Under the Same Blue Sky (5 page)

He—this man, my uncle, my father—walked slowly to the door and turned the “Open” sign to “Closed.” Then he put his arm lightly on my shoulder and led me to his desk. “Yes, Hazel, you were that baby.”

“So I wasn’t born in Heidelberg? It was in New Jersey, to Margit Brandt. Why didn’t she keep me? And why didn’t you tell me, all this time?”

His hand hovered over a hinge, touched it, turned it, and moved it back. When he finally looked up, the slightest shift of face and voice announced that we would now speak as adults. “Sit down, Hazel.” He pointed to the stool that once was my high perch. “I knew you’d find
out someday. But we hoped it would be later, when you’re settled. So it’s now.”

“Yes. It’s now.”

He took a breath. “Katarina’s sister Margit came to America first. She was younger than Katarina, and her parents wanted her to wait so we could all go together, but she insisted. She was unhappy in Heidelberg and there was someone in New Jersey who’d sponsor her, a woman named Anna. She said New Jersey was the place for her, in a town called Dogwood.”

“But my mo— Margit wasn’t happy there, either.”

“No. That’s what worried Katrina, that she couldn’t be happy.”

“And my father?”

“I never saw him. I understood that he was German. They worked together in Dogwood, but he left before you were born.”

“And Margit wasn’t happy with me.”

“I don’t know why. She met us in New York when we arrived. She brought you with her and we went to a restaurant. Everything you did annoyed her. And you were so dear. Anyone would have wanted you, but Margit was sure she’d be happier in a big city.”

“Without me?”

He pushed the hinge away. “Yes. In fact, she’d already moved to New York and left you behind in Dogwood. When she knew we were coming, she went back to get you and a little bundle of clothes. She’d even had someone make a false birth certificate naming us as your parents. When I said we’d be your family, you—” His voice caught. “You said ‘good.’ So we took you on the train with us to Pittsburgh. We changed your name to Hazel, and you seemed to like that. You never spoke of Margit again. You were so little that we thought, we hoped, you’d forget her. We loved you. It all seemed so simple.”

“What about Margit after she gave me away?”

“A few months later, we got a telegram that Margit had died.”

“How?”

“We don’t know. We wrote, but we never got an answer.”

There wasn’t much sorrow in me for her death. As mother or aunt, Margit Brandt had been less real than the men in scarlet jackets. The new grief was that she’d borne me, known me, and chose New York over me. The “who” I used to be—the natural daughter of Johannes and Katarina Renner—didn’t exist. The “who” I truly was had been created in a New York restaurant by a forged certificate. “You never told me.”

This man moving a hinge back and forth was my uncle. Is that what I should call him? He brushed back sandy hair, now tinged with silver. “Katarina made me promise I wouldn’t. Hazel, a man’s vows to his wife can’t be broken. You didn’t seem to remember Margit or mourn her. We never wanted you to feel abandoned. Perhaps we made a terrible mistake. It’s been a weight on me. Often I lie in bed wondering if we’d hurt you. We never wanted to do that. I’m actually glad you know the truth now. Were we wrong? Can you forgive us?”

The blue eyes turned to mine, a warmer blue than any sky or sea. I’ve loved that blue all my life. Johannes and Katarina Renner had lied; this much was true. Yet it was equally true that they chose me and loved me from the first. And I loved them. These three truths clashed like cymbals. With the fixity of purpose that defined their lives, they’d kept faith with their secret until today’s rain washed it out. Margit Brandt had abandoned me, but here was my father; upstairs was my mother. We would not un-choose each other now, and I could not un-choose my life as Hazel Renner.

My mind jolted to another, more tangible question: “So the grand rooms I remember might be real?”

He shrugged. “We knew Margit worked for a wealthy man, but she never spoke of him, and you were describing a
palace
. How could that be in New Jersey? You might have been dreaming. We couldn’t pretend we’d lived such a life in Germany.”

“You never saw Dogwood?”

“No, we came straight here. Someone there might remember her. You could write, I suppose, and try to find out more.”

“No, not yet.” I didn’t need particulars of how I was objectionable or extraneous, carelessly housed until Margit found a respectable alternative. Men in scarlet jackets didn’t matter now. I had to look to my own future: where Hazel-Hilda would begin the next stage of her life.

