Chapter Three #3
Gisela stood in awe of the unlikely playfulness between Fiadh and her mother, as if they were friends. And this Fiadh could make her mother laugh! Gisela could hardly remember the last time she saw her own mother even smile.
Fiadh put her hands on her hips. “Mam!” she said, her voice good natured and bright.
“Give them time with Hannie’s cooking, and you’ll be Irish triplets!” Jean said, and the three of them laughed and laughed.
Gisela tried to understand what was so funny, something about fruit and making fat children. H?nsel und Gretel, bellies empty, nibbling away at the witch’s cottage, fattening themselves to be eaten, blaming the wind.
That night, Gisela lay awake, thinking of the mother and father below them, what they might be plotting. She rubbed her full belly. Loose shutters clattered in a west wind. “Do you think they’re fattening us up to eat us?”
“Don’t be silly,” Elisabeth whispered. “We are lucky to be here. You worry too much.”
Gisela balled up, squeezing her eyes and the brown rabbit tightly. Der Wind, Der Wind, Das Himmlische Kind.
The following morning, Gisela and Elisabeth were hardly down from the loft when Fiadh appeared in the doorway with a list of chores and ideas for games and adventures. “Soon enough, those O’Kane boys will be off their boat and just wait until they get a load of you lot.”
That afternoon, the sun high in a cloudless sky, the O’Kane boys came up the path like a single, dozen-limbed lobster—boy chests armor-hard, thin carapace, flushed faces, bones bare and pokey.
Denis, the oldest, then Jeremiah, called “Jem” for short, and the youngest, Conor.
Denis was light haired with a spitting lisp and crossed hazel eyes, looks that reminded Gisela of the boys in Cologne who played at being soldiers, who jutted out their arms and hands in allegiance to der Führer.
Jem and Conor were his opposite—dark hair, blistering blue eyes, uncommon white teeth.
Fiadh had been fighting Conor her whole life, she told the girls.
“Denis is the ugly one, Jem is the clever one, and Conor’s a rogue—he’ll get you cigs if you want.
Bit of a temper too.” She touched her hair when she spoke his name.
Gisela raised her eyebrows and eyeballed Conor.
“What?” Fiadh said, incredulous. “You think I like him or something? Well, you’re wrong.
I hate his guts. I hate his stinking, mean guts.
” She smoothed her hair with both palms and wetted her lips as they approached.
“Mark my words, though,” she added, grinning mischievously.
“I do plan to marry him and make his life miserable.”
The boys squared up and blocked the road like brawlers. Fiadh stepped out, hands on her hips, legs spread into an A-frame. Conor did the same.
“I now pronounce you man and wife,” Denis jeered. “Kiss your bride, there, Con!”
“Shut your trap or I’ll shut it for you,” Conor said. “That what you call muscle, Fee? Your girls are scrawny.”
The air between the two kids crackled. Gisela’s eyes popped when Fiadh blew Conor a kiss.
“Give me a fag,” she said.
Conor smirked at his brothers. “Kiss me for reals, and maybe I will.”
“We’re leaving,” Fiadh proclaimed, stepping back and squeezing herself between Gisela and Elisabeth. “No guff from you today, Conor O’Kane.”
Jem stepped forward. “Ah, don’t leave. Fee, who are these girls anyway. They talk?”
“They belong to Hannie and Hugh. German orphans. Hannie got them at auction by Dublin. They’ll be giving them back, though who’s to say when. For now, they’re mine. Like sisters to me.”
What did it mean, Gisela wondered, to belong to Fiadh?
To belong to Hannie and Hugh? She’d heard of slaves before, this American thing.
Had America won everything? Did everyone have slaves now?
Is that what they were? Fiadh grabbed their hands protectively, the way their mother had when she’d pulled them through the streets, past soldiers and shopkeepers, to their grandmother’s house before the body wagon took her away.
“Stick to me like glue,” she’d say. At some point that Gisela could not pin down, Mutti had lost her insistence, had surrendered to fate and war, given them up for dead while they still took breaths. Could Fiadh keep them safe?
“You got your very own Germans?” Jem stepped past Conor. The boys softened, moved toward the girls like Fiadh had come to possess a bundle of firecrackers and punks to light them.
“Ah, sure you’re nice now that I’ve got something you want,” Fiadh said.
Gisela stepped back from the advance.
“No,” Jem said. “We’re not trying to hurt ya.” He addressed Fiadh, though his eyes remained on Gisela and Elisabeth. “They come from the war?”
“Aye. Their mum—” She slashed at her throat with the tips of her fingers.
Gisela pressed her tongue into her cheek.
The last she saw of Mutti, she was running toward their building after the collapse, her mouth gaped open.
Gisela could not hear any sounds she made, though the memory of her own screams echoed in her head.
It had happened so fast, the truck that barreled into Mutti, then the strange angle of her neck and hips, the red stains on her yellow dress, the way she wore only one shoe.
Gisela forced her lips together and breathed through her nose hotly.
She cleared her throat as if it were still clogged with dust.
