Second Fiddle (5 page)

“Is empty here in East Berlin,” the soldier said. “All people running to the West.”

“Are you going to be okay?” I asked.

“We can come back tomorrow after school and bring food,” Vivian said. “And in the meantime he can have this.” She took Herr Müller’s chocolate bar out of her purse and set it on the ground.

“Good idea.” I said. Giselle and I added our chocolate bars.

The soldier looked at our stack of Ritter Sports and put his hand over his heart as if we had given him something unspeakably precious.

“Let’s move him there,” Giselle said, pointing to our hiding place under the bridge. “He’ll be harder to see.”

Giselle lifted from under the soldier’s arms, and Vivi took the good leg and started to tug.

“I’m going to go over there and put on my PE clothes,” I said, waving in the general direction of some shrubs.

The other two half dragged the soldier up the bank to a sheltered spot. He tried his best to help with his good leg, but mostly he spent his energy trying not to scream in pain. They settled him under the bushes and put his wet uniform out of sight behind him. Giselle made a pillow of her fencing-team jacket. The soldier leaned back on the pillow, breathing as hard as if he’d run a mile. He waved us away.

“You go. I sleep.”

“We’ll come check on you tomorrow,” I said.

We gathered up our backpacks and violins and headed down the river toward the main road and the gelato shop. The sun felt good on my bare arms and legs, but even so, I was shivering from the memory of dark water and the way the river felt like it was pulling me in.

“We never do stuff together on days we don’t have a lesson,” I said. “How are we going to get permission to come back into downtown Berlin?”

“We just need to figure out a reason to get together,” Giselle said. “We can say we’re at the library or something. Mom likes it when I go to the library.”

“Here’s an unprecedented idea,” Vivian said. “We’re a trio; we could get together and say we’re practicing.”

“But we never practice together,” I said.

“Well, my mom is always bugging me to bring you guys over to play,” Vivi said. “I’ll just say I’m doing it at Giselle’s house and Giselle can say she’s at your house.”

I had never bothered to invite them to my place. No way would my neighbors want to see the general’s daughter hanging around enlisted housing.

“Yeah, that would work great,” I said, “except our moms call each other.”

Giselle actually slumped a little bit, and we all walked slower as we turned onto Unter den Linden, with the Brandenburg Gate at the far end leading us back to West Berlin. The shadows from the trees on either side of the street stretched eastward, and even the uncollected garbage from
side streets couldn’t drown out the sweet smell of those tiny yellow linden flowers.

Once we crossed into West Berlin, there were plenty of people around. The S-Bahn stop at the Potsdamer Platz was packed with commuters, so we had to find separate seats. Usually when I had a few moments to myself on the train, I took out my music notebook and worked on my songs. Last year I decided to write a canon for us that made all the instruments in the trio equal players. I finished the violin parts last summer, but the cello part was much harder. It took me months, and even though I’d finished the “Canon for Three Friends” in March, I still wasn’t satisfied. It was kind of simple compared to the rest of the music we played, and I was too shy to ask the girls to play it.

But today, I kept working over the matter of how to get back into East Berlin to help our soldier. I racked my brain to think of what normal girls did together after school. Movies? There was only one theater on the army base, and our folks would hear about it if we didn’t show up. Bowling? My folks or people who knew them would be there. The officers’ club? I wasn’t even allowed in the door.

I got to thinking about it, and even though Giselle and Vivian were the best friends I’d ever had, all we did was eat lunch together at school, travel to music competitions once a year, and take the train to Herr Müller’s. Once, we stopped at the Christmas market on the way home from lessons to get crystal ornaments for our moms. But we never just got
together for no reason like other girls did. I felt so close to them when we played a piece of music, especially a hard one we had really worked on. But they were strangers to me, too. And I wondered for the hundredth time what it was going to be like to choose a hometown and buy a house and live in one place forever. I wondered what kids were like who had never traveled.

Dad hated it when I moped about army life. “We have good memories in a thousand places,” he’d say. “You can find your way in any size city or town. You can make a home for yourself anywhere, and that makes you a thousand times richer than those hometown Hannahs who’ve never gone a mile on their own.”

He was right about getting around. My cousins in Chicago weren’t allowed to ride their own commuter train, even though the whole system was in English. I’d been riding the Berlin trains alone since I was ten, and Mom didn’t even check up on me to see if I’d made it to my music lesson.

That’s it! I stood up and tapped Giselle on the shoulder. Vivian’s stop was coming up. “I’ve got an idea!” I said. “Get off here and we’ll talk.”

Giselle grabbed her backpack and followed Vivian and me out onto the platform. The train door hissed shut behind us, and the train rumbled off to the south. I motioned them over to a bench.

“We can say we’re going to Herr Müller’s,” I said. “To practice for the competition. It’s perfect! Our parents want
us to win, and they hate to talk to Herr Müller on the phone because of his accent.”

There was a moment of silence while the girls digested my plan.

“Plus they don’t know Herr Müller’s canceled yet, because he’s telling them in the letters he gave us,” I said, tapping the folder where I kept my sheet music.

“And if we don’t give them the letter, they’ll still think we’re going,” Vivi added. “And it gives us a reason not just to get together, but to head back down in the direction of our wounded soldier’s bridge. Jody, you are a genius! Mom doesn’t care where I go, so long as I’m with people she knows.”

“Ditto,” Giselle said. “Oh my gosh, this could really work. You two could leave your violins at home and fill your cases with clothes and other stuff our soldier needs.”