My father,
yes, my father,
opened the jar where he kept caramels, inviting little children to choose “the best and juiciest” for themselves. “Now Hazel,” he said, “shall we choose a caramel?”

“I’m too old for that.”

“Are you?” he asked mildly, searching for the biggest, the juiciest caramel and slipping it in my mouth. “Come.” He folded me in his arms. Years ago, in a nameless New York restaurant, an uncle became a father; an aunt became a mother. This was a mystery, dark as the melting caramel. “The rain stopped. You take a walk, Hazel. I have to speak with Katarina.”

I walked for blocks, thinking of New York, of a place called Dogwood, where I wasn’t wanted, and of Galway, where I might be needed. When I came home, anxious eyes studied me. “You heard.”

“Yes, Mother.”

She looked into a bowl of potatoes, squeezing her eyes shut for a minute. “Can you help me with these, Hazel?”

“Yes, Mother.” We peeled a mountain of potatoes. When we finished, we hugged each other, our hands sticky with starch. Yes, here was my home, my family, but Katarina Renner’s nagging fear was mine
as well. Peace might elude me as it had eluded Margit Brandt, always somewhere
over there
. Like her, I’d have to search it out.

I
WROTE TO
Galway for particulars of the post. The matter of Margit had only increased my restlessness on East Ohio Street. Every headline, every casualty report in the
Volksblatt
and editorial in the
Post
blasting the Central Powers’ aggression made me want to leave. In a small town, I’d be plain Hazel Renner, the schoolteacher, not a hyphenated American or a wanderer’s illegitimate offspring. Galway’s people might not have families in Europe writing about the atrocities of war. Children wouldn’t hear these horrors at the dining room table, or reenact them in schoolyards. Boys would farm with their fathers. They wouldn’t be stoning each other.

Two weeks later, I received an offer of a teaching post at sixty dollars a month, including “a small furnished house with a tight roof and abundant wood for winter.” This was exceptional. Most small towns boarded out teachers to the lowest bidder. Some were shunted to unheated rooms barely larger than closets. I’d have space for my art and even paid work in the summer. A local judge needed tutoring for his invalid daughter.

“When would you leave?” my mother asked the carrots she was chopping.

“In early July, for the tutoring.”

“I see. Well then.”

I’d mentioned Galway before, but now my mother’s knife missed the carrots. “Suppose your father chokes again?”

“That only happened once,” he said. “I’ve had my bad-luck rye bread. It sounds like a good post. And it’s not far, is it, Hazel?”

“Just two hours by train.”

“Two hours,” my mother repeated. And then, “Coffee?” So we wouldn’t speak of Galway that evening, or the next day or the next, until Uncle Willy and Tante Elise came on Sunday and my plans were formally announced.

“Well,” said Uncle Willy, “we all left home when we were about Hazel’s age. Now it’s Hazel’s turn. Isn’t that right, Katarina?” No answer.

“Another letter, Willy?” my father asked in the silence, pointing to the white edge of an envelope. Yes, another letter from the front.
Don’t read it,
I wanted to scream, but he did. The poison waves of war talk rolled over us again. Later that evening, my father beat out a new tin: an imagined face of Uncle Willy’s childhood friend, now buried alive in No Man’s Land when a bomb fell beside him.

“We have to distract him, Hazel,” my mother said. We did, gathering commissions from friends and neighbors for tins of peaceful scenes and portraits. Within a week we had generated enough work to last the summer. To our delight, my father seemed almost relieved. He bought new tins and in the long June evenings we sketched scenes together while my mother did her baking. She and I were so hopeful.

On an early July morning, my parents took me to Union Station. “I’ll write you this afternoon from my new house,” I promised.

“We’ll visit as soon as you’re settled,” they said.

“I’ll be back for Christmas. Perhaps we’ll have peace then.”

“Peace at Christmastime,” my father said wistfully. “That would be a miracle.” He handed me a neat package. “For your new house.” The keen edge of tins poked through paper wrappings. “Scenes from Germany before the war. But tell people it’s America. That’s safer.” We hugged in public, as we’d never done before, and stood close together until the train came roaring in.

On board, I watched the city’s stain melt into green. In Europe, millions of men were blasting their old world away. Perhaps the shock of bullets fired in Sarajevo would even reach Galway. I’d have to work hard to shore up the blessings of peace there, to keep the boys from digging trenches. I opened my copy of John Dewey’s
The School and Social Progress
, intending to read until my whistle-stop at Galway Station.