Elisabeth shook her hand free of Fiadh’s, clamped her tiny waist, and thrust her head forward. “Unsere Mutter ist nicht tot! Nein. She is not dead!”
Gisela bit her lip, threaded her hand through the crook of Elisabeth’s arm.
She had tried to tell Elisabeth—Sie ist tot.
Sie ist tot—but her sister refused to listen.
Elisabeth, clinging to this false hope. Now was not the time to try to convince her again.
Which would be better? Safer? That they had a mother to return to or that there was nothing left for them in Germany?
Best to be quiet, to keep their business secret.
“Sag nichts,” Gisela whispered in Elisabeth’s ear.
“Hissing donkey, that one.” Denis spat and laughed, a manic sound that went with his bright red face. “I wouldn’t want no sister like that. Besides, Fee, how you figure them for sisters? Hell, you’re not even cousins. Hannie and Hugh ain’t nothing to old Batty Jean.”
“I’ll call them whatever I like, and you, Denis O’Kane, had better not use that name again.
Not like we haven’t all seen your own mam running down the lane shaking the rolling pin at your da.
You’re lucky she’s fatter than him, or she’d give him a licking good.
Like she ought to be giving you lot, by the by. ”
“Let’s not fight. Come on. We’re going to look for periwinkles,” Jem said.
Conor thrust out his hand to Fiadh. “Truce?”
“Truce.” She spat wetly on her own palm, then clasped it to his, squeezing so tight a drop of saliva dribbled to the ground.
From up the road, a rotund woman hooted, her arms waving above a curly cloud of hair.
“Speak of the devil,” Fiadh said. “If it isn’t Theresa O’Kane come to fetch her babies.”
Conor threw his head back. “Sheesh, Mam!”
“I heard about these girls, Fiadh. I want a photograph.” She held up a brown camera that dangled from her neck by a leather strap. “Not often we have visitors.” Gisela moved closer to Elisabeth. The woman had the same eyes as her boys, blue patches like shallows in dark waters.
“Have you ever gotten a photograph from that thing?” Jem asked. “You say you’re taking pictures, but we never see a single likeness.”
“Do as I say,” Theresa said, “or I’ll whip you.
I mean it, now. Go on.” She gestured to the wall.
Gisela followed Fiadh, who trudged dutifully.
Denis jumped on the wall and crouched in a pose.
Jem and Conor stood on either side of Fiadh, who crossed her arms. Gisela sat on the wall, her legs dangling, arms stiff. Elisabeth shrugged and did the same.
“Hold still now,” Theresa said.
Gisela marveled at the wild black hair, the busy fussing with the contraption. She leaned forward slightly to squint at Fiadh, whose head was cocked toward Conor. Elisabeth grabbed her hand as the camera popped.
“Lord knows what we got there.” Theresa blew on her fingertips, stared into the lens as if the photograph was assembling in the camera’s guts. She walked away, talking to herself.
“That’s done, I guess,” Jem said. “C’mon. Let’s go.”
The girls astride followed Denis down the clover path through the field that led to the water’s edge.
Jem and Conor brought up the rear. Gisela felt their eyes on her back, flicked her head around periodically to check on them.
Fiadh tilted to Elisabeth. “You like Jem? Gisela can have Denis.” She covered her mouth and giggled.
Gisela squinted at Denis, seared a dagger into his thick skull. Yellow hair, like Hitler boys with their spidery armbands. Like Herbert. She felt a thick pinch on her ass and twisted around. Fiadh gasped at the same time, her face flushing red.
“Conor O’Kane!” Fiadh yelled, stopping the procession.
“What happened?” Elisabeth whispered.
Gisela shook her head.
Conor held his hands out at his sides, threw his head back in wild laughter. “Fee! Your arse is the better handful than the German’s, that’s for sure!”
Fiadh marched at Conor until they were face-to-face.
His bemused look said he enjoyed riling Fiadh up.
Gisela expected fists to fly, but instead Conor grabbed Fiadh by the waist, spun her around to the path again, and swatted her on the behind.
Gisela’s mouth fell open. Beside her, Elisabeth gasped.
But Fiadh lowered her chin and pursed her lips.
Her eyes drifted from side to side and a tiny smile lifted her lips.
Over her shoulder, she said, “The only arse here is you, Conor O’Kane. ”
Jem punched Conor’s shoulder, and Conor rubbed it as if it hurt, but the grin on his face said otherwise. Denis, well up the path and oblivious to the commotion, yelled back, “Ya comin’ or what?”
“That boy knows just how to get under my skin!” Fiadh said, wiping at her mouth like she’d bit into overripe fruit. She waved at Denis. “Yeah, yeah!”
They proceeded like the altercation never happened, Conor and Jem behind the girls.
Gisela, still smarting from where Conor had grabbed her, stole a glance over her shoulder.
Denis reminded her of the brainless Hitler boys, but maybe it was this brother, the one with the dark gleam, who was Little Red Cap’s wolf, the real threat in this green place.
She would have to keep her eyes wide and her ears perked.