The Blackberry Bush (8 page)

Waves of what Mom calls “vertigo” keep rolling over me. She told me not to walk to school along the top of the wall, just for today.

It will take every one of us a decade, at least, to get our balance back. If we ever do. Once the season changes, the old one doesn’t come back for a long time.

I immediately think of Oma Adri. She would know what to do.

The instant I think of her, the phone rings.

Sure enough, it’s Oma.

________________

*
To view this amazing painting for yourself, search your internet browser for: “Vermeer vrouw met weegschaal” or “Vermeer woman with a balance”

2001
9-11 Attack Day
Zarzamora, California

Janine

J
ANINE
, J
OSH’S MOTHER, STANDS ALONE
behind the counter of the wine-tasting room of the Zarzamora Winery.

The radio is on, and Janine has been staring for hours at the polished wood floors as she listens to every word of the news. Now she glances at her exotic Asian ring, and memories start to trigger.

For the first time ever, on a beautiful sunny September day, not one visitor has come in all day. The slow season doesn’t usually start until later in the month. She will lock up tonight without having talked to a single person. Even the phone has not rung.

Janine could use the money, so she stays on for the full shift and punches the clock. Having grown up in a prominent, wealthy family, this is quite an adjustment.

She has plenty of time to think about the 9-11 terror atrocities being broadcast through speakers into the wine-tasting room.

Atrocities. Her mind flips to an earlier time—her sixteenth birthday in Holland—when Oma Nellie had taken her to a fancy restaurant at De Bijenkorf Department Store. There Oma Nellie had told her everything that had happened in 1944....

1944
Hillegersberg, Holland

Z
WANGER
(
PREGNANT
)?

Nellie’s mother admits, in the kitchen over afternoon tea, that she suspected as much. Nellie has found it impossible to hide the growing baby, and her mother calls her in to talk about it. Nellie had been playing from Chopin’s preludes on the Bösendorfer piano in the solarium.

“
Ja, moeder
(yes, Mother), it’s true. And I love the father. Even though he’s not in the room, I was playing that for him. He adores my music.”

Mother covers Nellie’s hands lovingly on the table. “We’ll make this right somehow. These things happen, even in our circles.”

“Mother?”

“Yes.”

“The father is German.”

A
S
N
ELLIE STANDS ON THE STREET
in front of Ruud’s magnificent home, a few blocks from her own, her mother’s words play over and over in her mind: “
Don’t ever come home again
.” She can still feel the bruise burning around her left ear caused by her mother striking her after learning the baby’s father was German. Her lunge at Nellie knocked the table on its side and smashed much of the priceless tea service.

So
, Nellie thinks,
I’m pregnant and showing it, on the street and in wartime, carrying the unborn child of a married enemy soldier. And I’m at the door of the young man with whom I broke our marriage engagement because I knew I didn’t really love him.

She exhales slowly through pursed lips.

Just a few months prior, Nellie had risked what was left of her reputation to accompany Walter, in public, to Rotterdam’s Centraal Station, as he was shipped out on a troop train to the Russian front. Every last German soldier was needed to defend the Fatherland as the juggernaut Soviet Army was thundering across the steppes, aiming at Berlin.

As the train started to pull away, Walter silently handed Nellie his magnificent Swiss Ziffer watch through the cabin window. Nellie reached up while running along with the train, grabbed it, and held it to one cheek as she waved with her free hand. She vowed to keep it running until she saw Walter again—the ticking reminding her of his presence and the hope that he was surviving the Russian onslaught.

Not long afterward, she wrote him about the pregnancy. When she didn’t hear back, she had no idea if he was even alive. But while writing him, she looked down at the huge man’s watch on the desk and noted it was still ticking. So she could at least hope....

Now, as she gazes at Ruud’s house, she holds a small suitcase in one hand and her pregnant belly in the other.

F
ROM AN UPPER-FLOOR BAY WINDOW
, a wealthy older woman gazes at Nellie. The room behind her is filled with full-length oil portraits of important-looking people wearing orange sashes.

Nellie looks down at her suitcase and up at the house about three times. It takes the older woman awhile to “read” the situation. But when she figures it out, a flood of compassion fills her, and she turns and runs down the stairs.

Flinging open the door, the older woman hurries to Nellie and throws her arms around the girl, lifting her off the ground.

At first, Nellie is startled. The suitcase goes flying and bounces twice. But then her arms return the hug. Oh, how she has always loved Ruud’s mother. Family friends, they are. Nellie has grown up calling her Tante (Aunt) Riek.

Nellie inhales the older woman’s expensive perfume scent as they embrace on this brisk spring morning.

For the first time, Nellie believes that she and the baby might just live through this war.

