Wanda knew exactly what would come next. As indeed it did.
“I only want what’s best for you, child,” Ruth said, her voice suddenly softer. “I can just imagine how Marie filled your head with all sorts of romantic nonsense about Thuringia, about the pine trees rustling in the forests and the brooks babbling over the rocks and birdsong everywhere. But the truth’s quite different; cramped little homes that lose their roof tiles in winter, children who have to work alongside their parents from morning till night for a few moldy potatoes and maybe a scrap of ham to go with it. After our father died, we three girls didn’t even know how we would afford the wood for the stove that winter! Oh, we were young and slim and pretty, but we didn’t owe our trim figures to corsets or tailored dresses. Why do you think thousands of Germans emigrate every year? Why did Steven’s family emigrate? Not because life in the old country is so wonderful! Forget Lauscha. You don’t belong there any more than I do.” She wanted to stroke Wanda’s arm but her daughter pulled away.
“And so you want me to deny my roots, just the way you did?” she blazed back at her mother. “We speak a little German from time to time and that seems to be enough for you. Why do we never eat German food at home? And why do we celebrate Thanksgiving but never the harvest festival?”
Her mother was at a loss for words. Instead of even trying to answer she changed the subject just as she always did when she didn’t like the turn a conversation was taking.
“What would you say to starting tennis lessons this fall? I hear that more and more young ladies are taking it up, and the white outfits are most attractive. Or if you like, you could go riding with your cousin Dorothy. She always says that a gallop through the park first thing in the morning is the finest pastime you can imagine.”
Wanda waved the suggestions away. Tennis and riding—next her mother would suggest that she join a church choir.
Up on the roof she had to squint as the sun sank down behind the buildings across the avenue. It had been a cool day with heavy rain in the morning, and the evening was noticeably cold. Wanda shivered as she headed for her favorite spot by the chimney. It wouldn’t be long before it got too windy and cold to come up here.
A pair of pigeons nesting by the chimney cooed curiously at her approach. Wanda shooed them away. There were no crumbs of dark rye bread for them today, no tales of the old German homeland. A tear ran down her cheek. She hadn’t realized she was crying.
She missed Marie so much!
“What do I do now?” she whispered as the pigeons strutted off through a puddle.
“Everybody has a mission in life,” Marie had told her. “You just have to know what it is. And that’s true for you too.” It had sounded so true when she said it.
Wanda ran her hand over the slab of cold stone where she sat. Only a week ago this stone had been warm, and Marie had been sitting there with her, a sketchpad on her knee. Despite Wanda’s protests Marie had insisted on drawing her portrait. “Just like in the old days when you were only a babe in arms. You’d hardly started crawling. I drew so many pictures of you in those days that your mother could practically have wallpapered the place with them,” Marie had said, laughing. Wanda also had laughed when she replied that Ruth probably wouldn’t want to be reminded of that these days. It had been one of those moments when everything seemed easy and uncomplicated. Once Marie had finished the portrait, she shut her sketchpad so carefully that anyone would have thought the sheets were made of gold leaf. “This way I can take something of you with me,” she whispered softly. And the carefree moment had passed.
It had been their last conversation before she left.
Wanda hadn’t let Marie go so easily. She had burst into tears, and she had said some harsh words. She accused her aunt of leaving her in the lurch, and Marie had been visibly hurt by the charge, nearly in tears herself.
“I’m sorry if that’s the way you see it,” she had replied. “But there’s nothing more I can do for you. Not even if I stayed a couple of weeks longer. You have to find out for yourself what you will do with your life.” That was when she had told Wanda that everybody had a mission.
Wanda wanted so much to believe her, but instead she had replied, “What if I’m the sorry exception? What if the Lord made a completely useless human being when he made me? You have to admit that’s how it looks.”
Marie smiled. “How impatient you are! Perhaps the dear Lord decided he didn’t want to make things quite so easy for you as he does for other women. Otherwise he’d have made Harold propose to you a while back, wouldn’t he now? Then before you knew where you were, you’d be a married woman with a baby on your lap.”