 
Sandra

A True Story

by

Alexander Hope

With

Helen Raines

Published by Alexander Hope at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Alexander Hope

1938

FRIDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 30, 1938 "FOUR-POWER PEACE PACT SIGNED" Sudetenland Given to Hitler Compromise Plan Adopted at Munich Calls for Nazi Troops to Begin Occupying Czech Territory Tomorrow. MUNICH, Sept. 30, (Friday) (UP) Britain, France, Germany and Italy early today signed a compromise agreement for surrender of Czechoslovakia which, if it refuses to accept the terms, must face Germany without any help from France or Great Britain.

While a little Austrian psychopath bullies Czechoslovakia and creates disorder in the Sudetenland, Berlin is tranquil. Citizens can attend anyone of three hundred and fifty theaters or browse through twelve thousand periodicals. Life is good in Germany unless you are a Jew or four-year-old Sandra Schmidt. Sandra sits on a hard, wooden bench. This is her punishment; the hard wooden bench. It is always, "Sandra, go sit on the hard wooden bench for an hour." The wooden bench in her father's room has soft pillows. Big soft pillows with pretty pictures of ducks. The other big soft pillows with duck pictures fill the house. They are in every room. Her father stole them from the company he works for.

But, her wooden bench has no big soft pillows with pictures of ducks. Her hard wooden bench has no pillows at all. Her feet do not touch the ground so her back hurts and her legs begin to cramp for what seems like hours. She has just learned to tell time, but it doesn't matter, she doesn't wear a watch. Her father has a box full of pretty watches. She doesn't own a watch because her father refuses to give her one even though it is one of many items he carries in his product line. The line that takes him all over Germany and keeps him from ever being home.

If she did have a watch, it will only verify what she already knows; she is fed-up with sitting on this bench. She knows that time is longer for a child than for an adult; her father told her it is because if a child is one year old and is told to wait a year for something to happen—a birthday or something—that year, that long year that the child waits, is equal to the time the child already lived—one hundred percent—the child lives a lifetime for that birthday to come; but if an old man is told to wait a year—for a job promotion or something—and the old man is already sixty years old; then the old man only waits one of sixty lifetime; not an only lifetime like the child must wait; not an only lifetime, Sandra thinks. Her father explained the time thing to her mother once, while he was sitting at her mother's bedside, in the dark bedroom, at the back of the house. Her mother didn't understand or maybe it was the medication she was on or maybe her mother was just bored from listening to her know-it-all husband go on and on with one piece of information after another; but Sandra thinks she understands the time thing because it seems she's already spent a year on the hard bench.

Sandra knows she is too young to hate, but if she was sitting on this hard bench when she is old, say like twelve, she would hate him with all her heart and soul. Her father, Herbert Schmidt, told her to sit on the hard, wooden bench, at the front of the house, and watch the flowers grow. Her father, Herbert Schmidt, thinks his daughter, Sandra Schmidt, is stupid; flowers no longer grow in her mother's garden. There are all kinds of flowers in the garden that her mother planted when she was not so ill. Her father begrudgingly kept them watered while her mother was alive, so if her mother ever came back home; and of course her father gives information about the flowers, "Sandra, see this is a Tulip, and this is a Rose and this is a blah, blah, blah," he says. But now, the flowers are dying—you can still see the colors in them and tell the different flowers, but they are dying; the flowers haven't been watered —since her mother died; and Sandra knows they won't be watered ever again; it is her father's protest against God and every living thing left on earth.

Little, beautiful, Sandra sits and watches and watches and sits, and in her young mind she knows she is being lied to; flowers don't grow fast enough for even a child with perfect twenty twenty eyesight to see them grow especially if they are not watered for many days. Why did God make flowers so they need water? They should be able to get water from the ground. Then these flowers can grow without a hateful father watering them.

When her father comes, to find a larger suitcase, she murmurs, "You can't see the flowers grow. You just lied to me to keep me sitting on this hard bench. No one can see flowers grow especially if you never water them."

"I always water them," her father says, "I've just been very busy and sad and angry. Besides, you can see flowers grow. You can see them grow if you sit very quietly and don't say a word, and if you've been a good girl. You have been a good girl, haven't you Sandra?"

"Yes! I've been a good girl!" Sandra says. "I'm always a good girl. Grandma says I'm the goodest girl in the whole wide world."

"I'm glad your grandmother thinks so," he says as he carries an empty suitcase toward the back of the house. "Because you're going to be with her for a long, long time!"

She is always a good girl; even when other children act like fools, Sandra is a good girl. She once took a pair of pretty earrings from her mother's jewel box; her father beat her with his belt so hard that big old welts stayed on her tiny legs for weeks or maybe even months and he beat her mother just as hard for trying to stop him from beating Sandra. But she is a good girl. But what has it gotten her: her beautiful mother died; yes, little Sandra knows she died even though everybody wants to tell her she is just away for a while—Sandra knows her precious mother died and went to Heaven. Went to Heaven, to be with the Angels, because God needs her for something; some important chore. God must need her more than Sandra needs her, Sandra thinks; but no matter how hard and long Sandra racks her tiny brain, and she has lots of time to rack her tiny brain on the hard bench, Sandra can think of no reason that makes it more important for a mother to be with God then to be with a lonely, frightened daughter; a daughter who is now left with only a very frightening, but very well informed, monster: her father.

Sandra is wearing her black dress; the one her father brought home for the funeral. The dress, made with a full skirt and little dark-red flowers along the hem, Sandra thinks should be all black, no flowers, because flowers appear too happy for a funeral day. She has a big, big pain in her heart because her heart is broken and no one can ever fix it or put it back together again. Her mother died slowly, very slowly over a long period of time, especially time measured by a child who was always waiting for her mother to get well and come back home and hold her and hug her. Her mother was home from the clinic several times before Death took her, but she is always (was always) in bed or on a cot in the garden with all the beautiful flowers.

Her mother was like the flowers; beautiful. The most beautiful mother ever. Sandra is certain that beautiful people are not supposed to die or even get ill; beauty is some kind of protection against illness; maybe beauty is a special gift from God; if there is a God. Her father says there is no God: that there can't be or his wife would still be alive and taking care of him; but her mother always told her to pray and pray and pray and all her prayers will be answered; but Sandra prayed for months and months that her mother gets well and comes home, and that her mother takes her shopping for a new dress to wear to Grandma's house where they can both go to be away from her father, Herbert Schmidt.

Nobody likes Herbert, she thinks. That's why he's such a poor salesman. Somehow Herbert sold her mother on being his wife. How'd he do that? Sandra thinks. Her mother was so, so beautiful. Her mother never looked like she was dying; but her mother and Sandra never played or danced or took walks together like other mothers and daughters did across the city and in the parks and at the schools where Sandra was always without a mother. The other children will laugh at her or worse: they will feel sorry for her and bring her cookies baked by mothers who feel sorry for her; or they will invite her to mother-and-daughter things and their mothers will try to act like her mother but none of them can be her mother.

Sandra strokes Greta, her doll. Sometimes Greta speaks to her but only in a whisper. Sandra knows dolls can't speak, but Greta started talking to her, in her mind, when there was only her father to talk to her and he wouldn't. Fathers are like that. Fathers have more important things to do than to talk to little girls. They have to talk to grownups all day long, so when they get home to their lonely, little daughters, they have no more to say. But dolls, like Greta, are supposed to talk to little girls; that is their job; a job given to them by God or a big, old ragdoll in the sky. Somehow she knows that if there is a God a good and gracious God that God would create dolls like Greta just so lonely, little girls can have someone to talk to; someone to tell their dreams to; someone to hold them. God would make a special doll for a child like Sandra who now has no mothers.

Sandra really never had a mother at least not as long as she can remember. Greta is a special doll but Greta is tired of talking; they talked it over and over so many times and it appears that Greta agrees with everything Sandra says; either Sandra is a genius or Greta is just being nice or maybe being practical because Sandra can throw her out anytime she wants or worse; Sandra can just leave her in the closed toy box. She would never leave Greta in a closed toy box because that's how Sandra lives; in a closed toy box. This house has lots of toys but she never gets to go out. Her father just closes the lid and gives the key to his nasty old mother. One good thing about leaving her father (there are many other good things) is leaving his nasty mother and maybe Sandra will never ever have to see her again.

When a half hour passes, and none of the flowers grow even a fingertip or half a fingertip or anything at all, Sandra goes to look for her father. The house is spooky-quiet but she fortify herself, straightens her shoulders, and then moves to the bottom of the staircase and looks up: the first room is a guestroom with nothing in it so it looks real, real spooky. Sandra knows her father won't be in that room because it is the room her mother used when she came home and it is isolated from the rest of the house. And the next room is the master bedroom and Sandra is never allowed in that room because maybe her father might be in his under shorts and undershirt and no decent young lady is supposed to see her father in his under shorts and undershirt.

She is trying not to cry, trying not to make her father scream at her again, because his screams are becoming louder and scarier than ever especially to a little four-year-old girl. In her mind, she knows that the funeral means her mother finally died: that's what her father says, "Well she finally died." Sandra knows that sounds wrong. But that's what he says and he keeps saying it to anyone who wants to listen. She heard many people say the same...like they all wanted her mother to die, or get well; one or the other. Berta Schmidt had been dying for as long as Sandra could remember—for her age, she can remember pretty good especially anything to do with her mother.

Her beautiful mother contracted T.B. and was sent to some kind of clinic for beautiful mothers who suffer from TB. Sandra never visited her mother when she was in the T.B. Clinic. The clinic was very famous. Davos. And it was in Switzerland. The doctors at the clinic believed that the high altitude of the Alps created the fresh air needed by the patients. They were to take in the fresh air and make the air cure their T.B. But Sandra's beautiful mother breathed in the air for a long, long time and the air didn't cure anything. And for all anybody knows, the mountain air made her mother get worse.

The clinic was new and modern. Her father's insurance paid for some of the care but a major part was paid by her grandfather who visited her mother often. He always came back and told Sandra that her mother was getting better and that she sent her love to Sandra and grandmother and all her friends; but Sandra could look at her grandfather's sad face and know that things were not going well. The week before her mother died, Sandra's grandfather told her that her mother was coming home and would be at the table for Sandra's fifth birthday party, but he lied, but it was a good lie because it was done to make a little girl feel good, if just for a while. Her grandfather told good lies; but her father told bad lies.

"He squeezes their money until it squeaks," Grandpa said.

"We should bring her back to Germany," her father said to her grandfather.

"She will not get well; she will have no chance if we bring her back here," grandfather said. "No one ever survives in a German T.B. Clinic. They should be called terminal clinics; designed like Hitler's concentration camps. In fact you probably have a better chance in one of Hitler's camps. Four of my friends have died in the last six years, because they stayed in German clinics."

"This is not your decision. I'm her husband. I'm the one suffering the financial hardship."

"She's my daughter. I will pay the bill. You keep your money and use it for Sandra," grandfather said.

"What will people say if I don't pay something," Herbert said. "My customers will all call me a cheap bastard, an uncaring husband." He rubs his forehead. "What will people say?"

"Don't worry what people say. I'm going to pay the money to keep her in the best clinic in Europe. You do what you want, but you are not bringing her back to Germany. I will use all my power to stop you. Don't even think of going against me!"

Sandra's beautiful mother cried, at each visit, about not being able to see her beloved Sandra and she begged to see her once more before she died, but the doctors said Sandra would get the T.B. if she made the trip.

Sandra's father says her mother caught T.B. cleaning rich peoples houses; he says it came from the dust and germs. She would not have gotten T.B. if she just stayed at home and nurtured Sandra and him. There is less dust and no germs in their house, I meant, so he says. But her mother wanted more things than her father could provide; he provided just the basics; no new cloths, no new cars, no new house. So she worked for the rich people but still there were no new cloths, no new cars, no new house, because she gave all her money to Herbert so he could deposit it all in his business bank account so the busybody banker would tell everyone in the city how rich Herbert was. If Sandra ever cleans other people's houses for money, she will never give all the money to some stupid man to put in the bank to impress other people.

Sandra's mother didn't give all her money to Herbert; she secreted away just enough to carry her daughter to the shopping district and buy her an ice cream and a tiny necklace that Sandra hid under the neckband of her jumper. Her mother caught T.B. from the lady where she worked; this lady had contagious T. B. and didn't mind if she gave it to any of her employees.

All the young ladies of the city want to become employees of a rich person's household to get training for household chores they will do at their own homes or to use if and when they get married. Sandra's mother, thanks to grandfather's connections, was accepted in the house of a Jewish Brewery owner, Sandra's father says the Jews own everything.

It is an honor to work at the Brewer's house. The house is mammoth and takes much work; but there are many employees but most of them had coughing spells, and when Sandra's mother started to cough, and she thought nothing of it until it appeared that Sandra had caught T.B. and the doctor announced that Sandra's mother gave it to Sandra, her dying child. Sandra was isolated in the house but her mother was sent away and little, heartbroken Sandra stayed in bed until she became well because she never had more than a winter cold.

Her wicked grandmother, Herbert's mother, looked after Sandra while Herbert traveled and sold merchandise. Her good grandmother and grandfather came each Sunday to visit and to bring a nurse with medication that was purported to cure the deadly disease. After eighteen months, Sandra was pronounced healthy again but her mother was dying in some far away clinic. All because she worked for a Jew or so Sandra's father said. But Grandpa said, "I work with lots of Jews; not one of them ever gave me cause to think they were anything but loving people."

But the evening paper had a different story about Jews and the Jewish Brewer. As it turned out; the lady of the Jewish Brewery house infected two of the employees, under her charge, two other than Sandra's mother: the Brewer and his wife left the country before they could be held responsible for three deaths. The Nazis announced that the Jewish brewer did it because he knew his wife was dying and he wanted to use the disease to murder as many Germans as possible before his wife withered away and died.

Sandra finds her father in her room packing the last of her things. He is crying and rubbing his tears on his sleeve. He turns when he hears her enter.

"Sandra! I told you to stay on the bench," he says and wipes his eyes again on his rough coat sleeve. "You never listen. Just like your mother. Just the same. She never listened and now her God punishes her and you and me. Because she never listens to her husband. It is a Commandment that a wife must listen to her husband. God brought the Jews into our life so they would take customers and your mother from me." He wipes his eyes again. "Or maybe the Communists are right; there is no God." He picks up the bags and carries them to the front of the tiny house.

He goes back and kicks one of Sandra's toys under the bed. It is one of her favorite toys bought by her loving mother on their last trip to town; the last trip before her mother was taken to the T.B. asylum. "Sandra!" her father says, "Do you realize how wicked your mother was to leave us all alone? With no one to take care of us? I can't take care of us. I must travel in order to put food on the table. Your wicked, wicked mother didn't think of that when she worked herself to death. Did she! Did she!" He brings the third piece of tattered luggage to the front of the house. With Sandra following, he returns to her room. "Do you want to take anything else?"

Sandra motions toward the bed, "I want the baby clown...under there." She points under the bed.

Her father lets a long sight escape from between his pursed lips. He grabs Sandra's tiny hand and jerks her toward the front of the house. "Go sit in the car until I'm ready!" Herbert is still crying. Is he crying for her mother or is he crying for himself? Most everything in Herbert's life is about him; everything and everyone else is a big inconvenience. His wife has been a major inconvenience. Now, Sandra is a major inconvenience. He will foist her off on his dead wife's father: and good riddance. He will visit her a couple times a year so people won't talk; say he is a ruthless bastard or something like that. He isn't ruthless; he is just practical. He doesn't have the time or the money to raise Sandra...properly. The old man has lots of money; he can raise Sandra in the proper manner. The old man can be there with her. When Herbert is settled in with a new wife, he can bring Sandra back to the city. That is another thing: the city is becoming too dangerous. The British will come. They will bomb and bomb and bomb. They will bomb the cities; the British won't waste their precious bombs on the countryside; they will bomb the cities; Sandra will be safer with her grandfather in the countryside. But in his mind he knows he is a coward. His most important task, now, is to decide which side he should take or if his best chance of survival is to take no side at all: remain neutral.

Sandra walks slowly toward the overused sedan. She can see her hazy reflection in the dirty automobile door; even make-out the giant tears racing down her beautiful face, silently. The dirty reflection makes her beautiful face look like a photograph that has been stomped on by a "jackboot", a jackboot worn by her hateful father. Her beautiful mother is gone: gone from overwork, so her father says, gone as God's punishment, so her father says. Maybe her mother died to escape her father; to escape her father's pessimism; his hate of everybody and everything. Now Sandra has a chance to escape the hateful little man, she will go to the place she loves most and be with the people she loves most; the place where her mother brought her to see where her grandmother and grandfather lived. In a village, not a dirty city; maybe if her mother lived in a village, her grandmother's village, maybe her mother would still be alive, still be able to comfort her and protect her from her father. Now, Sandra has a chance to escape the hateful little man; but first she will have to endure the verbal barrage her father will spew on her tiny shoulders, as he drives her to her safe haven.

Grandma and Grandpa will be waiting for her; waiting with open arms. They won't shout and holler at her unless she does something very, very wrong, she will have to almost burn the house down to have them punish her or swat her, they won't follow her around the house and talk about what a bad mother Berta Schmidt has been; how she only thinks of herself and never thinks about her daughter and husband, only herself; that's why she worked herself to death. Maybe Sandra's father should work a little harder—why not. Men are supposed to do that: work so hard that their women don't need to work; so their women can stay home and love their daughters. Daughters with beautiful faces, beautiful long blond hair, and beautiful, shinning, tearful, blue eyes. Sandra knows it is a bad place to be: in a car, moving rapidly down the highway: there is no place to go; no place to run; no place to hide.

She sits and listens to the hours of hate her father chews up and spits out toward the dirty, rain-spotted windshield. "Sandra, you are too young to realize that what I'm doing is a very brave thing," her father says." I'm giving you up to your grandma. She can give you a better life. I can't raise you with no woman around. No woman to teach you how to become a good person and properly serve your husband. Not like your mother; she wanted only to serve other people. You will be raised properly. Your grandma will teach you how to sew and cook and clean, and you must only use that knowledge to serve your own family not others."

He stares at boxcars traveling along rusty tracks that parallel the road. The boxcars have either red or yellow tags pasted at angles on the front upper right corners. He heard from a Nazi acquaintance that the yellow tags signify those boxcars headed for work camps and the red tags head for...he really doesn't care where they head for. It is not his affair. What if Hitler is killing Jews; Herbert can't stop it. So why let it concern him. He works with lots of Jews; they all try to screw him but no more than the Gypsies. Rumor is that Hitler gasses Gypsies also. If he plays his cards right, he can take over some of the Jew businesses. The big mercantile in Frankfort will make someone a millionaire or damn near. And after the war, who is going to own everything that belongs to the Saperstein brothers; or are they Jewish? Who is going to win the war? Maybe the Americans will enter it. His brother is in New York. A smart thing to do is maybe send a letter that says he is, has been, and always will be against the Nazis and the Commies. But what if the Nazis get the letter? For now he will need to play both sides; he must be looked on as a friend of whoever wins. And this time he will marry rich

His wife was a beauty, but her beauty was of no use to him; they were never together. They made love once a month before she was poisoned with TB. He could never bring himself to touch her after the TB took hold. It made him ill to think of touching her and her maybe coughing in his face and giving him the hideous disease. He went to Vera the Gypsy and paid her to fulfill his fantasies once a month. But for many months he's been flirting with Marie the Mayor's daughter. She's beautiful but not of age; in fact many years from being of age. But she will boast a huge dowry when she turns eighteen and marries. So for now he will play the grieving widower; he is grieving but his grief is for his misfortune not his dead wife's misfortune. First he must get rid of Sandra.

Sandra is grateful for her father's silent treatment; this treatment lasts but a moment and then he begins to tell her all the things her Grandma and Grandpa have done wrong, and how her Grandpa thinks he is such a big cheese when all he is is some tiny mouse. Her ears ach; she keeps wondering just how far it is to Grandma's. The time, when she went there with her mother, it was a very short ride; but she didn't ride with anyone in the car spewing out hatred. She grits her teeth. She tries to think of her mother over the sound of her father shouting. Her mother is like the most beautiful angel, in fact, no angel is as beautiful; and no matter what her father says, there is a Heaven and her mother is there sitting at the side of God waiting for God to give an order for her to go back to earth and give love to her little girl.

"Nothing I have done should give God the right to take my wife from me. God knows how hard I work. I'm a good neighbor. I go to church as much as any one who comes to the Sunday morning service. Two years ago, I even served as one of the layman on the Church's council for the war. This is another reason I'm being brave; I would like to be with you, but that would mean keeping you in the city—the cities will be the most dangerous place. Moving you to the countryside should keep you from harm's way. When the British come, and the British will definitely come, you will be away from it all. The British will land on the coast. You will be too far into the interior for any one, British or German, to worry about you." The engine sputters. Her father's attention shifts to the many gauges on the dashboard of the trashy car.

"Daddy," Sandra whispers, "I got to go to the bathroom!"

"I told you to go before we left," he says.

"I did. But, now, I need to go again."

"Well, you wouldn't need to go," he says, "if you were a boy."

"Well, I'm not a boy, and I need to go real badly." Her father looks around at the deserted land that borders the crumbling road. "If you were a boy," he says, "you could go right out there." He jabs his finger at the knee-high dying weeds that line the rails.

"Mama told me that men are pigs for doing that." They drive another half-hour until Sandra thinks she will burst and wet the cloth seat of her father's pride and joy (she should be his pride and joy), but then he steers the bucket of bolts into a tiny gas station at an intersection just miles from her grandmother's village.

"I am only stopping because I need gas." He steps from the car and looks back at her. "We are almost there," he says. "You just sit there until we arrive at your Grandma's house. It is more lady-like to do your business at a private home not at a place on the road like this."

"But, I need to go so badly," she says. "Please!"

He throws up his hands. "Okay! Go! But you best be finished when I'm finished getting the gas and ready to go." He doesn't come around and open the door for her even though he knows she will struggle to open it by herself.

Sandra grasps the thin door handle in both of her small hands. She jerks down hard. The door springs open and pulls her from the high-clearance automobile. She slips down the running board and skins her bare knees. She begins to weep silently, so as not to alert her father, as she walks by herself toward the laboratory shed at the back of the gas station. Her mother told her to never go anywhere by herself. That in these days and times there are bad men who want to harm a beautiful, little girl-child like her. But Sandra moves toward the shadows of the back shed. The only bad man she can see in the area is her father. Sandra closes the shed door but she doesn't do her business. The shed is filthy and it smells bad. Real damp smelling like dirty, wet socks; and the shed is spooky. You can't see into the corners; you can't see into the many shadows where bad men might be lurking waiting for her to lift the bottom of her dress. Sandra shouldn't go anywhere by herself; her mother is right. But now her mother won't be with her to tell her not to be frightened.

Her father is not concerned...or he wouldn't let his little girl go to some dark, smelly shed to do her business by herself...he would lead her by her hand and peek into the shed to make sure no bad men or monsters lurk in the shadows. And then he would wait for her until she is finished. He would say, "Sandra? You okay, in there?" and wait for her answer. But here she is with all the bad men and monsters waiting for her to lift her dress bottom. Sandra darts out the door and runs smack in to a tall, thin stranger.

"Hey!" the stranger says. "What's a child like you doing back here by yourself? Where's your mother?"

Sandra's heart jumps into her throat. This is the man her mother warned her about. She should tell the man that her mother is in Heaven, watching over her, and that he will be severely punished if he harms a little girl and that her father doesn't mind if a tall, thin man harms her. But instead she runs the wrong direction and stops dead at the rusty railroad tracks. One of the boxcars, that passed along side Herbert's tattered car earlier, is burning. The flames dart toward the dusty sky. Hundreds of ordinary people huddle in the center of a farmer's field. Policemen with guns stand at the gates of the field. Sandra thinks what odd transportation. Her father will know why hundreds of mothers and fathers and their children use such a strange way to get from the city to the village. She turns and runs back past the stranger to her father and grabs onto one of her father's legs.

"Sandra," he says, "that was quick. You didn't need to go very badly. Get back in the car. No more stops."

She pulls herself up on the running board and into the car. Her doll just sits and looks at her. Greta knows something is wrong. Sandra always tells her doll all her secrets, but she neglected to tell Greta that her beloved mother left them both and is now in Heaven. Greta will not be able to take the news. Greta is only a doll and dolls are not brave. Sandra must be brave for both of them.

Her father slides into the driver's seat and sits on one on Greta's arms; he grabs the doll and pulls; the arm pulls lose from Greta; stuffing spills out onto the seat; he throws the tattered doll into the back seat. Sandra screams and scrambles into the back; she retrieves Greta and begins to cry. Her father turns. "Sandra! Forget that stupid doll. I'll get you a new one the next time I come back to your Grandma's."

"I don't want a new one," she says. "You will just hurt it too."

At her grandmother's, Sandra is hugged and kissed by all the relatives; they cry about her mother's death two days ago. But when her grandfather picks her up and carries her toward the house, Sandra knows she is home. When her father comes to say he is leaving, that he will be back for the funeral (which he sloughed off on Grandma), Sandra doesn't care. She doesn't care if he comes back for the funeral or not; she doesn't care if he ever comes back. When she starts up the stairs with Grandpa, she sees the little, beautiful girl from next door; Lena peeks around her mother and watches Sandra's every move. Lena is her age and temperament. This is the first day of a life-long friendship (they come to know each other's every thought and mood) they are together most days from early morning until their shadows lengthen into the late afternoon.

Berta Schmidt is buried in the little village's hillside cemetery. Sandra is in the funeral procession that follows the coffin to the cemetery up the steep hill. All the relatives come back to Grandma's house for coffee and cake and everyone wants to hug Sandra and she becomes more and more annoyed all Sandra wants to do is sit on her Grandma's lap.

Her father approaches, "My poor, little angel, come to your father."

Sandra nods and buries her face in her grandmother's neck.

"Sandra! Come when your father calls," he says. Then he reaches out and grabs Sandra under her tiny arms. Sandra slaps his face. He drops her back in her grandmother's lap and storms from the house. "She is just as hateful as her mother!" he shouts.

She pushes off from Grandma's lap, gets to her feet, her heart feels like it has been hit with one of her Grandpa's hammers; though it isn't Grandpa, wheeling the hammer, but it's her own hateful father. Her stomach is churning and feels like it did the time she ate some bad lamb at her aunt's house. Her head throbs like an extremely bright light flashes from her father's eyes and now settles in her brain. She staggers toward the door where her father exits. She is coughing and before she reaches the doorway, she vomits on her grandmother's striped wallpaper. She holds no sense of herself as a person; her father has destroyed her with his words but more so with his flight; he abandons her for good, this time; she looses her identity as his daughter; her identity shifts to Grandma; she becomes her Grandma's daughter. "Hey!" she screams. "Hey, we don't care. Do you hear me? Do you hear me? We don't care what you say! Grandma and me...we don't care. Hey!" She stops at the doorway.

Sandra's grandmother runs a cloth across Sandra's mouth and pats her head. "Now, now, Sandra," her grandmother says, "Calm down. Let's go back into the house."

"Grandma why does he hate me, so?"

"He doesn't hate you, Sandra; he hates himself."

Now the tears begin to run down Sandra's cheeks. She can no longer stop the flow. Can no longer pretend she possesses a father like the other fathers of her friends and cousins and the children in the storybooks. Her voice goes horse and she clings to her grandmother as they re-enter the house full of silent relatives.

Her grandmother takes her up the stairs to her new room and puts her on the oh-so-soft bed. She sits beside Sandra and strokes her hair. "Sandra, child, your father is a troubled man." Grandma says. "He blames all his ills on the world and everyone in it. Or he blames God. He blames anyone and anything so he won't have to blame himself for his problems and failures."

"But he hates me," Sandra says, "and I hate him. A little girl shouldn't hate her father."

"No she shouldn't and she doesn't. You don't hate him or anyone. You're too young to hate anyone."

"I should hate the Devil," Sandra says.

"Yes you should hate the Devil."

"And I should hate the tall man at the toilet shed," Sandra says.

"What tall man?" She takes Sandra's shoulders and turns her; they sit eye to eye. "What tall man?"

"When we came here, I had to do my business real badly. Father said I should be like a boy and do it along the road. But finally he stopped at that station before the cemetery. He told me to hurry while he got some gas. I went by myself to the back of the station. Mama told me to never go by myself. But I really had to do my business. So I opened the shed door. It smelled like Papa's dirty socks even worse," Sandra puts her thumb and fingers to her nose. "It was so scary. I went in but I knew that there were monsters and bad men waiting in the shadows to watch me lift the bottom of my skirt so I could do my business. But it was too scary so I ran out of the stinky shed and bang right into the tall man."

"Did the tall man hurt you?" Grandma said.

"He scared me."

"Did he touch you?"

"Just to stop me from banging into him," Sandra says.

"You are to never go anywhere without me, "Grandma says, "from this moment on. You go nowhere without me...you understand?"

"Yes Grandma."

"And I will give a piece of my mind to your father."

Sandra has lost her mother and now her father and now she is lost. Sandra's aunt and Sandra go every day to the cemetery to water the many flowers that surround the grave of her mother, but Sandra is lost, maybe lost just for now, and maybe lost forever.

1939

. FRIDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 1, 1939 GERMAN ARMY INVADES POLAND Battles Rage Along Border Cities Bombed as Fuehrer Orders Troops to "Meet Force With Force" on Frontier; Harbor Blockaded and Neutral Ships Warned. WARSAW, Sept. 1. (U.P.) Germans bombed Warsaw at 9a.m. today (11p.m. Thursday) (P.S.T.) Simultaneously the Polish government announced today that Germans had bombed five other places, including the railroad station at Czew and the town of Rypnic, as well as the town of Putzk near Czew. The Warsaw Foreign Office immediately charged Germany with aggression against Poland. BERLIN, Sept. 1. (Friday) (AP) The German army was ordered to "meet force with force," and Poland was declared dangerous territory for foreigners and the seat of the Jewish International Conspiracy at 5:30 a.m. today 8:30 p.m. Thursday, P.S.T.)

THURSDAY MORNING, JULY 11, 1940 BRITISH GRIMLY WAIT START OF BLITZKRIEG Swarms of Enemy Planes Routed in Raid. Believed Prelude to Threatened Invasion; 37 German Aircraft Shot Down or Disabled LONDON, July 11 (Thursday) (A.P.) England, on guard and ready, watched through the dawn today without any indication along the coastal no man's land of Nazi invasion which Commons was warned last night might come at daybreak. SUNDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 29, 1942 REDS KILL 10,000 IN NEW NAZI ROUT Russians Put Five German divisions to Flight in Northern Drive. MOSCOW, Nov. 29 (Sunday) (A.P.) The Russians announced today that a surprise offensive on the northwest front had killed 10,000 German troops.

The Germans fight a lost war; there is a funeral every week for some cousin or another; some close to Sandra's heart and many who she only met once or twice or never but knows of them from stories told her by her grandparents. The war is stupid when you think of the results, Sandra thinks. You dress young, handsome men up in beautiful uniforms and teach them how to march perfectly in rows and then you march them directly toward death. Nothing is worth that: no amount of land or payback for past grievances; nothing is worth that. At the last funeral, that Sandra attends, the cousin, who was slaughtered, is represented by a closed casket; he is only twenty-two years of age but his body is so damaged by a Russian mortar that they can't put enough of him together to allow an open casket. The women cannot stop crying. The ones left behind suffer the most. Sandra suffered so, when her mother died; and now mothers all over Germany were suffering. Sandra prays each night that the war will stop but it just goes on and on as another cousin dies.

There will be no cousins left at the rate they are dying. Or when you go to a family gathering, all the young men have sustained injuries: Kurt without a leg, his brother without an arm and a hand, the Burger's son is blind, and others are deaf or insane. Nothing is worth this. Sandra hears some of it from her grandparents. But then Lena's father says that Hitler is a genius and that he will not put Germany in a bad position as far as the war is concerned, or as far as anything is concerned; but he thinks that Hitler needs to put more effort into the Jew Problem here at home and in the international community; Jews hoard all the capital of the world: they own all the banks or at least ninety percent of them around the world. They also are behind most of the publishing houses around the world so most of the information the world population reads is tainted by the Jewish view of the world. And they own most of the movie production companies and the distribution companies that distribute those films and the theatres that show the films.

Sandra and Lena listen and listen and begin to agree that Jews cause all the trouble; but the fact is that Lena and Sandra don't know what a Jew is or what they look like or sound like. Unless those were Jews Sandra saw behind the shed when the boxcar burned. Lena's father describes them as little, fat, big-nosed people who (like the French) never wash. But many Germans are little, fat, and big-nosed. So Lena and Sandra decide that they will just ask whomever they meet if they are a Jew.

"Hey mister," Lena shouts. "Are you a Jew?"

"Do I look like a Jew?" The little man says.

"What does a Jew look like," Lena says.

"Just look for a target on their back." The little man says.

They walk a little further toward school and stop another man. "Are you a Jew," they ask in unison.

"Are you with the Gestapo?" the man says. "I think not; you're just very rude children trying to cause trouble. Get along home." The man rolls his fruit cart uphill toward the center of the village.

"We're not going home," Sandra shouts after the man.

"We're going to school!" They both shout in unison.

Lena and Sandra listen to both sides of the Jew Problem but they concentrate on more pressing issues: finally, they get to go to kindergarten. They go hand in hand. Their clothing is almost identical and they both have pierced ears holding tiny earrings: Lena wears little blue earrings and Sandra wears red hearts on her earrings.

"Stop," Sandra says as she lets loose of Lena's hand. "We are never going to be apart, you know?"

"I know," Lena says.

Sandra reaches up and takes the earrings from Lena's ears. She puts them into Lena's hand.

"What are you doing?" Lena says.

Sandra takes the earrings from her own ears. "We're going to trade earrings as a badge that we will always be together." She puts her earrings in Lena's ears. Then reaches down and takes Lena's earrings from her hand and puts the little blue earrings in her own ears. "Now, I have a badge and you have a badge."

Lena smiles, takes Sandra's hand, and they start back toward school.

"I did not approve of her giving away her earrings," Sandra's grandmother says to Lena's mother.

"Well, she didn't give them away," Lena's mother says. "She traded them for Lena's. Sandra got the better deal, I must say."

"I think not," Grandma says. "Those little blue nothings cannot be worth half as much as the intricate workmanship of the red hearts."

But Lena and Sandra insist the trade stay. And stay it did; for a lifetime. They hold hands as they skip up wooden stairs to Sandra's bedroom. "I thought school would be more fun," Lena says.

"It was fun, but I thought we would learn some new things," Sandra says. "Everything the stupid teacher tries to teach us we learned when we were four. The class is supposed to be for five year olds not four year olds."

"But Sandra," Lena says, "most the kids didn't know their numbers or their alphabet."

"That's okay; we'll just be the smartest kids in the class with very little work. And in art, I can out-draw anyone."

"You can't out-draw me!"

"Of course I can," Sandra says. "Here, take this pencil and we will both draw a factory and show my Grandma and see who she thinks draws best."

"Your grandmother will choose you," Lena says. "Besides, you're cheating: I've never seen a factory, but you saw one in the city before you came here. Why do you want to cheat?"

"Okay, okay, let's draw a garden and we'll show Fred the bus driver; he will judge them."

"Fred the bus driver is an idiot," Lena says. "My mother says he's retarded and only got the bus driving job because he's the principal's nephew. He's old but acts like he's about twelve years old."

"The poor guy will be dead or wounded as soon as they put him in a uniform," Sandra says.

"I don't think they allow retarded old people to be killed."

"They're the first to be killed at the concentration camps. My Grandpa says."

"My father says that's a bunch of crap," Lena says. "No concentration camps exist in Germany."

"Did you say 'bunch of crap'?" Sandra whispers and then giggles. "I should wash your mouth out with laundry soap."

They both giggle and put their hands over their mouths. "Well, who do you want to judge our drawings?" Sandra says.

"Your Grandma will do fine."

They both settle down on the floor; both lying on their bellies. The two giggle and draw but hide their drawing from the other and giggle and draw, and they spend the next hours drawing gardens of flowers on some scrap wrapping paper that Sandra retrieves from under her bed where she stuffed it after her last birthday. They do the drawings in pencil with no colors; but any fool can see the different shades of flowers in both the drawings. And any fool can recognize the backs of Lena's and Sandra's houses with the sheds and trees in the backgrounds. Both the drawings depict the gardens well. Both show much talent; but Sandra's is best. They tumble down the stairs trying to beat each other to Grandma.

"Hold it!" Sandra's grandmother says. She takes off her apron and dries her hands on it and walks to the stairs, "you two trying to kill each other?"

"Grandma," Sandra says as she waives her drawing in front of her grandmother's dodging face. "Who's drawing is best?"

"Look at mine! Look at mine!" Lena says. She pushes her drawing ahead of Sandra's.

Sandra's grandmother takes both drawings from the wrestling girls and walks over to the kitchen table. She pauses and with a huge sigh spreads the drawings across the table's surface. Like a professional critic, she takes out her glasses and taps them on her teeth then puts the reading glasses on the bridge of her nose. She leans over Lena's picture and gazes down then rubs her forehead and reaches down and slowly slides a chair back from the table and sits down. "Oh, my, they are both so original, so artistic; it's so hard to choose. What prize will you win if I choose you?" she says to Lena.

Sandra pushes past Lena. "You can't choose her," Sandra says. "You can't. You only looked at hers."

"I didn't choose Lena's. I was just asking what the prize was." Her grandmother says. "I just thought you should get a prize if you win." She walks to the cabinet and reaches high up on the top. She pulls down a tin canister, extracts two small chunks of fudge and then hands each girl a chunk. "You both did a great job; I can't decide so you each win a prize."

Sandra and Lena both smile and put the whole chunks of fudge in each other's mouth and then grab their drawings from the kitchen table and walk hand and hand in circles around the large house while chomping on the mouthfuls of fudge and finally run back up the stairs to Sandra's room.

