About Bread, Germany, 1944 I can see myself. A small girl. White vest, black, ballooning shorts, handmade. She stands on a milestone, giving her the height to overlook the wheatfield, trying to see the wave. In the distance a cuckoo calls. The children have finished picking out the potato beetles and their larvae by turning over each leaf, walking slowly through the field where row after row of the potato green thrives, ready for August. I see the girl in front of the big farmer’s wife, her apron a sea of colours, here and there slightly soiled. The woman presses the big round loaf against her swelling belly, cuts it in half and hands the child a slice as long as two of her hands after spreading some lard. The girl is walking home from the bakery. The baker lady cut out two coupons from the ration card. Under the child’s left arm, a big, crusty loaf. With her right hand, and an experienced finger, she hollows the bread through the crust from the exposed end. At this moment she doesn’t think about consequences. They picked up the last wheat from farmer Braun’s field after he finished the harvesting. Mother carried it home in a bag she’d brought. Left the stalks to dry on the windowsill, beat out the grains. She sits, the coffee mill between her legs, her dress sagging between her thighs. If we find enough firewood, we’ll have a small fresh loaf tomorrow. If the train doesn’t get bombed, Father will arrive just in time. From her poetry collection LIFE STUFF, Kelsay Books November 2023. Glamour Aunt Lil wore her black hat at a coquettish angle, its little veil pulled over her forehead. She was Arpège and blood-red lipstick, long, pointed fingernails to match, nylon stockings, everything I wanted to be one day. She bought me ‘Schillerlocken’*. My uncle was a lawyer, a tall tree in a forest of lesser trees. He seldom bent down to my ten-year-old, somewhat undernourished body. With a stentorian voice he hinted that I was making a nuisance of myself just by being a kid. I found out later that he had always thought my mother a creature of a lesser race. She didn’t speak like one is used to hearing. It was whispered behind fluttering hands that Aunt Lil had been a barmaid. Now she was the wife of a professional, was perfume and lace, and a deep-red slit replaced her mouth when she laughed. Which she didn’t do often. The idea that this childless couple would look after me for ten days while my mother went back to East Germany (in danger of being sent to a Russian gulag if caught) to sort out the lives we left behind in a hurry had been hammered out between the women. Uncle Fried looked at me across the huge dining table as he would a fly and frowned. ‘Has nobody shown you how to eat with knife and fork, child?’ My voice not quite steady from fear: ‘We had nothing to cut, Uncle.’ * “Schillerlocken” is a sweet, cone-shaped German pastry. The name was inspired by the typical curly wigs that men, like the German poet Friedrich Schiller, used to wear in the 18th century.” From her poetry collection LIFE STUFF, Kelsay Books November 2023. BIO: A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and eight poetry collections, her work has been widely published in US poetry journals. www.rose-mary-boehm-poet.com
1 Comment
10/17/2024 12:10:24 pm
These illustrate so clearly the suffering of children in times of war...
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