But the train was slow and the carriage hot, melting away my confidence.
What was I doing? Was I even remotely ready for a one-room schoolhouse?
In Saturday school, I’d had an easy group of eight-year-olds. In the aisle across from me sat two gangly boys, a head taller than I was, debating the prospects for the World Series. Why would they listen to me? What could I tell them about baseball? I’d never even seen a game. A little girl quarreling with her mother ripped a picture book and had to be chased down the aisle. Could I make her sit still for hours on a wooden bench? A boy stared glumly out the window. Could I capture him with the parts of speech? And how could I possibly fashion lessons that would engage all four at once? “The first months will be difficult,” our teachers had warned. I’d ignored them. Had I even pictured myself alone in a schoolhouse, facing ranks of children, waiting for me to fascinate them?

Sweat coursed under my new shirtwaist. What was my mother thinking with her signs that I’d be extraordinary, that I’d rise above? Did Margit have this same shaking fear when her ship approached New York? Did she want to cry out to the captain: “Stop. Go back. I’m not ready. I made a huge mistake!” But we had reached Galway Station. A squeal of brakes and piercing whistle scorched the air. I gathered my bags and hurried off the train.

CHAPTER 4

Why Not Blue?

H
enry McFee cut me easily from the other passengers because, he said, I “looked like a stranger.” He was a tall, rangy man in his forties with stooped shoulders and a wheezing cough. “I manage the school, fire, and water departments,” he announced. “I hope you like small towns.”

“I do.” If men didn’t pore over newspapers studying casualty counts, I liked small towns. “Thank you for meeting the train, Mr. McFee.”

“Call me Henry. Well, you probably want to see your house. Isn’t fancy, like maybe you had in
Pittsburgh,
but it’s yours.” He helped me into a dusty Model T.

“I’m sure it’s lovely.”

He coughed. “Like I said, it’s yours.” We turned on a dirt road through fields and orchards. He grimaced as we jounced. “Bum shoulder. These ruts make it worse. And today’s worse than usual.” A sharp look declared that he’d come out on this bad day for me. We bounced along until I thought to end the silence by asking what farmers grew in Galway. “Apples, corn, hay, milk, butter, cheese, and eggs for Pittsburgh. Folks have to haul their produce to Galway Station, that’s
outside of town,” he added bitterly. “We were bamboozled by a city slicker who took us for hicks.” He glanced at me, another city slicker. “Can you make sure our kids don’t grow up bamboozled?” We lurched in a rut so deep that I struck my head on the roof. “Damn,” he muttered, rubbing his shoulder.

“I’ll do my best, Henry.”

“We hope so. Well, here’s Galway.” White frame houses hugged Main Street. Marigolds and roses grew in small front yards. White curtains fluttered, never grayed by coal dust. Yes, here was where I wanted to be. Women gathered outside Burnett’s Grocery shouted: “Is that the new schoolmarm, Henry?”

“Sure is,” he shouted back. “Miss Hazel Renner. I’m taking her home.”

“Hope she stays,” a voice trailed after us.

“You have a sweetheart?” Henry asked suddenly.

“No.”

“Good. Mildred Clay up and got married, so we had to let her go. Can’t have married schoolmarms. You know that, don’t you, Hazel?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Folks said I should have seen it coming since he was from around here. They’d been stepping out on the sly. This time we thought we’d try a city teacher. She might concentrate more on the job. But maybe you’ll say the country’s too quiet.”

“Quiet is good,” I said quickly. But where was the country warmth I’d read about in books? Between ruts, Henry studied me like a specimen: city teacher. Still, I was determined to love Galway. On dusty streets, boys chased cart hoops. Others played marbles. Circles of little girls under shade trees were busy with jacks and dolls. I nearly laughed out loud. This could be 1913, an age ago, before the trouble started. Did people even follow the war news here? “You’ve heard about the
Lusitania
?” I hazarded.

“Sure did. Alfred Vanderbilt went down. One less millionaire in the world, I say. As for the rest of them in Europe, let ’em blow their heads off. It’s not our problem. We’re Americans from way back, before the first war.” Henry clarified, as if to a backward schoolchild: “With England, the revolution.”