The house is a nice, solid, two-story, brick house. All three bedrooms are upstairs with a bathroom that is never ever used for baths. Her grandmother always heats the water on the stove and then Sandra is bathed in the kitchen. The reason for this is, there is no central heating in the house and every room is warmed separately with a stove. Anytime anyone takes a bath upstairs, the hot water heater needs a fire in the firebox. It is a lot of work. Too much work for Sandra's grandfather. "That's too much work just for a little girl to take a bath," Grandpa says. "Just ask your Grandma to heat some water in the kitchen. And try to stop getting so dirty," he laughs.

"But, Grandpa, I like the upstairs tub," Sandra says. "I'll help you bring the wood. Please!"

"We'll do it this Saturday, when I'm not so tired," her grandfather says.

Once a month, the whole family takes a bath upstairs after Grandpa prepares the firebox; but the daily sponge baths are always in the kitchen. The kitchen is large and comfortable and always warm. All the meals are taken on the large table in the kitchen. Grandma cooks on a wood stove and sometimes uses coal, but coal is not always available or is very difficult to get because the "war effort" is consuming everything. Sandra is growing tired of the war effort. She wants it to get back to when there was enough to eat; enough of the good things to eat. She wonders why there is always fighting.

Sandra and her Grandma and Grandpa listen to the radio every night in an intimate living room. Why is the rest of the world fighting Germany (Germans are good people) why did the rest of the world not just leave Germans be? Maybe the world is jealous of the beautiful German people? Sandra thinks. But her Grandpa tells her that most of the trouble has been started by the German leader, Adolf Hitler. He is trying to get back territory that belonged to the German people centuries ago.

"Why did the other people steal the land from the Germans?" Sandra asks.

"They were German people also, but they wanted to be separate from Germany," her grandfather says.

"Why did they want to be separate from us?" Sandra says. Sandra doesn't hear her grandfather's answer because she is wondering why the rest of the world doesn't understand something as simple as wanting land back that was taken from you. Maybe Germany waited too long. Maybe they should have taken it back right away.

"How long did the other Germans have this territory?" Sandra says.

"Hundreds of years in some cases; thousands of years in other cases," her grandfather says.

"Why didn't' they take I back right away?"

"Germany wasn't strong enough," he says.

"Is Germany strong enough, now?"

"No, I don't think so," he says.

"Then why is Mr. Hitler having the war?" Sandra says.

"Because Mr. Hitler is insane."

"What does insane mean?" Sandra says.

"Nuts, bonkers, out of his mind," he says.

"Is he retarded like Old Fred the Bus Driver?"

"Old Fred is not retarded; he's just a little slow," her grandfather says.

"Is Mr. Hitler a little slow like Old Fred?"

"No, Mr. Hitler is certifiably retarded!" He looks over at Sandra's grandmother who frowns. "But you must not tell anyone what I said, especially Lena."

"Why not: If it is true?" Sandra says.

"In these times, I have found silence is the best truth," he says and looks over at his wife. "Sandra if you love me you'll not say anything about what is discussed in this house."

"I do love you Grandpa; I promise," Sandra says. Sandra wonders why God doesn't intervene on behalf of Germany and help this retarded Hitler defeat the Russians and the British and the Americans who blockade merchant ships from bringing goods to Germany; starve the German people. Why do the Americans do such a thing? Why deprive the German people of food and the other necessities. She listens to all the tragic news on the radio in the small living room.

The "good living room" is locked most of the time. On Christmas it will be opened and the stove will be lit and then the Christmas Child will bring all the presents. The family will sing carols and eat cookies and Grandpa will sip a glass of wine and some times when he is not looking Sandra will take a sip. The room is nicely furnished, with a sofa and a couple of overstuffed chairs and a small table; but Grandma never serves food in the "good living room", and Sandra is instructed where to put her feet (certainly not on the sofa.) There is a cabinet with all of Grandma's fine belongings, including the good china and flower vases all of which Sandra is not to touch under any circumstance.

"What if the house is burning?" Sandra asks her grandmother.

"You leave the house if it is burning." Her grandmother says.

"What if the house is flooding?" she says.

"You leave the house if it is flooding." Her grandmother says and looks up from her crocheting.

"What if the Nazis come to take our stuff?" Sandra whispers.

"Then, together we will unlock the door to the good room and gather all my precious china and vases and run with them to a safe place," her Grandma says.

"Okay, so then there is a circumstance when I can touch the china?" Her Grandma laughs and swats Sandra's backside.

Like all her neighbors houses, the walls of Grandma's house are covered with flowered, striped, and patterned wallpaper. "Germans do not use paint on the inside of their houses," Grandma says. "Paint is for the outside."

The stairs that go to the upstairs are of old wood, which squeaks and moans when Sandra attempts to sneak up or down them. Sandra watches and listens from the shadows at the top of those squeaky stairs.

Sometimes Lena will sneak up to Sandra's room when both should be in their own houses in their own rooms; studying. There, in the tiny room, Lena tells Sandra of all the things she heard in her house and Sandra tells Lena of all she's heard except that her Grandpa thinks Mr. Hitler is retarded. It seems odd to both of them that the information is so different and to such a degree. Sandra repeats what she heard about how the Germans lost in Russia and Lena tells her that the Germans entered Moscow and will soon topple the Red Communist and thereby slowdown the Jewish International Conspiracy to spread Communism and Socialism to Germany and the rest of the world. Lena says Hitler and a few of his friends fight Stalin and the Jews over the Communist thing.

"What is Communism?" Sandra says.

"I don't know. I think it's where everybody shares things." Lena says.

"That doesn't sound so bad," Sandra says.

"My father says it's bad because the greedy Jews just use Communism and Socialism to fool all of us and then take over all the assets of the world."

"Assets?" Sandra asks.

"I think it's stuff."

"I don't understand. So we don't own our toys and stuff."

"I think toys can be okay to own but houses and tractors belong to everybody." Lena says and itches the tip of her nose.

"Do you notice that you rub the tip of your nose when you think," Sandra rubs her forehead. "So you mean you can use any tractor. That will mean only the best tractors get used. It will cause lots of fights."

"My father says both Communism and Socialism exist for stupid people," Lena says.

"They are both the same thing, right?" Sandra asks.

"Communism and Socialism? Socialism is where the government steals all the stuff so the world can change to Communism," Lena says.

"And the Jews thought of this?"

"Yeah."

"And the Jews did this," Sandra says as she slides from her bed to the thick rug on her bedroom floor.

"Yeah, the Jews did it."

"So that's the Jew Problem?" Sandra says.

"Yeah, that's the Jew Problem."

"And Mr. Hitler is trying to stop it?"

"Yeah, he's trying to stop it," Lena says. "But he's not called Mr. Hitler; it's Chancellor Hitler or something."

Ninety-nine percent of the Germans back Hitler because he says he will solve "the Jewish Problem", now that Sandra knows what the Jewish Problem is, she knows never to tell her very best friend, Lena, that the blond haired, blue-eyed, aristocratic little girl who lives next door and is at Lena's door early each morning, is involved in a Jewish Problem.

The family finds out about the "half-Jew" thing when Sandra's father, Herbert Schmidt, decides to remarry. His choice is a beautiful but selfish young thing he has been waiting for for a long time. To get married, Herbert (who looks more Jewish than many of the citizens who spend the last days of their lives riding to work camps and death camps inside urine-soaked boxcars) must prove he is not Jewish. Herbert is a bastard; not a bad-guy type bastard. Like in, "you bastard, you!" Herbert's father and mother did not marry. Records show that his father is a Jew.

Herbert never knew of any of this. "Mother! What have you done?" Herbert asks.

"I've done nothing," his mother says.

"You've destroyed my life!" he shouts.

"I was not married. I just had you. So I put a man's name on the papers."

"You put a Jew's name on the papers!"

"I didn't know there would be a Jew Problem," his mother says. "If I knew there would be a Jew Problem, do you think I would put his name on the papers? I just put the richest man's name on the papers."

"And you're going to confess it to God and the world that I am a bastard! I'll be ruined."

"Better than you going to a death camp. I did the best I could as an unmarried mother. I will do anything to save you."

They go to the judge and only by the grace of God does the judge show mercy on Herbert and declare that he "is not and never was a Jew." But the damage is already done to Sandra. The word leaks out about her father's trial and her paternal grandmother's confessions. Now Sandra is probably a Jew and surely the granddaughter of a whore. Only Lena stands by her. Only Lena says it doesn't matter.

"But Lena, I am not a Jew. Look at me. Do I look like a Jew?" Sandra says.

"I don't mind if you're a Jew," Lena says.

"I am not a Jew. It was all a mistake, you know that sometimes, in life, mistakes happen?" Sandra says. "The judge said my father is not a Jew. Fact he said 'he is not and never was a Jew' so stop saying you don't mind. Of course you wouldn't want to be friends with a Jew."

"If the Jew is you," Lena says. "If the Jew is you? I'm a poet and don't you know it."

"Sandra, get in here," Grandma calls, "and tell Lena to cart herself home before her mother comes looking for her and looking to give her a whipping."

"Yes, Grandma I'm coming." Sandra says."But Lena never gets a whipping."

"Yes I do," Lena says. "I get lots more whippings than you"

"I never get whippings," Sandra says.

"Yes you do! Remember, you told me about the time your father grabbed you, threw you against the wall, and started whipping on you, remember?"

Sandra laughs and nods her head back and forth. "Oh, I didn't mean anything about him. He used to push me and shove me and use his belt on me. From now on when we talk about things and I am smiling and laughing, you will know I'm not thinking about nasty Herbert, the monster who calls himself my father. I was just saying I never get a whipping from Grandma and Grandpa."

"Oh, I know that," Lena says, "They will never beat you. They love you too much. Go see if they love you enough to let you go with mother, and me tomorrow, to see a movie.

Sandra likes Lena and her Mom, so does Grandma, but Grandma doesn't trust Lena's father. He is a brown shirt and asks Sandra and everyone a lot of question: if they know any Jews. If they know anybody who know Jews. If they know anyone who sympathized with the Jews. Lena says her father (who she loves) has proof that the Jews were slowly taking over Germany and the world until Hitler came along. Hitler was not afraid of the evil people who killed Christ and then said that they are God's chosen people and then acted like they were the chosen people and better than anybody else and so they rationalized (what ever that means) that they deserved everything and took over all the banks first and then every other business. Sandra doesn't think that Jews own Grandpa's markets. But maybe they own them in secret. But in their search, Lena and Sandra never find anyone who will admit they are a Jew or that they have ever met a Jew. So Sandra thinks that the Jew Problem is not a problem at all. How can it be a problem if no one in the village has ever met a Jew or knows anyone who has met a Jew. She gives her opinion to Lena and Lena thinks it's very logical that there must not be a Jew Problem in the village.

But Lena's father tells her that the people of the village are all liars. They lie because they are Jews or because they are hiding Jews or a Jew controls their job. He tells his daughter the secrets of spotting a Jew: they have very shifty eye and are unable to look a good German in the eyes. They never wear nice clothes because they hoard their ill-gotten money and never buy anything retail or new. They are penny pinchers (Sandra and Lena take a penny, pinch it, and try to figure out what the term penny pincher means.) The girls are thinking of just taking someone at random and make him or her the village's token Jew just so they, like Lena's father, will have someone to hate, someone who otherwise is an out and out monster even without being a Jew. They decide it will be the fat neighbor-lady who lives across from the bakery.

When Sandra tells her Grandma what they have done, her Grandma scolds Sandra and says it is a dangerous time to have a friend who is the daughter of a brown shirt. A brown shirt who holds meetings every other night. A brown shirt who recruits children as young as twelve.

"Father, I know about the Jews," Lena says.

"What about the Jews," her father says.

"You Nazis are working on a problem that is not a problem. There are no Jews in Germany."

"What makes you think there are no Jews in Germany?" he says.

"Sandra and I asked everybody," Lena says, "And not one was a Jew or knew a Jew."

"They've all been rounder up. Six million Jews have been rounded up."

"What do you mean, 'rounded up'?"

"The brown shirts have been part of a program that rounds up Jews and takes them to work camps so they can't disrupt the economy and further the Communist Conspiracy."

"We have work camps that house six million Jews?"

"Yes," he says but looks away from his daughter.

"Where are these camps?" Lena asks.

"You ask too many questions," her mother says.

"That's okay," her father says. "I can answer her without revealing too much. The camps are located across Germany and in other countries."

"Do Jews disrupt the economies of other countries?" Lena says.

"They disrupt business everywhere they go."

Lena cannot wait to tell Sandra why they cannot find any Jews in the village. She tosses and turns all night long because she always feels great when she has more information than her best friend Sandra. The next morning, on the way to school, Lena tells Sandra about the camps, ".and they hold six million Jews"

"They can't," Sandra says.

"They can't, what," Lena says.

"They can't have enough camps in Germany to hold that many Jews."

"My father should know."

"He should know but he must not, because they can't have that many camps or everybody would know; not just your father."

"You can have six camps that hold one million each. No big deal."

"It's a big deal to hold a million people in a major city," Sandra says.

"So hold five hundred thousand in each camp. Besides they're not just in Germany."

"Germany can not afford to feed that many people."

"What are you saying?"

"They must get rid of the Jews." Sandra says.

"You mean kill them?"

"Of course not, silly. You can't kill that many people. They must be deporting them."

"You're so smart. Of course they send the Jews back to their country. What country do Jews come from?"

"I don't think Jews have a country," Sandra says.

They take each other's hands and skip toward school. Happy to know that the Jew Problem is so simple. The Jews disrupt everything so the Nazis simply pack them up and export them to other countries. Why the other countries take them must be because the other countries need cheap labor. And maybe the Jews are smarter than the current help. But one good thing is that there is no logic for killing them. Maybe that's why Hitler took over Poland so he would have somewhere to send the troublesome Jews.

1944

SATURDAY MORNING, AUGUST 26, 1944 THREE VICTORIES WON IN FRANCE French and Yanks in Paris force Nazis to Surrender Battle in Streets Won but Sniping Continues; DeGaulle Entry Cheered. LONDON, Aug, 26 (Saturday) (U.P.) Allied troops and frenzied civilians, battling shoulder to shoulder in crowded, bullet-swept streets, smashed the organized German resistance in Paris yesterday, forcing the commander of the Nazi garrison to surrender. Scattered sniping continued through the night but these disorganized units were swiftly being liquidated. Troyes, 130 Miles From German Frontier, Falls: Yanks May Be in Reims. SUPREME HEADQUARTERS ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE, Aug. 26 (Saturday) three resounding victories have been won along the 200-mile long front in Northern France.

Then it happens. Grandpa, who is the director of a big food market chain, holds open job positions where the Nazis want to place their friends. But Grandpa doesn't cooperate. The Nazis come for him in the middle of the night. Sandra sits on the top stair and stares through the ornate banisters. They call for her grandfather to come out of the house. But he says no chance. A policeman kicks and kicks at the door until it splinters and slams open. The policeman charges in first with the Nazis behind; but before the policeman can get to Sandra's grandfather, her grandfather's German Shepherd, Alf, attacks the policeman and bites into the screaming policeman's arms and legs. The Nazis step back and watch as the bleeding policeman flails at the German Shepherd. He pulls free and springs out the damaged front door.

The antagonists leave as Sandra's grandfather pats Alf s head. Alf prances around the room then comes back and licks his master's hand. Alf sits wagging his tale and looking from Grandpa to Grandma and then up the stairs toward Sandra. He knows I am watching his fantastic performance, she thinks. But when Alf looks toward Sandra's grandmother, her grandmother begins to holler and shake her finger at the cowering Alf.

"Now, look what you've done you bad dog." Grandma says. "The Nazis will come back and shoot both of you and maybe even Sandra and me."

Sandra's grandfather walks over and looks at the splintered door. "They won't. Grandpa says. "They know I know friends in high places."

"Who, name your friends in high places? How will they get you out of this?" Grandma says. "Alf almost killed that policeman. I think he is the schoolmaster's son. You best run. We all should run."

Her grandfather pulls away the splintered wood and attempts to close the ruptured door. "Go where?" Grandpa says.

Sandra tries to think where they can go. Maybe to her fathers, but he will give them up for sure; he will not take a chance. They know relatives all over the region but they will not put any relatives in harm's way. Lena can't hide them because her father will give them up and smile while he is doing the dastardly deed. There are school chums but they all seem to believe in the Nazis cause. Or maybe they are just play-acting waiting for the war to be over and the Nazis to be destroyed. Life is a big, black pit: just when you think things are getting better, they get worse (get the worst). Sandra goes back to her room and flops on her bed; the tears start and don't stop until morning. In the morning, her grandfather walks right past the suitcase packed the night before by her grandmother.

"I will not run!" Her grandfather says.

"You old fool," her grandmother says. "This war is not over. And the Nazis will not stop until all Germans, including themselves and their families are dead. They blame their loosing ways on everyone who doesn't back them. This job thing is just a rouse. The stores will all be bombed-out skeletons by the end of the year, anyway. Go! Leave the country. Sandra and I will survive until the Americans and British come. We'll learn to dodge the bombs."

"I will not run! I will meet with the store owners, this morning; they will use their power to stop this harassment."

"Harassment? They mean to kill you, you old fool!" She turns away and runs into the kitchen; when her grandmother passes the staircase, Sandra sees tears running down her grandmother's trembling cheeks.

The Nazis arrest Grandpa as he waits, at the train station, on his way to work. He sees them coming and attempts to move into the crowd, to use it as camouflage, but the crowd sees what he is doing and quickly disperses not wanting to do anything to make this day their last day of freedom; if you call these days in Germany freedom; it is more like one big prison waiting to collapse around its once proud ears.

When the crowd disperses, Grandpa stands like a deer caught in the headlights; his head drops down, then he shakes it off and raises his head and straightens his shoulders and walks defiantly toward the oncoming Nazis. Two Nazis grab him by his arms and slam him face first into one of the cement pillars supporting the massive roof of the train station. Blackness fills his mind and covers the picture of his beloved wife and Sandra he holds in his mind.

When he comes too, he is in a moving boxcar (like the ones he heard so much about.) He is bleeding from his nose and mouth and his bare feet.

A tall, slender man uses his shirttail to remove blood from Grandpa's nose and lips. "My name is Isaac," the tall man says. "You have been unconscious for almost twenty-four hours. We are headed for a Work Camp and then a Death Camp if you are Jewish. Are you Jewish?"

"No!" Grandpa says. "Are you?"

"Yes, most of the people in here are Jewish. You have done something real bad to be in with us."

"I hired Jews," Grandpa says.

"Not very smart are you?"

"Not very," Grandpa says.

"You are dehydrated, but there is no water."

He is transported with the others to a factory that is fenced like a prison with guard towers at each corner. The factory manufactures shoes; top of the line combat boots and top of the line dress shoes. He is taken immediately to the work line. His nose is sill bleeding and he needs water and food, but he is seated at a heavy-duty sewing machine and told to begin. Sixteen hours later he is allowed a toilet break, some bread and gravy and sleep.

When Grandpa is first taken away, Sandra's Grandma tries in vain to find out where he was taken. Weeks pass and then months. No one hears from Grandpa and then one-day Lena's father comes knocking at the door. He speaks to Grandma like he never met her before even though they live next door to each other for decades.

"Mrs. Reim, I regret to inform you that your husband was transported to a work camp for crimes against the motherland."

"That is ridiculous!" She says. "What crimes could that old man commit without me knowing? And I know of no crimes."

"We believe you knew nothing." Lena's father says. "We...I...am certain you knew nothing about him hiring subversives and Jews to fill positions at the markets."

"You are ridiculous! Where did you take him?" Grandma asks, calmly.

"You have no need to know. He is sentenced to four years. The only way he will get out earlier is if at any point Hitler decides to forgive all Jews and friends of Jews for what they did to this country. And I for one am certain the Fuehrer will never forgive anyone who helped destroy the Motherland."

"Ridiculous little man," her grandmother says, "you and your kind destroyed the Motherland." She slams the door in the little brown-shirt's face.

Sandra wonders what her Grandpa and the Jews did to the country. It must be real bad for the Nazis to come and get her Grandpa because he hires some workers to fill positions at one of the markets. What can Grandpa and the Jews do to subvert Germany from a market? Poison the food? Maybe the Jews would but her wonderful Grandpa wouldn't hurt a fly. If a fly gets in the room and Grandpa can catch it, with fast hands and a fast mind, Grandpa will catch the fly and hold it gently in his cupped hands and push the door to the outside open with his foot and spring open his hands so the fly can buzz off toward the forest. Then he looks at Sandra and smiles. "It could be someone's mother," he says and they both laugh.

It doesn't seem logical to Sandra that she never observed her grandfather's traitorous actions; he must do whatever he does way after she goes to bed. Because he is always down at the Village Square where anyone can see and talk to him or he is at home or he is at one of the stores.

That's probably where he attempts to destroy Germany (if he does attempt to destroy Germany). Or, he must leave the house after she falls asleep. Sometimes he comes in and checks on her. She pretends to sleep and he leaves her room. But she only hears him go back down the creaky, wooden stairs. She never hears him leave the house to hire Jews. Maybe the Jews come to the house after Grandma and Sandra go to sleep. That is it. The Jews come to the house. The Nazis follow them. So her Grandpa gets caught. Now, he is with the Jews and friends of the Jews. Sandra isn't a Jew, of course not. How can she be? Grandma definitely isn't. Sandra's beloved mother, the one floating around in Heaven, isn't Jewish, because Grandpa is her father. And if her mother is part Jewish, she can't be in Heaven.

No Jews can be allowed in Heaven. Her father told her so. He knows, because he spends many hours a day talking to Jews about his line of products. Her father wouldn't tell Sandra her mother was in Heaven if he thought she was Jewish. Sandra and her friends vow they will never talk to a Jew and, now, Sandra must talk to them to find out what happens to Jews and friends of Jews who go to the work camps. She makes it her project to find out what happens when someone is sent to the work camps. She hears horrible things but she is certain most of it isn't true because it comes from the boys in her school and everyone knows that boys are mostly clowns and liars.

So Sandra continues her project. But project or not, she is able to find very little information. Her grandmother says she thinks that the people who go to the camps are used to manufacture materials needed for the war; but Sandra knows there is more to it then that. She knows many families whose fathers and brothers work at manufacturing war materials, but they don't live at work camps, they all just work a few miles from their homes. They go home each and every night.

It appears to Sandra that only Jews and those in disfavor with the government are sent to work camps.

"Well, I've head my father and mother whisper about the work camps," Lena says. "The people work as free labor because they committed crimes against the government." She walks in a circle around Sandra; they hide in their secret place behind Lena's house: inside an old shed. "The Jews on the other hand are sent to other camps. I think they call them 'Death Camps."

"Why would they be called that?" Sandra says.

"Sandra! Why do you think they call them that?"

"Your father says that Jews are being put to death?" Sandra asks.

"No, he doesn't say that," Lena says. She moves away from Sandra and sits on an old crate." It's just, all the facts seem to point to it."

"The government is killing Jews?"

"Yeah, the government is killing Jews. Lots of Jews. Tons of Jews." Lena says. And she holds out her hands as though she is holding butchered meat in her hands. She starts to weep.

Sandra runs to her and holds her in her arms. "Don't cry, Lena," she whispers. "It can't be true." Sandra will never believe it; can never believe it. Of course her Grandpa is not a Jew, but what if they mistake him for a Jew. Some of his features can be mistaken as being Jewish. What if there exist such things as Death Camps and her Grandpa is put on the wrong train. The train will say Work Camp but will be headed toward a Death Camp. Her Grandpa will be stuffed in some boxcar with a bunch of guilty Jews. An innocent, honorable German among guilty Jews. The boys at her school tell stories of the boxcars. Even claim to have seen one being loaded with Jews and Gypsies.

"Let's say the boxcar is supposed to hold a hundred people, the Gestapo stuffs three hundred Jews and Gypsies into the boxcar and you can hear them moan and cry. It's so neat," the boys say.

But Sandra doesn't believe any of it. She lets go of Lena who sits down on a tattered crate and continues to sob. How can it be? Sandra thinks. Actually, she doesn't know what to think; she is too agitated for anything close to rational thought. Her head is spinning, and her stomach hurts. As she looks around fearfully waiting for the other shoe to fall, she wipes her forehead with the back of her hand; when she raises her hand to her face, she sees that the fine hairs on the back of her hand stand on end. Her hand trembles. "They can't be killing Jews," Sandra says, "Grandma would tell me."

"How would she know?" Lena says. "I get more information than she does. She's just like most old people. They believe that Germany can do no wrong. So you can tell her a hundred times that Jews and others are being executed on a large scale, but she will never believe you."

"Okay, let's say that maybe some of it is true," Sandra says. "Why do they do it? It is better to use them as cheap or free labor then to kill them."

"Not if it costs you more, to feed and cloth them, than a Jew is worth as a laborer."

"Like women and children. Or if you're crippled or something." Sandra says.

"Yeah, like that."

The sight of Lena's wide, teary eyes and bloodless skin makes Sandra know that Lena, with more information than Grandma, believes that the German government, the Nazis, are killing Jews, and not just a few Jews; like the family she heard of that used to own the local bakery; but hundreds and maybe thousands of Jews. She feels a headache coming on and a little sourness in her stomach. But she needs to find out for herself. Lena, who should have the most accurate information, is always so dramatic and her father tends toward major exaggerations, says they are definitely killing thousands of Jews and her father is ecstatic about it.

"It will be the best way to stop the International Jewish Conspiracy." He says. "They will think a second time before they try this in another county as powerful as Germany."

And then she thinks of the anger in the voices of the police and Nazis who tried to take her Grandpa from his house. It was more than an arrest: It was very personal. Their angry voices still needle through her brain; kicking up the dust of that dark evening.

"Come out of your house you old Jew lover," they said almost in a kidding way. Then Alf tore into the young policeman's upper thigh.

"Yeah, I love all Jews," her Grandpa said defiantly. Later that night, he said he didn't know why he used those words.

But Sandra thinks that those I love all Jews words may be the last words she will ever hear her Grandpa say, and she shivers at the idea, like when she saw the tall stranger at the shed at the back of the gas station when she was four years old. Her tears start.

Lena moves to her side and holds her head. "It'll all be okay," Lena says. "God will protect us.

"I'm not so sure there is a God," Sandra says. "A sane God would not make me live without my Grandpa."

"There is a God, but he lets us do what we want most of the time," Lena says.

"Then why do we need him?"

"It has nothing to do with needing him. He exists and is all powerful so we have to listen to him."

"He sounds like Hitler."

"Sandra! If they hear you talk like that about God and Hitler, they will think you're a Commie."

"At least the Commies are not taking grandfathers or Jews away in boxcars," Sandra says.

"We don't know that there are any boxcars. Just what the boys say.

"I saw a boxcar full of people when I first came here," Sandra says.

"You never told me."

"I forgot. But I saw them. The boxcar was burning and these people were standing out in the field and there were policemen with guns guarding them. They were probably Jews."

"If the boys saw the boxcars, why can't we go see them? Then we'll know if it's true or not," Lena says.

The boys who are willing to take them to the boxcar site are two of the nastiest kids in their school. Both are two years older than Sandra and Lena. Sandra sneaks from her house after midnight and meets Lena by her shed. They hunker down as they move through the shadows of the village. Curt and Houser meet them at the cemetery on the outskirts of the village. Three hours of walking get them to an old factory site. Behind the factory are lines of boxcars. They stand in the shadows at the top of a brush-covered hill.

"I told you!" Houser says. "Those are all Jews and if we stay here long enough, some of them will be dead Jews."

"Yeah, there's always some jerk Jew who mouths off to the guards and gets his ass blown away," Curt says.

"How do you know those are Jews?" Lena says.

"Don't you know nothing?" Houser says. "Those stars on their clothes mean those are Jews."

"I saw some people in the city with stars on their jackets," Sandra says. "Grandpa said he didn't know what it meant."

"He lied," Curt says. "Everybody knows what it means."

"My Grandpa doesn't lie!"

"You two stop before someone hears us and blows our asses away," Houser whispers.

There is a commotion by the boxcars. The guards are screaming at ten or twelve of the Jews. The guards are forcing them, into a line, with the barrels of their guns. They make six men, three women, and a boy about Sandra's age strip and lay spread-eagled face up on the gravel. The guards shoot directly into the passive bodies. Sandra and Lena scream.

"Oh, shit!" Houser says.

Both of the guards turn quickly and look directly at the hill. They fire toward Sandra and the others. Curt takes a bullet in his upper thigh. He falls to the ground. Houser darts from the hill and runs in the direction of their village. The guards jump into a small military jeep and speed toward the hill. Sandra and Lena pull Curt up by his arms and drag him into the shadows of a block building. Curt is screaming. Sandra puts her hand over his mouth. The jeep speeds up to the entrance of the block building.

"There's where they came up the hill," a guard says. The jeep speeds down the hill. Then it is silent except for the sobbing of the children. The silence is broken by gunshots.

"They killed Houser," Lena whispers, "next, they'll kill us!"

"No, they won't! Grab his arm," Sandra says.

Lena bends down and tries to lift but Curt is hunkered forward, sobbing. "I can't," Lena says. "We have to leave him and get some help." They both dart down the hill away from the oncoming sound of the jeep. They hear Curt's screams and then gunshots. They run through the brush, but Sandra stumbles. Lena runs back and helps her dear friend stand. Sandra limps but starts running when they hear the jeep bearing down on them. They fight their way through the bramble bushes until small spots of blood decorate their legs and arms and faces. But, now, five vehicles are searching for the sobbing, young girls. They move deep into the forest and flinch at every sound.

After miles of walking, their sobbing stops, and there is no sound of jeeps, but they move cautiously through the thick growth: there is the rotted head of some kind of animal. Lena screams. Sandra puts her hand over her friend's mouth. "Shut up," Sandra whispers and looks around. "You want to be caught and spread-eagled and blown away?"

The animal has been butchered for sport not for food, Sandra thinks. What if there is something or someone in the forest that has no thought about the war. The war is only his camouflage to butcher innocent animals. She accuses the killer of being a he because women are rarely insane enough to hurt animals just for the sport of it. This is man's sport. Maggots have eaten the eyes but Sandra is certain the animal died a horrible death. She looks around. Why is the world so violent? Why can't it be gentle?

"Some crazy bastard is out here," Sandra says.

Lena half-smiles. "I hope he only hates animals."

"I think a guy like this is like my father; he hates everything."

"I wish my father was here, right now, he would lead us out of this." Lena says.

"Yes but he would never believe that we saw what we saw."

"My father believes in the Nazis only because he believes they will solve the Jew Problem. If he thought the guards only kill Jews he would be for the guards."

"How did your father get so twisted?"

"He is just one of many Germans who are twisted," Lena says. "I will try to explain to him what we saw. Let's get moving, we have to be home before dawn." Her voice is horse from sucking in air through her mouth. "How can we get back home if the troops are out looking for us?" Lena says.

"We know what village we are from but they don't so they'll have to search in all directions from the factory. They don't have the manpower. Come on lets keep moving." Sandra picks up the pace faster then faster. She throws caution to the wind and almost starts running. But she trips. Lena catches her before she is damaged goods.

"Let's slow it down," Lena says.

"Okay. But. I'm more frightened about Grandma than the Nazis."

"You should be, she's tougher than any old Nazi." Lena says.

They move quickly through the forest but dawn is chasing them and maybe something else. Lena looks over her shoulder and screams. Standing on the edge of the forest is Houser. He has a bullet hole through the center of his dirt caked forehead. Blood runs from both of his shoulders and his left leg is missing. But still he is able to stand. Lena and Sandra run up to him.

"Houser, how in Heaven's name did you get here?" Sandra says.

"I just kept moving. But I think I'm dead now," he says. His body topples forward and reveals a makeshift crutch he's been using. They drag his dead body deeper into the forest and cover it with branches and dry brambles. Now, neither lets go of the others hand. They arrive back at the village before dawn. A few vendors are on the streets but most of the village is still sleeping.

"Do I look as beat up as you do?" Lena says.

"You have small cuts on your face and legs," Sandra says, "how we going to explain this?"

"You're the brain." Lena says.

"No, you're the brain," Sandra says. "I know, grab a couple of branches." They walk up to the front steps of Sandra's house. "Okay, start sword fighting and shouting." Sandra says.

They cross branches and start the fight; the commotion brings Sandra's grandmother to the door. "Sandra! Get in here and get ready for school!"

Sandra drops her branch and runs into her house. Lena hesitates and then dashes into her house.

Sandra still holds her branch as she runs past her grandmother.

"Sandra, you foolish child!" Her grandmother says. "You could have poked your eye out. Look at your face and legs. What if you have permanent scars?"

"We were just playing, Grandma," Sandra says and runs up the stairs to her room.

Sandra and Lena are certain that Gestapo will come from every shadow or walk straight into one of their classrooms and snatch them up and put them into a boxcar headed for the Death Camp or just make them strip right in front of their classmates and lay down by the chalkboard and spread-eagle and bang, bang. They agree that they can never tell a soul that they know how Curt and Houser died. Rumor is the two bullies ran away to join the German heroes at the front. Sandra and Lena speak, in glowing terms about the two bullies, when they are asked for their opinions about what happened to Curt and Houser.

"They were both always nice to Lena and me," Sandra says. "They told some tall tales about the boxcars of Jews and stuff like that. But as I said, they were always nice to us."

"They spoke often about going and helping the Germans at the Front," Lena says and smiles a Sandra.

"Especially Houser: that's all he talked about: that and those silly boxcars," Sandra says. "I know that if anyone can survive this war it's got to be those two ruffians.

"They were not our friends but we liked them." Lena looks toward Sandra. "Well, they didn't just talk about the Front and the boxcars. They many time talked about pulling wings off of flies. And dancing on the graves of the Americans and the British. But I don't think Curt could dance."

"Why do you use past tense?" a classmate asks.

"Just a slip up. I meant can dance that's all. They talked about a lot of things," she looks over at Sandra.

"How to burn down a cornfield at just the right time of year." Sandra says.

"And unbolting the classroom desks and the girls' bathroom doors," Lena says. "Putting someone's bicycle on the train tracks."

"But they were always nice to us," Lena says.

"Yeah, they were always nice to us," Sandra says.

"Houser explained to us about the necessity of Germany to occupy Rome And to make sure the Catholics didn't side with the Jews." Lena said. "My father says the Pope wants to rule the world. And the world might end with the Catholics fighting the Jews."

"I thought your father liked the Catholics because they hate the Jews because of what they did to Jesus."

"You would think so but all he can talk about is how wonderful it is that the German's now control Rome."

1945

MORNING, MARCH 24, 1945 PATTON'S MEN STORM OVER RHINE Nazis Say Other Crossings Made on 215-Mile Front PARIS, March 23, (U.P.) Lt. Gen. George S. Patton's famed 3rd Army troops have stormed across the Rhine and established a solid, expanding bridgehead on the direct road to Berlin...255 miles away, it was announced tonight, as Berlin reported that other Allied forces are crossing the historic river barrier at other points along a 215-mile front.

Seven years of war and, at the end, the people of Germany go through devastating air raids. There is little to eat; whatever food there is goes to the troops. Sandra doesn't understand why the troops eat eggs and she gets none or at the most one egg a month. She likes eggs; it doesn't seem fair that she can't eat as many as her hen can lay. Grandma really doesn't like eggs so she doesn't miss having a nice breakfast of eggs, but Sandra does miss those eggs more than anything. She is delivering three eggs to the army supply depot. How will they know if she just takes one? She thinks. They won't know. She thinks about just taking one egg and downing it raw, but she doesn't really like raw eggs. Grandpa does, but he is someplace where they probably only get porridge for breakfast; maybe they get porridge for every meal; maybe they only get one bowl of porridge per day and nothing else to eat. Sandra decides to just deliver the eggs and go home and be happy with what she has. In the village, where Sandra lives, no one is starving but no one is getting fat either.

"At least we have food," Sandra's grandmother says.

"We don't have any food," Sandra says.

"Yes we do. It is out there in the fields. It just needs to be tended to. If we tend to it we will grow all the food we need."

"I hate vegetables," Sandra says. "And if we try to work the fields, we'll be killed by the bombs."

"I would rather we be killed by bombs than to starve to death." Her grandmother says. "We will wait, and when there is a lull in the bombing, we will tend the fields and gather some food each time. Each time there is a lull. No matter if it is night or day."

"We will all die, Grandma! Grandpa is already in Heaven with Mother."

"Your grandfather is not in Heaven. I'm not even sure they would let him in. He's in Dachau. He's in Hell." She runs her fingers through Sandra's long blonde hair: still kept clean by her grandmother even though the rest of the world is becoming rubble and tangled and dirty. Her grandmother whispers, more to herself than to Sandra, "Your grandfather will survive this just as we will. We will all be together when it ends."

"When will it end, Grandma?"

"When the Americans cross the Rhine."

"Will the Americans kill us?"

"Neither side will kill us, on purpose. We are unimportant. We mean so little in the scheme of things. They don't give a damn if we starve to death or if they hit us with a bomb or run us over with a tank, but neither side will kill us, on purpose."

"Because we are not Jewish?" Sandra said.

"No, because we are not important."

"Then it is good to be not important during a war," Sandra says.

Her grandmother hugs her tightly. "Sandra, love of my life, you act so smart for your age. Yes to be unimportant during a war is the best way to be. Let's hope we are so unimportant that the bombs don't seek us out while we tend to our garden."

There is steady bombing. American and British planes fly over day and night to bomb the points, so there is no way that most of the farmers will tend the fields because they fear a stray bomb. But during these bomb raids; with the sound of bombs going off at what Sandra things to be every hour, Sandra and Grandma tend their garden.

Where do they get all those bombs? Somebody builds the bombs. Why does a good human being on either side build bombs; they can only be used for two things: to destroy and to kill. So why does a person build bombs? If they stop building the messengers of death, the plants will close down and the planes will have nothing to drop; or maybe they can drop food. Lots of food: meat and potatoes and no vegetables but lots of eggs. Oh, no, Sandra thinks, they can't, they can't drop eggs because they will all break unless they drop them on mattresses; everyone in the village can put their mattresses out in a big square as big as a gymnasium and then the pilots can drop the eggs. But for now, Sandra becomes a vegetarian; she can't believe that somewhere in the world there live people who voluntarily become vegetarians right next to a big restaurant whose specialty is steak and eggs.

