Chapter 23
OZZIE
Jelka’s words hung in the room heavy and thick, like gray clouds of smoke.
Had Ozzie heard her correctly? He shook his head as if trying to clear water from his ears.
He was still kneeling before Jelka, and his right foot had begun to tingle.
Katja breathed evenly, her small body pressed against his chest as he cradled her in one arm like a football.
Ozzie pierced Jelka with his eyes. “What did you say?”
Her lips were dry and cracked, absent of the cherry lipstick she wore when they were out. “I am… married.”
The three words needled Ozzie in the chest.
“Please do not be angry with me. I wanted to tell you.” She reached for him, but he scooted back still on bended knee, out of her grasp.
The coral woven carpet was worn thin, and he could feel his kneecap twist under his weight as he looked down at Katja in his arms, then at Jelka, and then back at the baby.
No, Ozzie had not been seeing things. Katja did have the Philips nose and enough melanin in her skin to belong to him.
As if in answer to his question, Katja’s face twitched, and she grinned at him in her sleep.
“Please, let me explain,” Jelka pleaded.
He clutched Katja tight as he raised up off the floor and turned his back to Jelka, facing the tiny window, trying to calm down.
The sheers were drawn, and Ozzie peered out into the darkness at the gravel road he had traveled just hours ago.
Katja’s arm jerked, and he rubbed her back to soothe her.
She smelled like lilies, and Ozzie could feel her vines tighten around his heart.
He was her daddy. What was he supposed to do now?
He had really made a mess of things this time. When he was younger and came home bruised from an alley fight, his mother would tease him by saying, “Boy, trouble sure seems to follow behind you wherever you go.” Ozzie wished just once he could have made a liar of her.
He wanted to run. But if he did, he’d be just like his father. Leaving when things got hard. He had dug this hole for himself—the drinking, the woman, and now the baby. He turned back toward Jelka. She looked frazzled, stomach bloated, her big round eyes sagging with fear.
“Come sit, Mein Prinz.”
“Don’t call me that,” he snapped. This was no fairy tale, and he had a hard time seeing a happy ending.
“Please. I will tell you everything.” She patted the seat next to her on the sofa, but Ozzie moved to the chair that Jelka’s father had occupied and lowered himself into it, careful not to wake Katja.
Jelka fidgeted with her hands. Folding her fingers over each other as if washing them clean.
“I did not wish to get married. It was the middle of the war. Air raids. Bombs. They came, always in the night. I was afraid to leave the house.” Her eyes bulged as she looked up at the ceiling.
Ozzie followed her gaze to a long crack in the plaster that looked damp from years of neglect.
“My brothers were both dead. My father was fighting der Krieg. He sent what he could, but it was never enough. The rations got smaller and less adequate.” She took a deep breath. “In 1944, as soon as I turned seventeen, my mother married me off. Gottfried was six years older but could provide.”
“What did he do?”
“He managed the laborers at the local manufacturing plant. They made steel helmets for the Nazi regime.”
Ozzie’s jaw tightened.
“In the beginning, he went to work every day and came home at six.” Jelka closed her eyes. “Then one day, he said he needed to go to Berlin. He was in charge of an important delivery. That was in October ’46, and he never returned.”
Jelka looked up, and Ozzie studied her face, searching for signs that what she was saying was true.
“More than a year went by before his sister discovered that he was being held as a prisoner by the Soviets. Word came sparingly and then silence. I thought he was dead before I met you.”
“And?”
Jelka reached between the cushions of the sofa and held up a tattered envelope. “I received a letter from him last week. He is still alive. The Soviets will release him. He will return home soon.”
Ozzie chewed the inside of his cheek but said nothing.
“I do not know exactly when he will be released, but I do not think he would be happy to see her. He has certainly beat me for less.” She dropped her chin and her shoulders trembled.
Ozzie knew that she wanted his sympathy, but at that moment he had nothing to give.
He felt trapped, and a sense of doom hovered over him.
