Life Will Have Its Way (9 page)

Anja excused herself, I could hear the bath running in the other room, the linen closet open and close. “Who’s up first?” she shouted into the hallway. The boys looked at one another, their reaction was remarkably similar to that of a dog that wasn’t used to bathing but had suddenly realized he was destined for a trip to the bath. I went into the living room and looked for something to read while the kids got cleaned up. Anja joined me soon after and the boys wandered out separately as they finished bathing. Lukas carried his left arm with the other and I could tell he was trying to shield something as he passed. When I asked him what he hiding he reluctantly moved his hand to the side to reveal a sizeable wound on his forearm, it covered nearly the entire underside.

“My goodness, Lukas!” Anja exclaimed as she took hold of his arm and pulled it closer so she could take a better look. “What on earth happened here?”

Erich laughed, “You’ll never believe what he did.”

Lukas pursed his lips and squinted his eyes into a pretend mad face directed at Erich.

The boys had been playing in the fields with their cousins. One of the older boys started passing under the horses, he would lower himself to fit beneath the belly and emerge on the other side. The horses seemed indifferent to the antics and for the most part were able to completely ignore the boy. As always happened when the older kids got together, someone eventually dared Lukas to try it. Initially he was reluctant, knowing full well that it was never a good idea to mess around with the horses. 

“Come on!” they chided. “Are yuh chicken?”

“No I’m not a chicken!” he screeched before bending slightly at the waist and walking straight into the open area under the horse.

“You’re too tall! You’re too tall!” yelled one of the cousins. “Scrunch your knees! Scrunch your knees!”

It was too late, Lukas raised his head just enough to touch the tender underside of the horses belly. What followed was a rush of air then a floating sensation followed by a crash and a long tumble. He finally came to rest half way across the field. He sat up, the other boys rushed to him, the horse stood unaffected and continued to graze. The boys found themselves shocked by what they’d just seen and looked wildly around the field hoping no one else had been around to see it. They convinced Lukas not to tell anyone which meant the cut created when the horse kicked him was never properly cared for, and now Anja found it to be quite infected.

She turned to Erich. “You left this poor boy to deal with this on his own? You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“I tried to help him with it!”

“You should have told your parents!” Anja said, “This is serious.”

Erich snapped to attention, “Tell our parents? No way. Noooo way.”

Anja took Lukas off to the kitchen. Soon I could hear what sounded like cupboards and drawers opening, water boiling and the shredding of rags. They returned shortly with Lukas proudly displaying his freshly bandaged arm.

“It’s getting late!” Anja announced. “You kids need to get some sleep.”

The children piled together on the bed in the guest room, not bothering to pull back the covers. Anja moved their things inside the hiding space then pushed the armoire into place, she checked several times to make sure it was still ajar. She leaned over to Erich, giving him instructions in case of an emergency, telling him what he would need to do should she give him the signal. He listened carefully and nodded firmly once she’d finished.

I followed Anja back out to the kitchen. “Oh my God Anja! What is going on today? Could things get any stranger?”

“I don’t think so,” she laughed, “and I certainly hope not.”

I asked her what happened before I got home. She said she’d just happened to be looking out the kitchen window when she noticed the boys wandering around in the garden. Her finger shot into the air, “I knew right away who they were and pulled them inside. And I thanked my lucky stars that I’d been the first to have seen them.” She leaned into me and said a bit more quietly, “Those boys stuck out like a sore thumb out there, I hope to hell they didn’t walk around much before I got ahold of ‘em.”

Anja went to the kitchen and strained her neck to see over the top of the curtains that covered the bottom half of her window. “I had just enough time to get them all a bite to eat and the dishes put away when I heard voices out front. I saw who it was and had a pretty good idea they’d be at my door soon enough.” She moved to the windows in the living room and peeked through the small crack that ran along the edge of the curtain. “But luckily they went to your place first… and thank goodness they did! That extra few minutes gave me just enough time to get the kids out of the way.”