"Why is God allowing this war?"

"Maybe he's testing for angels," her grandmother says.

"Do you think we passed the test?" Sandra says.

"I hope not," her grandmother says. "I'm not ready to leave this earth yet."

The bombs come closer and closer. One blows apart the shed behind Lena's house. Sandra knows that Lena's father is ready to kill all American or British troops that come to the village. "When they come to 'liberate' the village; I'll liberate them." He says and puts his rife up and sights down the barrel toward the horizon.

During one of the many bombings, Sandra and her grandmother tend a goat giving birth.

"Grandma, I'm frightened, we must go."

"No, Sandra, if we leave her now, her baby will die." Her grandmother says. "I am almost finished, and then we will run like the wind. And with God's good graces, we'll be safe."

They run from the barn. Most everything is on fire.

"What if a bomb hits the barn?" Sandra says. "The mama goat and her baby will be killed. We should bring them with us."

"We can't help them any more than we already helped them. Now, we need to take ourselves from harm's way."

"Why did we stay and help them if they're just going to die anyway?"

"Sandra! The mama and her baby will be okay," her grandmother says as she runs and yanks Sandra toward safety.

"Does God use goat angels?" Sandra says. "I think." Sandra stops dead. There is the body of the old lady who lives across from the bakery; the side of her head is blown off. She is so far from home. It makes no sense, Sandra thinks. Sandra stops and throws up what little food she has eaten. Her grandmother pushes her ahead. They stumble toward the cellar where family and friends are huddled, and frightened and crying and screaming and praying. Boom! A bomb explodes near Sandra. She cries out for her grandmother; a splinter of shrapnel spikes into the left side of her head. Blood streams down the planes of her beautiful face. She falls; face down in the dirt, screaming. Her grandmother scoops her up and carries her through the debris to the cellar. Sandra continues screaming.

"You need to take her to the nurse's house," a friend says.

"She'll never make it," Another says. "The bombs fall too heavily. They are bombing everything. No regard for women or children or any of us. It won't stop until they level all of Germany."

"Shut up!" Sandra's grandmother says. "Hold her so I can remove the shrapnel,"

The friend holds Sandra who is thrashing and screaming. Sandra's grandmother takes a pair of small pliers, digs them into the wound. Sandra never felt such pain; it drives through her entire body. Sandra is certain her grandmother is not even trying to be gentle. She tries to pull away from the probing pliers, but she is held fast. All Sandra wants is for the pain to stop. Why do the Americans and British want to hurt a little girl? How will that help them win the war? Her grandmother catches the end of the splinter and pulls straight out as Sandra passes out. When Sandra comes to, her grandmother is pouring Iodine on the open wound. The pain is excruciating. Sandra screams and swings out with her fist and knocks the Iodine bottle and its remaining contents across the room. It is the longest night of Sandra's young life. But in the morning, the nurse comes and medicates the wound. Sandra sleeps on a dirty cot with dirty blankets for the next days and then the infection sets in.

"You must bring the Doctor!" Sandra's grandmother says to the nurse.

"I can not bring the Doctor," the nurse says. "He is at the Front. All doctors have been ordered to the Front.

"Then give her some proper medicine."

"There is no medicine." The nurse says. "I stand by and watch my friends and neighbors die because there is no medicine."

"Tell me what to do," Sandra's grandmother says. "I won't let her die."

"Put cold compresses on her. Get the temperature down. The high temperature is more dangerous than the infection."

Days go by, and Sandra becomes worse. The infection is creating a hole; eating Sandra's flesh; and her temperature rises; Sandra's grandmother prays. "Please God, I know you must be concentrating on the war, but Sandra has nothing to do with any of it. She knows nothing of Hitler. And has no idea who the British and Americans are. Please don't let her die. Please don't let her suffer and die. If Sandra dies, I will never forgive you."

Sandra is later told that she lives because her grandmother threatened God. But Sandra is certain she lives because her grandmother willed it.

Food is rationed. Very, very, very small rations. And if Sandra's chicken lays an egg, the egg still must be delivered to the Nazis to feed the troops even though the Nazis know that little Sandra needs and wants the egg. One egg per person per week one can keep; if it is found that more than one egg per week per person is kept, the entire family of the culprit is punished severely; there are even rumors that villagers get shot for withholding food. One loaf of bread for the family for the week; and Grandma gives the biggest share to Sandra. The potatoes, they dig from the garden, keep them alive along with the plumb butter that is cooked in a big kettle in the kitchen. Her brave grandmother runs between the shelter and the kitchen during any slowdown in the bombing raids.

When Sandra is on her death's bed, she is visited by her dead mother; she swears to her grandmother, "She was there, I swear, Grandma," Sandra whispers so no one else in the shelter can hear her and maybe think she is nuts or crazy or bonkers; at least more nuts or crazy or bonkers than most the rest of the people who tremble from the bombs. Everyone's nerves are frazzled.

"I can take no more of your stories," her grandmother says. "You were just hallucinating from your fever; nothing else."

"No, Grandma, I swear," Sandra says and crosses her heart. "I saw her. She is an angel. All in white in a long flowing dress like the one she is in for her wedding picture. She tells me that God is watching over us and that he will punish father for not helping us. And for not taking care of me." Sandra doesn't care, what her grandmother says, her mother spoke to her. She was out in the field picking ears of corn. They haven't had corn in years. She is out in the field picking ears of corn when her mother comes walking through the ears of corn; yes her mother actually walks through the solid surface of the ears of corn.

"Sandra, my child, how have you been?" Her dead mother says.

"I've been dying."

"Tell me about it," her mother says.

"I got hit by a bomb. I."

"No, no, I know all that. 'Tell me about it' is just an expression that means, 'I know about it."' Her ghost mother says.

"If you know about it? Why do you ask me how I've been?"

"'How have you been' is just another expression that means, 'Hello'"

"Do all Angels talk in expressions," Sandra asks.

"No. I talk this way because I worked a long time for a Jewish family."

"Are they the ones that killed you with lung decease?" Sandra says as she shucks some corn into the palm of her hand and tastes it.

"No Jewish family killed me. We all found out we had TB at the same time. For all I know, I gave it to her just like I gave it to you," her mother says and then floats closer to Sandra.

"Father says they killed you."

"Your father is a liar and an all around bad husband and father. God has promised me Herbert will go directly to Hell. There will be no stopovers; Herbert will go directly to Hell for not taking care of me and you and my mother and father—your Grandpa and Grandma."

"Could you ask God to end he war?"

"God doesn't control wars; people control wars," her mother says.

"I thought God started wars to test us."

"Test us for what?" her mother says.

"To get into Heaven."

"There is no test to get into Heaven. You just have to believe."

"Then why is Herbert going to Hell?" Sandra says.

"Herbert doesn't believe in anything. We met in church, but it was just a place where Herbert hung out to find women. Unsuspecting women like me"

"He hates you."

"Yes."

"He hates me."

"Yes."

"Sandra!" her grandmother says, "you just went off into one of your daydreams."

"I'm sorry, Grandma, I was just remembering what my mother said to me."

Overhead, bombers grunt through the air dodging ground-fire and still being able to drop their loads of death. News was that the Americans are just miles away, but Sandra and her Grandma believe none of it. Why drop bombs so close to their own troops? Why not just attack the weak defensive units stationed around the village. Maybe the Americans need to kill as many German civilians as possible so there are not as many mouths to feed. Sandra and Grandma sit in the cellar on the comfortable chairs they trucked from the good living room.

"Grandma, three weeks ago, you said that the war will be over in a couple of weeks; that the Nazis will surrender and Hitler will be hung or jailed. Grandma, you better not take a job, with the Gypsies, reading a crystal ball."

"Very funny," Grandma says. "I was just repeating what the experts are saying. They say this war is all over but the cheering."

"That's not cheering, Grandma. That's very loud bombs."

"I know bombs when I hear them."

"Will we be arrested for being Germans," Sandra says.

"I don't think so," her grandmother says.

"Will Lena's father be arrested?"

"I hope so."

"Why do you say such a mean thing? Lena is my best friend."

"Her father is our enemy."

"I thought Americans are our enemy?"

"Well, they are because they kill our relatives and friends, but they wouldn't be killing Germans if the Nazis had not started this war."

"You told me that Hitler and the Germans were right."

"I changed my mind."

"Grandma, I think you changed your mind just because you think the Americans will be here."

"Sandra, listen very closely. Men with guns are coming into the village. They will have license to kill anyone they don't like. So when they come, you treat these men as if they are Gods. Do you understand?"

"Just tell me if the Americans are our enemies. And the British; what of the British?"

"Anytime a foreign power invades a sovereign country and you live in that sovereign country, the invaders are your enemies."

"You've got me totally confused," Sandra says, "whose side are we on?"

"Who ever, marches into this village in the next couple of weeks, that's whose side we're on, you silly girl."

"So if the Devil marches in with his army, I will be on the Devil's side."

"Okay, if the Devil marches in with his army, we will hide until the Last Days," her grandmother says and glances at the Heavens.

A bomb drops within thirty yards of the house; Grandma and Sandra hold each other. But Sandra thinks about her beautiful mother watching down from an all-white Heaven. Her mother will make sure Sandra is protected and that Sandra's Grandma is protected and that Sandra's father is punished. The bombing goes on night and day and day and night and over, and over, and over again; but it no longer bothers Sandra. She knows that her beautiful mother is her Guardian Angel protecting her. Nothing can or will harm Sandra now. No more T.B. and no more shrapnel into her young body, no more pain, no more sorrow, Sandra thinks, but Sandra is wrong.

V-E DAY

MONDAY MORNING, MAY 7, 1945 V-E DAY! Nazis Surrender Unconditionally to Allied Powers. REIMS (France) May 7 (A.P.) Germany surrendered unconditionally to the western allies and Russia at 2:41 a.m. French time today. The surrender took place at a little red school house which is the headquarters of Gen Eisenhower. The surrender which brought the war in Europe to a formal end after five years, eight months and six days of bloodshed and destruction was signed for Germany by col. Gen. Gtustav Jodl. (Jodl is the new chief of staff of the German army.) BULLETINS ON SURRENDER LONDON, May 7. (A.P.) Adm. Karl Doenitz has "ordered the unconditional surrender of all fighting German troops," a broadcast on the Flensburg wave length said today. The statement, attributed to German foreign Minister Ludwig von Krosigk, was broadcast to the German people. LONDON, May 7. (A.P.) Reuter's in a Moscow dispatch said today that it was reported without confirmation that the bodies of German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbles and family had been found in an air raid shelter near the Reichstag Building in Berlin. LISBON, May 7. (A.P.) Portugal severed diplomatic relation with Germany yesterday on the grounds that there no longer is a legal government in the Reich. German Minister Adolf von Hallen was notified of the Portuguese government's decision as he was leaving the legation chapel after memorial services for Adolf Hitler. MOSCOW. May 7. (A.P.) Russian troops, systematically examining the bodies found in the Nazi Chancellery in Berlin, have not yet reported finding Adolf Hitler or Joseph Goebbels, although the bodies of many members of the general staff, leading Storm Troopers and high-ranking Nazis (all suicides) have been found. The Russians still believe that the report of Hitler's death is a Nazi trick, and that the Fuehrer is in hiding. LONDON, May 7. (A.P.) In obvious anticipation of an early announcement of VE-DAY, pennants and flags were being strung across the fronts of hotel and office buildings in many parts of London today. For the first time since the war began, factory signals sounded their whistles this morning to mark the start of the working day. The whistles previously had been banned to prevent confusion with air-raid warnings.

Before V-E day, Sandra's grandfather escapes from Dachau. Early one morning he goes to the Wardens office. "You owe me for past favors," Sandra's grandfather says. "You know Germany has lost the war. But the Nazis will come, for me and others, to vent their anger; for revenge. They will torture us and kill us to assuage their frustration. They have lost the war but worst for them they will be tried in the World Court for war crimes; war crimes against the German people and the people of most of Europe. They will start eliminating witnesses, immediately. They will eliminate the remaining Jews, first, by crowding them into the gas chambers. Then they will come after the rest of us 'Jew Lovers'" her grandfather continues "I have a plan. This plan will allow me to escape and will put me in a position to help you in the future. You know I will be put back into a place of importance. You will need all the friends you can get."

"But what if the Nazis don't lose the war?" The Warden says.

"You're an Idiot with a capital 'I'," Sandra's grandfather says. "Of course Hitler will loose. Evil always succumbs to Good."

"Do you think about me?" The Warden asks. He puts down the evening newspaper and begins to pay attention. "If you escape, the Nazis will torture and murder me. No plan can solve that. You must stay and take your chances along with the Jews, and the Gypsies and the Polish bastards. You don't see any of the Jews trying to escape. And they usually report as good if not better information on who's doing what."

"The Jews—the walking dead. You helped make them that."

"I never killed a Jew. I never killed or tortured anyone. You are my friend," The Warden says. "But what of my family. If I help you to any extent, the Nazis will hang me in the town square."

"At least listen to my plan," Sandra's grandfather says. "I will hit you and create a small bruise on your face. Then I will tie you to your chair, take your keys and escape into the forest."

"How hard will you hit me," The Warden says as he braces himself. Sandra's grandfather swings a little too hard and knocks the surprised Warden from his chair. Then the heavy chair comes tumbling down onto the Warden. "Damn! You said it would create a small bruise. I think you broke my jaw." The Warden says. "For the rest of my life, what is looking like a short one, I'll remember you as the guy who broke my jaw."

"Like all things," Sandra's grandfather says, "it will mend." Sandra's grandfather helps the Warden to his feet. He looks toward the door to see if the noise brings a prison guard to the Warden's door. No one appears so he up-rights the heavy chair, motions to the Warden to take a seat, and then rips the electrical cord from the ornate lamp, and ties his friend to the chair.

"You didn't need to ruin a perfectly good lamp," the Warden says. "And a very expensive one, I might say."

"Stop whimpering or I'll stuff one of your smelly socks in your mouth."

"Please use tape," the Warden says. "There's some in the bottom drawer. You should tape my mouth so I can't cry out; please be a little gentler with this part of your plan." Blood trickles from his split lip and onto his immaculate uniform. It runs down the starched collar and pools on the upper edge of a brass eagle pined to the Warden's upper chest.

The tape is in the bottom drawer as the Warden promised. And Sandra's grandfather applies it gently across the Warden's lips as promised. He takes a jacket from the Warden's closet and slips into the oversized clothing. It smells of tobacco and shaving lotion. He kisses the Warden on his swollen cheek and his baldhead. "Thank you, old friend, you saved my life." The Warden nods goodbye, and smiles as tears began to cloud his eyes.

It is dawn. Sandra's grandfather would prefer to wait until night but at Dachau you didn't hold the luxury of access to the Warden at night. He pulls the jacket up around his neck; not much of a neck; he has lost so much weigh, while working producing shoes for the Nazis, that he looks like one of the Jews that walks around like a skeleton so emaciated that it is hard to believe the Jew is still alive, but the Jew is still walking around and carrying some load or another usually that weighs as much as the Jew weighs.

Since the Nazis came to power, he knew they were bad for Germany; horrible for Germany; but he never really thought of them as alien creatures until he saw their treatment of the Jews. They stand by and watch the Jews slowly die. Death becomes welcome to most. The guards put money into a betting pool where they guess who will be the next to die; if the Jew will die whimpering, will he die during the night? Most die in their tracks trying to lift one more barrel of shoes.

If he lives, and if he is still supervisor at the markets, he will give any open positions to a Jew, first. They will get first choice and maybe someday he can erase the guilt of just standing and doing nothing while a Jew is beaten to death or thrown alive into an open grave or shot, pointblank, in the head; a head so emaciated, and so skeletal, that all the Jews look alike; they all look like brothers and maybe they are. Not like the Nazis say about inbreeding, but brothers in their hearts. Brothers with the same destiny: death. He needs to stop thinking about the inmates of the Work Camp and start thinking about his freedom and his duty to get back home and care for his wife and granddaughter. He must find a better pair of shoes.

It is ironic: he spent sixteen hours a day making some of the best shoes made by man, and here he is with the worst shoes in the entire camp. If he is going to walk the miles to his house; if his house is still there; if his wife and Sandra still exist, he thinks, he must walk to them. They've got to be alive and okay. Life can't be that cruel to take them: the two he loves so much.

He walks across the highway. A transport rumbles by. The driver looks right through him. Grandpa looks up at the East tower. He can see the faint outline of Robeshaw, the deadliest shot in all of Germany. He crouches low and crosses the road but expects to be shot in the back by the distant sharpshooter. He steps into the forest as soon as it appears. It is thick and dark and holds stories of atrocities committed by the guards as they release prisoners and track and wound and then kill them as fine sport. Now, they will start tracking him sometime during the night. But the war effort is winding down and they can't spare manpower. They need all the help they can get in completing the last days of "The Final Solution," but they will send someone. He dodges into the forest. And then something is freezing on the top of his uncovered head. Another huge splash of cold water washes down his face and then it becomes a deluge. As the night comes, the rain becomes heavier, and laced among the bomb blasts and the artillery fire; flashes of lightning cause him to stop walking and look straight up into the rain.

The bombs flash to the east so they may not get him; but the rain might if he doesn't get under some shelter. His cloths are soaked through and through. The touch of dysentery he has endured for the last months at Dachau is getting worse in the dampness. They will be looking for him to head straight to his home so he will circle around and come in from the west. Lighting flashes; followed by a bang of thunder. Then the flood comes. He trips and goes face down in the mud. He gets up, pulling the soggy jacket around his shivering body. He falls again. And then again. He tries to get up but his strength is sapped from the lack of nutrition he has endured through the many months at the Work Camp. He thinks about his wife and beautiful Sandra and then blacks out.

Hours pass; he pulls himself to his feet. Lighting flashes across the sky and bombs explode closer than before his blackout. He is unable to judge how long he was out, but his throat is locked shut and each time he takes a breath his lungs rattle and he coughs up bile into the wind. As he stands with water running from his hair and bile dripping down his chin, he sees a low lying shed with the entrance facing him. He staggers into it, stumbles over a crate and crashes to the sod floor. He will probably die here on the sod floor and never see his family again.

An instant later, three running men in hooded raincoats and being pulled forward at breakneck speed by German Shepard search dogs race along the side of the dilapidated shed; the dogs ignore the rain and the shed. They didn't even give the shed a sniff. Maybe they track someone else. Or maybe his prayers reached God and were answered. He is not a religious man, but he finds himself praying for the smallest thing. "Please God give me a larger ration tonight." "Please God burn that idiot Hitler in the fires of Hell." When he prays, he looks around to see if maybe the guards learned some way to use psychic powers that allow them to read his thoughts. Now he is praying he will get home and find his family alive and well. How well can they be in these times? Please, God keep them alive. And when the Americans and British come, make them less evil than the Nazis. He sleeps through the day and travels by night. He cleans off an old bicycle he discovers in the corner of the shed. He wheels it to the highway and rides it when there is no traffic, which is most of the late night hours.

The shed has been his godsend: it gave him shelter when he was being attacked by the rain; it provided a barrier to his scent when the dogs came; he found his transportation in the wonderful shack and he was able to salvage a weeks rations of potatoes from a mildewed bag hidden in the darkest corner of his magic shack. Someday he will revisit the sacred shed with his wife and Sandra and he will tell them, "It was a gift from God, this shed. I could not have survived without it." Eight miles into his trip, he is almost spotted by a German patrol. But something else gains their attention so he is saved again.

Lena's father comes to Sandra's house with three other Nazis. He speaks to her grandmother. "Your husband escaped with the help of the Warden. The Warden is being dealt with and so will your husband be dealt with," he says. "As long as Germany is a sovereign country, all criminals will be dealt with. Your husband is a criminal as we both know."

"We do not know any such thing," Sandra's grandmother says. "When the British and Americans come, you will be dealt with as a criminal. This is the time for you to shift. You picked the wrong side."

"If I find out you are sheltering your husband!" He shouts. "I will take you and put you in the same cell your husband escaped from. I doubt that you will be so lucky as to escape. History shows no two escapees from the same family." He laughs at his own words.

"If you are half smart, little man," Sandra's grandmother says. "You will start cultivating friends. Someone like you is going to need all the friends he can get when this conflict is over."

He storms from the house, but stops long enough to nail a wanted poster to the door.

The rain pours, but in the western part of the forest, the trees grow so thick that little of the rain comes through to soak into Sandra's grandfather's already saturated skin. His cough is worse and he abandons the bicycle because he is too woozy from the fever to balance on the seat. He sees a clearing and stumbles through the clearing. He is back at the Work Camp! He has stumbled through the forest in a circle! Hanging, from a thick rope attached to the underside of the East guard tower, is his beloved friend, the Warden of the work camp. Dogs have eaten his feet. "Your friend had an easy death compared to you," a voice says from behind him. He turns quickly; a rifle butt smashes into his face. He is out cold. He wakes; straddled over him is Robeshaw, the guard from East tower. His knees are on Grandpa's shoulders and he reaches into Grandpa's twisting mouth and clutches his swollen tongue. In his free hand, Robeshaw has a bayonet. He moves the bayonet toward the tongue; Grandpa tries to move but before he can twist his frail body, a shovel edge comes out of the darkness and slices into the neck of the guard. Roveshaw is dead.

Grandpa thinks, there is a God.

"Hello, old friend," the village gravedigger says, "you're looking a little under the weather." He helps Grandpa up. "I'm headed to the Front to try to win this war."

"Come back home with me and we'll have a drink together," Grandpa says, The war is over."

"It ain't over till it's over," the gravedigger says.

They go their separate ways through the pouring rain. Grandpa struggles along the highway with sorties into the forest when traffic comes. He is certain he is nothing more than a walking dead man like most the Jews. He has to make it home for his friends sake; the friend who he got killed; who is now hanging from the East guard tower with his feet chewed off. He rearranges his waterlogged coat; it has dried somewhat from him being under the trees. He can't make a mistake again; to ride and walk for days and to end up were you started is more than a bad dream. He is dying from the croup, he is certain. One more bad trip around the forest and back to the Work Camp, and he's a dead man. He needs to find the small creek that runs northeast to southwest. He will have to hike deeper into the forest but that is life. He listens for running water amid the downpour and he thinks he hears it. There it is, he thinks.

It won't do for me to stumble into the creek and drown. Best I concentrate. There it is. It's there. It's there. It's there. His goal is to keep the creek in sight no matter what but the trees are thick and the brush is dense and his head is woozy, so the creek runs in and out of his consciousness. Sometimes he walks so close to the water that the thin soul of his right shoe lets freezing water seep in and attack his withered toes. He has to concentrate and not let another Robeshaw tap him on the shoulder and attempt to cut his tongue out. But crazy Robeshaw is dead. If they find him, all Hell will break out. He laughs at the image of a cartoon Robeshaw charging from the Work Camp: charging from Hell: charging from Dachau.

The trees get thicker and thicker and for a long moment his looses sight of his creek flowing toward his freedom and his loved ones. Actually it flows almost in the opposite direction of his loved ones because he is taking the long way home. And he doubts that freedom is so easy to achieve. He stops dead in his tracks. He cannot see or hear the running water of the creek. It must go underground, he thinks. He panics and circles round and round in a fifty-foot circle. When he finally finds the continuing creek, he is uncertain that he is headed in the right direction. He stands and says a short prayer to a God he's not very certain of. Then he opens his potato sack, knocks of a few rotting spots and bites off the end. The rain is still pouring but the forest buffers the downpour.

In all the books he has read about the forest, there is always a list of things you can eat: bark and moss and a desert of berries. But the authors were not writing about this forest. The bark is like chewing on an iron skillet. The moss looks so nasty, no sane person will put it in his or her mouth; he is sane still, he thinks. And there are no berries. Not one. So here he is stumbling through the forest eating a half-rotted potato. Dear Lord, I'm not complaining, he thinks.

The ground becomes too soggy at the edge of the creek so he has to back off about ten yards. His attention is distracted when a bomb blast sounds like it comes from the exact location of the Work Camp. The British and Americans won't bomb the innocent prisoners, but he doesn't put it past the Nazis to arrange some kind of mass murder of the remaining prisoners/witnesses. He trips over a large tree stump and crashes face down in the brambles. He decides to lie there for a few minutes but the minutes run into almost an hour. He pushes his body up into a seated position, and then, with the help of a thick barked tree, he stands upright. Every muscle in his body aches from his neck to his cramped toes. He walks cautiously out of the brambles but closer to the creek. He stands at the edge. Again he tries to decide which direction he should be going. If he has somehow ended up on the wrong side of the creek, then he is certainly going back toward he Work Camp and his friend with no feet. "Lord, give me a little help, here," I'm okay; I'm going the right direction. I just have to speed it up so I get there sometime before the war is over about ten months from now, he thinks.

His ears start ringing. They are swelling shut like his throat. He starts walking. The trees bunch up tighter but it won't matter because he will have to leave the protection of the forest to begin his circle around to the village.

Grandpa moves slowly out of the forest. It is almost dawn. He looks both ways, like he taught Sandra, and then attempts to run across the silent highway. He slows down about half way across and suddenly hears the rattle of trucks coming his direction. His feet are like lead. But he stumbles forward into a field before a seventeen-truck caravan rumbles by. The trucks are empty? He is in a field but he is slipping down; impossible in a field. But he realizes he has stumbled to the edge of a ten foot crater. Oh no! he thinks, they are bombing this close to the village. He pulls his body away from the crater and convinces his emaciated body to move faster toward what he is certain will be a death scene of his loved ones.

He struggles in the direction of the village, moving through the slippery, tall grass of the cratered field. The downpour blurs his vision, but it looks to him like the village has been bombed out. He starts to run but stumbles and falls, rises and stumbles and falls, but gets up again. In his mind, he is running to a bombed out house with nothing left but the foundation. In his mind, he lifts the storm cellar doors and huddled inside is Sandra.

She is frail and blood is dripping from a wide gash on her head. He runs to her and sweeps her up in his arms, "Sandra, you're alive. Where's Grandma?"

Sandra hugs him. Some of her blood gets on his dirt streaked face. She blurts out, "Grandma has become a famous nurse and is out saving the troops, she should be home tonight to fix this cut on my head. Did you bring any potatoes?"

His mind clears as he hears a sound behind him. He tries to find a weapon; a sick or a rock, but here is nothing. Then it comes at him wagging and whining. It is Alf his old German Shepard. "Fellow! You old fool, what you doing so far from home?" Alf nuzzles his master's withered hand and continues to wag all over and whine softly. "Alf, stop that or you'll give me away." He pets and rubs the dog's thick fur. "I'm so happy to see you but you must go home or you will get me caught. Go, now. Go home boy." He smacks Alf on the butt and the dog prances off. Alf looks back once and wags then prances off through the field in the direction of the house. He looks mighty happy, Grandpa hopes Lena's father is not around. Grandpa sits in the center of the field, smiling, and thinking of his next move. The rain is still pounding on his bare head, but there is no shelter and no way to find any without chancing exposure to the Nazis. It is either exposure to the rain or the Nazis; he chooses exposure to the rain that may end up killing him in the long run. He spits bile into the wind.

He drags himself through the field and is only a mile from his house when the rain stops. He backs up, using the shelter of the field for protection until nightfall. His wife will know how to cure his cough. But he will only visit them once, and then find some place to hide. He has passed a bombed-out warehouse a few miles back. He will stay there until he is well enough and strong enough to go to plan B. He will find some way to get his family out of Germany until the war is over in six months or a year. He sits with the support of a tree trunk and waits as the day blends into night. He is happy that he has escaped and the gravedigger saved his life but sad that the gravedigger and many other loyal Germans will become the final fodder for the Satanic war machine.

It is after midnight when he pries open the window to the good living room. He pulls himself in and slides down the wall to the floor. He sits there and eventually falls asleep.

Morning comes, but he cannot move. He is afraid to call out because he doesn't know if his family still lives in the house; but the gravedigger would have said something, he thinks. He hears the door being unlocked. He drags his wretched body behind the sofa and waits. "Sandra," her grandmother says, "We will pack the good china because we don't know if the Americans and the British will make us vacate our home."

Sandra moves toward the display cabinet and looks to her right. She looks straight into her grandfather's eyes but doesn't recognize him. She screams and points. "Grandma! There is a man behind the sofa. He is dirty and he is dying."

Her grandmother runs to the sofa. She doesn't hesitate. She pulls the sofa away from the wall and kneels down and cradles him in her arms. "I knew you would come home. I never could imagine Sandra and me living without you." She cradles him and rocks back and forth. "Sandra, go and get your grandfather a small glass of brandy."

Sandra comes back with the brandy. She kneels and places the glass to her grandfather's lips. "What have they done to you, Grandpa?" she says.

"Nothing, nothing important, now that I'm home," he whispers.

Sandra stays with her grandfather while his wife prepares the tub in the bathroom, upstairs.

"You can't stay here, grandfather, Lena's father and others are looking for you."

"We will clean me up, prepare me a ration bag, and I will go to the abandoned warehouse on the edge of town. Then I will find some way to get us out of Germany." He says.

Sandra's grandmother enters. "Your plan is good except the last part," She says. "We are not leaving our home, we are not leaving unless the Americans or British throw us out."

"But we can't wait for them," he says.

"They are just across the river," Sandra says.

"Is this true? They invaded Germany? And so close?" He says.

"It's true. They will be here soon," Sandra's grandmother says. "Rumors persist that the Americans and maybe the British will be here in just weeks."

Her grandfather bathes, with the help of her grandmother, while Sandra prepares a bag of food. It is mostly potatoes used in different recipes for different dishes but there is some plumb jam and bread and the only egg they have left. He goes alone to the abandoned building.

Sandra and her grandmother visit him, late at night; every other night. They make sure no one is following. Sandra can't stop smiling; her grandfather is home and the Americans are coming. But her grandfather tells her to stop smiling. "Sandra, everyone will know I'm safe and that you know it. Stop smiling, you silly girl. Stop smiling until the Americans get here."

They sit and talk for hours on the days that Sandra and her Grandma visit.

"These are vicious people...the Nazis," her Grandpa says.

"I know, Grandpa. Lena and I saw them kill Jews," Sandra says.

"You saw no such thing," her Grandma says. "Germans don't kill Jews."

"Sandra is right, Nazi Germans kill Jews," Grandpa says, "They kill thousands of Jews."

"We saw them kill ten Jews and Houser and Curt," Sandra says.

"Sandra, stop telling stories. Curt and Houser ran away to join the brave men at the Front," her grandmother says.

"Where did you see the Jews killed?" her grandfather asks.

Sandra points out to the front of the abandoned factory, "Out there for the Jews and up in the hills for Houser and Curt."

"Why didn't you tell me? When was this? How did you get out of the house?" Her grandmother says.

"I can't tell you more or you will beat me," Sandra says.

"When have I ever beaten you?" Grandma says

"If the Americans come and I come home, I'm going to beat you for doing such a dangerous thing as hiking this far to see the killing of Jews. You could have been killed. Tell me the entire story. We will have to inform Houser's and Curt's parents."

"Houser's father was wounded in "43", he died last week," Grandma says, "Curt's mother committed suicide. His father hasn't been seen."

"This is almost over," Grandpa says, "When the Americans come maybe they'll restore sanity."

But insanity reins and bombs rain and death reins. There is no safe place to hide from the bombs when the bombs start falling, so Sandra and her Grandma spend most of the time knitting in the cellar. They tend the field and the garden in-between the raids. But twice the bombs tore out three quarters of the field and part of the garden and the back porch. Most of the front of Lena's house is burnt causing Lena's father to swear at the Heavens and the Americans and the British. Lena and Sandra are determined to continue their education by reading books from their homes and their neighbor's homes; they carry the precious books to the corner of Sandra's cellar when it is safe for Lena to cross over. "It's your turn to read aloud, Lena," Sandra says.

"I always get the crappy books with all the big words," Lena says.

"Lena," Sandra says, "Grandma will hear you say crappy!"

"I heard your Grandma say 'this crappy war."

"Well, this war is crappy, but little girls are not supposed repeat it."

"We are not little girls," Lena says.

"Well, girls and women are not supposed to use language like 'crappy.'"

But the crappy war continues. All the fighting seems to focus on the tiny village. Now every morning there is gunfire close to the village and bombs at night. And now there is silence. Sandra opens he cellar door and peeks toward Lena's house. Lena's father is dousing the flaming side shingles with water. Lena hands him another bucket.

She waves at Sandra. "You can come out now," Lena says. "I think it's over." She points toward the road. Ragged looking German troops are walking slowly toward the center of he village; they have their hands clasped behind their heads.

Sandra ducks back in he cellar. "Grandma, you can come out now. It looks like all the German soldiers have surrendered."

Her Grandma steps from the cellar and hugs Sandra, and then looks in the direction of Lena's house, "Sandra, get our garden buckets and bring them to Lena's."

With four of them filling buckets and dousing the fire, the house is only slightly damaged.

Lena's father put his bucket down and runs his forearm across his grimy forehead. "Thank you, thank you." He leads Grandma out of hearing of the two girls then says, "I need you to help me with another thing. I need you to help me by telling the invaders that I am on their side; I always have been. I always will be."

"Why would I tell such a lie?" Grandma says.

"For Lena's sake," he says.

Lena's mother comes running up the path from the center of town. "I got trapped in that last gunfight." She looks at the side of the house. "Lucky for us it's over or we will have no house at all. The Mayor says the Americans and British will appreciate it if we line the road and cheer as they pass. Someone is filming a newsreel."

Most all of the villagers line the road and wait. Two hours into the wait a cameraman comes riding backwards in a jeep. He signals to the crowd and a big insincere cheer goes up. He signals again and this time he gets closer to what he wants. Soldiers riding on tanks and flying American flags raise their arms into the air to signal to the crowd to cheer. The crowd sees the enthusiasm of the tired, young faces and bursts into applause then cheers.

"They look friendly," Sandra says.

"And handsome," Lena says.

"We will spank both of you," Grandma says, "if you even go close to the Americans."

Lena's father and mother nod their heads. Sandra and Lena walk hand-in-hand along the parade route. In the center of the village, across from the grade school, a band plays an up roaring, out-of-tune march. American flags, handed out by employees of the newsreel company, are waived enthusiastically.

"How did the Americans get this together so quickly" Sandra says.

"So quickly?" Lean says. "They've been across the river for what seems like ages."

"Yeah, but that last explosion and that last gun fight happened just hours ago. Then all of a sudden everyone surrenders?"

"What? You think it was staged for the newsreel guys?"

"Yeah, I think it was staged," Sandra says, but smiles at one of the Americans. I'll bet he thinks I'm fourteen, she thinks. She will have to get some makeup from Lena. Makeup that makes her look more like she's fourteen. She's always been told that she looks older than she is. And she acts more mature than most eleven-year- olds. And luckily, Lena looks older so Sandra doesn't look like she's a fourteen-year-old hanging around with an eleven year old.

Finally the Americans are over the Rhine and liberate them. And the show is over. Sandra, Lena, and Grandma race to the abandoned warehouse. Sandra calls out, "Grandpa! Come out! You are free! We are all free!"

2046-1948

WENDNESDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 2, 1946 Goering and 10 Other Hitler Chiefs Must Hang in 15 Days Von Papen One of Three to Be Acquitted NUERNBERG. Oct. 1 (U.P.) Herman Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop and 10 other Nazi arch-conspirators were condemned today to hang within 15 days for their World War II crimes.

It is bad times for Goering and his buddies, and for Sandra. Her father demands that she come to live with him and his new family. Back to the city. She hears her grandparents talking at night in their bed. Grandma is crying.

"Maybe it will be good for her," her grandfather says. But her grandmother keeps crying. His footsteps come up the stairs. He hesitates outside her door. The door creaks open. "Sandra," he says. "Don't pretend you're asleep. We must talk about your father and his family."

"I'm asleep," Sandra says.

"No you're not or you wouldn't be talking."

"Lots of people talk in their sleep."

"But not you," he says. "Let's talk a little about your father."

"I hate him!"

"No you don't. You just don't understand him," her grandfather says and sits down on the edge of the bed and holds her hand. "It would surly be nice to see your little sister and brother every day and go to school in the city and meet new friends."

"He doesn't want me there. It's her, Marie, she just wants me to be her slave, to watch the children while she lounges around. That's all she does, you know. She doesn't want me. She just wants a housekeeper. A permanent babysitter and a housekeeper. I'm not going to go, why should I be punished this way. I'm not ever going back to that place."

He strokes her long hair. And then kisses her on the top of her head. "I don't want you to go. And Eva will suffer with you gone," he says. "But you must at least try it. He can cause us trouble. He is still your father no matter how long you've been with us. He can go to the judge and force us to bring you to him. Go and try. If it just can't work, then I will move mountains to get you back. You can come see us whenever you want."

"Once I become their slave, I'll not be able to go anywhere. Not even to see you and Grandma. They will chain me to my bed each night and unchain me in the mornings just long enough to do the breakfast dishes."

"Now, Sandra, you know they are required to let you go to school," her grandfather says, "or a judge will give us immediate custody. They will not chain you to the bed."

"They might as well. I'll have no life."

"You must try, Sandra. You must," he says as tears form in the corners of his eyes.

When he leaves her room, Sandra shakes off her covers and walks to the window. Before looking toward Lena's she looks toward the forest. She remembers not recognizing her beloved grandfather when he came from his ordeal in the forest on his way back from Dachau. Back from Hell. She remembers the Nazis coming to the house and threatening her grandmother. When it was all over, she was certain that life would be good from that moment on. There would be small troubles, life is full of the small troubles, but she was certain that life with her grandparents would be good from that moment on. But now the man who never wanted her is destroying her life once again. He has no thought for what she wants. Now she will be uprooted from her beloved village and transported, like the Jews, to a work camp; a work camp with a Warden named Marie.

Like Sandra's Grandpa, she will plan an escape. She looks ruefully toward the night sky. She is very sad about her future. Then the tears start and she cries and hyperventilates until she faints. Her very first fainting spell. She will tell Grandma.

She begins packing the next morning; and with her grandmother's help they make a quick job of it. "Please don't send me away, Grandma. There must be something Grandpa can do."