“Look,” I said, “I can only bring food. Kyle and Tyler eat constantly, so Mom will never miss a jar of peanut butter, but no way am I stealing Dad’s clothes.”

“No problem, I’ll get the clothes,” Giselle said. “My dad’s bigger than him, but better too big than too small.”

“I’ll see what I can find out about foreign soldiers and if they have any protection from their own army,” Vivian said. “There are lots of law books in Mom’s study, and her secretary helps me with my homework all the time.”

That would explain why her papers were always perfectly
typed and mine were full of cross-outs and my brothers’ jammy fingerprints.

“Great. So we’ll meet after school tomorrow,” I said.

Giselle and I hopped back on the train to Zehlendorf. It was even more crowded than before, so we stood without talking, but my head was buzzing with plans the whole way home.

walked the dozen blocks from the train stop to the enlisted apartment buildings. Usually I stopped at the PX for my favorite candy bar, but that day I went straight home. I strolled past the familiar places on base: the army hospital, the post office, the day care, and then the motor pool. All the HAZMAT trucks were lined up by the gate with their engines running, and a bunch of guys stood around in those horribly hot-looking rubber suits. Seems like they could have picked a less sunny day for a chemical weapons drill.

There was no way I’d be able to sneak anything out of the house with Dad around. Dad was all about the routine and kids having responsibilities, even my little brothers. He monitored my homework, my chores, my music practice, and my phone calls. If Mom didn’t stand up to him every once in a while, he’d probably be monitoring my height, weight, and blood pressure. I’d have to wait until everyone was asleep to pack up some food.

“Hi, Mom! Hi, guys!” I hollered as I walked in.

“Jody!” my brothers shouted in unison. I set down my violin and braced myself for impact as Tyler and Kyle thundered down the front hall in their mismatched socks and threw little-brother hugs at me. This was a lot more fun back when they weighed twenty pounds apiece, but I kissed their grimy little heads anyway, thankful that they were ignoring the smell of river water coming from the wet jeans in my bag.

“Hey, Kyle, how was kindergarten? Let’s see that loose tooth, Tyler.” They ignored me in favor of measuring themselves on tiptoe against my arm, in case they’d grown since breakfast.

“How was music?” Mom called from the kitchen.

“Mmmm,” I said, which wasn’t lying. I swung my backpack off my shoulder and held it in front of my gym shorts just in time.

Mom stuck her head out of the kitchen door and looked me up and down. “You’re a little late.”

“Sorry, Mom, we stopped for gelato, and then we, umm, walked down by the river.”

“Oh, that’s nice, such a pretty day. Did you bring enough money?”

“Yeah, I had some from when I babysat the Smith kids last weekend, remember?” Mom would make such a big deal if she knew Giselle treated. She doesn’t believe in that sort of thing at all.

“You’re remembering to put half your babysitting money in the bank, right?”

“I know. College.” I lifted up Tyler’s chin and gave his remaining front tooth a wiggle. “You better get busy on this—college is expensive.”

“If I wiggle my toes and they come off, can I get money for ’em?” Kyle asked. He sat down in the hall, yanked off his socks, and got to work on the largest of his toes.

“Don’t be gross, Kyle.”

“What’s college?” Tyler demanded. “Is there bowling?”

“Yes, there’s bowling. College is just like an army base but everyone is your same age.”

“Whoa!” Tyler was so amazed, he held his body still for an entire ten seconds. “That would be awesome!” Then he got that worried little eyebrow wrinkle that made him look like a tiny old man. He was the most serious seven-year-old I knew. “How many teeth does it take to get in?”

“I’m pretty sure you have just enough,” I said, rubbing him on the head. “But you better read a lot of books—tricky ones. Now, who is a big-enough boy to carry my enormous backpack and my violin case full of gold bars?”

“Me! I can! Yes, ma’am!” Kyle and Tyler shouted, snapping off eight or ten salutes each.

“Be careful with them. They weigh five hundred pounds each!”

Kyle grabbed my violin case and was panting and groaning with fake effort before he’d gone three steps.

“Race you!” Tyler said. “Ready, set …”

“Don’t mess with my stuff!” I hollered after them as they
ricocheted down the hall to my bedroom. “Hey, Mom, mind if I grab a shower before dinner? It was all hot and sweaty on the train.” I headed down the hall, hoping she’d stay in the kitchen and not notice that I smelled like sewage.

“Whatever,” Mom said. “No rush.”

Dad must be working late again. I hustled down to the bathroom before she could see I was wearing my PE shorts. My skin was itchy with tiny red dots where I had been in the river. Looking out the bathroom window, I could see a smudge of pink in the sky to the west. I thought of the soldier watching the same sky from under his bridge, with no way to clean up and no one to make him a warm dinner. Even though it wasn’t a cold night, I shivered. A few minutes of hot water and the girl soap Mom kept for just her and me worked wonders. The red spots went away completely, and the lavender smell covered up the river-water stench.

I slipped into my room for pajama pants, socks, and an old army T-shirt of my dad’s. I dug my wet jeans and shirt out of my backpack, tossed them into the hamper, and dragged it to the laundry room. Then I put my stinky clothes in the wash with a load of my brothers’ jeans and joined Mom in the kitchen.

“Hey, Jody,” Mom said. “What do you want with burgers?” Mom was standing with her back to me working a pound of ground beef into patties.