Anja continued compulsively checking the windows.

“Is someone out there?” I asked.

“No, no. I don’t see anyone, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they came back.”

“Why? Why would they? What did they say to you?”

“Oh not much. I talked to Friedrich and that other nice boy for a few minutes, they came in, looked around a bit and left.”

“Weren’t you scared?” I asked.

“Eh!” she flipped her wrist casually. “Why would I be afraid of those boys? I’ve known most of them since they were about this tall.” She lowered her palm to mark a spot about three feet above the floor. “It’s only when they send the old, cranky ones over that you have to start to worry.”

I told her about my trip to the police station, she said she’d seen us leave and felt horrible that she couldn’t do anything to stop them from taking me. With the kids hiding in her guest room, she figured it probably wasn’t a good time to draw any attention back to her place. She went on to tell me that she hadn’t been too worried about anything happening to me personally, but wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep quiet about the girl. She knew how they worked people over and how easy it was to say the very thing you were trying not to say.

“You didn’t tell them anything… did you?” she asked.

“No. Well… not really.

“What do you mean not really?”

“I just told them that I’d talked to the girl in the garden,” I replied nervously.

“What?” she exploded. “Why? Why on earth would you tell them that? Why on earth would you tell them anything?” Her nostrils flared as her breathing became slow and labored.

My jaw felt as though it had been clamped shut. “I thought they already knew,” I whispered through my teeth, “I didn’t think it would matter to tell them something they already knew.”

“What else did you tell them?”

“I just told them that she was waiting for her grandma, that’s it, I promise.”

Anja placed her elbows at the edge of the table and let her head fall into her hands. After several minutes, she finally looked back toward me and offered a weak, strained smile. “Well, I guess what’s done is done,” she said, “and hopefully it won’t make a difference.”  

I offered to make up something to eat and went to work flipping mindlessly through one of the cookbooks on the counter, eventually managing to put together something loosely based on one of the casserole recipes. We sat at the table in silence, I could tell Anja was still upset about my revelation to the police. I hoped she would get over it. I wanted her to talk. I wanted to talk to her. I had so many questions I wasn’t sure where to even begin.

“Okay then,” Anja finally said during an especially long lull, “remember last night after Peter left?”

I nodded.

“Remember when I told you that you’d think I was crazy if I told you where we thought Evie came from?”

I nodded again.

“Well, the good news is… I’m not crazy.”

I told her I was glad to hear it, since I was seriously beginning to wonder. She swatted at me with the back of her hand. “Oh come on now,” she laughed and offered to start at the beginning. 

I correctly guessed that the beginning would have something to do with the armoire in her guest room. As for the actual hiding place, everyone had certainly heard of them, of course we all knew they’d existed, but no one wanted to talk about stuff like that anymore. Everyone just wished it would go away. But it didn’t go away, it couldn’t. The ghosts of the past were stubborn. They lingered in every apartment, in every house, in every building, uninvited and unable to leave.

In the years leading up to the war when people were being arrested, Anja said her mother nearly had a breakdown watching people being taken away, that she absolutely hated the idea of sitting idly while all around them, entire families were disappearing. “Of course you wanted to hope they were going off to maybe a better place, you know, but deep down we all knew that wasn’t the case,” Anja said. One day her mother announced that something had to be done, soon after that Anja noticed an increase in the number of houseguests, some were people they already knew, many were not. “If I sat quietly and acted like I wasn’t paying attention, they would forget about me. But thinking back now, that was actually very dangerous of them. They put a lot of trust in the fact that I wouldn’t go off and say something at school that I had overheard at home.”

She moved her fork mindlessly across her plate, rearranging the food she hadn’t yet eaten, “When they started building the closet, no one really took notice. The neighbors weren’t preoccupied with one another like they are now days.”

Of course Anja’s parents were no fools, even though things were fairly sedate when they started their efforts, they had seen the writing on the wall. They became more withdrawn, more paranoid, more serious. Anja said her life got very different, very fast during that time. And although it felt like she’d lost her parents, there was something about the tense new environment that she found very exciting.