"He tried everything," Her grandmother says, "But your father maintains the upper hand. We never adopted you. During the war, adoption was difficult; and after, it didn't seem necessary. In the past, your father just tended to his new family. But now, he says he wants a complete family and that his family will not be complete without you."

"He's a liar," Sandra says, "he always has been, and he always will be."

"Go and do this, and your grandfather and I will not hesitate to exhaust any and all our resources to find a way to bring you home."

It is her home. The place where her father is will never be a home; even if she stays there for a lifetime. No not one lifetime: she will find the first opportunity to run away; but if she runs, she won't be able to come back to her grandfather's. Her retched father will cause trouble if she runs back home. She closes her suitcase and carries it to the front of the house. Her father will pick her up in an hour. It is hard to say goodbye to her friends but she promises she will come to visit and of course they can visit her in the city. Her father doesn't come that day. He calls and demands that her grandfather brings her to the city; and of course her grandfather obliges as an excuse to spend the last hours with Sandra.

She tries very hard not to cry when he leaves, but tears flow down her pretty cheeks. She allows herself to hold her grandfather tightly forever. Before she finishes, her tough, old grandfather is weeping openly. Then she steps back and holds his hand. "I love you, Grandpa. Tell Grandma, how much I'll miss her."

"It's not so bad, Sandra," he says through his tears, "we will come visit you and you will come visit us. It will all work out. You know it always does."

But she is not so sure, this time. Things always work out if it is her Grandpa and Grandma in control; but nothing works out when her father is in control. And this time her father is in complete control. And it appears to Sandra that her father is as much a megalomaniac as Hitler and only death stopped Hitler. Sandra feels very guilty, but she wishes death will stop her father. She decides she will live through it. And when she is old enough to be emancipated, she will get her freedom and head back to live with her grandparents in the village. As her Grandpa leaves, she wants to chase after him and ask him if she did something wrong. Did she offend him in any way? Why else would he leave her? Why doesn't he fight for her? Tell her father to go to Hell. But they both just stand there and weep.

Marie's mother uses her twisted hand to raise Sandra's chin. "Oh don't be such a crybaby," she says, "you'll stay with us here and now. And you'll start your chores by washing the dishes, after lunch."

She doesn't like the mother of her father's wife and is not to keen on her father's young wife either. After lunch, she clears the plates and bowls from the table and scrapes scraps into the trash then places the dishes in burning water. She pulls her fingers out of the water and blows on them.

"Make sure the water is nice and hot. Make sure those dishes get clean before you put them away," Marie's mother says. "Come find me when you finish; then you'll do more chores. The work builds up around here. You will be a very busy girl."

Sandra is so exhausted at the end of the day that she just falls onto the couch, her bed, which she shares with a dog. She wishes it was her grandfather's German Shepard, Alf. On the second day, her father enrolls her in the local school, but the girls make fun of her homemade village clothes and sox. "I need some new clothes," Sandra says to her father.

"There is no money for new clothes," he says. "There is nothing wrong with your things. You wore them in the village you can wear them here. Your grandmother and grandfather spoiled you. But you'll not be spoiled here. You'll help Marie and do it without complaining. You'll go to school and wear whatever there is to wear without complaining. You'll sleep on the couch, you're lucky to have, without complaining."

"Then, at least, buy me some decent material so I can make my own clothes," Sandra says.

"See, that shows how spoiled and selfish you've become," her father says. "You wish to spend all your time making things for yourself and leaving no time to help Marie."

"I hate you," Sandra whispers to herself.

"What did you say, young lady?" her father says and moves closer to her; he stands directly in front of her with his arms across his chest and his feet wide apart. "What did you say?"

"Nothing!"

"She said she hates you!" The mother-in-law says from the shadows. "She said she hates you. It was very clear. You heard it but you just decided to ignore it."

"I'll not ignore it another time!" he says and then steps forward and slaps Sandra across the face.

Sandra falls back and hits her back against a wooden, kitchen chair. She stops her fall and then lunges forward and scratches her father's face. "I hate you! I hate you! I always will from now and for ever more!" Her father slaps her again.

This time Sandra falls back against the mother-in-law and is immediately in the old lady's tight grasp.

"Bring her over here!" her father shouts. He moves the sugar bowl and candle-holder to one side of the kitchen table. "Hold her against the table and press her head down in the center!" He pulls his belt through the loops and snaps it as it comes loose from his pants. "Lift her skirt!" The mother-in-law holds struggling Sandra's head down against the kitchen table with one hand and lifts her skirt with the other. Her father snaps the belt against Sandra's bare legs.

Her body responds and she stands straight up knocking the mother-in-law against the sink. The room echoes with the mother-in-law's screams and the cracking of her wrist bone. She falls to the floor and rolls in pain. Marie comes running into the kitchen and drops down on one knee. She tries to calm her mother but becomes hysterical when she sees the angle of the broken wrist bone.

"What have you done?" Marie shouts at Sandra.

"I defended myself," Sandra says. "That witch was holding me and your idiot husband was beating me with his belt."

Her father comes at her again. Sandra puts both her hand out. "If you hit me ever again, I will tell my grandfather and he will come here and kill you with his bare hands," Sandra says, and then runs from the kitchen and out into the night. She is not crying. She will never let him make her cry again.

Her father married a rich girl but his father-in-law controls all the funds and there is very little for the family of his daughter and the man, named Herbert—who he told his daughter not to marry. He is a step-father who never goes home because he hates his son-in-law and he hates his wife even more. She is evil. So when he hears Sandra called her a witch and knocked her to the floor, he can only think how wonderful life could be if only the old witch broke her neck instead of her wrist. In the morning, he smiles at Sandra as she moves around, the silent house, doing chores.

Before school, Sandra gets up and does house chores and washes the family's clothes. After school, she goes shopping and carries the entire purchase home even though it is always too heavy; and then she puts the water on the stove so it will get warm for the children's bath and finally when everything else is finished she can take a bath in the dirty water. After her bath she carries the dirty bathwater, from the kitchen, in a tub, into the bathroom pours it in the toilet and flushes it down. In the mornings, her little sister cries, her stepmother sleeps until midday, so Sandra has to feed the screaming baby before she runs off to school. She doesn't tell her grandfather of the beating the two adults perpetrated against a child–that child being her—because he will show up at the doorstep with a double-barreled shotgun and blow her father away along with the ugly witch of a mother-in-law. And then her grandfather will be back under lock and key. Sandra decides that it isn't worth taking a chance and she thinks the threat of her telling is probably more powerful than the real telling. The threat is more powerful than the deed, she thinks.

Someday, when she is older, she will do something real nasty to the old witch and her father. Someday.

Sandra is one of the better students at her school in her village; but in the city, Sandra's grades become the worst. Her father isn't concerned and his young wife thinks that girls become more attractive to men if said girls are not overly educated.

"Sandra, all you need to do to get someone like your father," Marie says. "Is to look good and never say no in the bedroom."

"I don't want anyone like my father," Sandra says. "The idea of him in the bedroom makes me puke."

"I of course will tell him you said that, and that you didn't feed the baby before you went to school."

"It is not my baby to feed. You need to get up off your fat butt in the morning and feed your own kid." Marie steps forward and attempts to slap Sandra; but Sandra knocks the slap away.

"You will never speak to me that way. I'm your mother and your boss."

"You will never be my mother and as of today you'll no longer be my boss." Sandra runs from the house. But returns after an hour of walking and thinking.

Grandpa calls often but Sandra never tells him how miserable and unhappy she is, or how her father and his witch of a mother-in-law tried to hold her down and beat her naked legs with a leather belt and how she broke the witch's wrist and wishes it was her skull or how she's flunking school; she cries every time after she hangs up. She cries herself to sleep as the dog cuddles up to her and licks her hand. He is the only one who shows kindness. She isn't allowed to attend the fair in her village. Only three more days of festivities are left to enjoy. Her father is never home, because he works all the time, so he is hard to approach, but she is determined to go to the fair.

When she approaches him, he is in the presents of his mother-in-law. Sandra should know better. "Father, you know that the annual fair ends this weekend," Sandra says. "Please may I go?"

But before her father can respond, the mother-in-law says, "I cannot spare you. Who is going to do the chores if you go dancing off to that silly fair?"

Sandra leaves at five in the morning while everyone is asleep except the dog. She kisses the dog and then runs all the way to the railroad station. Grandpa, on his visits, has given her emergency money that she hides in the far reaches of the couch. The train takes her to a town two miles from her village. She starts to walk. There is a cluster of bugs swarming around her head in the damp morning air. Two miles will not take her long to walk; but her suitcase is already heavy; she switches to her other hand and then back to her other hand.

It is not a good time for a beautiful, young girl to be out on the highway alone. What if someone comes from a drunken night-out and happens upon her? Will she be raped or worse, murdered. She's read about such things and they are rumored at the school; but that is in the city. Everything is worse in the city. In the country, people don't rape and murder because we all know each other. You don't rape or murder a friend. Sandra begins to run. She turns and looks behind her. Sandra sees the shadow of a huge man coming through the mist on a bicycle. He most certainly is a rapist. Sandra recognizes him as a friend of her grandfather.

"Sandra, come sit on the back of my bicycle," he says. "I'll give you a ride home" He has one and a half legs but somehow is able to pedal.

"No thank you. I'm okay."

"Okay, but I am going directly to your grandfather's and tell him you're on the road. He must not know, or else he would be with you." The man says. "He would not allow you to be on this road at this time in the morning. Bad things happen to good people on this road." He takes off on his bicycle. His bicycle wobbles toward the village.

Sandra waves goodbye. She knows who he is: he works as a gravedigger; he is probably going home from a night shift. All the kids fear him because of all the stories they hear about him being friendly with dead people. A shiver goes through Sandra. She stands on her tiptoes to make sure his carnal desires don't persuade him to turn around, wobble back and get her and take her to one of the freshly-dug open graves only yards back up the road. She can smell freshly turned earth. Is it from the fields? Or is it from the graves? How does he dig the graves with only one and a half legs? Does he dig with only one hand and have a crutch in the other? A crutch and shovel were tied along the side of his bicycle. Or does he get down on his knees and claw the wet earth? And bury his victims in shallow graves. Maybe coming on this trip by herself was not so wise. Maybe she should have called her Grandpa and asked him, begged him, to pick her up from her dreadful father's place. But now, here he is .her Grandpa. stepping from his automobile. He is in his pajamas. He looks adorable. Sandra begins to cry as she runs toward him.

"Grandpa, I'm so sorry. I tried, but I can't live there. I can't go back there." She says. "If you make me, I will drown myself in the river like Auntie Anna." She remembers the story of her Auntie Anna drowning herself after her fiancé left her for some shop girl just after the War's end. Her aunt survived the war and helped her fellow survive; he is part Jewish; but then the war ended and all of a sudden he started going with a shop girl reported to be his first cousin. So Auntie Anna said he just played her so she would hide him in her cellar. She was ashamed she had been played so blatantly; she just jumped, into the river, knowing she couldn't swim.

"You won't be jumping in the river," he says, "I'm taking you home."

Her grandmother is waiting at the front of the house. She is in her night robe and she is smiling but with tears in her eyes. Sandra runs to her grandmother's outstretched arms. "Grandma, they beat me and starved me and never let me study" Sandra says. "I can't go back."

"I think you're exaggerating," her grandmother says, "but I'm sure some of it is true. That whole family is a little off kilter. You were there long enough. You are old enough to make a decision of where you want to live. We will find some way that you can stay with us."

At noon the telephone rings and a very angry father is on the line. But Grandpa says, "Herbert, shut up. You are such a poor father. If I thought it was true that you and your mother-in-law ganged up on Sandra and beat her within an inch of her life. If I thought it was true, I'd come there and strap you with your own belt. Sandra will no longer be your wife's slave, or your punching bag. From now on, and for as long as she wants, she will stay here with us, and that is final!"

Her grandfather makes a promise to her father that Sandra will visit every three weeks on a Sunday. And Sandra does visit the city as promised for the first four times but she never visits her father. She, instead, takes the streetcar and rides on it all day till it is time to catch the train back home.

"How is the family?" Her grandfather asks. "Oh they're fine," Sandra says. "The children grow up more each day and slowly become less demanding. And father treats me very well. Even Marie and her mother stopped being so harsh since I ran away. I think this is working well."

But of course she is making it all up, but with so much enthusiasm that her grandparents believe her, until one day another angry phone call arrives from her father; he accuses her grandfather of not keeping his word. "Why did you lie to me?" her grandfather demands of Sandra.

"I was afraid they wouldn't let me leave," she says. "I think they will lock me up if I go." Tears run down her cheeks. "They are terrible people. They will tie a rope around me and tether me to that old witch of a mother-in-law. Even when I go to market, I will be tethered."

"No such thing will happen!" he scolds.

She visits every third Sunday, and she is never tethered. But Sunday always goes by so slowly because of the lifetimes she lived, now fourteen, and because Monday is the only chance she gets to see Peter. He maintains a corner of her heart for as long as she can remember. He is her grandfather's assistant. Lately he comes over on Monday to map out the next week's work schedule for the markets and to eat diner and to stare at Sandra who is ten years his junior. He is tall and handsome and everything Sandra dreams of, most every night.

"Sandra, Peter is a fine young man," Grandma says, "And he had exemption from the army so he didn't get killed or maimed by the war."

"Why was he exempted?" Sandra says.

"I don't know. I've never asked. But I think it could have a lot to do with his father being a high mucky muck in the Nazi Party and Peter being his only son."

"He is so handsome, Grandma."

"He is. And so intelligent," her Grandma says.

"Your Grandfather and I have given Peter permission to take you, unescorted, to the opera and other places. I trust that you will act like a lady."

"I will Grandma. Thank you, thank you, thank you."

"He is considerably older than you, but he has agreed to marry you four years from now if you agree."

"I agree, Grandma."

"There can be no petting between the two of you. It can only be social intercourse, not sexual intercourse."

"Grandma!"

"Swear to me on your Grandfather's life," Grandma says.

"I swear," Sandra says and puts her hand over her heart.

"Okay, you can start going places with him. And we will announce to the village that Peter has ask for your hand in marriage four years from now and that you have accepted."

"Grandmother, when will Peter propose to me?"

"Probably never, he has already spoken o your grandfather. Your grandfather said yes."

"But I still want him to ask me."

"Sandra, child, don't make a big deal about this. He may decide he wants a more traditional wife."

"What if I don't want to be a more traditional wife." Sandra says.

"Then you will lose him and most every other man in Germany."

"Then I will lose him."

1949-1950

TUESDAY MORNING, MARCH 1, 1949 Air Lift Costs $119,702,600 BERLIN Feb. 28 (A.P.) The Berlin Air Lift has cost the United States taxpayer $119,702,600 in the last eight months, the Air Force estimated today.

Again, Sandra's life turns good. Her current situation is luck-of-the-draw. If the Russians demanded control of Sandra's area of Germany, the world would have given in and Sandra would be living with very little food again and trying to figure out what to do with her life. But fate gives her the good life again. Her father wants her to be a doctor, but he won't pay for her schooling. Her grandfather and grandmother decide that since they are growing old, Sandra must learn a decent trade.

"Sandra," her grandfather says. "You understand that you will never be able to depend on Herbert for anything. Maybe if you succumb to a major medical emergency, an accident or something, your father will come through, but I doubt it. So, we must start thinking of some sort of training you can take so you can work at a good job when I pass on."

"You're not going to pass on." Sandra says. "You and Grandma will live forever."

Her grandmother pats her hand. "No one lives forever. We must be practical."

"I don't want to be practical about you passing on," Sandra says, "The Meyers down the road are more than twenty years older than you and Grandpa and they're still going to the market every day."

"Sandra," Her grandmother says, "Adie Myers is only five years older than I. She was leaving school when I was starting. Besides the Meyers are unusually healthy, never were ill or injured or suffered malnutrition from the war. Unique in most of Germany."

"Well, you and Grandpa are unique in all of Germany," Sandra says as she hugs her grandmother.

Sandra doesn't want to think about her grandparents dying. If there is a God, He or She or It will not be so cruel as to bring them all through the war and Grandpa's internment or imprisonment, or whatever it was. To bring most her family through the war and then to cause the most important part of her family to "pass on." But the more she doesn't want to think about it, the more it creeps into her fertile mind. She rolls over on her stomach and stares at the patterned paper on her bedroom wall. This time actually counting the little flowers but the count becomes days and the count becomes about death. What if her grandpa dies? They survived without him before, but it was a challenge every day: trying to find someone to fix things that were broken, missing his wisdom on everyday things, and finding enough food and fuel; he would work every hour of the day to make sure Sandra and her Grandma ate enough and kept enough fuel to keep them warm at night.

But if her Grandma dies, they can hire someone to come in and help Sandra clean the house. What terrible thoughts; she is weighing who best to die first. But there it is facing her everyday, everyday as she decides what to do with the rest of her life. The Americans are everywhere and pretty much hated by everyone, but Sandra thinks they look cute and handsome; but not as handsome as Peter; and so very very clean. She remembers a line she read in a periodical about all American men looking like the actor, movie star, Cary Grant; and they do, they all look like Cary Grant—she thought Cary Grant is from England, but who knows?

Whenever anything goes wrong it is blamed on the Americans. The potholes in the streets; the terrible record of the trains arriving on time; flooding or all the faulty construction. And everywhere Sandra looks, a new Anti-American organization pops up. Everyone forgets how many American lives have been lost to bring freedom to Germany. But the members of these Anti-American groups don't believe that freedom exists in Germany or that Germany needed to be saved from Hitler. Hitler was just doing what was right and just for the Motherland. Even at the new school that she attends, she is approached about joining a protest about transportation or the lack of transportation or something. But Sandra is just too happy, about being in the school, to protest about anything as mundane as transportation although she depends on it every day and it is a fact that the trains always run late. She is at a school that will attempt to quench her need to know everything about everything, except the mundane things like transportation snags or potholes in the highways. She skips two grades of high school and then goes to the Junior College and makes straight A's and loves every minute of the classes and lectures and the camaraderie with the other students; she is the leader and the star of whatever group she becomes a part. And she begins to understand that it will be so for most the remainder of her life. Where a majority of the students appear shy—especially the girls—Sandra is gregarious and outgoing to the degree that when a speaker is needed: she is the first to be asked. She delivers her speeches short and to the point and usually ends by telling the student body they can do anything, go anywhere, and achieve anything.

Her grandfather enrolls her in the Fashion College in Frankfurt to become a dress designer and a dressmaker. She is so very young but mature for her age and promises her grandfather and Peter that she will come back home if there is too much pressure or she gets real homesick. She has been designing and sewing dresses for herself for over nine years so the course is very easy and uses very little of her brainpower. With so much spare time she begins to prowl the streets of Frankfort to see how the other-half lives. She likes what she sees: the young people are usually always having a party here or there and everyone is invited. At one of the parties, three blocks from the Fashion College, she meets a beautiful, young American named Charlie. Charlie is very feminine in his perfect features. He isn't an American G.I—the Americans won't let him in the military.

He is a female imitator in a local club. He is the first homosexual Sandra ever met and they strike it off immediately. "Well, Miss Sandra, I get up on the stage and pretend to be a girl," Charlie says. "Of course, it's not much of a stretch. I prance around in almost nothing and many of the unsuspecting Americans, who have been duped by their buddies, fall in love at first sight. They give me their phone numbers and throw money at me. But when I take off my bra and their buddies start laughing at them, they get ready to kill their buddies and me. But I'm sure many of them go home and experience wet-dreams because of me."

"My Grandpa warned me about men," Sandra says, "but none like you. At least he doesn't need to worry about you trying to sleep with me."

"Oh, beautiful, naive Sandra," Charlie says, "I would love to sleep with you but we will just cuddle and girl-talk." He kisses her gently on the cheek and walks away with his hips swaying. He turns to see if she is still watching and then he waves and walks over to a handsome G.I.

Charlie and Sandra meet every Saturday at the "Mug" for drinks and to decide which of the many parties they will give their presents to. And after many of these parties, with Charlie half drunk and crying over some lost love, he and Sandra go to his immaculate apartment and cuddle for the night. If Charlie is sober enough they spend hours engaged in girl-talk about Charlie's latest love and Sandra's future with Peter; it is their only intercourse.

Sandra promises her grandfather she will be careful of the American G.I.s who roam Frankfurt and that she will visit the Beethoven Monument in honor of his favorite composer. When her first evening is free of Charlie, Sandra visits the monument at a time when six other visitors move around the monument. Several of the others look like tourist, and an American serviceman stands tall in his handsome uniform. Sandra stares at him and he stares back and smiles. Sandra blushes and as she walks away from the monument she notices a stocky, middle-aged man in a laborer's jacked staring at her, but she doesn't blush, she shivers, he looks like the stranger she remembers from her lonely trip to the shed behind the gas station when she was four years old and still with her horrible father. The laborer carries the same look that the stranger had when he surprised her coming from the smelly shed. They both looked like they thought she was ice cream and they had searched for just that perfect flavor for years and now there she was. The search was over and now all they had to do was dig in. But they'd have to catch her first. Come over here; sit on my lap, Miss Strawberry/Vanilla.

She hurries from the monument toward her bus stop. When she passes Taunus Street she hears footsteps behind her; she turns hoping it is the American serviceman, but instead it is the laborer. Her heart goes up into her throat. Her Grandpa neglected to warn her about middle-aged perverts. He needed to tell her that there were men, not necessarily American G.I.s, who were willing to take what they wanted anywhere anytime without asking or bringing flowers.

The laborer grabs her arm and stops her dead in her tracks. "What's a beautiful, young thing doing out here by yourself," he says directly into Sandra's face. His breath is like rotted meat laced with alcohol.

"I'm meeting my fiancé, Peter, just down at the corner on Kiser," she says. "He should be here any moment." Her hands shake and she feels like she is going to vomit. Maybe if she vomits all over him he will leave her alone. But Sandra knows that is not true. She can see in his raw rimed eyes that she is to be the desert to whatever meal he consumed earlier: a meal laced with garlic and peppers and schooners of beer. She may be his desert at the end of it all, but right now she is going to try to out run him, she thinks. She jerks her arm free and sprints in the direction of the City Hall; there is a police station there, isn't there? She remembers seeing it: it is fronted with red brick and yellow signs and a big, glass entrance.

He catches up to her again and grabs her shoulder and pulls her into his tight grip. He squeezes her breast and slides his strong hand over and twists her nipple. She pounds her doubled fist directly into the tip of his fleshy nose. He screams and brings both of his hands up to his blood-gushing nose. Like a wounded beast, he bellows at the shifting clouds; looks back down at his bloody hands and charges after Sandra who discards her high heels and races down the middle of the boulevard. She turns to the left and begins accelerating; her long legs stretch out and propel her forward. Her right foot steps on a jagged stone in the pavement and the stone knifes into her arch; pain shoots up her calf and thigh and darts into her anus. She hopes that will be the only pain she feels, down there, tonight. She starts to limp but forces herself to run through the pain. She's heard of super athletes who run through the pain, so tonight she will be a super athlete, she thinks, and runs through the pain. Every now and then she forces herself to look over her shoulder: praying the laborer is far behind or gone completely. Though she likes the idea of being able to see him; if he is gone from her sight she will worry that he may cut over on one of the side streets and attack her at any dark corner; but he comes a running.

She watches the street signs so as not to somehow by pass the City Hall. She has only been to the City Hall once with her Grandpa checking the records and reputation of the school she now attends. The school's reputation was good and excellent, at least enough for her grandfather to invest his money in her education; and she is positive she knows what street the City Hall is on. She listens for voices, hopefully, but the streets appear pretty much deserted. She hears voices a block over and she screams as she runs. "Help! Somebody! Help me!" she shouts. But no one answers or comes to her aid. She looks over her shoulder and unbelievably; he is gaining on her; she is certain that she can actually hear his rapid breathing; it is that of a hungry animal ready to pounce on its prey and eat every bit of her from the toes up. Won't do me any good to stop and plead with him, she thinks. He won't even stop to listen to me. His momentum will carry him into me and we will both crash to the pavement and he will rip my skirt and enter and violate me without even asking my name. She is about to faint from running and hyperventilating at the same time. She looks over her shoulder, again. He is fast for his size. And he is yelling something at her. He is gaining and is less than a couple of strides behind her; so close that Sandra is certain she can smell his foul breath and hear his evil heart beat, so she doesn't hear the American, at first, when a cab pulls up to the curb.

The American service man from the monument peeks his head out the back window and repeats his question. "Miss, do you need a ride somewhere?" he says. "I'm sure I'm going your direction. And maybe your companion needs a ride also."

"Funny! But you don't hear me laughing," Sandra says as she sucks air into her searing lungs, but keep running. She looks behind her; the laborer stops chasing her and is now waving goodbye to her.

"A young lady as beautiful as you shouldn't be out this late without an escort," The American says from the taxi.

Sandra is now walking; sucking air through her open lips. The taxi keeps pace with her. "My 'Companion' back there just said the same thing. You're probably a team. He chases them. You rescue them. It says a lot about men when a woman can't walk through the city without being accosted." She says.

"It says a lot about some men," he says. "Please get in, we'll take you where ever you want to go."

"I'm sure you will. I'm not going to get into any taxi with some slick American," she says. "Some stranger."

"I am not a stranger," he says, "we met at the Beethoven Monument. And as for slick, I'm about as slick as a rock"

"What does that mean? Slick as a rock? Is that some American thing? We didn't meet, you just looked me up and down." Sandra says.

"And you looked me up and down," he says. "It must be the uniform."

She stops walking and stands with her hands on her hips while she looks straight at the American. "You can do me one, big favor, just stay in the taxi and follow me to the police station by the City Hall." She begins to run again, and the taxi with the handsome American follows at the curb. When they reach the police station, Sandra waves, "Thank you!"

"What's you name?" he shouts.

"Sandra!"

"Sandra, when will you be visiting the monument, again?"

"Never," she says and waves goodbye and enters the police station.

In the police station she is informed that the laborer is a local character who is brain damaged from the war but has never done any harm to anyone except he killed about twelve Russians in the winter of "44". The police will do nothing and they said, "by the way, what's a beautiful, young lady like you doing out on the streets of Frankfort without a friend or escort?" She decides right then and there that, in Germany, women exist as second-rate citizens; targets; fair game. Sandra is not certain she can live with that. She will find some way to leave Germany; her only regret will be leaving her friends and of course Grandma and Grandpa. And what about Peter?

Peter has become more demanding, lately. The first year he didn't even kiss her, but there was the first kiss, and now their kissing is commonplace. His hands roam to her breasts every time he kisses her. She moves quickly out of his grasp but it is becoming more difficult to talk him out of running his hand up her leg. She wears protective clothing on the nights she knows they will go back to the store and key the back exit and with the lights out sit and talk and kiss. "You are old enough now, Sandra, so we should be learning what each of us wants out of a partner, sexually."

"It can wait till we're married."

"We should talk now to learn each others likes and dislikes."

"Okay, you start. What are your likes and dislikes?" Sandra says as she moves Peter's hand from beneath her skirt.

"Well, one thing I really hate is when you push my hand away when I'm not even close to your privates."

"So you were just going to massage my leg right now?" Sandra asks.

"I was going to maybe touch your privates through your undies. I will be soft and gentle." He puts his hand on her knee, and then slowly inches his fingers up her leg like a spider inches its way through unknown territory. Sandra begins to giggle because she thinks how she would crush a spider if it climbed up her leg and tickled her. "Sandra! Stop! Or I'll stop." He says.

She pushes his hand away. "This was your idea. I can't help it if your fingers feel like spider's legs."

"Lots of girls like the way my fingers feel."

"You know what, Peter, maybe you should go feel up those other girls. Or maybe you should go out with some women." She jumps up from the edge of the desk and walks out into the dark alley behind the store.

Peter does not follow her. The alley is dark and smelly and reminds her of the day her father didn't follow her to the dark and smelly toilet shed.

A week goes by before Peter comes by to apologize," Sandra, I'm so so sorry. I hope you didn't go and tell your grandfather about our little tiff."

"No, you still have your job."

"It's not about the job. It's about respect," he says.

"So you think he'll lose respect for you if he finds out you tried to stick you fingers up his granddaughter?"

"Sandra! Not so loud; your grandmother will hear you." They stand on the front stairs of Sandra's house.

Her Grandma is at the market, but Peter doesn't know. So Sandra speaks louder, "You care if grandfather respects you and grandmother doesn't hear about your dastardly deeds, but you don't care if I respect you or I become the target of those deeds."

"This is not working," he says.

"So, why do you keep coming by here?"

"Because I love you," he says.

"But not enough to wait."

"How long have I waited?"

"No long enough," Sandra says. "You agreed to wait until we are married a year from now."

Sandra walks down the stairs and toward the road. She tries to hide her tears. She picks up the pace when Peter starts to follow. They walk past Lena's house. Lena waves but neither wave back. Peter catches up with Sandra and grabs her arm. Sandra twists loose. She has grown to be almost as tall as Peter.

"You need to make a decision today," Peter says.
"A decision to let you feel me up," Sandra says.

"Sandra, keep your voice down."

"Why, Peter," she shouts, "don't you want the people of the village to know you're leaving me because I won't let you feel me up?"

Peter turns and walks away. Most of her dreams about her future walk away with Peter. He has been part of her life for as long as she can remember. She walks back toward her Grandma's house, but stops when Lena chases her down. Tears roll down Sandra's cheeks.

"Holy crap!" Lena says. "The whole Village must have heard that!"

"Good." Sandra says.

"Did he really dump you because you wouldn't give him a feel?"

"That's pretty much it."

"I would have given him a small feel."

"All you can give him is a small feel," Sandra says as she smiles and wipes the tears from her cheeks."

"Well, we can't all have big boobs."

"And we can't all be sluts."

Lena gives her a gentle push. "If I was earning money as a slut, my income would be zero."

"I know." Sandra says then hugs her best friend.

"We must be the only virgins left in Germany."

"Maybe in all of Europe. Or all of the known world." Both girls laugh, clasp hands, and walk toward their secret place behind one of Lena's sheds. "Everything has been all about sex since the Americans came," Sandra says.

"Sweetie, it's been all about sex for six thousand years."

"Is that how long people have been around?"

"It matters who you listen to," Lena says. "But no matter. Sex has always been the issue. The G.I.s are just more open about it."

"You going to ever date a G.I?"

"My father would kill me. He still thinks the brown shirts will rise up against them."

"Are there any brown shirts left?"

"Apparently. They meet in that old building up the road from the cemetery. They make plans to overthrow the current guys."

"How would they do that?"

"They kill them all, I guess," Lena says.

"Your father's nuts, right?"

"Basically."

"But everything is working well between you and me, right?" Sandra says.

"I think so."

Then tragedy strikes to create the worst days of her young life: Peter destroys her dreams, her beloved grandfather dies, and she is raped.

1951

SATURDAY MORNING, OCTOBER 27, 1951 165,648 East Germans Fled To The West BERLIN: Oct. 27 (A.P.) The East Berlin Ministry of State Security is hard at work. In a single trial, nineteen young people (some of them still at the secondary school of Werdau and seven of them under eighteen) were sentenced to a total of one hundred and thirty years imprisonment. So far this year, 165,684 East Germans fled to the West.

Grandpa is lying in his coffin in his best wool suit; the makeup artist at the mortuary had made him look too young; Sandra loves his old face and his old hands and his old heart; she cannot believe that he is gone. All her strength passes on with him. She is so lucky he is her grandfather; if he was just a friend it would be great knowing him; but she is lucky enough to have him as a grandfather and a father. He cultivates more friends, loyal friends, than anyone she knows. The church service is overflowing with friends; all there to honor one of nicest human beings on God's green earth. His so-intelligent eyes close forever. Sandra backs up and places her spine against a bare stretch of wall—the only bare stretch; every other square foot of wall is covered with pictures—because she is going to faint. Fainting is the only answer to stopping the pain that is shooting through her brain and swallowing her heart. He is gone; she cannot make it sink in. He is gone.

Her grandparents tried to prepare her for this day. They spoke about all the East Germans coming across; risking their lives and the lives of their family just to come to this great place where Sandra already lives. Everyone wishes the Americans would leave; but what if the Russians decided to occupy her village instead of the Americans? Then her family would be trying to escape to East Germany. Her grandparents were a luck-of-the-draw from God, but why can't God give her Grandpa a little more time. He is not really old; though at the moment she cannot remember his age. But she knows he is younger than many of the villagers who attend his funeral. God only takes the good people like her mother and her grandfather while her horrible father lives on.

Sandra isn't ready for her beloved grandfather to go; she probably will never be ready. But for sure it is not the right time now, she thinks. She has been planning her escape from the male dominated society of Germany; maybe go to France where the women can do anything they want; even take whatever job they are qualified for. Here, all she can be is a homemaker or a secretary but never a dress designer. In France, she can be a dress designer. But, now, she can't go and leave her grandmother alone now that her grandmother lost her very best friend. Sandra is going to faint. She keeps her back against the wall and slides down it onto a weaved-seat stool.

Peter sees her discomfort and comes across the room with a glass of water. She doesn't want to talk to him but she needs the water. "I'm so, so sorry," Peter says. She takes the glass of water from his hand but doesn't answer. She motions with her hand for him to go away. Then she begins sobbing for her grandfather and for not knowing if Peter meant he is sorry about Grandpa's death; of course he is; or if he meant he is sorry for getting his floozy secretary pregnant. It would be nice of God not to give her so many problems bunched together, Sandra thinks.

One problem Sandra doesn't face is how to live after her grandfather passes; he was always a great provider and his pension fund will be more than enough for her and her grandmother. Sandra gets to her feet, and then tries to make her way though mourners to the ornate casket. She is starting to feel ill, her back begins to ache and her chest hurts. Maybe she caught her Grandpa's pneumonia, she thinks. He was very ill and instructed to stay in bed, but too conscientious about his duty: his duty to represent the Governor at important meetings. The Governor could not attend this last meeting because he was ill himself. So Grandpa, against the protests of Grandma and the doctor, dragged himself from his sickbed and was trundled to the meeting. He was a long time friend of the Governor's and they were prisoners at the same time in Dachau Concentration Camp; they were like brothers: always there for each other. After the meeting, he went home and went straight to bed, but his breathing became alarming and nothing Sandra's grandmother tried eased the labored breathing. She tired again to get the doctor and finally contacted their family physician; he came and spent the better part of an hour examining the old man and then told Grandma it was a terrible case of pneumonia, the worst he treated in his long career.

"It's in God's hands now," the doctor said

Sandra prayed all night. But God was not listening: in the morning her Grandpa passed away. It is sad news for the whole region. The Funeral is a big affair, many people from far and near. Most everyone tells their favorite story about the wonderful man. But it becomes intolerable for Sandra; she doesn't want to hear any more about the past; she wants her grandfather alive, now, in the present. After a very short time she can take it no longer; she runs to the nearby grave of her mother and throws herself on the snow-covered earth. Her hands hold desperately on to the stone. Sandra is sobbing, "Mama, Mama. What am I going to do without my Grandpa?"

Suddenly she hears steps and Peter comes walking over and puts his hand on her shoulder. "Get away from me!" she screams, "I don't want your sympathy. I hate you."

Peter wants nothing more then to comfort her, but she slaps him and in resignation, he walks back to the mourning crowd. Peter was the only man she ever loved, even as a child after her mother died he would come to her grandmother's house and let her ride on his knee. He was many years older then Sandra; he was to be the successor to her grandfather at the market chain; it was everybody's belief that he would marry Sandra when she became of age. But fate changed all that: one day she found out that, although Peter tried to hide the affair, the entire village knew his secretary was expecting his baby. Sandra was constantly lectured by her grandmother that sex was only for the married; so when it got a little hot between Peter and Sandra, Sandra remembered what her grandmother said and held back. Now, her commitment to be a "good girl" is making her suffer without end; how can love become a tragedy? What is it that drives men so crazy that they forget all of their promises?

"I will pay for the child," Peter said, "It is my duty to give her and the child a good living. But I need to be married to you. I have loved you forever. You must marry me."

"I will never marry you," Sandra said then and whispers it now. She grabs the edge of the marble stone and braces herself. It feels like she is going to pass out again. But she holds tight and uses her hate of Peter to keep from fainting. How could he humiliate her in front of the village? How could he do that silly cow? Sandra is so much more beautiful than that cheap, little office worker. He couldn't keep it in his pants long enough to wait for Sandra, so he just pounced on the most convenient body. They probably did it on some dusty, old desk in the back room. They probably put notches on the desk leg every time they did it. He probably met her there in the backroom, in the wee, small hours, after he left Sandra with a tender kiss and a claim of his undying love; he was a liar; is a liar, she thinks. But maybe she should have at least let him touch her breasts and maybe her privates and maybe she should have touched him.

What would it have hurt, nothing, that's what, so why not? At first when he tried to touch her, she just laughed it off. But he became more insistent so she decided to tell him what her Grandma said. "Grandma says sex is only for the married," Sandra said as she pushed his hand from her breast. "I would like to be touched all over, but that will lead to other things and then we will all be in trouble. You must wait, we must wait."

"Beautiful, Sandra, it is so hard to wait." He said, and then tried to replace his hand on her other breast. "But I'll wait as long as it takes. I'm just so full of you. And I've waited so long for you to become of age. Now, you've grown to be such a beautiful woman, and still you are not old enough. Please forgive me for touching you inappropriately; it won't happen again. But please understand me."

He promised her that he would not even look at another woman. He promised her that he would use all his willpower to keep from thinking of sex. He promised her he would keep it in his pants. He lied. And his lies destroyed her life.

She shuffles her feet, and then moves across the wet grass of the cemetery. She turns and looks back at the grave of her mother. Soon her Grandpa will be, right next to her mother, in the small plot that is just east of her mother's perfect grave. Sandra will be able to come here and be with two of the three people she loves most. But she will be the only one breathing and feeling the sunlight or mist on her skin. They will both be dead. They both died. How can that be? Why is life built on such shaky ground? What will it hurt if everyone lives forever? It will be crowded or maybe people will bare only one child; but still it will be a problem because there will not be enough to eat; or maybe a more intelligent God should make it so there is no human waste: its simple; all an intelligent God would do is make all foods so the human body uses all of it—absorbs all of it—so there is no waste byproduct thereby no need for more food or any toilets because there will be no piss or shit, Sandra thinks, and then looks around to see if anyone heard her thoughts. She giggles when she realizes that if her solution comes to fruition, there will be no need for humans to contain assholes; so there will be no assholes; no assholes like Peter and her father.