Thank you, God. Thank you, God
.

Angelo

2003
Melrose District
Los Angeles, California

K
ati is pedaling on her beach-cruiser bike past the trendy shops along Melrose Avenue on her way home.

If you can call it home.

She’s gotten taller but is still almost painfully thin and pale. Her prominent nose seems to stick out from an unruly, dark mop of hair. Her eyes are hidden.

Kati and Josh have traded continents recently.

In fact they were both in the air, flying in opposite directions, on the same “moving” day: Kati westbound on Lufthansa Flight 119, Frankfurt/LA; Josh eastbound on KLM Flight 911, LA/Amsterdam.

It’s typical California “June gloom” weather. Overcast. A hoodie sweatshirt kind of day…

Kati

I
DO NOT WANT TO GO HOME
.

I love home and hate it—at the same time.

It’s always great to walk in and see Opa, who’s lived with us since we moved to Los Angeles. But Mutti told me not to come home unless I get a haircut, and I’m not getting one. She used to say it was because she was afraid of long hair getting caught in the power tools that Opa and I would use, but we left those behind with the family that’s renting our house back in Germany.

Nowadays, she just tells me it’s because I don’t have nice hair, and the less of it I have, the better. Well, I’m not cutting it today, and I’m
never
cutting it. It’s the one thing I can control about my looks. There’s always one pancake in a batch that is shaped funny and a little burned. That would be me.

Johanna’s hair is perfect. She’s perfect. Being around her—and everybody who makes such a big deal over her—is hard for me. So I stay away from home as much as I can.

Mutti told me that moving to California would be a chance for me to start over, to be more popular than I was in Germany. She meant well, but it made me dread the pressure of coming here and having to perform better, socially, for her.

I still have very few friends, and Americans name everyone their friends. If I were to stop calling or greeting people, I would fall off of the map. No one ever takes the initiative to get to know me. No one, except Zara, really even knows I’m from another country. My English is perfect, and no one seems interested enough to ask where I come from.

Zara is from Pakistan. There are a lot of Pakistanis and Orthodox Jews here in the Melrose District.

I love the colorful shops here along Melrose. Wish I had lived here all my life. There is so much to see here—so much going on. LA is always in present tense. No one cares about history. It’s all about the here and now. So much right-now that it makes you dizzy. I think I just said “so much” three times.

I go in and out of most of the shops on a regular basis. The fashions are way ahead of what we were wearing in Germany. I tell Mutti I’m with friends, but I’m usually shopping alone. Every time I ride all the way through the Melrose District, a storefront has changed hands. There’s always something new to look at.

I wish I could resent Johanna for being the always-favored one, but she’s so likeable. Should I feel bad for wanting with all my might to dislike her? Why can’t
I
be likeable? She doesn’t seem to have to work at it. But the more I work at being liked, the worse it works. It’s
so
not fair.

And all the girls at school, including Zara, are developing a figure. Not me. Mutti even took me to the doctor to ask what’s wrong. I have never been more humiliated in all my life than sitting there in the doctor’s office. They can’t find anything physical that might be causing it. I just look like a skinny, awkward boy with a lot of hair. I hate walking by mirrors. That’s why I never wear jeans or pants—always a stylish skirt or dress. I am traumatized by the thought of people wondering what gender I am. Can you imagine how embarrassing that is for me? Maybe they don’t wonder at all, but I worry about it anyway.

There are days when I physically feel like I’m always about to lose my balance. It’s hard to describe. It’s like chronic tripping…constantly being “off.”

I’m afraid of mistakes, so I speak softly and then people always have to ask me to repeat myself—which makes the awkwardness worse.

Mutti bought me new jeans for Christmas last year, and they still have the tags on them. Like I’m going to wear them and have everyone think I’m a boy. Not going to happen. Makeup doesn’t work very well, either. My hair is bushy, my eyes are small, my nose is huge, so why draw attention to my face with cosmetics? I’m developing a mega-collection of big sunglasses. No one will have to see my eyes.

And I’m too tall. Way too tall. It would be embarrassing to dance with a boy my age…although I would love to be asked.

Mutti denies she does this, but I believe she works hard behind the scenes to get me invited to parties and beach bonfires. The kids are so friendly here, way more open and sunny than my classmates in Germany. But I don’t know how to act around them. I think I could easily tell if a boy was ever interested in me—but that just doesn’t happen.

I tell Mutti that the parties go well, because she gives me a social coaching session if I don’t. But that encourages her to get me invited even more often. It’s a vicious circle. I want to go to the parties, really I do, but I’m also relieved when the plans sometimes fall through. I often leave early, when I can’t stand the awkwardness of being around people for even one more minute.