Not long after the closet was built. A friend of Anja’s mother began staying in the apartment. Her parents didn’t tell the children anything about the reason for their new houseguest and the kids didn’t question her presence. “Her name was Rebekah,” Anja said, “she was already like part of the family, an auntie perhaps, so having her stay with us seemed quite natural. She and my mother would talk and laugh and eat little sandwiches and cakes. I can still smell the fresh pastries.” Anja closed her eyes and smiled as she was transported back to the warm, busy kitchen, filled with laughter and sugary treats.

“One day there was an unexpected knock at the door, Rebekah jumped up, she had a look of terror in her eyes as she quietly raced down the hall. Mother double checked the room, put a few things back in place, fluffed her hair, smoothed her dress and walked gracefully to the door. It just so happened that the visitor was one of my father’s work associates. I could tell his presence made my mother very uncomfortable. I had seen him at our home in the past, but he had never been involved in any of their late night discussions. I was surprised by her reaction, she had not acted that way when he had been a guest several months earlier.”

Anja shifted uneasily in her chair and the sound of her clothing rustling against the seat cover seemed unusually loud. “As time went on, I noticed that Rebekah was spending more and more time in the bedroom. My mother thought perhaps she just felt safer in there. I could see that the stress of rushing to the closet at every sound was taking a toll on her.” Anja turned her head and looked toward the ceiling, her lips pulled together while she thought. “Yes, yes, I believe it would have been about this time that the discussions at the table seemed to get more intense. I remember one night when the entire kitchen was covered in maps and blueprints, I had no idea what they were planning next, I just figured maybe they were thinking about building more closets. In any case, about a month later I
woke up one day and Rebekah was gone.” Anja’s shoulder shrugged reflexively. “She was just gone. My mother told me she’d had enough of city life and was going to live with family somewhere in the country. I was glad to hear it and perfectly content to accept that for an explanation. It was only much later when I asked why she never came back to visit that my mother decided it was safe to tell me where she’d really gone.”

Over the next year or so, Anja’s family had several more guests. They were often people Anja didn’t know or had never seen before. They would usually stay with the family for a week or two or perhaps just for one day. When they did leave, it was always with Anja’s father and always very late at night. “To be perfectly honest,” she said apologetically, “by that point, I’d grown tired of all the people coming and going, they were so dirty and distracted and in such poor health. Now I know this sounds horrible, but when they left, I have to say, I was usually quite relieved to see them go… and was glad to know they wouldn’t be coming back.”

“Oh, Anja,” I said, “don’t be so hard on yourself. You were just a teenager.”

“Well, you should know,” she replied, “it wasn’t always so bad.” A somewhat embarrassed smile grew slowly over her face. “There was one time when a couple stayed here with their son. They stayed longer than unusual, perhaps almost a month.” She tilted her head to the side and nodded slowly, “That boy stole my heart. He really did.” Her eyes became dreamy, blinking slowly as she talked. “He was just so wonderful, so sweet. He was smart and kind and confident,” she pressed the fingers of her hand down as she listed his qualities, “oh, and good looking, so good looking, I can’t forget that, now you should know, I’m talking movie star good looks here!” she laughed, her cheeks blushing. “Thomas. His name was Thomas. We promised to find each other after the war, of course we were still so young, but, you know, we really did think we were going to spend the rest of our lives together.”

“So what became of it? Then why didn’t you?”

“Well, for one thing… I never heard from him again. He and his parents left in the night with my father, like all the rest, but beyond that I have no idea what
became of them. After the war ended I checked every missing persons list I could find for as long as the lists existed, but their names were never on them. I even added their names to a few lists on my own, but nothing came of that either.”

“What do you think happened to him?”

“Oh, I can only imagine, but, mmm,” she stopped suddenly, I could tell she was trying not to choke up. “I just like to think he and his family were able to get away,” she trailed off, “far, far away.”