Her asshole of a father should have fathered just one child. Her father was at the funeral for such a short time; he said he needed to get back to his pretty, young wife. He is like Peter: he can't keep it in his pants. Peter is dead and gone in her mind, now, so Sandra vows to never give her heart to anyone ever again. Sandra moves across the grass and onto the street. She cannot bring herself to go back to her grandfather's funeral with all those people feeling sorry for her and making such a fuss; all her grandfather's friends want to give her grandfatherly advise while all her aunts and uncles want to give her career advice and she wants and needs neither. She runs down the street toward her house. She passes near the bus yard and sees an old friend, Fred the Bus Driver, who drives the school bus. He looks as though he is sitting out in the cold, on the steel bench, just waiting for whom? Waiting for Sandra? But why?

What kind of advise does he hold for a sad, young, beautiful girl: it won't be about her career because he maintains a crappy career; and it won't be grandfatherly advise because he isn't old enough to be her grandfather and Fred the Bus Driver is too creepy to be her grandfather; maybe his advise will be about how not to lose Peter, but Peter is already lost; and who gives a damn.. She thinks her language is starting to sound like a tramps; what with the assholes and shit and piss and damns she utters in her brain. Someday those nasty words will come out of her mouth and spew on the unsuspecting public. She is beginning to hate life. Fred works for Sandra's family once in a while. He is always smiling when she is around. And he is always clutching at the front of his workpants and then releasing and clutching again.

He touched her, accidentally, a couple of times on her breasts when he was trying to juggle his ladder and tools with one shoulder and an arm while using his opposite hand to move Sandra out of harm's way. His hand cupped her breast just for a short split second and he apologized profusely and then said he dirtied her blouse and rubbed at a spot on her breast and apologized again. It was summer and Sandra's blouse was very thin and he looked right through the material as Sandra's nipples hardened. He was at her house repairing the porch. He touched her once more and he apologized again and then went back to repairing the porch but Sandra noticed the front of his workpants was sticking out like a tent pole was jammed in them. Sandra didn't tell anyone because everybody loved Fred, and after all it was an accident or two or three.

When she passes closer to the bus yard's big doors, they swing open; inviting her in. She looks longingly inside and wonders if it is warm and safe; then she looks over at Fred the Bus Driver in his dirty coveralls and rough sweater, he is unshaven and his hairline is receding more than she remembers from the summertime. She remembers the summertime accidental touch of her breasts and her nipples harden under her coat.

Fred calls her over, "Sandra," he says. "You look like you need a friend." He motions to her and she runs into his open arms. She sobs against his broad shoulder. "It is such a sad situation," he says. "Your grandfather's death. He was such a good man. He took such good care of you and your grandmother. You tell your grandmother that I will help around the house with anything she needs. And of course you are my sweetie and always will be. I can come to the house everyday, if you need me. And if sometimes when your grandmother is gone and you're frightened and you just need a friend to hug you, just call and say 'Uncle Fred, I need a hug' or just come by here and get your daily hug."

He hugs her tightly against him and she notices there must be something in his pocket. He pulls her tightly to him once more then pushes her to arm's length and looks her over from head to toe: it is the look men always use when they look at a half gallon of vanilla ice cream, and they know exactly where their favorite spoon is.

He drags his hand across her breast and down her arm to her open hand and pulls her hand to the front of his pants; her hand is there only a second but she feels what she thinks she recognizes as the infamous tent pole. He walks her through the rows of oily, used bus parts and discarded tools and ancient workbenches to the stove in the center of the work shed. It is a big old potbelly stove with big raised letters embossed in the black-gray metal; it is warm and toasty and brings a shiver of heat to Sandra's chilled body. She warms her hands and puts them to her cheeks and the tips of her ears and to her nose. She feels warm for the first time this day; both inside and out. Everything is amiss for her. Everything!

All her plans have gone up in smoke. And then through the potbelly's smoke she sees Fred looking as if he wants to chew her up and swallow her. She needs a friend, and Fred is a friend of sorts. He takes her hand and pulls her down onto his lap on the only stool in the shed. Her back is aching and Fred knows just what she needs. He begins massaging her back and the touch of his hands sends shivers through her entire body. She is relaxing. She hasn't slept much during the time of her Grandpa's illness, and hasn't slept at all since his death. All she does most nights is rile at God about what a disaster He, God, made of things. How, if she were God, she could have done a much better job of giving a good, uncomplicated life to a beautiful, young lady. She asks God why did she need to grow up without a mother or a father and now a grandfather. "What next, God?" she asks. "You gona take my Grandma too. Go ahead! Take her! And then you just better take me because that will be the end of it. I won't want to live anymore; I don't much want to live now!"

Fred keeps his strong hands massaging her slender back but his hands instinctively move lower and lower down toward the swell of her buttocks. She begins to swoon and fall into the most comfortable state of pre-sleep. His big hands keep massaging her back and then her legs; up high toward her privates. She can tell he is going to touch them but she doesn't know if she wants him to or not, but the anticipation begins to cause her to tingle and it feels good waiting and waiting and waiting and then his fingers brush against her privates and she thinks she will faint. He lifts her face towards his and kisses her. It feels so good and soothing. Soon he kisses her cheek and she begins to fall back against him. Suddenly his kisses become urgent. He kisses her lips as if he might bite her if she doesn't respond. She opens her lips and mouth and lets him slide his tongue in her mouth. Her Grandma would kill her if she knew she was sitting on Old Fred's lap and he put his tongue half way down her throat. She knows he probably kisses his wife the very same way, with the very same tongue. A picture swims through her mind of Fred reaching in his coverall pocket and pulling out a spare tongue and switching tongues before he goes home after kissing Sandra. They will meet each day and he will put his tongue in her open mouth and then he will switch tongues before he goes home to do the same to his smiling wife. She giggles.

"Don't be giggling," Fred says as he runs his hand over her breast. "This is serious shit. If you giggle then I will start giggling and I won't be able to keep the 'little soldier' stiff enough to put it in you."

"Is that what you're going to do? Put your little soldier inside me?"

"Yep, that's what I'm going to do." Fred says and undoes the top straps of his coveralls.

"Oh?" Sandra says. She thinks about Fred's wife, again. She is a pleasant looking woman but not even close in looks to Sandra. Sandra is tall with perfect legs and perfect breasts and a perfect butt. And Sandra's face makes men stop and look even when they walk beside their wives or girlfriends. Fred would probably do her right in front of his wife if it were the only time he had a chance. In her mind, her grandmother is wagging her finger at her for such thoughts. But it doesn't matter about Grandma or Fred's wife or that she never let Peter put his tongue in her mouth or touch her breasts. Nothing matters.

Fred runs his hand down the front of her thin camisole and touches her nipples. She lets him, and feels the heat run down her belly and dart between her legs. This is wrong she thinks, how will she explain this to Fred's wife and kids if they come walking through the front door. They won't, of course, they live way on the other side of the village, and they own no transportation to get over here unless they all ride bicycles over to the bus yard. But a person will hear a bunch of bicycles come to the door, won't they? He pinches her nipple, and then rapidly slips his hand under her skirt, pulls her panties away, and starts rubbing her deep inside. He does it with such a practiced move, that Sandra begins to wonder how many of the local girls he pulled onto the infamous stool. Maybe old Fred is the greatest lover Germany has ever known, or at least he is the greatest lover in Sandra's region. Maybe Peter is his only competition. But she will never know. It is all so silly. All she had to do was let Peter do what she was letting Old Fred do right now, she thinks.

When Fred kisses her again, for a moment or two she thinks that he is Peter. She even says Peter's name but Fred says nothing though he must know that she is no longer with Peter. And he knows about Peter's floozy. Old Fred probably did the floozy on this very same stool. Maybe the baby is Fred's? He moves his fingers deep inside her and she starts thinking about Fred's wife and how lucky she is when Fred comes home and puts his fingers up inside her. Fred is the best; although she never had anyone else do the slow movement like he is doing. Course she never had anyone do a fast movement or any kind of movement. She is a virgin. At least at this moment. He begins rubbing her buttocks and she starts getting dizzy. Maybe she is coming down with something. Maybe what her Grandpa died of. But her Grandpa's death is so far away. Way in the back of her mind. At the front of her mind is Fred's hands and his heavy breathing. She moans. Then Fred kisses her nipples and she knows she is going to let him do everything she didn't do with Peter. Go-ahead Fred, she thinks, go-ahead Fred do your best.

Is she missed at the funeral? Maybe they are all out looking for her. Peter will tell them he saw her at the cemetery. So they will know she probably headed home. And maybe they will all take the logical route or routes. They will all be at the bus yard in just a few minutes and find Old Fred with his hands glued to her breasts and she will never get a chance to be devirginized, if there is such a word.

"Oh, be my little baby," he says, "I won't hurt you." He drops his coveralls and opens the front of his trousers and shows her what he isn't going to hurt her with. He takes her hand and moves it in position to grip him. It is big! It will hurt, that is for sure; Fred isn't going to con her into believing the big, old thing isn't going to hurt. But she wants to try it. When Peter tried to get her to touch his; he sort of pulled her hand toward it and brought it out against her hand, but it was dark in the backroom of the store so Sandra couldn't see the size of it—not that she wanted to see the size of it then—now, she is thinking how fantastic if she had had a look at Peter's so she can compare it to Old Fred's which seems gigantic and is most likely much bigger than Peter's.

Sandra wondered how men do it. How can they possess almost nothing in their pants; or at least that is what she has been told by all the girls in the village who watched Rutker when he was twelve years old and showing it to who ever would look; that was most of the girls of the village. Rutker's was small, actually, tiny. Not frightening at all. But men hold this small thing and then walla all of a sudden they hold this big thing that looks and feels like it can hurt you, but remember, old Fred says he won't.

"You sure it won't hurt? She asks as she removes her hand. "I think it is going to hurt. I've been told that sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it hurts bad."

"You ever been hurt by one?" Fred asks.

"No." Sandra says.

"Besides, those who told you they got hurt," Fred says, "never been with Old Fred the Bus Driver."

"How many of the village girls you do?" Sandra asks and looks back down at the strange looking organ as though she might see some notches, on it, like in the American Westerns where the hero—Fred is her Hero—cuts notches into their pistol butt or like Peter—definitely not her Hero—probably cuts notches into the legs of his desk after plowing his chubby assistant. She thinks how Fred will look as a cowboy; instead of pistols, Fred possesses two giant penises. They stand proud in his holsters. He drawls, "Mam, you ready to get some of this here loving. I sure enough need to put some more notches in these here penises."

She snaps out of her daydream just as Fred begins to drop his trousers. "I'll bet you've done half the girls, between twelve and twenty-five, in the village. Now, you're going to do me." She says. "You could rent yourself out to all the virgins and become a millionaire."

"There are no virgins in this village," he says.

"Uh huh."

"Uh uh."

"Then it's probably your fault," she says and then whispers, "I'm a virgin."

But he isn't listening; he is like a big bear in heat. He finishes dropping his trousers, pulls her panties off, turns her around, spreads her legs, and pulls her onto him. In a move that is so fast that Sandra doesn't see it coming. She cries out. Fred looks toward the front door, but keeps his movements and thrusts at a slow even pace. It hurts a little bit at first but now it feels great! This is great, she thinks, she loves Old Fred. It is love at first sight. He will divorce his wife and leave his children. Her grandmother will wonder when the two fell in love but Sandra will clean Old Fred up before she takes him home for an introduction; but of course Grandma already knows Old Fred, Sandra thinks. Well, maybe she won't recognize him after he gets cleaned up. They can buy him one of those toupees; the kind with sideburns; that will change his looks completely. But Sandra is in love, and she stays in love right up to the very last stroke. When they finish, their privates are painted with blood.

"Oh my god," he says. "You were still a virgin. You said nobody ever hurt you with one."

"Nobody ever did," she says. "I never had one before."

He throws up his hands then drops them down quickly and buttons his trousers blood and all. "I thought Peter saw to that little problem a long time ago, with his reputation," he says. "Oh, my God what have you done? You better tidy up and not a word about this to anyone, you hear? We both could be in a lot of trouble. You sure Peter didn't take care of this. He's got that little fat girl pregnant. You give him sex in other ways then, huh? At least you play with him and stuff, right? I know Peter won't go with anyone unless he is getting some. You must give him some."

"No, you're my first," Sandra says. "And I think I want to do it again, tomorrow and maybe the next day. Maybe we can get engaged. Maybe we can do it next time in my bedroom. You can tell my Grandma that you're there repairing the porch. It won't be the first time you repaired our porch."

"You just go along and don't say a word to anyone or my wife will find out and she will kill both of us. You first." He pulls on his coveralls so rapidly that Sandra thinks someone might be at the door. "You should have told me you were a virgin!" he says in his most irritated voice. "You should have told me!"

"I did!" Sandra says.

"No you didn't! I was right here! You didn't say a thing!"

Well, she thinks, the engagement is off! She doesn't say a thing. She pulls her panties up and straightens her clothes and slips into her coat and then runs back home, wondering if this is all there is to sex. It hurts and only feels good for a minute or two; okay so maybe it feels good for fifteen minutes but that is it; fifteen minutes at the outside. What is all the cheering about? What is so special that she had to wait, had to loose Peter because of the waiting? It is all so stupid; all the lectures of how it is forbidden and she will go to Hell, and all that. Save it for marriage. What marriage? She will not waste another moment thinking about this silly thing. She goes home, slips silently through the back door, tiptoes softly up to her room, and then cries herself to sleep. She is all right, at first, in her dream, that is. Then her dream places her in a church; it is not the village church but some real ornate church in some city where she has never been. She is marrying Peter and Old Fred is the Best Man. Her Grandpa is there. He looks so much younger. And so is her Grandma there and looking younger. Peter's floozy secretary is the Ring Girl. And Sandra's father and stepmother peek over the back row of pews. Her mother, as a white-robed angel, hovers above. The preacher continues, "Peter, do you take Sandra to be your lawfully wedded wife?"

"I do," Peter says.

"What about your skanky secretary," the preacher asks, "Will she still work for you and put you in the way of Temptation?"

"My skanky secretary was never appealing to me," Peter says, "I find her very unattractive and never thought of touching her in any way."

"How did she become with child?" the preacher says.

"She lay with Tommy Herman; a low life American who works the front floor on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He and my skanky secretary deserve each other, but I pity the poor child," Peter says.

"And do you Sandra take Peter to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

"I do!"

"And what say you about nasty Old Fred," the preacher says. "He bragged to the town's people that he used you like an old shoe and then tossed you out."

"Nasty Old Fred asked me to touch him but I declined," Sandra says. "He asked me if he could touch me but I decline. He asked me if I would sit on his lap but I declined. He asked me if he could kiss me in the French style but I declined. He asked me if he could remove my panties but I declined. He asked me to say if it felt good but I declined. He asked me to say if I would tell his wife and children but I declined. He asked if he could drive me home so I could clean up and reflect on what had happened but I declined."

"So," the preacher says, "this precious gift you saved for so very long; saved for handsome Peter; you gave to nasty Fred; nasty Old Fred the Bus Driver?"

"I did even after I declined," Sandra says. "But it is foolish to listen to anyone about how precious it is. I should have given it to Peter all along. It is not precious. It is gone in a moment. It means nothing. It is a myth that it means so much to a happy marriage. Peter and I will be happy even thought he didn't get my little gift and it was given or actually taken or at least conned away from me by nasty Old Fred the Bus Driver."

"Wait one minute," Peter says, "You telling me that nasty Old Fred the Bus Driver parked where only I should park? It is not right. A man needs a bride who receives from only him."

"But, Peter, my love," Sandra says. "it is rumored that you caused your skanky floozy of a secretary to receive, and I am still marrying you."

"I confessed nothing about me and my skanky secretary; but if I laid with her and caused her to receive and did many positions with her, that would make no difference. A man should be able to sew his seeds. A woman must only receive those seeds from her husband. I cannot marry you, now, or ever." In the dream, Sandra faints just before her grandfather dies of shock.

In the morning, she thinks about the dream or at least the parts of the dream she can remember. Tears still stream from her eyes. But she isn't certain if she is crying about the loss of her virginity, the loss of Peter, or the loss of her Grandpa. Her Grandpa provided for her all of her life. He is the only father she has ever known. She knows her father of course, but he neglected to raise her. He has done nothing to encourage her; to inspire her. That's what a father is supposed to do for his daughter. Not just take a mother's virginity away, get her PG, and then abandon the baby when the mother dies. What kind of a father does that? She thinks. My father. My father did that. But I was lucky that Grandpa took me in and raised me. And loved me. And now he's gone. Gone to heaven? Maybe, if there is such a place. If there is such a place then her Grandpa is surly there. But now she needs to face Peter. She needs to go to him and tell him that he can do her now. That it is no big deal.

She should have let him get his way two years ago. That time when they were alone in the back of the market and he touched her shoulder and turned her and kissed her on the lips for the first time. And then he tired to put his tongue in her open mouth.

"Oh damn! Peter," Sandra cried, "You promised me and Grandpa that we will wait until we get married."

"It is no big deal, Sandra," Peter said. He ran his hand down her body. "I love you. We will marry. No one will know we did this."

"I will know," Sandra said. "I will know that I broke a promise to my Grandpa and Grandma. So it is a big deal!"

"Calm down!" Peter said. "Someone will hear us. Your grandfather will find out and I'll be in big trouble."

"That's all you think about," she said. "I don't know if you even think about me. You just think about other people and your job."

"Of course I think about other people," he said. "I think about my job, but I also think about you and your reputation."

"If you think about my reputation, than why ask me to do something to sully it?"

"It's no big deal. Guys need it more than girls. And I am much older that you. I am in the habit of having it. Besides all girls do it or at least some of it. I was just going to kiss you and touch you. It's no big deal. I swear to you most all the girls your age do it and like it."

"Than why did you make the promise to my Grandpa that you had no intention of keeping?"

"I thought I could wait. But I'm a man. And any man who sees someone as beautiful as you wants to bed you."

"I was beautiful when you made the promise," Sandra said.

"I honestly thought I could wait," Peter said, "but it is becoming harder and harder."

"I can see that!" She looks down at the front of his trousers.

"That's not funny. A guy can cause himself physical harm if he walks around in this condition. We don't need to go all the way. Just kissing and touching. All the girls your age do it; and much more."

"You said that before. So I should do it because everyone else is doing it?"

"You should do it because you love me."

"You should not ask me to do it, if you love me."

"Sandra, I do love you, but sometimes you are impossible." He turned from her and walked to the front of the market.

Sandra remembers thinking that when he said, "all the girls your age do it," she almost said, "Then go and do it with all of them. Go and do it all day long. Go and do it all night long. Just go and do it!" but she didn't say it because she didn't want it. But Peter did go and do it with someone else; he did it with his secretary. She isn't a skanky floozy like in the dream; she is very attractive, even though a little overweight and she is very nice to Sandra when they see each other at the market office. But she still destroyed Sandra's life when she got pregnant and announced Peter was the father.

Sandra's grandfather was going to fire Peter and his secretary, but then they would have no jobs and no money and no way to raise the baby; so Peter was never fired. He asked Sandra to still marry him and swore that he would take care of her and the child and the child's mother. But, as in the dream, Sandra declined.

"Am I stupid?" She says to Lena.

"No, you're finally getting smart," Lena says. "You missed all the school dances because you went with a guy who couldn't take you to school dances."

"Why didn't you smack me or something?"

"I tried to tell you that Peter slept around and would want more than a kiss from you. But no you wouldn't listen."

"Because, I didn't want to take advice from anyone who has a slutty reputation, but who has never been on a date with a boy or with a man or with a small pig," Sandra says.

Lena musses Sandra's hair. Sandra retaliates. They are in the busiest section of the village. People stop to watch two beautiful girls get down and dirty. Before it is over, they are on the ground wrestling around in their nice dresses. Suddenly, they jump up, brush the grass from each other's dresses and faces, smile at the crowd and then walk off hand in hand.

"That was fun, but you ripped my new dress," Lena says.

"We'll sneak up to my room and I will fix it or make you a new one."

"That's what you should be."

"What?"

"You should make dresses," Lena says.

"Sew them? Sit all day and sew dresses? Are you nuts?"

"You know I am. I mean design them." Lena says.

"That's what I took courses for, Crazy. But you don't see me making any money designing dresses. You ever hear of a female designer in Germany?"

"You don't have to stay in Germany," Lena says.

"I can't leave Grandma."

"Your grandmother's strong, and she has lots of friends. She will be okay."

"You can come with me," Sandra says and turns to her friend. "Yeah, you can come with me. France or Italy. We will have a ball!"

"No, I'll become your anchor. You are the star. You always have been. I'm destined to stay in Germany. Get married. Have ten kids and then twenty grandchildren."

"You trying to repopulate Germany?"

"Someone has to."

"Whose gonna father all these children? Or are you just going to go to the American PX and lie spread-eagled."

"Sandra! I'll bet you my new earrings that you go to the PX before I go there and a long time before either of us spread-eagle on the PX floor."

"Yeah, we wouldn't want to get sawdust in our hair." Sandra says.

"How do you know the floor is covered with sawdust?"

"I didn't say 'covered'. Do you know something I don't?'

"Don't dodge the question," Lena says. "How do you know there is sawdust on the PX floor?"

"It's in all the movies."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah."

Sandra holds up her hand. "I swear I have never been on the PX floor."

"But, have you ever been to the PX?"

They walk hand-in-hand in silence thinking their own thoughts. But pretty much the same thoughts. They have come to a time in their relationship when reality dictates that soon they will not be together. Soon, Lena will be tethered to Germany and Sandra will be flying high to France or Italy or maybe even to the United States of boring America. No, they both know that will never happen.

Sandra turns to Lena. "You know we will always be friends. That no matter where I am, where we are, in the world, we will write and call and come back and visit. We will meet at the Film Festival every year."

1952

WEDNESDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 5, 1952 General Cracks solid South to End Long Rule by Democrats LOS ANGELES: Nov. 7 (A.P.) General Eisenhower won the Presidency by a landslide yesterday and brought to a crashing end the 20-year era of Democratic political reign..

Sandra knows nothing about General Eisenhower but she knows that all Americans are loudmouth louts, who think they own the world. They are very poor dating material. Because Sandra is beautiful and the granddaughter of a famous Buergermeister; every boy and man in the village wants to court her, but she is not interested. Once or twice she has gone to the local movie house with her childhood friend, Walt, but they become fast buddies and nothing more. She decides to get an excellent education and leave Germany. Maybe go to Paris or Rome. Fly to exotic places around the world. But most of the adults of the village say that her dreams are too big and that only angels fly.

But Grandma says, "Sandra, you are beautiful, intelligent, and ambitious don't listen to anyone or anything but your heart. It's untrue that only angels fly; look at the Americans; those young men fly everywhere in the world. You should go to America."

"I'm going to be like Mama: fly like an angel. But I'll never be with an American!" Sandra says. "Americans are so self-righteous. They think they know the answers to everything. I will travel and someday see America but first I'll see Rome and Paris and then some of the Far-eastern countries. Then years from now I may go to America."

"Sandra, you're silly," Her grandmother says. "Go to America first and find a movie star."

"How about just finding an American G.I. right here in our village?" Sandra says. "They come through here like they're God's gift to women."

"I forbid you to go with any of those bad boys." Her grandmother says. "They have terrible reputations and give terrible reputations to the young girls who hang around them."

"Grandma, you need not worry about G.I.s, I think they are all obnoxious. But they all look so handsome in their uniforms."

The next Saturday, Sandra is sweeping the street in front of her grandmother's house. It is her chore and the chore of every young person in the village to keep the street clean in the front of the residence where they live. She is in deep thought. She is smiling to herself when she thinks of all the advice her grandmother spouts about the Americans and says nothing about the local boys or the local men. Men like Peter and Old Fred the Bus Driver. She saw Fred on the street just the weekend before last; he was with his family going into the five and dime department store. He looked over at her and dropped his eyes; but his wife looked straight at her in an accusatory manner. How can she know? What? Did Fred go home and confess? Tell his portly wife what a fine body Sandra possesses and how he got to touch it all over. Maybe Sandra was just imagining the look. Yeah, because if Fred the Bus Driver's portly wife knew all the nasty things Fred did to poor, young, innocent, beautiful Sandra, his wife would be at Grandma's door and then immediately be at the local newspaper. "Extra! Extra! Read All About It!"

Suddenly Sandra hears a horn and she thinks it is a bus horn with Fred careening around the corner in an old school-bus on the way to pickup Sandra and whisk her away from it all or on the way to run her over so the secret of their love affair can never be revealed at least not by Sandra who will be road kill.

Reality surfaces in Sandra's fertile brain and she sees a bright red Opel Roadster burst out of the shadows. It speeds in her direction and swerves towards her. She drops the broom and jumps back to avoid the shiny front bumper of the speeding car. A blond curly haired stranger drives right through her pile of dirt and leaves. He is obviously American. He barely misses the bucket standing to the side in wait of the dirt and leaves. What an idiot, she thinks. The driver makes a screeching U-turn and parks the car on the far side of the street, jumps from the roadster, and then walks back toward her. She recognizes him.

"Guten Tag," he says. "I am so sorry, please forgive me, I didn't see you till the last minute. I should slow down for curves. Especially yours. But you surprised me. I was listening to some beautiful music on the radio and thinking of all the beautiful things I miss at home in the States, and there you were. Such good-looking women are a rare sight in this village. Or in Germany."

"You've just insulted most of the women of Germany," Sandra says.

"I didn't mean to insult German women; I was just complementing you. You would make most women look plain next to you."

"In the States, also," Sandra asks as she smiles.

"If you went to the States, they'd make you a movie star," he says.

"You are really full of it, aren't you.?"

"Mostly. Oh, my name is James Hauskopf, but you can call me Jim." He smiles and sticks his hand out.

He is handsome with his sunburned neck and his shirt opened at the front and draped casually down his tapered body. Sandra takes his hand and holds it a moment too long then blushes and asks him if he is from America.

"Yes, but of German decent." He says. "I visit relatives here in the village." He visited the village on several occasions. In fact he saw her a couple of time in the town square. Did she see him?

He asks her. Sandra says no; but she is fibbing. And he knows it. And she knows he knows it. Suddenly Sandra is happy that her grandmother insisted she sweep the street that day and that she comb her hair before she went to do the dreaded chore. She is also happy she didn't let her grandmother talk her out of wearing a blouse that her grandmother pronounced as entirely too tight to wear on the street. Her beautiful hair is in a ponytail. She knows how beautiful she must look. His eyes travel her face and hair but always stop at her breasts. Without another word, Jim takes the broom and sweeps the leaves that have scattered over the street; back into a pile. He walks over and retrieves the bucket and pushes the pile of leaves into the bucket with one quick stroke that makes Sandra think he sweeps the street most every Saturday.

"There now," he says, "you see I'm not the monster you think I am"

"How do you know what I'm thinking?" Sandra says.

"Judging by your face, I bet you called me a no good American. But very handsome in my sports car and open-neck shirt. Please forgive me; I really did not do this on purpose."

Sandra still looks mad. He apologizes again.

"She did think; what an idiot. These Americans think they can do anything, anytime. It is not at all nice to destroy a morning's work.

With a boyish grin, he says, "I visit your neighbors. Down there," he points down the hill, "every weekend that I have furlough. Tonight I'd like to take you to the PX and buy you a Banana Split, just to show you that I am not a bad guy."

"What is a Banana Split?" She asks.

He smiles and tells her it is an American treat. He says that he is in love at first sight. Sandra blushes and wonders how he knew she was thinking the same thing. She decides to risk going with him, but tell her Grandma she is going to Lena's for a while after dinner.

"Well, I don't think I need one of your famous, American Banana splits," she says and turns away.

He reaches out and turns her back towards him. "Let's start over. Hi, I'm harmless, lovable Jim. Perhaps I could take you out tonight and buy you a Banana Split?"

"What's a Banana Split," asks Sandra again.

"You'll love it, it is an American treat, will you come and check it out?"

Sandra knows what her Grandma will say. This is the American related to the Hauskopfs. He's the one everyone is talking about. They all say he just goes with girls who put out. They say he looks like an American movie star. They think no good girl can resist him. Jim stands patiently waiting for her answer. He watches the beautiful young girl size him up and run all the pros and cons of going out with someone with his reputation. It's a reputation he worked hard to achieve.

He is the biggest scorer in the game that he and his buddies have going. It's all about who can bag the most village girls. Who can do it fastest. Who can do it with the least cash output. A Banana Split is cheaper than a full-blown burger and fries.

What shall she do? Sandra thinks. He is a stranger but he owns a car, a nice car. None of the boys in town will ever be fortunate enough to own a car or earn the money to pay for the gas and a Banana Split. "Oh I don't know," she says. "I never go out at night and I would not want the whole village talking." But in her mind she is thinking, it will be nice to go with him. All my girlfriends will be jealous. "No," she says, "I can't lie to my grandma. She will tan my hide if she finds out."

Very disappointed, Jim says, "It would be so nice to show you that Americans are nice, friendly people."

She can tell he really likes her and wants to know her better. She is young but tall and with a great figure and long blond hair; she knows he likes what he sees.

"Oh, come on! I only want to take you to the City of Darmstadt; it's about twenty minutes driving. We can eat fast. In two hours you can be there and back home. Please."

She shocks herself with her boldness. "Ok!" She says, "Do you know the churchyard at the city limits? There's a red house. You can wait for me there. I'll be there at seven p.m. and then we can go. It's on the outskirts of town, on the road to Minden, by the giant trees, just before the long turn. But you can't tell anybody especially your relatives. Your reputation is terrible with young girls. If my Grandma hears of our plans, she will lock me in my room for the rest of the year."

"I won't say a word," he promises. "No one will know where we go or what we do."

"We will do nothing," Sandra says.

"We're going to eat a Banana Split," he says.

"Okay, we'll do that but we are definitely not doing anything else."

"Oh, you mean like take a drive to the river or something like that?"

"You know what I mean!" Sandra says and walks away. Sandra whistles as she carries the bucket of leaves to her grandmother's yard and back to the mulch bin. Alf, the fat, old German Shepard is sleeping on the doorstep. The beloved dog wakes and rolls over so she can scratch his stomach; he wags his thick tail in appreciation. Sandra walks into the kitchen and kisses her grandmother on the back of her neck. Her grandmother turns and smiles and then frowns.

"Sandra, I told you not to wear that tight blouse," she says. "It outlines your breasts so the village boys will think you want them to be touched. You'll get a reputation like your friend Lena."

"Lena?" Sandra says. "Lena has no bad reputation. Whatever the gossipy neighbors say is not true. I'm going to her house for an early supper."

"I better not find out you and Lena went out with Americans," her grandmother says. "Especially that Hauskopf boy. He plays a game with the other Americans and his cousins about how many village girls they can bed down. I think Lena has already succumbed."

"Grams, where do you hear such nonsense?" Sandra says and starts up the stairs. "Grandma I'll be at Lena's."

What shall one wear to the American PX? Sandra thinks. She decides on a skirt and a blouse she designed and cut and sewed herself; everybody says how nice she looks in the dress and especially in this color.

Her goal for the night is to get out of the house without having to answer any questions of where she and Lena think we're going and with whom. Her grandma is one of the best at the use of the "Second Degree" method where you grind down the criminal by asking continuous questions some of which have no answer that is positive. She possesses the uncanny ability to know what Sandra is thinking. Or maybe Sandra looks so guilty that Grandma just keeps asking questions.

That night, Sandra decides to bypass all the questions and sneak out knowing she will answer twice as many questions when she returns to the house. But Sandra knows that her grandmother will be able to see the lust in her beautiful blue eyes. Lust for Jim: The German-American bad-boy.

When the time comes, Sandra tiptoes down the backstairs and runs to the edge of town. She comes this way all the time, but this time it appears to be so far, Sandra thinks. Maybe she should ask beautiful Jim to pick her up closer to her house, in the future. Oh, that would be smart, missy. Why not ask him to drive right up to the house in his little red roadster and beep the horn. Shout out, "Sandra come out and play with me," that would work. Her Grams would come out and give him a piece of her mind.

Her grandmother would shoo him away with the very broom that Sandra used to bring him into her life. It sounds like witchcraft: using a broom to bring a lover, a handsome lover, into your life. Did she say "lover"? What is she planning? She walks rapidly down the road. She looks over her shoulder every couple of minutes. Yeah, you are real subtle, she thinks. Most people stay indoors at this time of night and there is little chance to meet a nosy busybody. Of course, the village is so small that everybody knows what everybody else is doing.

She isn't going to do anything bad; really. Maybe she will let him hold her and kiss her. She has been horny as a toad for the last year or so. Of course she can't let Jim know or he will draw a target on her butt and be aiming for it all night. She will let him accidentally touch her breasts sort of like Fred did when he was repairing the porch that hot, hot summer. And as far as going all the way, maybe a couple dates from now, she thinks. The Linden trees sway in the soft wind and then Sandra sees the steeple of the church as she takes the curve in the road. The neighborhood is so quiet; of course all the good girls are inside knitting or preparing dinner.

She can do all those things: knit, prepare dinner, and be a good girl; but, tonight, she plans on doing none of them. From a distance, she thinks she can see the silhouette of the Roadster standing by the old Oak tree; her heart begins to beat faster. What will Lena think when I tell her? Sandra thinks. She will probably scold me. What if he really is a gangster like Lena says all American men are? Gangsters roam New York; maybe Jim is one. What if he really is one? But she didn't answer her own question, because Jim is standing there with the door open; she just gets into the car.

"I was afraid you wouldn't come," he says and smiles.

She sits back and smoothes her skirt and wonderers what he thinks of her. No lipstick. All the American movie stars use lipstick. But it is too late; he will have to take her to the city as she is. But she is daydreaming; she is just reaching the Roadster now, and Jim isn't standing holding the door open like her knight in shining armor; he is slouched down in the front seat smoking and snapping his fingers to a tune on the radio. No! She is still daydreaming. But now as she reaches the churchyard, she sees the red Roadster waiting up the road past the old Oak tree. It is like a scene from one of the romantic American films she has watched at the local theater for the last couple of years since the Americans took over her town. It is the "Golden Hour" with the sunset behind the big Oak tree. The lovers run toward each other and kiss. There is that word "lovers" again.

She is going to make this whole thing too easy for him, she thinks. Americans don't need any help with making things easy. Everything the Americans do is big and bold and easy. Not one of them seems to be shy and reserved or up tight. No wonder so many of them become entertainers and sports figures. Jim is handsome. But he is no more handsome than she is beautiful. She will be a prize for him. At the PX, she will be the one everybody turns to see and wishes they were with and not some silly American girl in a too short uniform skirt. She will walk like a model as she crosses the PX floor. If there is a floor in the PX. Maybe it is just like the dirt she is crossing now, she thinks. She walks calmly up to the car, smiles, and gets into the snug, leather seats of the little Roadster. If she were a writer, this first time in Jim's car would be written just as it happens: snug little Roadster; beautiful German girl; handsome German-American G.I. in a perfectly designed and pressed uniform. She is nervous; but she hides it well.

"I was afraid you wouldn't come," Jim says. "What did you tell your family; your grandmother?"

"I said that I was going to a friend's house for supper," Sandra says. "It's the first time I've lied to my Grandma. No, that's not true. It's the second time."

"Was the other time a lie about a date with a handsome American G.I.?" he asks.

"Not American; and not all that handsome. And it's none of your business," she says. "You must promise to bring me home early."

"No problem," he says, "You'll be home early and on time, if you promise you'll go out with me again."

"Why should I make such a promise," she says. "I don't even know if I like you, and I don't even know that I will like the place you're taking me to. Ask me at the end of this evening. But if you don't get me home on time, this will be our last date."

"You will be home before the fat lady sings," he says.

"What in the world does that mean?"

"It's an American thing."

"I'm not an American," she says.

"Not yet," he says.

The U. S. commissary is on a main street. Sandra sort of remembers it. She saw it when she came to the city to go shopping for the fabric for her new dress. She passed it, never dreaming that she would ever go in. She saw some American girls come out; laughing and smoking. All the girls had on very short skirts. Now, inside, it is very plain, not at all like in the movies. There is a bar like arrangement with high chairs. She thought highchairs were only seen in nightclubs; it must be an American thing, she thinks It is a lunch counter of some kind. Jim takes Sandra's arm and walks her to two high-stools in front of the counter. Sandra mounts one of the uncomfortable stools and watches as Jim straddles the spin-top stool and turns toward her. Sandra had first noticed the silly stools in some American movie and, at that time, she wondered why they were made with a spin-top; it seemed that you would need to do a balancing act just to stay on them; but they turn out to be easy to sit on. Again that word "easy" when it comes to the Americans. Jim casually puts his hand on her leg as he turns toward her. She starts to brush it off, but before she can make this lady-like move, Jim puts both of his elbows on the counter and leans forward and unfolds the menu.

"Would you like to get something to eat?" he says, "before we order our Banana Splits?"

"No, I ate just before I came to meet you," she lies.

"Okay," he says.

"I'm going to eat a burger and fries, if you don't mind? I haven't eaten all day."

"Go ahead; you look famished," she laughs.

He smiles and calls to the counter girl to bring him a burger and fries and a Coke.

That is all Americans eat. All the wonderful foods of the world, especially her Gram's food, and all the silly American's like to eat is a burger and fries and a Coke. Someday, with the way the Americans are taking over the world, there will be American PXs on every corner and all they will serve will be a burger and fries and a Coke, Sandra thinks.

Jim receives his burger, etc. and begins eating it while he attempts to carry on a conversation with Sandra. No village boy on a date with Sandra would talk with his mouth full and feel enough at ease to poke a stray piece of hamburger back into his mouth and lick catsup from his lips and fingers without so much as an apology, she thinks. But she looks around at the other patrons of the PX and finds to her disgust that most all of them, including the women; including German women; are the mirror image of Jim with their eating habits.

