  His mouth is as straight as a pencil, his serious look. His wide shoulders block the orange and pink tipped clouds beyond the window.  “Frieda,” he says, his thickly accented voice gentle and calm, “it’s not for you to think about, or to worry about. Sometimes your Papa’s mouth works faster than his Kopf,” he says, tapping the side of his head with his index finger.  He points at my bowl. “Now eat. Mama worked hard. Ja?”
After dinner I help my mother with the dishes, wiping the table and tidying the kitchen.  Papa helps me understand my algebra assignment and watches patiently as I correct mistakes.  
The evening news carries the usual footage on the war in Vietnam:  soldiers with ammunition belts strapped across their chests loading body bags into helicopters; protestors marching in front of the White House; college students burning the American flag.  Papa makes a sound deep in his throat, gets up and changes the channel to a nature program about wolves. 
Mama told me once the reason she married Papa was because he liked books as much as she did, that he was quiet around other people, but when they were alone, he told funny stories that made her laugh.  They left their homeland to come to America because Papa always said that America was the greatest country on earth. But he always missed home; he missed Berlin. I wondered what it would be like to leave all that was familiar and move to a new country.
Brenda and I walk to school under an overcast sky on Monday morning.  Her white knee socks slip down around her ankles, and she stops often to pull them up.   Brenda’s mother lets her wear strawberry lip gloss to school since eighth grade is practically high school.  Brenda stops in the middle of the sidewalk and pulls out the sparkly pink tube. She holds it under my nose. “Smell this,” she commands.  “Doesn’t it smell cool?” 
“You’re going to make us late,” I say, as Brenda glides the tube across her lips until they shimmer like pink icing against her pale skin.  “Mama packed an extra slice of apple kuchen in my lunch box for you.”  I wonder how it will taste mixed with strawberry lip gloss.  
“No thanks,” Brenda says, stopping to examine her reflection in a store window.  “I’m on a diet.”
“That’s stupid, Brenda.  You’re not even fat.”
“Shows what you know,” Brenda says, flipping her dark hair over her shoulder. 
The first warning bell sounds as we reach the grounds of Sacred Heart Academy.  I run up the stairs to the double glass doors and hold open the door for Brenda, who saunters in like we’re way too early instead of late.
“I heard your dad got in trouble on Friday,” Brenda says, reaching for her socks.
The second warning bell peals.  Fellow latecomers slip past us and run down the hall to homeroom.  My heart beats a staccato rhythm that feels strange. I don’t want a night of detention for being late, but I slow my pace and stare at Brenda.  
“What are you talking about?”
We reach Brenda’s homeroom first.  “My dad said your father was shooting off his mouth at work.”  
I shake my head.  “I don’t think so, Brenda.”
Brenda takes a step toward her homeroom door. “My dad said your father was a Nazi, and all the men at work think he still loves Hitler.”
Suddenly the halls have gone quiet and the only sound I hear is my heart pulsing in my ears.  “What do you mean?”
Brenda laughs; it sounds like a bark.  “Are you serious? You don’t know what a Nazi is?”
I shake my head, hating the mean look in Brenda’s eyes.  She’s supposed to be my best friend. 
“Duh, Frieda.  World War two. Ring any bells?”
I can’t stop staring at Brenda’s glistening lips, her secretive smirk.  “Papa was a soldier in the war.”
“So was my dad, but he wasn’t a Nazi.”  Brenda flicks her hair again and I feel the urge to hack it all off with a pair of Mama’s sewing scissors.  “Only the Germans were Nazis, Frieda.”
My mouth has gone dry and I hurry to the water fountain across the hall.
“You’ll find out, next year in Social Studies,” Brenda says.  “We had to watch old black and white films. There were mountains of dead people in concentration camps.”  Brenda pauses, tilts her head as if she were looking at a museum exhibit. “They were all the people killed by the Nazis.  They looked like skeletons. They gassed them and buried them in mass graves, you know.”
I swallow the shout forming in my throat and whisper, “My father didn’t kill anyone, Brenda.”
The third and final warning bell is a shrill alarm.  We both startle and turn toward our homerooms, Brenda murmuring, “I’m sure your father killed lots of them.  He has a temper.”
By lunch time I feel sick to my stomach.  Sister Margaret, the school nurse, sticks a thermometer under my tongue, makes me lie down on a cot with sheets that smell of bleach while she calls my mother.  At home I crawl into bed with my old stuffed rabbit that’s missing one eye and its fluffy cottontail. Sleep pulls me under, but Brenda’s words are stamped on the back of my eyelids.  I dream of Papa, a cigarette hanging from his mouth while he shoots skeletons.  
My room is filled with shadows when I wake.  My pillowcase is damp. I hear my parents talking in German in the kitchen.  They only speak German when they don’t want me to know what they’re talking about. 
My mother makes potato pancakes with homemade apple sauce for supper, my favorite, but I can’t eat a bite; my appetite doesn’t exist.  Papa comes in to see me, a tender look on his face. He pulls a chair next to my bed and puts his warm palm on my forehead. I try not to cry, but tears escape and slide down my face like rain. 
Papa whispers, “Schatz, what is it?”
Mama enters my bedroom with a cool glass of water.  “Drink some water, Frieda.” I do as I’m told, wiping my tear stained cheeks.  “Does your stomach hurt?”
I shake my head.  “Not anymore.”
“She doesn’t have a fever,” Papa says, holding my hand.  
I look at his crinkly blue eyes and his five o’clock shadow, his faded flannel shirt.  It’s hard to get my mouth to form the terrible words. “Did you kill people in the war?”
Papa looks at Mama for a long time.  Another silent conversation.  
Mama sits on the side of my bed and takes my other hand.  “Frieda, war is violent.” She smooths my hair. “Bad things happen.  Many people don’t survive.”
I look at Papa again, holding his gaze.  “But is it true, Papa? Did you kill people?”
“Frieda,” Mama says, “soldiers don’t have a choice.  They must follow orders.” Deep lines form above her eyebrows.  “Close your eyes. Think of good things.”
 When I was little we had a sweet terrier mix that followed Papa everywhere and made him smile.  Her rough coat was white and gray, and Papa said she was his little shadow. One morning when Papa was mowing the grass, his shadow slipped her leash to chase a squirrel and wandered into the street.  Papa noticed too late. He shouted her name, running toward the traffic, waving his arms, but he couldn’t save her from a speeding car. Papa carried that dead dog from the street, shouting words that Mama didn’t want me to hear.  She covered my ears with her hands, tears streaming down both our faces. He wrapped the dog in an old wool blanket, dug a deep hole under a maple tree, and shoveled the rich brown earth over her until he was satisfied that nothing could dig her up.  When he was finished, he threw down his shovel and sat on the grass for a long time, his face buried in his hands. It was the first time I’d ever seen Papa cry. He disappeared into the garage for the rest of the day. When Mama sent me to call him in for supper, I found him fast asleep in a sagging lawn chair.  Next to his feet, a dozen empty beer bottles stood like sentinels on the cold concrete.  
Now Papa stares out the window, silent as stone.  His eyes are moist. He sighs, and it sounds like a breath he’s been holding in for years.  A single tear rolls down his cheek.



           

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