He rose and paced the floor. There was a family photo on the table.
Ozzie peered at a preteen Jelka with two older boys flanking her.
Her little sister was small and stood clutching the hand of her mother and father.
Now Jelka’s brothers were dead. Her father mentally unhinged.
She had a violent husband on the loose, and Ozzie’s newborn child was tied between them all.
How had he gotten himself wrapped up in all of this?
“Osbourne, when I met you at the club, it was your kindness. The way you looked at me. For so long, I was dead inside. I felt empty. Your affection brought me back to life, and I will be forever grateful to you for that.” Her bottom lip trembled as she moved across the room toward him.
“You are Mein Prinz. No one has ever treated me as kindly as you have.”
Katja began to cry. Ozzie rocked her a little, but she would not settle.
Jelka reached for the baby. Her hand grazed Ozzie’s arm as she took Katja, hushing her with sugary words in German.
She sat with the baby on the sofa and lifted her blouse.
Ozzie watched as she pushed her swollen pink nipple into Katja’s mouth.
Katja moved her head to and fro, smacking her lips like a guppy, trying to latch on.
Jelka cooed until Katja found the milk flow and calmed down. Ozzie needed to be soothed too.
“You got anything to drink around here?” he asked.
“Look under the kitchen sink.” She motioned.
Ozzie walked into the tiny U-shaped kitchen. It was barely big enough for two people to stand in at once. He opened the cabinet and found a glass bottle with clear liquor. He assumed it was vodka. He found a small glass and greedily poured himself two fistfuls.
He returned to the living room with the intention of sipping it slow, but once the liquor touched his lips, he couldn’t help gulping half of it down in one swoop. The burn in his throat relaxed him at once.
“What are we supposed to do?”
“I could try to divorce him, but that would take time and money, and there is no guarantee that it would be approved.”
Ozzie had asked Jelka to marry him as a matter of duty but had not thought it all the way through. For Katja, he was willing to try anything to keep his daughter with him. More than anything, he wanted to raise her up and be a stable man in his child’s life.
Jelka had placed Katja on her shoulder and started patting her back. Katja let out a loud burp. On her lap, Jelka swaddled Katja tight, tucking the edges of the blanket around her until she was wrapped like a mummy.
“She’s so beautiful.” Jelka met his eyes.
“Yes, she is. You did good.”
Despite how her news had hit him, Ozzie couldn’t make himself turn away. It was a tender sentiment, and it felt good to forget their troubles and share a moment, if only for a few seconds.
Jelka stood, then stroked his face with the back of her hand. “The only way to keep her safe is to run away.”
He stumbled backward. “Run? What are you talking about? And go where?”
She leaned her weight into him. “I have a friend south of here,” Jelka said.
Then she told Ozzie about one of her schoolmates who had a brown baby and how her American sweetheart deserted his company.
“They now live happily in a little village south of Ulm, and no one bothers them. They are content. Even had two more children.”
Ozzie rubbed the back of his neck. The liquor had taken the edge off, so much so that he chuckled when he asked, “You wanting me to go AWOL?”
He had joined the army for stability. To make something out of his life.
To be a proud American. To show America that the Negro man was just as capable as the white man.
He didn’t want to give up his dream of working in the Intelligence unit.
Besides, since he had volunteered, it was the first time in his life that he’d had steady pay.
It wasn’t a lot, but it was damn sure more than he was used to making.
How would he earn a living as a man on the run from the American government?
His mother wouldn’t survive it. And what about Rita’s tuition? Ozzie bristled.
Jelka said, “I am just thinking about what’s best for our daughter. With Gottfried returning, what kind of life do you think she will have here without you protecting her? He is a violent man.”
Ozzie could not answer that, and Jelka’s words were like a dagger through his heart.
He knelt before Katja, who slept peacefully on the sofa.
Already, looking at Katja was like looking God in the face.
In just a few hours, he had discovered a love that he never knew existed.
But Jelka was asking him to do the impossible. There had to be another way.