Jim finishes, wipes his mouth with a thick, white, paper napkin, and then calls to the counter girl. "Judy! "Two Banana Splits. Please Beautiful!"

The waitress, dressed in a tight, red, white, and blue, striped blouse with a short, short white skirt, looks Sandra over, and then smirks and smiles as though she can already predict Sandra's future for the evening. She's probably already tasted the fruits of lust with Notorious Jim, Sandra thinks. She probably thinks that I'm going to do a replay of Old Fred the Bus Driver. Maybe she even knows Old Fred the Bus Driver. Maybe she's even caught his bus, on several occasions. Once was enough for me, Sandra thinks.

The waitress goes back toward the kitchen but turns and gives Sandra one more predictive smile. She should just announce it to the PX, "Sandra, this proper German girl, beautiful, I must say, has been with Old Fred the Bus Driver; but on just one occasion, and now she is with Handsome Jim, the beautiful German-American G.I.; so we all know what she is going to get in the end, pardon my pun. But all we see is another broken heart and some chicken tracks on the seats of Handsome Jim's Roadster. How many times can that upholstery be cleaned, Jim? Get a room." Sandra giggles to herself.

"What you giggling about?" he asks.

Sandra shakes herself back to reality then whispers through a giggle. "Those!" She lifts her hand from her mouth and points at two giant, long dishes piled with mounds of ice cream and bananas and cherries and nuts and whipped cream. "Oh my god!" She says, "How can anybody eat all that?"

Jim laughs and tells her that some American girls stay away because they fear they'll get fat, but Sandra has nothing to worry about, because she is so thin and so beautiful.

"It's delicious!" Sandra says after she carefully eats spoonful after delicious spoonful. Grandma never buys ice cream or such expensive deserts, she thinks. She finishes the entire dish although she thinks her stomach will burst. An hour goes by and conversation is mostly about Jim and the United States of boring America. Sandra has led a pretty exciting and unusual life but there is no silent spot for her to jump in and say oh by the way, I was hit by some of your United States of boring America bombs, and I almost died. Isn't that horrible? But Jim talks on and now she concentrates on the urge to pee. And the more she tries not to concentrate; the more she wants to pee. Then he finally asks about her parents, and for the longest time she forgets about peeing because she is so excited to get a chance to speak; it has been so long since she spoke she is frightened she might have forgotten how to enunciate. But she starts to speak and out comes this long, long tale about her mother and how she died of a lung decease she caught from a wealthy Jewish employer; it turns out Handsome Jim doesn't really like Jews. He doesn't bare them any ill will but he really doesn't like them even though he risked his life to free them from that Nazi bastard Hitler.

She talks about how her father abandoned her for that witch of a stepmother's attractive daughter, who incidentally is only a couple years older than Sandra; her father is a damn cradle robber. She tells Jim about her grandfather and what happened at the funeral with Peter and the others. Except, of course, she doesn't say a word about the bus yard and Old Fred the Bus Driver. He doesn't need to know she isn't a virgin. Beside, Jim would probably challenge Fred to a bed-off with Fred being allowed to count Sandra as his first score. Sandra heard that Americans don't want a virgin; they want someone who knows some new positions that the Americans haven't tried yet, but she isn't taking a chance.

The Americans and the French live, drink, and eat sex. It is all they think of. When Sandra finishes, she is amazed that she told Jim, a total stranger, her life's story; with all its flaws and all the good times except the bus yard and Old Fred the Bus Driver. When she is running to be the first female Governor of her region, Old Fred will probably blackmail her or release some hidden photos he took with a hidden camera in some hidden crevice of the bus yard. Not that that was a good time. The bus yard incident was one of the biggest flaws of her young life.

She is also amazed how badly she needs to pee. She has to go to the bathroom but is afraid to ask where it is, after a few more minutes of hesitation; Sandra very shyly asks Jim if there are toilets. He laughs and says,

"Little girl, even Americans have to go. That's why you were fidgeting? You've been holding it long?"

"It's not for you to know. It seems like hours," she says as she stands and heads in the direction that Jim points.

On the way back home, Sandra decides she likes him. Is he her shining knight in shining armor? She thinks. Probably not, and isn't that too many shinings? And if she really thinks about it, Peter wasn't either. It is just that her whole life was planned around Peter. But that was then this is now, she thinks. She'll just have a fling with this beautiful, uniformed American who she likes more and more. She already knows that she will do sex with him, someday, or more likely, some night.

But she insists that he let her out of the car at the edge of the village. He kisses her goodnight and tires to slide his hand over her breast, but Sandra has had much practice with the local boys; she dodges just in the knick of time. He smiles. And Sandra knows he is thinking the same thing she is about the amount of practice this beautiful German girl must have had with the local boys. Sandra promises him to meet next week when he comes to see his relatives. But he promises that his relatives will never know about their meetings. Sandra kisses him again and then moves his hand to her breast and her erect nipple; just a quick touch to keep the boys coming back for more, she thinks and smiles and then drops his hand and sprints toward the village.

She will go over to Lena's. Lena will still be awake. She will tell her of her plans to seduce or be seduced by Handsome Jim. She throws a small stone at Lena's window. The window slides open and a hand reaches out to give Sandra some support while she climbs the lattice to the opening. They sit cross-legged on Lena's quilted bed.

"You nuts?" Lena says to her best friend. "Sure he's handsome, all those American G.I.s are. But this one you picked is like a gigolo."

"What's a gigolo?" Sandra says.

"It's French or Italian for a fellow who dates women for money," Lena says.

"So he's dating me for money?"

"Yes, there is some kind of bet these Americans make," Lena says.

"The one who gets the most women gets a pot full of money from the other Americans?"

"I'm like on their list. But no one has even persuaded me to say yes to a date. It must be an honor system that they use to get the points for getting us into bed. So I figure, if I don't even go on a date with one of them, they won't be able to lie about bedding me down in one of their cars or the river bank or an out-of-town hotel."

"Jim wouldn't just take me out to win a bet," Sandra says.

"Of course not," Lena says as she runs her fingers through Sandra's long hair. "You certainly must be one of the most beautiful ladies in Germany. So he's dating you because of the way you look, but by the same token, I'll bet he gets extra points for someone as beautiful as you."

"And then why isn't Jim after you? You're beautiful," Sandra says.

"He already tried," Lena says. "I declined, as we say."

"Why that scoundrel!"

"You still going to date him?"

"I'm going to think seriously about it," Sandra says as she looks in Lena's dresser mirror and brushes her thick hair away from her beautiful face. "

"You going to become points in this game?" Lena asks.

"I'm going to think seriously about it." Sandra says as she thinks about Jim and how he kisses her and holds her. And so what if he tells his buddies. She will just deny it. If asked, she will say she is very sorry but she had to decline. No matter what she tells Lena, she knows she will see Jim every chance she gets. And if he wants to kiss her and touch her and enter her, she will not decline.

"You already said that," Lena says. "I can tell by the look in you eyes that you're ready to let him get his way."

"And what do you think his way is?" Sandra says.

"Wham, bam, thank you mam!"

"What the heck does that mean?"

"It's American for just getting what you want when you want it and never coming back for more." Lena says.

"What if you're like a Banana Split," Sandra says. "So delicious that he needs to come back for more. And he comes back so often he hasn't got time for anyone else and he just forfeits the game."

"You're crazy, Sandra girl. You're playing with fire!"

"Maybe so," Sandra says. "But, at least, I feel alive for the first time in ages."

"You haven't lived for ages," Lena says.

"Okay, but it's been a long time since I felt like having fun."

"By having fun, you mean letting Jim do anything and everything?"

"No! Lena! Having fun means I let Jim do some things but only if he romances me. No, 'wham, bam, thank you mam." Sandra says and smacks Lena's bottom that is sticking a little higher on the quilted bed than it did less than two months before. Lena is getting a big butt, she thinks and giggles.

"Don't be smacking my butt and giggling." Lena says and rolls over on her back. "I know I've gained a little weight. But I think the Americans like a little more meat then you've got on your skinny behind."

They start smacking each other with pillows until Lena's father pounds on the ceiling with a broom, "For my sake and sanity!" He shouts. "Act like ladies."

"He knows I'm here," Sandra says. "I best be going."

"Okay, sweet dreams, Sandra," Lena says. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"You're so bad!" Sandra says and slips out through the open window.

Sandra and Jim meet every time he can get away from the Base. The first time they do it in his Roadster, he asks her if she is a virgin; she lies and wonders if he receives more points for bagging a virgin. If she were scoring the game, she thinks, she would give the most points for a beautiful virgin; maybe not the most; the most points would go to a beautiful virgin who is a practicing Nun. He is gentle the first time: he starts with a kiss that makes her almost swoon, and then he touches her breast with one hand and at the same time slips his hand under her skirt. They go off-road in the first stand of the forest. It is private and cozy; even romantic. But all Sandra can thing of is her Grandpa coming through this very same stand of trees when he escaped from the concentration camp at Dachau. What if he were alive now? She thinks. And he comes by and looks in the rocking Roadster, and sees this young American violating his granddaughter, he would kill both of them, or at least, he would kill Jim. Sandra flinches.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Jim says, "Did I hurt you?"

"No, no," Sandra says. "I'm just a little nervous, this being my first time and all."

"Don't be surprised when you go home and there's a spot of blood in your panties," he says. "I tried to be as gentle as I could but I've been so anxious to do this. I can't work, I can't sleep. I can't eat. All I think about is you."

"And will you get extra points if you go back to the Base with my undies with a spot of blood on them? Will it help you win the 'Game'?"

Jim stops on the down stroke. "Game? What are you talking about?"

"Everyone knows about the 'Game' you got going with your nasty cousins and your buddies at the Base," Sandra says and undulates her hips.

"You talking about Poker or Dice?" he asks.

He slips out of her and she is sorry she brought up the subject. "Jim, you know very well what I'm talking about," she says. "My plan is to make you lose the game because you will be with me, alone, while your buddies and those nasty cousins of yours keep going through the local girls like rabbits through a carrot patch."

"I don't know what to say or do," he says.

"Don't say a word, but continue to do what we were doing before I brought up this silly game thing. Remember, this is my first time and I want to remember it a lifetime."

But Jim is finished for the night but is willing to try again the next weekend. They explore every intimate spot in the village and the bordering cities and river-banks. And they make love. Truly make love. Sandra knows from the first time that Jim loves her without reservation. And then they speak of marriage and America; a country run by a General. Sandra wonders what is the difference between a country run by a Dictator and a country run by a General.

"Americans are like early Hitlers," Sandra says.

"Sandra, the biggest problem we are going to have is this time after sex," he says.

They are deep in the forest on a thick quilted blanket that Jim carries stuffed in the trunk of the roadster. He moves a basket to one side so he can turn and look at Sandra. She has put on her underwear under her skirt and re buttoned her blouse. He pats her beautiful leg. "What nonsense are you talking about now?" he says and then sips some beer.

"Everyone said that Hitler was a bad man because he wanted Europe to be a Germanic continent again," Sandra says. "But at least the German people used to own Europe. Americans took over an entire continent that they never owned."

"So now Hitler is a good guy?"

"No, Hitler is not a good guy. I'm just saying, what's the difference. You guys took an entire continent. What's the difference?" Sandra says as she sips from Jim's beer and searches around for the last half of a sandwich she started before Jim started the sex thing by running his hand up her skirt and removing her panties.

"The difference is that we did not take an entire continent. We don't own Canada or Mexico. We were lead to America by God to educate the primitive people. Hitler went against civilized nations."

"France and Poland are civilized nations? Have you ever been there?"

"I've been to France. Have you?" He gets to his knees and tucks in his wrinkled, uniform shirt and buttons and zips his pants and hitches up his belt. "Have you been to Poland?"

"Okay, I've not been to Poland or France, but I've been told by reliable sources that neither wash."

"Were your 'reliable sources' Germans?"

She smacks his arm. He grabs her and rolls her around on the quilt. "Stop!" she says, "you'll have me so mussed up I'll never be able to face my Grandma."

"She must know by now that we are doing the nasty," Jim says.

"She doesn't even know I'm dating an American. She doesn't even know I'm dating anyone."

"Is she stupid?"

Sandra pushes away from Jim. "Whoa, now, my Grandma is anything but stupid. She sees that I'm happy so she doesn't push the issue. But if she knew you are jumping my bones, as you crude Americans say, I would be bound and tethered to the heavy chair you'll never see in my bedroom."

"I'll see you bedroom when we marry," he says.

"She'll never let us marry."

"She can't stop us; you're of age."

"But I wouldn't want to break my Grandma's heart by marring an American especially an American G.I. especially one with your reputation. Besides you never asked me."

"Of course I did."

"No. You just take it for granted that I want to marry you. But you never asked."

"So, you want to marry an American?"

"Ask me." She stands up on the quilt, then bends over and puts on her shoes. She straightens up and sands stiffly. She looks down at Jim. "Ask me."

Jim crawls over to her; he looks up, "Sandra, my love, and light of my life will you marry me?"

"If you asked me when there was a law against German women marrying American men, I would have to decline.

"Yeah, that was then and this is now," he says.

"Yeah, now, I can even be in the Olympics."

"As what? The fastest dressmaker in the world?"

"At least it wouldn't be the fastest bagger of village girls in the world."

"Is that a yes?" He says.

1953

TUESDAY MORNING, JUNE 2, 1953 Tremendous Crowds Hail Queen Along London Coronation Route Millions Gather for Rites LONDON: June, 2 (A.P.) Roaring, cheering crowds totaling hundreds of thousands of persons jammed the gorgeously panoplied streets of London today for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

Sandra is pretty sure "panoplied" means decorated; elaborately decorated, and that is how she feels the village streets should be decorated for her. She is a Queen or at least a Princess. Everything is going so well, she pinches herself to see if she is dreaming; not the recurring dream about her declining Peter at their elaborate—panoplied—streets wedding. Dreaming a dream of a Princess having a Prince. Of course she is not Queen Elizabeth the third or fourth or whatever she is; but she is Queen Sandra about to marry Prince Jim. Or King Jim, she thinks it must be. Her Grandma isn't happy but she isn't exactly sad either. Her grandmother lectures her three times about staying a virgin until the wedding night.

"I know, I know, Grams, I know," Sandra says. "I've waited this long I can wait until the wedding night or at least the wedding evening." She giggles and her grandmother smiles.

Her grandmother walks around the kitchen table and hugs Sandra tightly. Tears fill her old eyes when she pushes Sandra out to arms length and kisses both her hands. "More beautiful than that British Queen, Queen Elizabeth, more regal. You will be a Queen in America or anyplace you go. You make me so proud; the way you turned out."

"Grandma, you're the reason I turned out the way I did," Sandra says and pulls her grandmother towards her for another long hug.

"I'm so proud that you saved yourself for this young man," her grandmother says. Sandra's heart starts pounding and she knows she will start hyperventilating if the conversation gets around to her virginity again; plus her grandmother will be able to feel the lies through the tenseness and the reaction of her body especially if she starts hyperventilating; that will be a dead giveaway, Sandra thinks. She pushes her grandmother out to arms length and then walks over to the sink and begins washing her hands. "I'm so proud," her grandmother continues, "that you are not like most of the other young girls in the village, and from what I hear, all over Germany at least in the American Sector. They all seem to sleep with dozens of men. What kind of a man will want them when they finally decide to settle in with a husband and raise children? No man. That's who. You did it the right way, Sandra, the regale way, like a Queen. You waited. And now you hold this wonderful gift to give to your new husband on your wedding night."

Sandra turns from the sink and moves toward her grandmother. "Grandma, I."

"I know, Sandra, you're frightened," her grandmother says. "I never told you about the birds and bees, but you must get the general idea." Sandra nods her head and turns back to the sink and busies herself with washing her hands again. "All I can tell you," her grandmother continues, "you should ask him to be gentle and then just lay back and relax. And I suggest that you don't pretend that you like it because then he will think you have lots of experience."

"Grandma, this is an embarrassing subject to be talking about to your grandmother, Sandra says and moves over to the towel rack to get one of the highly embroidered towels draped over the rack—folded and placed exactly in the center of the rack.

"I know, you've heard it all from Lena and all your experienced friends," her grandmother says. "But I just need to make sure you feel okay and are not too frightened. You're supposed to do it whenever they ask. But don't fret: after the first couple of years it will taper off dramatically and after a while, you won't have to do it at all. You just become the Queen of your household. You just tend to the house and children and let him go out and chippie."

Sandra turns and looks directly at her grandmother; there are tears in the old lady's tired eyes.

"Grandpa didn't chippie...did he, Grandma?" Sandra whispers.

Her grandmother leaves the kitchen. She is dabbing at her eyes with the corner of her apron.

Early one Tuesday morning, Sandra stops being her grandmother's Queen or even a Princess; in her grandmother's eyes, she becomes the Village Harlot. Sandra sits in the shadows at the top of the stairs in the exact position she sat when the Nazis came to arrest her beloved grandfather; when she was stunned and frightened that the Nazis would harm her grandfather and maybe even her grandmother and her. On that night she was trembling and sick to her stomach. But this feels worse. Not that she didn't love her Grandpa, she thinks. But this is happening now; she weeps silently.

"This is all lies you're telling me," her grandmother says as she paces around the kitchen table.

The neighbor lady leans foreword in her chair. "Everybody knows," she says.

"How can they know?" her grandmother says and sits down on one of the ornate kitchen-chairs and scoots it in closer to the neighbor lady's matching chair. They sit at the kitchen table. The table is set with coffee and cookies but neither lady is drinking or eating. They sit almost head-to-head, whispering.

"Sandra and that American are not very discreet," the neighbor lady says. "I see them together touching and kissing. Many of the women from the church witnessed them together acting as if they are married. They're always touching."

Sandra peeks through the banister. She always hated this lady, she thinks. She is the busybody who lives alone on the second street over. Sandra remembers seeing her placing flowers on a grave, late at night; on one of the occasions she met Jim at the edge of the old cemetery. Jim caressed her breasts before they noticed they were not alone. But she is certain the old busybody did not see anything. And Sandra remembers rationalizing that the old lady has no friends; everybody hates her; everybody Sandra knows.

"I knew something was going on with that Jim." Her grandmother says. "He is too much of a playboy to not want to get some from Sandra. I've warned Sandra about wearing those blouses she wears."

"The Church ladies all talk about how much of Sandra's breasts the boys can see." The old lady says and looks up toward the staircase. "Is she here?"

"Yes, so keep your voice down," her grandmother whispers.

"It isn't just the American," the old lady whispers back, "several of the local boys brag that they were with her by the river, skinny-dipping, and doing other things. Sexual things." Sandra's grandmother's face begins to burn a dark red. The fat, little neighbor lady leans forward and puts her knurled hand on Sandra's grandmother's twitching shoulder. "I know how you must feel," she says.

"How could you know?" Her grandmother hisses though her teeth, "you have no children. No daughter!"

"Well, Sandra isn't exactly your daughter."

"She is my daughter. She is more my daughter than she could be anybody else's daughter." Her grandmother says and stands up from the table. "You're starting to babble, now."

The neighbor says. "You are a grandmother with too much pressure; too many woes; and I don't want to add to your woes, but there is more."

Sandra's grandmother walks to the window; her back is to the viper at the table. She brushes the backs of her hands against her eyes. "I don't want to hear another word." She starts toward the kitchen door to open it to let the viper drag her venomous body out of her house and maybe out onto the road where a transport truck loaded down with American G.I.s will drive over her and smash her putrid soul.

The neighbor lady pushes herself, stiffly, from the hard wooden chair. She moves toward the open kitchen door. "You should know, your nasty, little slut of a granddaughter chippied with Fred Meyer at the bus yard."

Sandra nearly tumbles down the stairs; her heart beats so rapidly that she starts to hyperventilate; she thinks she is going to faint; her grandmother steps forward and strikes the neighbor's face. The neighbor staggers backward against the staircase. She catches herself and steadies her ancient body against the banister. She looks straight up into Sandra's eyes. Her eyes look evil; and her eyes are laughing.

Sandra stays in her room into the evening and through the night. She runs though her mind the litany of methods of committing suicide: she can be like her aunt and jump off the bridge, the problem is, that Sandra is a darn good swimmer so the worst that can happen is that she will get wet and ruin one of her pretty dresses. Of course she can go naked but she isn't sure how attractive a naked body is after it is in the putrid water for a couple of days. She can wear one of her old dresses; the brown one with the silly pattern across the hem; and attach some weights to her legs; but how can she carry the weights to the river and what can she use for weights? Another choice for a suicide waiting to happen is pills; the new sleeping pills; she can get these pills from whom? Who does she know who can get her enough sleeping pills so that she is sure to go to sleep and die? And if she does get the pills, where will she go to take them; she wouldn't want her Grams to find her dead in her room; she will need to go out into the woods, at night, and she will probably get raped before she can kill herself. She certainly doesn't want to get raped again; if the first time was even a rape. As dawn creeps to the far corner of her bed, she thinks about hanging herself but she worries what the rough rope will do to her beautiful neck. The house is silent except for her grandmother's sobbing.

Sandra waits for the dawn to complete its daily comeback. Not that she wants it to come back; it will mean she will need to face her Grandma, she thinks. Her favorite person in the whole world. That cannot be true. She must favor Jim over her Grandma or else she wouldn't go against her grandmother's wishes. She does a few sex things with Jim to keep him so he won't be another Peter and find a substitute plaything. She has sex with Jim to keep him and because she likes the sex. Sex is natural, why else would God give us the parts to do it with, she thinks. But she wasn't real certain that she believed in God any more. Dawn comes; her grandmother stands in the early-morning shadows of her bedroom doorway. She stands for the longest time just staring at Sandra, whose eyes stay closed, and is pretending to be in a deep sleep.

"We must talk," her grandmother says. She is still sobbing. "I know you heard the conversation last evening. I want to believe it is not true that you would be a slut. But in my broken, old heart, I know that it is all true. So I want you to tell it to me. All of it. Not one lie."

"Grams, I didn't hear the conversation," Sandra says. She rolls off the bed and puts on her slippers and attempts to walk past her grandmother.

Her grandmother grabs her arms and pushes her back onto the bed. "First you will tell me about the American and then the local boys and then Fred. No more lies. You will not leave this house until I hear it all. And I may decide, after I hear your nasty story that you may not come back to my house."

Sandra starts sobbing. "This is my house, too." She says.

"It was until you became the Village Slut!" Her grandmother says.

"I am not a slut, Grandma, I've been with one man, Jim, just Jim. I love him. He is going to marry me, soon."

"I doubt that," her grandmother says. "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk free? Men don't marry your kind. They want something fresh and unused. You're a beautiful child but now Jim and the local boys and even the bus driver used you. Last Saturday, you sat and lied to me about being a virgin. How many other lies have you told me?"

"Last Saturday, I tried to tell you," Sandra says. "But you were saying such wonderful things about me; things that I wished were true, so I couldn't tell you. I didn't mean to lie to you."

"Exclusion is the same as a lie," her grandmother says. "You kept things from me; things that you knew I would punish you for."

"Grams, I'm a little old for you to punish. I'm an adult."

"You haven't been acting like an adult. Adults don't make choices that will ruin their reputations."

"I never slept with any local boys. Just movie dates. Just kissing, nothing else."

"I hate to think what 'else' means," her grandmother says. She pulls a chair up next to the bed. Her sobbing stops.

"Jim and I sleep together, have sex, straight sex, that's all."

"Straight sex? What is straight sex?"

"You know! Just regular sex," Sandra says. "Just sexual intercourse."

"You swore to me you were doing nothing. Now I find out the whole village knows you have 'sexual intercourse' with an American G.I. who is performing 'sexual intercourse' on every woman and child in the village, What about Fred?"

"He raped me!'

Joseph Hidel, Fred's smarmy attorney says. "Why do you accuse this poor, humble, innocent father and good husband of this dastardly deed?"

Sandra twists and turns nervously in the witness box. Her grandmother sits in a back row seat. She stares directly at the back of Fred's greasy head. Sandra thinks maybe her Grandma is trying to make Fred's big head explode. "I am telling the truth. Fred Meyers raped me. He took away my virginity."

"We obtained information that a local boy by the name of Walter Hause did that dastardly dead." Hidel says.

"Objection!" shouts, Linus Burger, Sandra's ancient attorney.

"Over ruled," says the Judge.

"Young lady, did Walter Hause in fact have sexual intercourse with you before you met with Fred Meyers?"

"He didn't have sexual intercourse with me, before or after greasy, old Fred Meyers raped me."

"If you think he is greasy and old, why did you go to meet him?" Hidel asks. He moves in closer to the witness stand and stares straight into Sandra's eyes.

Sandra looks down and then over at Fred. She looks back at Hidel. "I didn't go to meet him. I was walking back from my grandfather's funeral. You were there. You saw me there. I was crying as I passed the bus yard. Old Fred asked me what the problem was. I told him. He made some lame excuse about not coming to my grandfather's funeral. Then he asked me to come over and sit on his lap."

"Did you know Fred Meyers?" Hidel says.

"Sort of," Sandra says.

"What does that mean?" Hidel says.

"Objection!" Burger says. "He's badgering the witness."

"Mr. Hidel!" the Judge says. "Keep it civil."

"Sorry, Your Honor," Hidel says as he turns back to Sandra. "Did you know Fred Meyers before you sat on his lap?"

"I knew him from the bus," Sandra says. "And he did some work at my grandmother's house." She looks over at her grandmother.

"Did you ever talk to him before this meeting where you sat on his lap?"

"Objection!" Burger says. "He's beating a dead horse with the phrase, 'sat on his lap.'"

"Objection sustained," the Judge says. "Mr. Hidel, move on."

"Did you ever have occasion to speak with Fred Meyers before the day at the bus yard?" Hidel says.

"Just to say hello and goodbye when I got on and off the bus," Sandra says. "And when he repaired the porch, I talked to him about something or another."

"So, he was more or less a stranger?" Hidel says.

"Yes," Sandra says and continues her inventory of the people—mostly local—in the court.

"Are you in the habit of sitting on stranger's laps?" Hidel says.

"Objection!" Burger says.

"Overruled." The Judge says. "Please answer the question."

"No, I certainly am not." Sandra says.

"Than why did you sit on Fred Meyers lap?" Hidel says.

Sandra looks over at Mrs. Meyers and her two children. She looks down and whispers, "I was confused and sad and needed someone to comfort me."

"What?" Hidel says. "We can not hear you."

"I was confused and sad and needed someone to comfort me." Sandra says.

"So, did he comfort you?" Hidel says.

"At first, but then he raped me!" Sandra says.

Fred Meyers is acquitted of all charges and Sandra faces the scorn of the village women. The only good luck that comes to Sandra in this terrible stretch of bad luck is that Jim is in the States during the trial. He is there getting papers to bring her to America.

"He will never come back for you," her grandmother says. "And if he does, and he finds out about Fred, he will never marry you."

"He will so marry me," Sandra says. "Americans are not as vicious as Germans. They will forgive a young lady who is a rape victim."

When Sandra repeats this conversation to Lena; Lena replies "I'm not so sure, I don't think it is anything to do with what country they come from; men do not like used goods for a wife."

"Now, I'm used goods?" Sandra shouts. Lena looks around. They lounge in Sandra's bedroom. It is early evening.

"Yes, face it. In most everybody's eyes, you're used goods."

"And you, what do you think?" Sandra says. She rolls over on her bed and looks Lena straight in the eyes.

"You are my best friend and I love you," Lena says. "but I told you when Fred raped you that you needed to tell the authorities. You waited too long. It makes it look like you approved of what happened. Maybe even enjoyed it. So I think you didn't think it through and now your life, here, is totally screwed. And I told you not to date Jim; he's a playboy, and he'll always be one. It will be a miracle if he comes back for you, but regardless, whether Jim comes back for you or not, you need to get out of here."

Sandra knows Lena is right. She needs to leave the village as soon as possible. Wait for Jim's return at her father's maybe.

But her father reacts as usual: like a madman. "I should have never trusted you to your grandparents," her father says. "They spoiled you. Never could control you. Just let you sleep around and become the Village Whore. You ruined my name and my reputation. This Fred Meyer becomes my albatross. People who know him, say he is innocent, so that makes you guilty. People who know him say he is a good family man and with good children. And they look at me as if they think I am not a good family man. Like I don't raise good children. Like I abandoned you into a life of debauchery. All my customers ask me if I know this Fred. 'Isn't he about your age,' they all say. My business is destroyed. My family is destroyed. At least God had the good grace to remove you from my house, so you couldn't infect the children, before you went on your sexual rampage."

"I was raped!" Sandra says, "A good father would comfort a daughter who is a rape victim."

"A good father would keep you away from his other children," he says. "A good daughter would have said no. Did you ever say no? Do you ever say no? To the bus driver, to the local boys, to this Jim fellow? No, you never say no. You just let people use you. You're like your mother; she never said no, to anyone, she just let people use her and use her and use her until she was all used up. At least she wasn't a slut!"

Sandra buries herself in the bedroom she uses at her "grandmother's house" and waits for Jim. She feels like the little Jewish girl, Ann or Anne Frank or what ever her name is. The one who kept a diary. The one who hid from the Nazis while she waited to be rescued by the Americans. Sandra is hiding from people who all use to be Nazis or at least liked the Nazis—except for her Grams, she thinks. And she is waiting to be rescued by an American: her beautiful Jim.

And then, here he is. He kisses her and hugs her and then pushes her out to arms length. "Sandra, were all set," he says. "I got the papers to take you to the U.S. of A. Actually, you will go to the States by yourself. I'll be waiting for you."

"First, I want to tell you something," Sandra says.

"Is it about the bus driver," he asks "I'll just go to his house and blow his fool head off."

"How do you know about him?" Sandra says.

"My buddies sent me some of the articles. I didn't mention it on the phone because I knew how it would turn out," he says, "it always turns out the girl who was raped was asking for it."

"I wasn't asking for it!" she says and pushes away from him.

"I know that, or I wouldn't offer to blow his fool head off," he says and pulls her back to him. "And I wouldn't be insisting we get our marriage license and blood tests and get married next week. I love you Sandra. If you say it was rape; it was rape."

She hugs him and kisses him and decides she will never leave him. She will be the best wife ever. She will always tell him the truth. And she will become an American and leave all the Nazis behind. The day of her marriage comes and she is in total shock. She wants to get married and get out, but she always dreams of a major wedding with her Grandpa giving her away, but her Gramps is dead and life hasn't turned out the way she hoped.

She planned to design her own wedding dress. And have it acclaimed in the local paper or even the national tabloids. They would say how beautiful she is. How she is one of the most beautiful brides anywhere in Germany. And her dress is the most beautiful to be worn by any bride in Germany or maybe in the world. And did we know that she is the one who designed the dress and cut the dress and sewed the dress. 'Impossible' they will say. But it will all be true; in her dreams. But this is reality, she thinks, I'm getting married at City Hall and that's it. Not really a wedding just a legal ceremony. How romantic. It is almost like she must get married because of the rape. Or the sort of rape, she thinks.

The ceremony is quick and witnessed by Lena, and Walter, and Charlie and her Grandma. All just to get a piece of paper that is proof Jim loves her enough to tie her to him even though, as it turns out; she is a slut. But through the mess of it comes a life lesson: Sandra now knows she wants to see the world. The lesson comes when Jim takes her to Italy, by car, for their honeymoon. She knows from the moment she left Germany that somehow she needed to travel the world. It is her calling. But she is void of ideas on how to make it happen, and then she knows that it is just another dream that Life will turn into a nightmare. A nightmare that will take her to America: the last place she wants to go.

The nightmare begins before they reach Italy when Jim makes a scene in a French restaurant. The restaurant is a mom and pop operation as Jim calls it. But they have a full menu with so many choices that Sandra takes time just deciding what to order. The waiter is elderly and very patient when Sandra asks what he would recommend and then asks him to repeat himself twice.

Now, it is Jim's turn to order, "A burger and fries," he says.

The waiter says, "It is not on the menu."

"How do I know that," Jim says. "The damn menu is in French. We liberated you, the least you can do is put your menus in English."

"There is an American burger place on the next block," the waiter says.

"Any idiot can make a burger and fries," Jim says.

The waiter goes and gets the chef who is big and fat and greasy looking. Sandra knows there is going to be problems so she takes Jim by the hand and leads him from the restaurant and down the block to an American burger and fries. But she can now see some of the tarnish on her prince's shinning armor. They quarrel several times on the trip; usually about what she is going to wear; as it turns out, Jim decides he is a better judge of fashion than she. By the time they get back to Germany and Jim leaves for the States to finish the paperwork, Sandra is disillusioned

She is a married woman, so she is mostly treated like a married woman. It is much better than being treated like a harlot. She sees Fred and his wife on the street, one afternoon; they cross over to the other side and keep their eyes down as they pass. Sandra stares directly at them trying to will them to look up at her; she will smile at Fred and give his wife the look of a woman who could give a detailed description of Old Fred the Bus Driver's private parts.

The wait for Jim is excruciating. Each day a litany of things that can go wrong runs through her head: his flight to the States can crash; his flight from the States can crash. The paperwork won't go through, the paperwork will be delayed, he gets hit by a fish truck in New York, or mugged or shot or stabbed, he meets a new love—she will stab him if that happens—or he just decides he doesn't want to be married to her anymore.

But he comes back again: it is all approved. She will pack her belongings and be ready to travel to the United States within four days. And Jim will go back that night. "I'm sorry that we argued so much before I left last time," he says. "But every thing was so rushed. I'm going to make it up to you when you reach the States. And tonight, I'm going to make love to you until the last minute before my plane takes off."

"Why can't we go together?" Sandra asks.

"It's the military," he says. "They make the arrangements."

"I'm frightened," she says.

He pulls her to him and kisses her on the forehead and then on the lips. "I'm so sorry I can't be beside you on the trip, but I'll be there when you arrive in your new country.

"It's not my country," she says. "Germany will always be my country."

"I want you to become as American as possible," he says.

"But I am a German girl," she says.

"German girls are not exactly a precious cargo in the States," he says.

"Then why do we go there?" she says.

"Because that is where I live," Jim sits down and puffs out his lips. "Women go where their men go."

"Why can't men go were their women go?" she says.

"Sandra! We talked about this. We decided we would live in the States where I can be certain of having a job and be with my mother."

"But you can get a job here and then I can be with my grandmother." She says.

"We discussed this. Your grandmother is provided for. Besides, she will tell you to go where I go. She came to this village because of your grandfather." He says.

"How do you know?" she says. "When did she ever take the time to tell you?"

"The last time I was here, she said she didn't like the idea of you leaving, and she wasn't certain that she was all that happy with your choice of husbands, but she admitted that I came back and married you, and now she will give her blessing to you going to the United States and becoming a traditional wife."

"Traditional wife!" Sandra says. "Traditional wife, what the hell is a traditional wife? You mean one that waits on you hand and foot. One that never thinks of herself. Stays at home and never strives for a career?"

"Oh, you can't stay at home." He says. "We'll need both our incomes to save for a house. But I will be the boss. I think that's what your grandmother meant when she said traditional wife."

"I won't let any man be my boss unless he pays my wages," she says.

"We shall see," he says. "We shall see."

They argue until Jim's flight leaves. It is all doomed from the start. But Sandra decides to go through with the sham because her life has been pretty much destroyed in Germany at least this small part of Germany. She has heard of a lot of women who marry just to get into the country of their choice. America is not the country of her choice in fact America is not even a country, she thinks. America, North America, is a continent not a country. But of course Americans from the United States of America just bogarded—as they say—the name America. But America is the most logical choice for now. She will get a free trip to the States and maybe it can work out between her and Jim. She doubted it but it could happen. So for now, she would act like a woman in love instead of a woman who has been disillusioned.

The more Sandra tries not o listen, the more she hears negatives about the United States of America. First she is told that nothing runs on time. Nothing works correctly. No one works hard. Everything cost twice as much as it should. The country is so big that it is almost impossible to govern. You can commit a crime in California and get half as much prison time as the same crime will get you in New York. Not that Sandra is planning to commit a crime in either state. At least in Germany, laws are uniform; maybe harsher but at least equal. And Americans are said to be the most violent in their daily contact with their fellow man of any country in the world. Even more so than primitive areas of Africa where they eat their victims. Sandra decides that she will make the trip to the States; after all she survived TB and having no mother and father, bomb shrapnel, the death of her grandfather, being chased by Nazis and being raped by Fred, she surly will survive America.

1954

TUESDAY MORNING, MARCH 2, 1954 Fanatics Shoot Five in Congress Puerto Rico Assassins Open fire on House From Visitors Gallery. WASHINGTON: March, 2 (A.P.) Four fanatics seated in the House Gallery today suddenly shouted, "Free Puerto Rico!" waved their flag and than fired at least 20 wild pistol shots that wounded five Congressmen.

Sandra's grandmother tells her that she is headed for the wild west, but Sandra believes very few stories told her by her Grandma or her German friends when it comes to the U.S. of A. Even Lena believes that most American men are mobsters or in the case of the women, they are all married to mobsters. Her grandmother believes they are all cowboys; they all carry six-shooters and shoot you if you disagree with them. Jim tells her that of course there is more crime and killings and fanatics, because the States are free.

"We have no Gestapo or whatever your crazy police call themselves," he says. "I'd rather live in a country where you can carry a gun and protect yourself against thugs then live in a country where you depend on the police to protect you but the police are the thugs."

"So you're taking me to a country where I can get shot?" She says.

"I'm taking you from a country where you could have been put in a concentration camp," he says and smiles a big insincere smile.

"Grandma says you operate concentration camp in your country."

"Your grandmother is nuts." He says. "No concentration camps exist in the States. Your grandmother should stop reading German propaganda and start reading history."

"Where did you keep the Japanese?" she asks. "I think you'll find it was in a concentration camp in Arizona. Maybe you should read your own history."

"If we were in the States, I would slap you silly for being such a smart-alecky fool." He says as the blood rushes to his handsome face. "That was not a concentration camp. It was an internment facility. The Japanese were treated with respect as citizens of the United States of America. They had churches, and schools, and theaters and everything just like if they stayed on the coast. That's' why they were moved to the interior of the country so they couldn't aid and abed the enemy. It was completely different from concentration camps where Jews were worked to death or gassed."

"I wonder if the Japanese feel the same way." She says. "And, Jim, don't ever think you can slap me silly no matter what country we're in or we won't be in the same country ever again."

She weighs the choices between being married to someone she is starting to dislike or staying in the country she has been born and raised in and lived a dicey life in and is beginning to dislike. She decides to stay married and head for the Wild West. Her grandmother makes arrangements for her to travel with Mrs. Zimmerman an old, fat, overdressed, loudmouthed German. She is an importer and exporter or some such things, Sandra thinks. Sandra is glad to travel with a companion on the long trip. Mrs. Zimmerman says she knows all the tricks; and apparently to survive a trip to and life in the States, you need to know a lot of tricks. One of Mrs. Zimmerman's first tricks is to get Sandra to claim some the old lady's goodies. Sandra arrives with very little luggage. Mostly the clothes she designed and made herself. And some framed pictures of Grandma, Grandpa, and her mother. No pictures of her father, she thinks, just as there are no pictures of Satan or Black Witches.

The picture of her mother is the one of her mother kneeling in a white dress; of course any light dress would look white in the old black and white photo. In the photo, her mother is kneeling next to Sandra who is in an identical dress that makes her look more beautiful than the child-movie-star, Shirley Temple. If Sandra ever writes the story of her life and the story becomes published, this picture will appear on the cover. Lena and her grandmother and a few friends come to see her off. But she brings so little luggage that it takes only Walter to carry it all on. It is sad to Sandra that she can't bring all the dresses she designed and sewed but her grandmother is certain that the Customs Authorities at one end or another will want to see receipts for the dresses. They will not believe that such fine dresses have been sewn by the beautiful young girl and not given or purchased duty free at some store along the port; probably by some wealthy gentlemen. Or maybe Old Fred the Bus Driver, Sandra thinks.

Mrs. Zimmerman and Sandra and their luggage take a train from Frankfort to Hamburg and stay the first night in a hotel room so they can board the M.S. Berlin in the early morning. Before she doses off, Mrs. Zimmerman tells Sandra fantastic stories of her world travels. She travels everywhere and keeps lovers in every port. Repeat lovers who lust after Mrs. Zimmerman's rotund body. Mr. Zimmerman, it appears to Sandra, is a freethinking German gentleman who inherited a haberdashery and early on in his life discovered that he likes both men and women equally as friends and lovers. So, Mrs. Zimmerman travels around the world and buys expensive antiques, but in many countries of the world it is illegal to take these antiques and artifacts from their country of origin; as a result, many of Mrs. Zimmerman's lovers work as customs agents or in some high ranking government job where they can influence the customs agents. Mrs. Zimmerman embarrasses Sandra with her bawdy tales of love that she proceeds to tell in every detail including descriptions of bodily fluids, and with flailing hands pointing here and there and where the juices originated. Sandra listens, instead of rolling over and going to sleep, because the idea of traveling the world intrigues her; actually more than intrigues her; it feels strangely like it is her destiny.

As far as having lovers in every port, it seems kind of silly when there is so much to see of the world why would you hold up with some lover somewhere when you could be out seeing it? Sandra's dreams, that night, are staged in every exotic part of the world. And in the morning, the beautiful morning, Sandra cannot remember Jim being in any of her dreams; many handsome American, French, and German movie stars and even Old Fred the Bus Driver and Peter move through her dreams, but there is no Jim. And then the ship is moving. They will cross the Atlantic in a week. To Sandra it seems impossible to go from one continent to another on an iron ship and take only a week. That means that anytime she gets homesick she can catch the M.S. Berlin and come right back home. Back to her Grandma, Lena, and her friends, Sandra thinks. Mrs. Zimmerman tells her that once she sees the States, she will never want to return to Germany.

"A beautiful child like you," Mrs. Zimmerman says. "You could own your own piece of this new country. Men will lay fortunes at your feet."

"I already love a man, thank you," Sandra says.

"Can he lay a fortune at your feet?" Mrs. Z. asks.

"Not yet," Sandra says. "We both must work and save and get a house of our own and then make our fortunes."

"You look like you do? And you married a man who will make you work?" Mrs. Z. says. "You silly, silly girl. Why would you do that?"

"We love each other." Sandra says.

"Love won't pay the rent," Mrs. Z. says.

They sit on two, rented deck chairs. Sandra is working on a tan while Mrs. Z. is working on a young German from the Volkswagen Company; he is traveling with twenty other Volkswagen Company employees who head for the States to work at various V.W. automobile dealerships.

"Young man, have you ever made love to someone my age?" Mrs. Z. says. "Have you ever made love?" She loops her arm though the young man's muscular arm and they walk away toward the upper deck.

"She certainly knows how to have fun," a handsome deck hand says. He is dressed in a ship's uniform.

Sandra is a sucker for any man in uniform. She turns away from the sun and looks up at the stunning man. Her first thought is he must be American. But he speaks to her in German.

"Yes she does." Sandra says. "She is the life of the party. She travels most of the free world; something I intend to do while I'm still young."

"I've seen most of the world," he says, "and the only thing that sticks in my mind about my travels is the times I've met a beautiful lady. I will remember this time and you."

"Slow down, sailor," Sandra says. "You're talking to a married woman. Just traveling to meet her husband in the States."

"That puts him thousands of miles away," he says. "I won't write him if you don't."

"I'm not interested," she says.

"Yes you are." He says. "I can see it in your beautiful eyes."

"You are wrong," she says. But in her mind she thinks, yes I'm interested, and wish I were free; not just to be with you, but also to be free of Jim and the whole U.S. of A. thing. She turns away and listens for him to walk away; but he doesn't move.

"The next time I see you," he says, "and you give me that look you keep giving me: like yesterday when you boarded the ship, this morning at breakfast, and now just before you turned away, I'm going to grab you up in both my arms and hustle you back to your cabin and show you how I would treat you if you were a wife of mine. You would never be away from me, especially on a trip as dangerous as this; crossing the Atlantic with a ton of horny men."

"I won't let you hustle me off to my cabin," she says. "But I will let you escort me to the movie this evening. But right now let me just relax in the sun. I look so much better with a tan."

"With a tan; without a tan," he says, "you look fantastic. I'll meet you in front of the theatre at 6:00. See you then. Get all the sun you want...at my bunk is a fantastic lotion for sunburn and I know just how and where to apply it. You can be hot and burning up, but when me and my lotion finish with you, you'll be cool as a cucumber."

"What if I don't want to be cool as a cucumber?" Sandra looks right at his crouch.

"Then I'll make you hot as a tamale," he says.

Sandra doesn't know what a tamale is or how hot it is, but she has a good idea and she decides to find out about this tamale thing sometime soon.

They start a shipboard romance that Sandra keeps from getting too hot. They dine each night and then a movie or dancing. Sandra is falling in love with him or maybe it is just the idea of being on the sea with a handsome man...any handsome man. On the eve of the last day, they sneak off to the cabin that Sandra shares with Mrs. Zimmerman. Sandra is indecisive about having sex with him but things lead that way.

"I am in love with you," he says and then kisses her and maneuvers her toward the bed. "I know it's crazy but it's true. I think I fell in love the first time I saw you.

"I'm married," she says. "I shouldn't have led you on. But you were told I'm a newlywed."

"But you're not a happy newlywed," he says.

"I haven't been married long enough to be happy," she says.

"If you were married to me, you would be happy from day one," he says.

"Well, I'm not married to you," she says, "and I shouldn't be on this bed with you. And I shouldn't be kissing you and letting you kiss me."

"You want me to stop?" He asks.

"No!" She says.

He rolls over on top of her and begins removing her blouse. With her blouse wide open, he begins working on the intricate clasps on her bra.

The door pushes open and Mrs. Zimmerman tiptoes in. "Don't let me disturb you," she whispers, "I just need to get something from my nightstand."

Sandra sits straight up and pushes her young man to the side. She straightens her blouse and pulls it together and reminds herself to get a bra that doesn't take a locksmith to open. "We were doing nothing," Sandra says as she straightens her skirt and buttons her blouse.

"It is none of my concern, but if I were a beautiful young girl about to embark on a boring marriage to a boring American; and some handsome German had me on a bed in a cabin of a ship floating romantically along, I would screw the German's brains out right up until the minute they threw me off the ship."

Sandra and her young man laugh but follow Mrs. Zimmerman out of the cabin and stay in her sight for the remainder of the trip. Sandra doesn't want Mrs. Zimmerman reporting to her grandmother that Sandra acted like a slut...again. The trip turns out to be wonderful. It would have been so, so romantic, she thinks, if she had been single.

Sandra's great big grin lights up her beautiful face until a customs officer asks her to step over to Mrs. Zimmerman's crate. "What are these things?" The officer asks.

"They look like antiques and clocks," Sandra says.

"Look like? You brought them. You should know what you clumsily try to smuggle into the country without paying duty."

"I'm not trying to smuggle anything into this country. I am here to meet my husband," she says.

Jim comes through the door of the customs. "What is taking so long?" Jim says. And then gives Sandra a light hug.

"Is this your wife?" the customs officer asks. Jim nods. "She was caught trying to smuggle some valuable goods from Germany. And some other items on which she didn't pay duty or claim an exemption," the customs officer says.

"Sandra! What is he talking about?" Jim says and grabs Sandra roughly by the arm. Sandra pulls away and begins to sob.

"They don't belong to me. I just tried to help Mrs. Zimmerman. All this is hers."

They can see Mrs. Zimmerman across the hall in a second office. She is pointing in Sandra's direction.

"She says they belong to you," the officer says. "Please sit down and wait until I can sort this out. And you," he points at Jim, "you go and sit in the lobby."

"I need to stay with my wife," Jim says. He hugs Sandra and rubs her back gently. "I'm sorry I grabbed you," he whispers.

"Go sit in the lobby or I will escort you out," the officer says.

Sandra is always a sucker for men in uniform but this time she thinks the fragile customs officer looks creepy in his uniform. It is way too big and bunches up around the waist. He looks like he is wearing his older brother's uniform or a tent. She knows that if she ever is going to make use of her beauty and charm she will need to start immediately. "Sir, I'm so sorry. I didn't know what I was doing." Sandra says. She stands and approaches the little man. She knows immediately it is a bad move because now she towers over him. "I was just trying to help a friend of my grandmother."

"Does your grandmother know you work as a prostitute?" The officer says.

"What?" Sandra shouts.

"Your friend, Mrs. Zimmerman, says you were a prostitute in Germany and she even caught you plying your trade on the M.S. Berlin," he says.

"She's a big, fat liar," Sandra says. "I'm a newly married woman. I came from Germany to be with my new husband. I am anything but a prostitute. Mrs. Zimmerman was the one acting like a prostitute on the Berlin."

The hours pass slowly and Sandra starts calculating the negatives against the positives in this move to the New World. So far the negatives win: a positive is almost doing it with the deckhand on the ship; negatives are bunking with Mrs. Zimmerman, and being caught with Mrs. Zimmerman's stuff, and being in America, and being married, and being married to Jim, and being a German in a world full of people who hate Germans, and being away from Germany and her grandmother.

The customs agent tells her she can leave but she may be called back in as a witness against Mrs. Zimmerman. If looks can kill, Sandra should die a horrible death as she looks over at Mrs. Zimmerman and then exits quickly. Jim takes her hand and drags her away from the customs office. He pulls her into a gloomy taxi that speeds down the gloomy streets of New York to a gloomy building that houses their gloomy apartment.

"This is where we live?" Sandra says. "It is so crappy,"

"What is crappy is you getting mixed up, with that fat German, and attempt to cheat the American government."

"I didn't do anything wrong. Mrs. Z did everything." Sandra says. "Just tell me how long you intend for us to live in this dump."

"It's not a dump by New York standards."

"Then New York has very low standards," Sandra says.

Jim starts up the stairs with the luggage. A group of tough looking young men begins to form across the street from Jim's apartment.

"Hey, beautiful," the gang leader shouts, "drop the fag and come across here and party with some real men. Me and Rios will do you at the same time." The rest of the gang whistles.

"Jim, do something," Sandra says. Jim ignores her and the gang and he just continues up the stairs with the luggage. Sandra runs up the stairs behind him. She looks back at the gang. The tall guy, next to the leader, looks a lot like Peter. Peter would have done the same: turn his back and run from this raunchy looking group. She needs to stop falling for weak men. Men who fail to protect their women. Men are put on this earth to protect women and children. But most men run at the first sign of danger. Sandra walks up the thread-thin carpet of the stairs and hallway. Paint flakes from the ceiling and side walls. The electrical wires hang from a tattered light-fixture that Sandra's head barely misses as she turns the corner on the second floor.

1955

WEDNESDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 14, 1955 Woman Leaps 24 Floors Into Hotel Court: 11 Hurt NEW YORK: Sept. 13 (A.P.) A young woman plunged 24 stories today through a glass roof and into the midst of 150 persons gathered for lunch and cocktails in the Biltmore Hotel's fashionable Palm Court. She died a short time later.

Sandra is shocked at how much the Biltmore Jumper looks like her and is almost the same age. America the Beautiful? Sandra reads the article twice. It can easily be a story of her life since she arrived in America land of dreams. America the Beautiful. Her life has gone downhill since the Berlin docked and pooped her out into the toilet that is New York. Nothing has gone right. She has been fired for being a German; spit on for being a German, and threatened for being a German. The melting pot has no room for Germans. If you're lucky enough to be a German in New York, not a German-Jew, but a German-Christian, you will be treated by New Yorkers like you led the troops in Normandy or turned the handle to gas the Jews. They can't understand that there were millions of Germans who did neither of those things or any other atrocity attributed to the Gestapo or any other Nazi organization or affiliation. They don't understand that the only Jew that Sandra hates is the Jew who gave her mother T.B. No other. So where is America the Beautiful; Sandra leafs through picture books showing how beautiful the U.S. of A. is supposed to be, but the pictures appear to be mostly of oceans and lakes and forests and mountains, but she is in New York City. Nothing is beautiful about New York City except maybe the lights of Broadway.

If Sandra can stay in those lights maybe her marriage will survive. But Sandra doesn't want just survival; on the boat trip over –across the rolling water—she made up her mind to get the best of everything; and some how, with or without handsome Jim, she will travel the world. And the Biltmore Jumper probably had a better life than most; certainly a better life than Sandra. Sandra should have been right next to her on the ledge. Back in Germany, when Sandra was contemplating, no not contemplating but thinking about the negatives and the positives of suicide—thinking about it is contemplating, you idiot, she thinks—she never though about jumping from a ledge. Of course there were no really tall buildings in her village; if you jumped off the roof of one of the village buildings, you'd most likely only break your legs unless you landed on your head and you must make a perfect dive to do that. But it was interesting that she would do that: not think of jumping of a ledge, because there were cliffs and tall smokestacks and fairly tall buildings in the cities that were just a bus ride from the village.

Well, anyway, Sandra thinks, she should have been right there next to the jumper because her life is no better than the jumper's, she is certain. She has a bad life. A terrible life. Or at least it feels like a terrible life when you compare it to her dreams, Sandra thinks. Her life is in no way to be considered a dream; at the very least it is a major nightmare. One shock after another. Her first shock was how little Jim told his mother about her. It was as if he purchased her from some German furniture store and trundled her to his mother's apartment to make the place more livable. "Just put me in the corner next to the window" she should have told Jim on that first day when he led her though the green door that needed a paint job two years earlier. Her mother-in-law hated her from the start and the feelings were somewhat mutual.

There is some unnatural relationship going on between Jim and his mother. Both his mother and he gang-up against his father. The father can't say a word unless he wants to get his head bit off, so he just stays away: never comes home. Jim and his mother sit on the couch together watching whatever Jim wants to watch. His mother keeps his hand clutched in hers and laying in her aproned lap. Sandra watches to see if there is any movement of the hand and if the old broad is getting her jollies. She is starting to sound more American each day, she thinks. Her big handsome Jim is in reality nothing more than a mama's boy. He goes to school and watches football; he does nothing else. Sandra's second shock is that James Dean died in an automobile accident. In most of her dreams; Jim is replaced by James Dean. Now, she will never meet James Dean and make love to him. He was so young; just twenty-four years old. Sandra never thought about movie stars dyeing at any age especially twenty-four years of age. Life is one shock after another and she tires of it. Maybe the Biltmore Jumper was just tired of all the numerous shocks. Maybe she had dreams of James Dean, beautiful dreams, and she jumped from the twenty-fourth floor as a symbolic thing, Sandra thinks. One story for each year of James Dean's beautiful, glorious and all too short life.

Now Sandra will pick another movie star to fantasize about during sex with Jim and during her horrid job of waiting on tables at Lourie's. Sandra works her restaurant job in a gray funk as gray as the funk that covers most of New York City. Sandra wants out of the city and out of her mother-in-law's apartment. All her money goes to the witch to be parceled out as the old hag sees fit.

"Why should she make all the decisions about our money?" Sandra asks Jim. "Why should she decide if I get a new dress or not? Or if we should get to go and see a movie? I'm sick of it. I'm fed up to my teeth with listening to that old witch. Why should I listen to her?"

"Because," Jim says. "She's my mother and she's the one keeping a roof over your head."

"Your father does that. Not your mother. She does nothing all day but follow you around picking up after you and feeding you and laughing at your lame jokes and touching and holding you; she's always touching and holding you. It's not natural."

"All loving mothers touch and hold their sons." Jim says.

"Not all the time and not after the son is supposed to be a grown man. Every night she takes your hand and buries it with hers in her lap. I think she gets her jollies." Sandra says and snaps her fingers like the Deckhand taught her to do.

"What are you saying?" Jim whispers through his clinched teeth.

"I'm saying we need to find our own apartment," Sandra says. "You need to get work."

"I can't go to school full time and hold a job full time," Jim says. "Not enough hours in the day."

"Maybe if you didn't watch so much football," Sandra says. "Maybe you could find more time to study, more time to work, more time for me."

"I brought you from that terrible country and still you're not happy." Jim says.

"Germany is not a terrible country," Sandra says. "In Germany, I had fun. I worked but I had time to do other things. In this country all I do is work and give my money to your mother. I'm going to locate an inexpensive single apartment and then we move. And you will get work. Thousands of G.I.s study under the G.I. Bill; they support wives and children and they provide for them without relying on their mothers."

Sandra searches for and finds an apartment they can afford. Then she pries Jim from his mother's grip. His mother will have to sit each night with her own knurled hands in her lap. His mother warns that they will be back when they find out the realities of New York. The apartment is small: just one room with a small kitchen and bathroom, and in a terrible area. The gangs harass anyone who looks or acts weak; Jim looks strong but acts weak. Sandra knows in her heart that even though Jim trained for combat, if one of the gangs attack and decide they all want Sandra, Jim will not be able to save her; he may not even try. He may even set some kind of record for the quickest sprint to the second floor apartment. Jim still finds every excuse to visit his mother. Sandra can get no sleep because Jim studies all night with the light on. She asks him to study in the kitchen but he says he can't. It is too distracting to sit in a kitchen with all the food smells because she doesn't take time to clean properly like his mother cleans.

"Have you've thought of cleaning the kitchen...yourself?" she asks.

"I don't clean kitchens," he says. "I wasn't raised to clean kitchens. No American man is."

"So here I am working two jobs," she says. "And you can't lift a hand to help me because you weren't raise to clean a kitchen."

"That's just the way it is," he says, "if we were at my mother's place, the kitchen would be spic and span. That's just the way it is."

So Sandra is working two jobs, getting no sleep, and having no fun. And the only nights she can sleep is when Jim is working some trivial job all night. So each night, on her way to the dreaded apartment, she prays that Jim will not be home. She even thinks how her life might change if Jim gets hit by some meat truck as it is making an early morning delivery to the Village, not her village in Germany, but the one in New York. But her biggest problem is Jim's attachment to his mother.

"Will you ever sever the umbilical cord?" Sandra says. "Part of growing up is to be able to stop suckling. I thought I married a man who was going to provide for me. That's what you promised. You didn't deliver on that promise. I'm providing for you. You rarely bring money into the house. We never go anywhere. It's always football, football, football; or Mama, Mama, Mama."

"You knew I had to finish school," Jim says. "That's what I'm doing."

"Lots of G.I.s finish school," Sandra says, "but they still work hard enough to feed their wives and children. We have no children and we still can't make ends meet. I can't make the rent this month. What do you suggest we do?"

"We're moving back to my mother's." He says. "Until we can get on our feet."

"I'm already on my feet," she says, "maybe you should get on yours."

They move back to his mother's apartment; they save money but now it is even worse between Sandra and her mother-in-law, because her mother-in-law has won. Sandra finds a better job: a job where she can use the training she received in Germany; Germany where she longs to be; where she longs to be with her grandmother. More than once she decides to squirrel away some money to get her back to Germany and her grandmother, but each time she gets a little money ahead some emergency occurs and her travel money is gone. She settles in to being a patternmaker at a fashion house on 42nd Street, but still dreads going to her mother-in-law's apartment and watch her lazy husband lay around watching football.

One night, when Sandra thinks Jim is working all night, Sandra takes the long route home. She read a glowing report on a ballet whose ticket prices seem very reasonable. In Germany, her family bought season tickets to the opera and her grandmother and Lena and she attended plays and music recitals. But she attended nothing since she arrived in the States. She is in the center of the entertainment capital of the world, and she has seen no plays, no musicals, and no operas. Margot Fontain is dancing in a show called "The Red Shoes." It is fairly close by at the Metropolitan Theatre. Sandra is tired from all the long hours but she decides to spend a little of her precious time and money to get two cheap tickets. She waits in the long line. Just about the time her legs sag and she is having a major problem staying awake, she is at the ticket window. Before she can change her mind, she passes her money through a barred cage to an old lady with orange hair and thick fat lips chewing a wad of gum about the size of a small golf ball. She spends the money.

Jim will be mad, or maybe he might enjoy getting away from his mother and enjoy a night out on the town, Sandra thinks, but she knows in reality there will be Hell to pay when she arrives at the apartment. But she never thinks it will be as horrific as it turns out. If she was writing a story about the worst thing that could happen if a person buys two cheap tickets to see Margot Fountain dance in The Red Shoes: it would be something about Margot Fountain tripping and falling and maybe breaking her foot so she can't finish the show and that would end the run of The Red Shoes. But Sandra would have never written that the purchase of two cheap tickets would end her marriage. She arrives at the apartment at 9:00 am.

"Where have you been?" Jim shouts.

"You know where she's been," Jim's mother says. "I warned you she was no good."

"You have been with someone." Jim says. "How long has this been going on? Is he someone I know? How far did you go?"

"Throw her out!" his mother says. "I will not have a slut in my house. What will the neighbors think, her coming home all hours of the night and now not coming home until the morning?"

"Shut your nasty mouth!" Sandra says to her mother-in-law. "Why don't you just marry Jim? You act more like his wife than his mother; always touching him; always making him touch you. You get your jollies with his hand in your lap?"

Jim's mother throws her hands up to her chest and looks over at Jim. "You going to let this slut talk to your mother that way?" She says.

Jim turns and starts to speak but Sandra speaks first. "Just shut up. I thought you and I could have some fun: a night on the town. So I stood all night in a line to get these tickets." She starts to hand him the two tickets to The Red Shoes.

He jerks the tickets from her hand and looks at them as if they were pieces of porno. "You spent our money on this crap?" he says. "You don't think of what I want. It's all about you. Just you." He tears the tickets in pieces and throws them in her face.

Tears roll down Sandra's tired cheeks; tears of frustration and hate. She runs to the door and than down to the bus stop. On the bus to Long Island, Sandra takes inventory: she is broke and tired and all alone in a great big country—except maybe her cousin—but she feels like the weight of the world lifts from her shoulders. She will never live in that hateful apartment again. But she cannot stop crying. She gets off the bus three blocks from her cousin's house and drags her tired body through the mid-morning traffic to her cousin's brownstone.

Later in the day, while her mother-in-law is at the market and Jim is at school, her cousin and she pack all the things she brought from Germany. All the things she owns, still stuff easily, into two small suitcases. She has accumulated exactly zero things since her stay in the States. She goes back to her cousin's apartment and is left alone to sort out her life. She knows this is it for New York, but she doesn't know whether to stay in the States or whether to go home to Germany and her beloved grandmother. If James Dean were still alive, she would not hesitate to go to Hollywood, she thinks. So, maybe there will be a James Dean replacement; she seriously doubts it, but maybe. So using the logic of a young romantic trapped in real-world New York, Sandra decides to hightail it to Hollywood. Jim calls that night, but no matter how hard her cousin tries to jam the phone into Sandra's closed hand, Sandra does not take the call.

"Sandra, you must go back to him," her cousin says. "This is not a city where a young lady can live by herself."

"I have been alone since I came here," Sandra says. "Jim takes me nowhere. He barely speaks two sentences to me. It's all about football and Mama with Jim. I'll be better off without him. I'm going to find someway to get to Hollywood and someday travel throughout the world."

"You're going to be an actress? You'll need training. But you're broke." Her cousin says. "How will you get to Hollywood, become a star, and see the world with no money."

"I don't want to be a star or any kind of actress. I want to design and make the dresses for the stars and other actresses. I already took the training. And I'll find a way to get there," she says. "I'll find a way," she whispers to herself.

"This is very foolish; it's because you're young," her cousin says. "I'll help you anyway I can. And I'll pray that your dreams come true."

"The way you can help me most is with a small loan and a promise you will not tell Jim where I go."

"The loan is yours, but I still think that in the next weeks you should make an effort for reconciliation with your husband." Her cousin says.

But Sandra never does talk to Jim. She plans on never talking to him or the old hag ever again in her life. In her head she knows that someday she will speak to him about a divorce, but for now she never wants to see him or talk to him ever in her life. He now represents everything that is wrong with her life. She needs to get as far away from him as possible; so California here I come, she thinks. The next morning she boards a train to Los Angeles by way of Chicago. Her cousin's husband loans her one hundred dollars and makes reservations at the YWCA in Los Angeles. He is a good man and concerned about Sandra. For two hours before the train pulls out of the station, her cousin and her cousin's husband talk about the dangers of being a young, beautiful woman all alone on a train to Chicago; which is Al Capone territory. And Los Angeles; which is gigolo territory.

It appears to Sandra the every territory in the United States is filled with bad guys just waiting to get their hand on her to use and abuse her and turn her into a prostitute. But at this point in her young life, she never met any man who can control her for long enough to convert her into anything but what she always wanted to be: free. So if some gigolo gets his hands on her beautiful body and turns her into a prostitute, it won't be for long, Sandra thinks. She'll only be at it long enough to make ten bucks and then on to do something else. She giggles to herself. She doesn't feel afraid; she feels unbelievably free. She giggles again.

"Sandra! This is not funny," he cousin says. "You must be alert for any man that might try to harm you. You will be defenseless if some man tries to pull you into the shadows of the terminal in Chicago. The police in Chicago won't help you because they're infamous for being on the take."

"On the take?" Sandra asks. "What does 'on the take' mean?"

"That means they get paid off by the thugs," the cousin's husband says.

"You mean the rapists in Chicago pay off the Chicago police?" Sandra says and smiles.

"Oh, Sandra, I love you, but you're impossible," her cousin says.

The train trip takes two nights and three days before it arrives at Union Station in Los Angeles, California. Los Angeles, California will be where her new life will begin. But she lives through an interesting couple of days; added to her life's story, on the train trip, in her escape from New York—or as Sandra refers to it: her escape from The Doorway to Hell. On the train, Life decides to sit her next to Monica Crawford, an aspiring actress who does regional theatre; lots of regional theatre by the looks of the many write-ups in her scrapbook. The same scrapbook that includes some very risky looking poses on top of a flimsy ladder sitting on the edge of a building in the center of Chicago's Miracle Mile; along with some photos of Monica romping in some very revealing outfits that surly are not designed for the snow that fills the bleachers in Solders Field from the top to bottom; plus a photo shoot of Monica singing at Ritters a club rumored to be Al Capone's favored hangout; Monica is dressed mostly in gangster type clothing and gun moll outfits like the ones worn by Bonnie of the infamous Bonnie and Clyde. Monica Crawford is not shy about chatting Sandra up or any of the other train passengers who show even the slightest interest.

"I will be famous," Monica says. "Not because I am beautiful, but because I am very, very talented. I dance and sing and act. What they call a triple threat. Can you be a triple threat?"

"I don't know what a triple threat is," Sandra says.

"I just told you," Monica says, "it means you can sing and dance and act."

"I don't know if I can do any of that," Sandra says as she turns and looks at the farmland passing by the train's window. It reminds her of her village in Germany. She needs her village and her grandmother, she thinks.

"You don't know whether you can sing or dance?" Monica looks at her in disbelief. "Everybody in Chicago knows if they can sing and dance."

"I'm not from Chicago," Sandra says.

"I'm not a dummy you know," Monica says. "I know from your accent that you wasn't born in no Chicago, but on the South Side we got a lot of Polacks and I figured that you was a Polack."

"I'm from Germany, and we Germans were too busy dodging bullets from the Nazis and then bullets from everyone else in the world. No time to become a triple threat." Sandra says.

"Oh!" Monica says. "I hope you are a German-Jew and not just a regular German or else you best say you're Scandinavian. You're very beautiful, but if you're German you won't get a chance in Hollywood. Even if you was a triple threat."

"A chance at what?" Sandra says.

"A chance to be a movie star," Monica says.

"I never said I wanted to be a movie star," Sandra says.

"Everybody wants to be a movie star," Monica says and smiles and then holds up a black and white 8 x 10 photo of herself and points at it. "I'm gonna be a movie star; but luckily I'm not German."

"What's being a German have to do with anything?" Sandra says.

"Everything! The movie business in Hollywood is run by Jews. For good reason they don't like Germans," Monica says.

"Well maybe I am a German-Jew," Sandra says.

"Are you?" Monica asks.

"Maybe," Sandra says.

"I doubt it," Monica says. "All the German-Jews was gassed by all the German non-Jews."

"You are an idiot," Sandra says and turns back to the train window and the panorama of farms that pass rapidly by her view. She should leave any country where all they think Germans do is gas Jews, Sandra thinks. She will give herself just until her money runs out, and then she will call her Grandma and ask for enough money to get back to Germany where most people have been forgiven for not knowing what was happening to the Jews under the Nazis.

The remainder of the train trip is relatively quiet. Sandra spends the time planning her future: if she runs out of money, she will go back to Germany. So that much she knows; if the money runs out she'd go back to Germany for a while. But if the money lasts long enough for her to get a job, then she will stay and try to get into dress design; to utilize her schooling. She won't be able to get into it right away. To survive, she will take any job. Well, not a dancer in a strip club or a prostitute; of course not that, she thinks and giggles and then looks around at the others on the train. Most snooze. She slowly doses off.

From the Union Station, she takes a taxi to the Hayworth Hotel in downtown Los Angeles; the Hayworth has YWCA accommodations. No one asks her if she is German. She decides to tell them that she is Scandinavian, if they should ask. Three other girls share the room with only curtains between the beds. But Sandra sleeps like a baby; she is content; she knows that it will all work out. In New York—the dreaded Doorway to Hell—everything is gray and claustrophobic, but even though the buildings look old, Los Angeles feels like anything can happen. In New York, she lost jobs because they found out she was German, here it will never happen because she is learning to lie: learning to be American. She decides not to tell any whoppers, but if people ask; she will say she is from Norway and that she went to Fashion school for two more years than she actually attended. There is no way of checking her out other than her quality of work, and she knows her work is first class. She was top of her class in high school, college, or as her friends all called it, "Junior Collage" because of the diverse and sometimes silly classes you can take and earn a useless degree in. She was number one—numero uno—as they say in Hollywood.

"Hooray for Hollywood" keeps playing through her head. When Sandra wakes, the sun is shining and the sky is beautiful and peeking through a dirty window with a taped crack up in the corner. At first the jagged light coming through the torn and tattered tape looks like a swastika and a shiver goes through Sandra's body. She is alone in the room. It is 11:00am; she overslept. Her plan was to get up early and look for work. No, not look for work, she thinks, get work. Any work. She walks down the hall to the locker room and showers and gets dressed with no thoughts of urgency though she holds very little money. For the first time in the States, things feel right. She is in control of her own destiny. It won't be easy. Life is never easy. Sandra doesn't know why life isn't easy, but it isn't. It should be easy, you know, you just get out of bed and sort of stroll through life, looking at the flowers, without a care. But life is just an insane gauntlet and Sandra decides she is up for it. She starts out the door and runs into one of her roommates.

"Oh! Hi!" Sandra says. "Margaret, right?"

"Yeah, and you are Sandra from Scandinavia, right?" Margaret says.

"Last night, you never mentioned where you were from," Sandra says.

"I was never asked," Margaret says. "You just blurted out that you were from Scandinavia. Usually when someone with a German accent says they're from Scandinavia, it means they're really from Germany but fear they'll be condemned as a Nazi or a Nazi sympathizer or something."

"Well, it's true," Sandra, says as they both move back into the room and sit down on Sandra's bed. "Most of the damn Americans think everyone from Germany is a Nazi; that we all killed Jews."

"Yeah, Americans appear to be mostly brain dead. They believe there can only be Germans in Germany and only Yugoslavians in Yugoslavia. I'm Armenian but I come from Yugoslavia so most Americans can't figure it out even though the States overflow with people from everywhere on earth."

"So, now we're here," Sandra says. "Now what do we do?"

"We get something to eat." Margaret says, "then we get jobs and live the 'American Dream" She dumps her purse on Sandra's bed. "This is how much I've got," she says.

Sandra dumps her purse on the bed and watches her possessions and money tumble and mix with Margaret's coins and cash and lipstick and rouse and eyeliner. "This is how much I got."

They both giggle and then frown when their total cash adds up to twenty-five dollars American with maybe seventy-five cents in pennies, nickels, and dimes. Margaret collects all the money and puts it in an envelope and hands the envelope to Sandra. "This has to last us till we both get jobs," she says. "You Germans are more organized than we Armenians. Besides you look more organized than me. I'm kind of silly and not good at all with money. Our lives are in your hands."

Sandra reaches out and takes the envelope and bows to Margaret. "Sandra the Scandinavian at your service. I liked you from the first moment we met. And you're right I am from Germany, but I hated the Nazis. Please don't tell the others."

"That you hated the Nazis or that you're from Germany?" Margaret says.

"Silly," Sandra says. "Please don't tell them I'm from Germany."

"They already guessed," Margaret says, "they both gave me the look when you said your name and immediately said where you were from. Besides, you're not a very good liar."

"Okay, this is what we'll do," Sandra says. "We will eat breakfast only and then some fruit during the day. What fruit do you like?"

"I like most, ah, apples are good," Margaret says. "Or maybe we should eat carrot fodder and peanut butter."

"What is carrot fodder?" Sandra asks as she re-examines the money envelope. Her new friend put so much more in, she thinks; she will make it up and make sure Margaret—silly Margaret—is always okay.

"Carrot fodder is the shavings of carrots that they feed to rabbits. You can get a big bag for only pennies." Margaret says. "My cousin from Poland came here and went to college. He lived off of carrot fodder and peanut butter and once a week he would go to a twenty-four hour smorgasbord and eat a late-night meal then study all night in one of the booths that a friend of his who worked there provided and then they'd both eat breakfast together at the same smorgasbord and all for one price paid the night before; two meals for the price of one. Actually as much food as you wanted at anytime you wanted it until you left in the morning. Good deal, huh?"

"Yeah, good deal," Sandra says. "But do either of us know anybody at a smorgasbord?"

"No, let's stick to your original plan," Margaret says. She collects her lipstick and things back into her purse and helps Sandra put her things back into Sandra's big purse she brought from Germany—not from Scandinavia—and helps Sandra from the bed then loops her arm through the beautiful German girl's arm and says, "Let's do it!"

And they walk merrily through the door out into their future. They eat their apples and their breakfasts; by the end of the week, Sandra finds a job in a factory sewing shirts and Margaret finds a job as an office worker. They work and talk and laugh. Ex-servicemen wait on every corner most every night. Sandra and her dark-eyed friend, Margaret, run the gauntlet of men hanging around the front of the Hayworth Hotel, waiting for the YWCA girls to come home and maybe want to go for a bite to eat or a drink or maybe something a little more serious.

On one occasion, two young men approach the tired ladies. "You've had a long day?" the first young man, David, asks.

"Look at them, idiot." The second young man, Curt, says. "These beautiful, young ladies need a nice meal and some fun. Let's take them to 'Rudy's."

"Who says we want to go to some dump named Rudy's?" Sandra says.

"I do." Margaret says. "I've been past Rudy's; it's no dump. Besides, if I eat another apple, I think I'll start hanging from a tree."

"I'd like to see that," Dave says.

"We need to go up and change and talk," Sandra says. "If you can wait fifteen minutes then that's fine, but here's the ground rules: we go to dinner, we go dancing, and that's it. We'll go change, if you're still waiting when we come back down, we'll go."

They go up to their room and change into their Sunday best.

"I get Dave," Margaret says.

"You can take both of them," Sandra says. "I just want a solid meal. And to dance. I would do both with two hunchbacks."

"Neither Dave or Curt are hunchbacks," Margaret says. "They're like most American men: they're handsome as Hell."

Sandra enjoys herself until Curt becomes too aggressive on the dance floor. "You are a great dancer," Sandra says, "But if you can't keep you hands off my backside, this is our last dance."

"You got to be kidding!" Curt says and lets his hand slip down. She slaps his hand away and walks from the dance floor. Curt comes after her and grabs her by the arm. "I bought you a very expensive meal," he says. "In this country it's like a contract. You get a good meal at the very least you get a good feel. American girls understand."

"I'm not an American girl," Sandra says. She walks from the club and catches a late-night bus back to the hotel. Margaret had already left with Dave for some unknown place. Sandra sits on her bed and talks to her roommates but when they doze off, Sandra still sits waiting and worrying about Margaret. Morning comes and Margaret comes dancing in. She is in love. But she promises to never again leave Sandra alone with a Curt-like guy who thinks a meal means bedtime. Besides she doesn't have time for men; she is on a mission to get a dress-designing job that will earn her enough money to once a year travel to the far corners of the earth. She will travel alone. Then if she meets a beautiful young man on a ship, she can have an affair without feeling guilty about some one waiting back at home. And in each country she will find a lover who will not ask her about her past and Old Fred the Bus Driver. Someone who will be grateful to be in the arms of such a beautiful woman. She works every hour that the law allows and in her spare time she designs and sews dresses on a rented sewing machine. Her friends get in the habit of buying their best clothes from Sandra. Margaret gets a raise and now their total income rivals anything they have dreamed of.

At the end of the month, they rent a studio with a pull out bed but no kitchen only a hotplate. "It's so sad, and I had such plans of coming home after sixteen hours and cooking you a first-class meal every night." They both laugh. Their journey begins.

1956

WEDNESDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 14, 1956 L.A. Suffers Worst Smog Crisis: Another Alert Today Predicted Ban on Industry and Traffic Threatened: Disaster Unit Stands By LOS ANGELES: Sept. 14 (AP) The densest smog on record grayed Los Angeles for hours yesterday, threatening closure of industry and curtailment of traffic as ozone concentration came within a shade of reaching the second alert stage for the first time.

Sandra isn't thinking about the smog although sometime she catches herself coughing; she is thinking about inches and feet. She found a new job in Beverly Hills but as usual the Americans use a different way of doing things than the rest of the world: they measure in inches and feet and yards. It makes no sense at all to Sandra: but if she is going to be in the design business in the United States of America, she thinks, as she salutes an imaginary flag, she must learn inches and feet and yards. There is a fashion school on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, so she takes all her money and enrolls for one month. In school, she finds herself arguing with the teacher; he is a curly haired youth who thinks that all things American are perfect and he defends inches, feet, and yards as the only way to measure; any other way is idiotic and arcane. He predicts that inches, feet, and yards will take over the world in less than a decade. And if the students don't like doing things the American Way, well then, they can all just go back where they came from the whole lot of them. He scratches one of his many pimples so that a little blood spots his rawboned face while he continues to extol the virtues of being an American.

"Most of you came to this great country, this great melting pot, to live the American Dream; to get to that dream you must embrace inches, feet, and yards, or maybe you can go back to the primitive counties you came from; after all none of you were kidnapped by mercenaries and dragged to these magic shores," he says.

Sandra bites her tongue so she won't speak up and tell the man/child that the shores aren't so magic and maybe none of the other seventeen students, sitting in the tattered chairs, holding dog-eared notebooks and chewed-on pencils—both of which cost them their last dimes—may not have been kidnapped by tattooed mercenaries, but Sandra surely was; she was kidnapped by monsters: a terrible fellow named Jim and his mother/housekeeper/maybe lover. Jim kidnapped her with the promise of a good life when in his heart he knew she was being brought to the magic shores for reasons of slavery, slavery to Lord Jim and his Wicked Witch of a mother.

With her new diploma she becomes a designer assistant at a big firm. She becomes the assistant to a skeletal woman named Nora Marshall. They quickly become friends.

"Sandra, the owner likes your work," Nora says. "I like your work. It's funny how my job, if I do a good job, can get me replaced by the very assistant I train to do a good job."

"What?" Sandra says.

"If I train you too well," Nora says. "The day may come when the owner replaces me with you."

"Why would the owner do that?" Sandra says. "You are much too valuable."

"I'm replaceable," Nora says. "Besides, you would do the job for much less money. All you foreigners are willing to work for peanuts." She laughs.

Sandra laughs and thinks nothing of the conversation until later. That day and what eventually happens becomes one of her many hard-learned lesions: liars come in all shapes and sizes and many times they appear beautiful and gracious until the day they drive a large, shinny blade in your unsuspecting back and then twist the blade until the pain knocks you dead or you feel like you want to die. They work side by side and go out for drinks on the weekends. Sandra becomes too comfortable with Nora and takes her into her confidence. "I must tell you the truth because you are so straightforward with me," Sandra says. She reaches across the table and pats Nora's arm. "On my job application I put that I am from Norway, but I'm not, I'm from Germany. I lied because, in New York, I lost several jobs when the owners found out I was German. And of course, all the idiots thought that if I am German than it must mean that I am a Nazi and that I somehow participated in the deaths of six million Jews. Now we've become friends, I won't ever lie to you again. About anything. I don't ever lie to my friends."

"Sandra! If this ever gets out," Nora says. "You won't last a day. This company is world famous for design and its owner is world famous as a Nazi hater. He donates millions to every anti-Nazi cause and foundation and museum in the world."

"I am not a Nazi," Sandra says. "I never was; my family was persecuted by the Nazis."

"Are you Jewish?" Nora asks.

"No, but the Jews were not the only people persecuted by the Nazis," Sandra says and wishes she never started the conversation. She remembers a quote from someone that went "No good deed goes unpunished." Or something like that and now her telling the truth about being from Germany is about to come around and bite her in the butt.

"Sandra! You've put me in a terrible position." Nora says. "If I don't report this to the company, and it comes out later, I will lose my job. A damn good job I must say. Why did you tell me? Why couldn't you keep your dirty little lie to yourself?"

"I thought we were friends," Sandra says.

"Well, young lady, you're about to learn a valuable lesson." Nora says. "We were never friends. We work as employees for a major company. I am your superior and you work very efficiently as my assistant; at least you did. When you become employed by a major company there is no such thing as friendship; it's all about the job, the money, the position." She puts money on the table for the drinks, bends over and kisses Sandra on the forehead and walks stiffly out of the bar.

Sandra sits in shock. She just made one of the stupidest moves of her life. She assumed that Nora is her friend and her equal. You can't assume; it always gets you in trouble, you idiot, she thinks. But Sandra is wrong. Her idioticy, she thinks she has fallen victim too, is, in retrospect, the turning point in her life. The biggest turning point in her life. The German hating owner of course fires her, and she is in total panic, but Fate steps in and leads her to her dream job. Sandra and Margaret still live in the studio apartment with a Murphy bed that pulls down from the wall. It is a relatively small bed so when they both bed down, it is hard not to touch the other person sleeping next to you. Margaret takes to hugging Sandra while they both sleep. But Sandra starts to wonder what she will do if it becomes more than a hug. She isn't even sure if she does or does not want it to be more than a hug. But what will she do if it does become more intimate. Before Sandra can find out, they find a one-bedroom apartment with two beds. The rent is higher and Sandra just lost her job. So she takes any job she can get.

"I don't think I can do the job," Sandra says.

"You've got a great voice," Margaret says.

"Uh huh, but nobody wants someone with an accent answering a phone," Sandra says. "Hello! Yes I can tell you about Japan and India but I don't know how to pronounce the names of the cities, and if I could you wouldn't understand me anyway." Sandra imitates herself and puts her thumb and little finger to her ear in imitation of a phone.

"That's not funny. You can do this job; I have faith in you. It's Dave, he knows you speak with a slight accent," Margaret says.

"Where did you run into Dave?" Sandra says. "He came by the job to ask if maybe we could start going out again," Margaret says. "I said yes, and then he asked about you going out again with one of his friends; not Curt. I said no chance if the guy is like Curt. I said, besides you kinda feel depressed because of no job and no job prospects. He said I got a job for her working nights answering phones. You see he wouldn't offer the job if there was a problem with your accent."

"Does that creep, Curt, have anything to do with me getting the job." Sandra says. "Maybe he spouts some cliché about a job for a job. And you know what kind of job he will want." Sandra opens her mouth wide. They both fall into each other's arms laughing.

"No, in fact, Dave and Curt don't hang together anymore. Dave thinks Curt is a number one jerk." Margaret says. "Sandra, I got a good feeling about all of this: about Dave and about the job for you. Please at least try it."

"Okay, but the first time Curt walks in or somebody laughs at my 'Scandinavian' accent, I'm outa there," Sandra says and points her thumb over her shoulder.

So that is that; the two young ladies go back to more important things at hand: they share a half-pint of very delicious Neapolitan ice cream and see how many American slang words they can work into a single sentence. As it turns out, Curt really does have nothing to do with the late night job; he never shows up or calls or sends notes or sends a message by way of Dave; but a handsome Korean, named Wayne Park, does. Sandra works at the job she has come to love; each night, as she closes shop after an evening on the phones, she collects all the literature she can find on the countries that interest her and her customers.

India is one of the most popular so she reads every brochure and flyer she finds in the utility cabinet and on the display desks. Soon her nightly dreams involve India and the possibilities if somehow she can find her way to India; not to live there but just to visit; she will need time to visit all the other countries of the world. Each night she tells her customers about the exotic places of the world and they ask," Sandra, were you ever in so and so place?" Sandra answers, "Yes, of course." Usually she is a very poor liar because it is against her nature. But when she says, "Yes, of course," she really believes it. Because, back, deep in the cervices of her laughing brain, she knows this is it, this is the life she dreams of; the dream she lives for. This is it. Then it happens: Wayne Park propositions her; not a crude Curt-type proposition, but a real nifty proposition: Park needs an assistant to travel to Bombay with him and forty-two tourists. Sandra will work as a sorta tour guide. As long as Dave will let her leave the night job for the time it takes to make the trip.

All Dave asks of Sandra is to make sure the tourists book through his agency and that Sandra watch out for Wayne Park. He can't be trusted as far as you can throw an elephant. Sandra knows that she can't throw an elephant very far so she expects that sometime on the trip, Park will hit on her. In fact, the only reason he is taking her to the city of Bombay in India—India! She repeats to herself—as his assistant may be to assist him with personal things like maybe twenty-five of the positions illustrated in the "Kamasutra". Margaret and Sandra scrape up some extra pennies to go up to a used bookstore on Hill Street and buy a tattered paperback version of the infamous Indian love book. The clerk is an old man with a balding head but long, shoulder-length hair on the sides. He smiles at the young ladies and offers his services in the practice of the many positions illustrated in the book. Sandra declines and her mind flashes back to her dreams of Peter and her declining to marry him and thereby not having him with her now to experiment with the many position herein illustrated. They waive goodbye to the clerk and both swish their hips as they walk arm and arm from the store. They giggle all the way to their apartment as they leaf through the poorly printed illustrations.

"You can barely see their privates," Sandra says.

"Yeah, but you can certainly get the idea," Margaret says. "It looks like Indian men like seven or eight naked women watching as they do their woman in some contorted position. I would want a chiropractor present."

They anxiously enter their building and run up the stairs to their tiny apartment. Sandra pulls two Cokes from the refrigerator and brings them over to Margaret's bed; they spend the whole Sunday analyzing each illustration and judging only twenty-five positions as doable. They can be done without months of training; without dedicated commitment; and without monster bills from a chiropractor.

As it turns out, Sandra won't be able to practice the Kamasutra positions on Wayne, because when he comes back to define what he meant when he said. "I must make a proposition with you. I'll explain later." His explanation is far a field from Kamasutra positions. Not only is he not planning on getting her to his bed in some luxury hotel in Bombay: he is not even planning on going.

When they meet at the airport, Park makes an announcement. "Ladies and gentlemen," he shouts above the noise, "welcome. You are about to take one of the most famously fabulous trips of your lifetime. You will bring memories back with you that you will tell your grandchildren and their grandchildren. One of the reasons this trip will be so memorable is this beautiful, young lady standing next to me. Isn't she beautiful?" The crowd cheers and whistles and Park continues. "This is Sandra. She may be young but she brings years of experience. Over twenty trips to India alone. She won the National Tour Guide's Award for the best tour guide for the year 1954. Welcome Sandra as your tour guide for this trip and many future trips. Here's Sandra."

The tourist all cheer and whistles again. "Speech"! A tourist yells. Sandra still doesn't know that she is to be the only tour guide on the trip; she steps forward, smiles and with a strong voice says. "Wayne Park tells you the truth. You will never forget this trip. Though I've made many trips to India; each trip holds a place in my heart. This trip will be like it is my first."

"Start lining up in alphabetical order," Park says. "And please excuse us for a minute." He takes Sandra by the arm and leads her to a wooden bench out of the hearing of the tourists. "Good job, Sandra." He says. "A neat speech for a beginner.

"Beginner? Oh, I've been to India over twenty times," she says.

"That's the spirit," he says. "I know you can handle this."

"As long as you're here to help me," Sandra says.

"There! There you got it exactly right," he says. "I'll be here and you'll be there."

"What do you mean?" she says.

"I'll be here to help you. I can't go, Sandra, you'll be the boss tour guide," he says. "I know you can do it. It's an opportunity of a lifetime."

"No, no, no. I can't. I can't do this," she says. "These people expect me to know the customs and the language and the money exchange and all that."

"You've been doing most of it on the phone," he says. "Plus I've prepared a little kit for you to read on the flight over. Besides, you don't need to know the language; there is always someone in each city who knows English."

"I expect to get paid," she says. "Not just a free trip as agreed to. This is different. I should be paid."

"You will be paid what you earn on the phone and you can keep the gratuities." He says and pats her on the arm. "Time to go. Time to board."

"Wait, wait, wait," Sandra says and grabs the handsome man by his arm. "I want triple what I'm making on the phone."

"Sandra, why so greedy?" He says. "Earlier you were willing to take the trip for just the free ride and your normal wages. Now it's triple this and triple that."

"I want triple my wages. This is a big responsibility on my shoulders," she says. "And, incidentally, off yours."

"The responsibility is on some very beautiful shoulders," he says. He pats her arm. "Okay, triple." And he walks away.

On the flight over, she reads the kit that among other things gives phonetic pronunciations of the different foods; many of which Wayne gives specific instructions not to serve the tourists; he outlines what is being served on the flight over; and how to pronounce each dish and what to expect and where to go in Bombay and other major Indian cities.

Sandra's first test as the boss tourist guide comes on the flight. She is reading Wayne's kit when she feels a tap on her shoulder. "Miss, my husband has a problem," an old woman says; behind her stands her husband.

"What's the problem?" Sandra asks.

"My husband ate the spicy food, mine and his, and now he's deathly ill."

Sandra stands up and towers over the tiny woman and her husband. All the tourists in Sandra's group turn to listen to Sandra's solution to the problem.

"I'll get something from the stewardess," Sandra says.

"Oh, we already did," the woman says. "That's not the problem."

"Okay, how can I help?" Sandra says.

The woman stands on her tiptoes and tries to whisper in Sandra's ear. The group of tourists, in mass, bend forward to hear. The tiny woman cups her hand over her mouth. "My husband was so ill he went to the toilet and puked, he threw up in the toilet."

"Okay, okay," Sandra says." Too much information."

The group giggles. "My husband threw up in the toilet and lost his uppers," the woman whispers. "Now, what do we do?" The group laughs.

The husband whirls on his fellow tourists. "You are all schmucks, you wouldn't think it was so funny if you lost your uppers in a toilet that you don't know what's been dumped in it, or actually you know what's been dumped in it but you don't want to think about it." He turns back to Sandra and his wife. "You two could find a more private spot to air my dirty laundry." The group moans.

"I'm sorry we aired you dirty laundry, so to speak, but it needed airing for us to find a solution." Sandra says.

"What's the solution?" the tiny man says.

Sandra walks up the aisle to beautiful Indian stewardess. "You hear the conversation?" Sandra says.

"Most of it," the stewardess says.

"How do the toilets work?" Sandra says.

"What do you mean?"

"How are they emptied?" Sandra says.

"Well, they build them over a septic system that is dumped when we land." The young stewardess says.

"Okay, here's what you do," Sandra says. "You lock that toilet door. Put an 'Out Of Service' sign on it. The other three should be sufficient unless the spicy food gets to everyone. Then radio ahead and instruct the field crew not to dump the septic tank until I get there and I give them further instructions."

The young stewardess gives Sandra a blank look and says, "We don't carry any 'Out Of Service' signs."

Sandra walks over to the toilet door. She turns and shouts back at the tiny man and his wife, "Is this the one!" The tiny man and his wife both nod. Sandra takes her lipstick from her pocket, unscrews the silver top and scrawls a giant red "X" on the door. The group cheers and applauds. "Now, make an announcement over your loudspeaker and tell everybody not to use the toilet with the big red "X" on it." She says to the stewardess. Sandra walks back down the aisle as the announcement is being made. The passengers smile and raise their thumbs as she passes by their row. When she reaches the husband and wife, she whispers, "We're not home free yet." She pats their arms and asks them to be seated. She tells them she will go to the tarmac when the plane lands and see if she can salvage the uppers.

When the plan lands, Sandra looks up the Airport manager who sends her to the maintenance manager who informs her that the septic tanks automatically close when the plane lands. "This is not unusual for one of our passengers to lose something in the toilet but usually they fish it out before they flush." The manager says. "But on those occasions when they cannot be swift enough or smart enough or their stomach not strong enough to fish it out, then we assist," he pronounces every word to prove to the beautiful, young tourist guide how perfect his English is. "But, you must understand our workers do not sign on to fish around in our septic tanks. It is not part of their job description. So we must line up some volunteers." After a long conference between three workers and the maintenance manager, the maintenance manager comes back to Sandra. "Two of them decide not to do it for any price. But the third, Sandor, will do it for a price," the manager says. "How much do you offer for the job and how much do you offer for the recovery?"

"What do you mean 'job or recovery'?" Sandra says. "I only want recovery."

"Of course you do. But Sandor may start swishing his hands around in there and find nothing. That would be unfair, don't you think? So we think he should get one price for the job and another for the recovery." The manager says.

"Do you get part of the money?"

"A small commission, as you say."

"Okay, I'll pay twenty-five rupees for the job and the same for the recovery," Sandra says and she reaches in her purse.

"I don't understand," The manager says. "You saying twenty-five for the job and the same amount should cover the recovery, also? Or you saying twenty-five rupees for each operation. A different twenty-five rupees for the recovery."

Sandra puffs her lips in exasperation, "I'm offering a total of fifty rupees for the recovery."

"It's not enough. I think you should offer a total of one hundred rupees for the recovery." The manager says.

"But that's a small fortune to these people." Sandra says. "I studied the wages and such. One hundred rupees is a small fortune."

"But so little to you Americans, he says.

While Sandra and the others wait in the Arrival Hall at the Airport, so all the luggage can be collected, a little man comes accompanied by the Airport Manager. The little man walks with his arms straight out—it appears he is the assistant to the Airport Manager—and in his hands is a small, brown bag. With great formality he hands the bag to Sandra. She feels the uppers in the bottom of the bag and immediately sticks her arms straight out in front of her in imitation of the assistant Airport Manager.

"Is there a doctor's office in this airport or near by," Sandra says.

"I don't think you will need a doctor just for this," the Airport Manager says.

"I don't need a doctor, silly, I want to sanitize these," she says. And she juggles the bag straight in front of her.

She tells the group to wait while she goes to the closest doctor's office. Indians on the street look on curiously as a beautiful, young white lady walks a block with a brown bag held straight out in front of her. At the office, she tells the receptionist her problem and after both laugh at what is in the brown bag the receptionist takes the bag back to a private room. When she returns with a fresh, white bag containing the sanitized teeth, she introduces Sandra to her handsome boss, the doctor.

"So you got into something a little deep," he says and laughs. "You were to Bombay before?"

She tells the truth and they start talking and before she knows it, an hour disappears and her clients have been waiting for her return to the airport. The doctor volunteers to be the escort for her and her group. Sandra says yes and thinks of the Kamasutra. At the airport, the sanitized teeth return to their owner; he proceeds to pop them back in his mouth while everyone, but Sandra and the doctor, moan as the teeth owner smiles from ear to ear.

So Sandra goes to India and loves it and the doctor –for a while—and she finds her life and a job that lasts for the next thirty years.

Prologue

It is dinnertime by the time Sandra walks into the grand ballroom of the Grand Bay resort at Miami's Coconut Grove resort. Through the steepled windows the slight overcast night hangs heavily but somehow protective. There have been some terrible nights in her life: the night her mother died and she was left all alone without ever knowing the feel of a mother's love; and the night her father abandoned her to her grandmother—even though it turned out to be good thing—the night it happened to a four-year-old was the longest night of her life; the nights she lay in bed dying of the fever brought on by a shrapnel wound caused by an American cluster bomb; the night she watched the boxcar-Jews get slaughtered and Curt and Houser die at the hands of the Nazis; the night her grandfather died and would leave her life forever and probably effect her life the most; the night she was raped just after her grandfather's funeral; the restless night before she had to testify against Fred the Bus Driver: the night before she caught the Berlin and left Germany and her grandmother in the distance; the night after she walked away from Jim and felt so sad and yet so free; the many nights she lay awake worrying that she was about to lose another job because she was German; all those terrible nights that she thought would never end, but they were all behind her; she survived.

She more than survived; her dreams of traveling the world not only came true, but blossomed beyond her wildest dreams: she is traveling the world with the highest of the High-class. With the wealthiest people in the world going to the most expensive, most exotic locations in the world; eating at the most luxurious of restaurants; sleeping at the plushest hotels and villas. Little Sandra the motherless and fatherless village child is living her dreams.

It is a beautiful night. She has seen no night more beautiful: maybe in Germany a lifetime ago, she thinks. But that was long before she realized she could be anything, go anywhere, and live her life exactly as planned in her impossible dreams. She delays joining the tourists, reluctant to face her public. It is her first private jet journey for Crème De La Crème Travel. "The Clients are all millionaires," She says to the mirror after pacing back and forth in the huge, ornate room. The room looks like the ones in movies about kings and queens and princes and princesses. She looks in the ornate mirror and sees her own reflection; the reflection of a princess. All her life she looked at the same reflection and watched as it became more and more beautiful more and more aristocratic; now the reflection is that of a princess. Moving from mirror to closet and closet to mirror, changing into the gold, scooped-necked dress, then a blue dress that is way too tailored for such a night, she finally decides on a sea green, simple-cut evening dress with a high neck.

An amethyst necklace stands out on her neck and shimmers in contrast to the color of the dress and the shimmering tan of her bare arms. The necklace tops it off, she thinks. Jewelry is her great passion. She judges ten necklaces before the amethyst and silver wins hands down. Amethyst always wins hands down even when she was a child in Germany: her stepmother owned a lot of amethyst jewelry. ".but you will not get any of it. It will all be for your stepsister, Valerie," the stupid witch said. And Sandra cried herself to sleep; another of those terrible nights. She vowed to possess ten times, no, one hundred times more jewelry than her neglectful father's second wife.

Now, she looks in the mirror at the amethyst necklace. Her face is tanned because she loves the sun and takes every opportunity to be in it, and her features appear chiseled and polished and sculptured under the tan. Sandra needs everything about herself to be elegant, every day of her life; she is in a sold-out stage play that runs for all the years of her life. She loves elegant clothes. And even though the clients can slop around in their casual clothes, tour managers must look good.

"But not too much better than the Tourists," her boss says.

She shouts back at him, "I can not dress like those people. They have tons of money but they don't spend a nickel of it on clothes. Jeans and T-shirts. Jeans and T-shirts that's all they know," She says.

"It doesn't matter if they walk around nude, you will not out dress them," he says.

She prays she has not out-dressed them tonight.

Two Japanese businessmen give her the once over as the three of them ride down in the elevator, she bows and says good evening in Japanese; they smile and bow back. The younger one looks somewhat like the friend she left in California. Not really left him. She will be back. But will he wait for her? He pushes to make things more permanent; but she tried permanent and it is not for her. Not now; maybe never. Her friends say it is sad that she is soiled by one bad marriage but she quickly informs them that the marriage was not bad by most standards but it was just not for her. Jim divorced her and remarried and rumors are that he is happy and his mother is with him—his father escaped the clutches of the old witch and is in Miami with some narcissistic bimbo, or so the story goes. Sandra's fertile brain flashes a picture of Jim, lying on a king-size bed, watching football, drinking a foaming beer with his mother on one side and his wedded mother-look-alike on the other. Maybe marriage was never in her cards. Maybe marriage was only in the cards that got her to America.

Admiring glances follow her as she approaches the grand ballroom. This is her wedding walk: she is wife and mistress and hausmadchen to all the millionaires. She stops at the entrance and takes a deep breath: her breasts press against the elegant material of the tight bodice like a gentle lover's strong hands. From the doorway, she sees her boss, Ms. Buttersby, standing in the middle of the room talking to Ted Farnsworth all slick and shiny in his tuxedo. Sandra's lady boss wears a beautifully cut suit with an ankle-length skirt; but very tailored. Maybe Sandra should have worn the tailored dress? Ms. Buttersby's buttons glisten in the light of the chandeliers. Sandra feels proud to be in the same company with the elegant lady. She loves elegant people, elegant clothes, elegant cars, and the elegant ballroom. She spots Stan, one of the tour directors, not far behind Ms Buttersby. He is handsome, very gay, and chatting and laughing with one of the female clients. Throughout her life, many of her best friends have been gay men; they are somehow more elegant than straight men and more elegant than most women. There is that elegant word again, she thinks. But the fact is: her life is elegant.

Stan twists and plays with the expensive buttons on his blazer. He buys expensive buttons, and then suits will be made to match the buttons: in Hong Kong, of course. And he falls in love, head over heals in love, every other day with a different guy. Tonight, as usual, he is suffering terribly from his most recent break-up. But he is Sandra's great friend. And the female clients think he is the most adorable man.

She touches his arm. "Stan, you still my man?" She says.

"Always and forever," he says.

She walks him away from the others. "Why so sad." She whispers. "Is it your new friend? How long have you been together?"

"Three weeks!" he says as tears come to his eyes. "We were the perfect for each other. A perfect couple; he was the man, of course. Perfect couple! Now, I don't know what I'll do with the rest of my life. I had so much of it planned around that wonderful, loving man. I don't know what I'll do." He says. With tears rolling down his cheeks, he glances up and spots a handsome waiter looking his way.

"That's so sad," Sandra says, and pulls out a tissue from her clutch purse. As she hands him the tissue, he starts in the direction of the handsome waiter. Sandra walks back to the ballroom and toward Bert van Biggen. Stan turns and watches her walk away. She looks back. She turns and moves toward Burt. Burt stands in a corner in the back.

Bert reads, writes, and speaks eight languages. Sandra picks up crucial words in each country she tours with lesser companies. Now that she is with the very top of the line, she will follow Burt's example and learn the language of at least the major countries her new company visits. Burt is very good looking. His father was in the service of the Queen and his mother is some fourth or fifth cousin of the Queen.

He walks toward Sandra. "Lets step out for a minute or two," he says "I must fill you in on a few things." Bert introduced her to the company and feels responsible for her actions and for her well-being. He pulls her in the direction of the pool.

The shimmering pool-water reminds her of when her father pulled her toward the cold, rushing, river water. "No more crying! Swim!" he said. She tumbled in the freezing water and began to drown. But her father did not move; he walked along the pier with his hands held comfortably behind his back. There was no anxiety in his posture or in his satanic eyes: he was so insensitive. She hated him. She struggled and screamed and tried to swim but all she could do was sink and bob up and sink again. And still her father did not move. He would tell everybody her drowning was an accident. Everyone in Germany would attend her funeral, she thought. Finally, a stranger dove in the churning water and saved her young life. Her father's drowning plan was foiled.

She hated her father. But she loved Bert.

He gives her a big hug. "You look gorgeous, they'll have a hard time giving me their attention, tonight," he says with a broad smile. They walk through the lush exotic garden and settle down on comfy lawn chairs.

She is in a scene from "A Thousand and One Nights": the elaborate hotel displays huge, marble statues; shadows of the large, round sun umbrellas sway and dance with the moonlight which glistens in the lake-sized pool.

"Hey kid, you glad to see me?" Bert says, and gives her a smooch on the cheek. They share more then friends share; they share every secret. "Just a couple of quick things. Don't let Martha buffalo you. You're both strong women. Remember she's the coordinator. She holds the final word. Be smart. Just say 'yes mum to whatever she says."

Sandra pulls her hand away from his. Sandra stands with her fists balled up on her gorgeous hips. "Ok, I won't fight her or you," she says, "I'll just stand around like some bimbo idiot."

"Sandra, Sandra this is your first night." He says. "I know you tucked a lot of miles under your belt, but cool it just for a while."

"What do you mean by miles under my belt?" she says. "It sounds like you think I'm old and withered up or something."

"Sandra, my love, you'll never be old and withered up," he says. "I just meant you are obviously overqualified for this starting position but if you cool it, you will get what you want."

"Okay, if you promise I can get what I want from you," she says. She smiles. He blushes. They fall silent for a minute then she pinches his butt, cocks her pretty head, and they walk hand in hand back to the ballroom. Just before they reach the entrance, they both, instinctively, drop the other's hand and frown at the idea they might be so bold as to enter, the ballroom, holding hands.

Everyone is greeting old friends and making new ones. The headwaiter, a big, dumb looking jock named, Duke, smiles at Sandra. His eyes say he thinks she thinks that he is the most gorgeous man in the room, but she really feels he is in the lower ten percent.

Duke announces that dinner is served, "Will everyone please take your places." His eyes sweep the room and come back to her. She smiles and turns away.

Every client's place holds a placard. Sandra stands mesmerized by the snow-white linen tablecloths and napkins, startlingly beautiful roses on each table, gold plates accompanied by sparkling silverware like piano keys on giant pianos, light flickering off goblets of fine Belgian crystal and glasses for white and red wine, smaller glasses for after-dinner Liqueur, dishes of soft pink Rosenthal China with blinding, gold rims.

Ms. Buttersby stands and gives her greetings and then gives the floor to Bert, "Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen, I can't tell you how happy I am to greet you and see you all in such fine moods, tonight. You came from all over the country and now you are going on a trip of a lifetime; around the world; you will not be disappointed. Crème de la Crème will show you the highlights in an unsurpassed style. All sorts of adventures and of course superlative arrangements will be provided for your enjoyment and pleasure. Life can't get any sweeter then this." Sandra feels like jumping up and seconding Bert's remarks, and add that she is just a little girl from a small village in Germany, and of course life can't get any better than this. Bert continues, "Let us introduce the team of escorts that will accompany you on this trip. Of course you all met Ms. Buttersby and then there is Martha the coordinator. We give you Stan, a longtime escort who knows the world like his back pocket and our newest addition, Sandra. And there is me, I am here to keep things rolling. And last but not least, as they say, I would like to introduce to you your Captain, Charles Baxter, and his crew. You can see we are flying in style, and we are all looking out for your enjoyment and happiness. Let's raise our glasses and drink to a super trip." Everyone drinks the toast and then Bert sits down to heavy applause.

Sandra watches the beautiful Captain lead his men back to a long table toward the front of the ballroom. She loves men in uniform. She has been addicted, all her life. It started when she was very young and probably is the number two reason she married her American. She left him when he was out of uniform; curious, she thinks.

At her table, on her left, sits the widow from Cleveland, Mrs. Teasdale. She can hardly wait to talk to Sandra. "So you will be our escort? You look so elegant." She pats Sandra's hand. "I can hardly wait till we take off. I am really looking foreword to India. My son was there on business and he said as long as you stay in the hotel, it is fabulous, but don't go outside, beggars and a lot of odd people, but otherwise it's a magical place."

Sandra eats one of the glazed shrimp and listens to Mrs. Teasdale. On Sandra's right side, Mr. Lathrop touches her arm and says, "I'm glad you are our escort. Things go a lot smoother when run by a good-looking woman."

Sandra stands and moves around the table and speaks to everyone in her group and keeps the conversation going until the last, late straggler leaves the table and then she goes off to the guide's meeting.

In her room, she can't get to sleep, because of the wonder of it all. It just seems like yesterday that she was scrounging for money and eating apples to survive or catching a train to Chicago and then to L.A. or leaving her husband or leaving Germany and her grandmother and, now, here it all works out with the rest of it seeming like someone else's story. But it is her story; she lived it; and the best part is yet to come. She dreams her silly wedding dream again but with very little enthusiasm, because really all she is doing is biding time until the dawn.

In the morning, Sandra jumps out of bed and hops into the shower, it is a brand new life for her, again. She will see the world with some of the wealthiest people in it. She puts her face up to the water and enjoys the water flowing over her body. Her body and her face make it a sure thing that she can get most any job. Now her brain will keep her in the game. She dresses in a light blue skirt and a crispy white blouse. After checking her makeup, she takes a matching blue jacket and walks slowly to the elevator. The elevator's mirror tells her that she will steal the show at the pre-tour meeting. The meeting is in a small room done up just for the occasion. Everybody is here and the meeting goes well.

"Well, Sandra, I hear good things about you." Ms. Buttersby says. "So work hard. Don't let me down."

"I'll do my best," Sandra says.

Bert smiles, "Not to worry, I'll keep my eye on her," he says and adjourns the meeting.

Checking in goes fast, because it is a special tour. The suitcases are loaded directly onto the plane while the press moves through the guests and interviews a few of the famous ones. Stewardesses greet the distinguished guests with glasses of champagne and snacks to eat to tide them over until lunch that will be served in one hour. The Captain switches on the seatbelt sign all is ready to start the engines and the Dream Tour of a Lifetime. Sandra buckles her seatbelt. The belt pulls a little tighter than usual; she needs to cool it with food on this tour. Although she knows she never can. After each tour, she goes on some diet or another, usually the most popular at the time, because of no control when it comes to trying new, exotic dishes usually laced with tons of calories.

She develops permanent lovers in most every port of call and without exception one of the first things they do when she comes back into town, is to go to the most elegant restaurant her lover can find. So, each time she returns to the States, Margaret says, "Damn, you gained a ton of weight." And they both head for the gym and go on some diet or another. Sandra suspects that Margaret uses her return as an excuse to get fit herself because while Sandra is away, Margaret eats like a pig and gets no exercise.

Sandra loves the way the expensive jet vibrates and pounds as it blasts into the clear, morning sky. As the jet levels off, she watches the passengers, or clients, as her employer likes to call them, begin twisting and moving around, in their seats, in an attempt to locate some of the new friends they met at last night's lavish party. The plane is beautifully decorated with flowers. Bowls of fruit are attached to every available hand-polished surface. The plane is a LT 1011 designed for the rich taste of the clients; who all left their cooks and maids at home. The McFersons arrived in His and Hers jet planes; Hers from Miami; His from New York City. On the client's assigned seats they find a little condiment bag that can double as a clutch bag, later, to carry money or precious trinkets after the clients use up all the toothpastes, toothbrushes, cosmetics, and perfumes.

Natie Golden begins spraying everyone with Channel # 5. Sandra steps forward and gently takes the perfume from Natie's dodging hand. "Mrs. Golden, Natie, your reputation proceeds you. You going to be a bad girl again on this tour?" Sandra says.

Natie smiles and bows her head. "Not little old me, sugar," Natie says. The clients all laugh.

A dark-haired stewardess moves gracefully, down the aisle, stopping to help each client plan his or her next meal from the gourmet chef's custom menu. Sandra watches the beautiful stewardess help the clients; then looks from client to client and records every smile. "We're off to a great start," she whispers to herself. She knows the clients will occupy themselves with their dreams of far away places and the exotic and beautiful things they will see. But her immediate problem, along with her fellow tour guides, is how to remember the names of all the clients. "Agnes Fountain? The fat lady with all the diamonds," she whispers to herself, "Mrs. Fountain: overflowing with fat and jewels," she giggles.

"What you giggling about?" Stan asks.

"Damn!" Sandra whispers. "Did you hear what I said?"

"No, but it must have been nasty," he says. "The way you were giggling. Was it about me?"

"Stan, not everything is about you," she says.

"It isn't?" he says and pats her hand.

Later, at the back of the plane, the other tour guides and Sandra hold a meeting to make sure everything will go smoothly. No one wants a disgruntled client. There will be calls to the headquarters in Los Angeles. Caligan will ream everybody out. "You expect these yahoos to spend fifty to one hundred-fifty grand again next year if they get pissed at us this year?" he will whisper through tight lips. Sandra's superior, Martha, lays out the plans and itinerary for each of the countries the tour passes through. "I realize we've all had a late night," Martha says softly, "most of our clients are snoozing. Let's all get a few winks in after lunch."

There is a movie after lunch or cards in the lounge. Sandra sits all alone in the last row of only first-class seats; the plane is custom built; with only six seats to each row: two on each window and two in the middle. She is happy to sit in one in the middle so she doesn't bother anyone and no one bothers her. Lunch is served and it is standing on the table next to her, she doesn't even hear the stewardess bring it; she dozes off and dreams one of her more forgettable dreams. The lights glow softly and most everybody is napping. Her watch says three p.m. Another four hours till landing, she thinks. But her mind is in Germany. She smiles at the thought of her grandmother in the good times. In the times when her grandmother didn't know about Sandra's carnal knowledge of Fred and Jim.

If her grandmother were alive, now, she would faint at hearing of Sandra's carnal knowledge: knowledge gained across the world. Then she thinks of Jim driving away in his shinny Roadster. She remembers singing as she carries the bucket of leaves through the garden gate. She stops and pats Alf, the old, fat German Shepard who suns himself on the kitchen doorsteps. Alf rolls over hoping she will scratch his stomach as she always does. She should take the time to scratch his belly; what will it hurt; kindness doesn't cost anything to give. But she hurries by and takes the leaves to the mulch bin. "Grandma!" She calls through the door; "I am going to Lena's house for a while. I'll be back for supper." It is a big monstrous lie. She is going to go and leave tracks on the back seat of Jim's bright-red Roadster. She giggles, and then wakes and looks around. Suddenly the lights go on and Sandra realizes she is in the very expensive plane. And she begins to sob, softly, so as not to disturb the other passengers.

Her beloved grandmother had died. But her grandmother lived long enough to see her, Sandra, become a success in the luxury travel business. Sandra sent her postcards and gifts from every corner of the world, and there was always a letter, from her grandmother, waiting for Sandra's anxious eyes, when she returned from far away to L.A. The letter usually told of how jealous the entire neighborhood is and especially the neighbor ladies are that Grandma raised such a successful, well-traveled, worldly granddaughter. Sandra traveled first class to the funeral, and is forever grateful to the company for footing her travel expenses; if she had been a dressmaker, she could have never made the trip. "Goodbye, Grandma. Thanks for everything. GruB GroBmutt."

The end

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