I Am Defiance, page 11
We’ve lost in Russia.
What does that mean for Marianne’s papa? Will he come home now? Or is he one of the men who were abandoned and trapped there weeks ago? I cringe to even think it, but he could be a prisoner of war. He could still be in Russia. And I wonder, “Was Hitler captured?”
Papa laughs. It’s not a funny ha-ha laugh, but one that’s more sarcastic. “Hitler isn’t anywhere near Russia. He doesn’t fight. His air raid shelter has a theater, for goodness’ sake.”
How nice for him. Fury builds within me. Hitler proclaimed he’d fight until the last man. And he nearly did. Except Hitler stopped fighting. He abandoned his men. From the safety of his hidey-hole, Hitler threw up his hands and he chose to leave his remaining men to die in Russia.
The White Rose has been right all along.
I swallow, but the lump in my throat feels larger than Russia.
And now I dread seeing my best friend even more. Fortunately, I don’t have a JM event for another two days.
The morning of, I drag my feet on the way to school. Papa and Angelika are ahead of me. I kick pebbles as I go, my head down—and walk straight into Papa’s backside.
Papa and Angelika have stopped. Everyone has. There’s a sea of people, all gawking at something on a brick wall. What that is, I have to elbow myself between Papa and Angelika to find out.
Then my mouth drops open.
“Down with Hitler,” I read aloud. Papa shushes me. I slap a hand over my mouth. He shakes his head, as if he’s disgusted by the big, bold letters in black tar. Even though he’s not.
I lean forward, looking down the avenue. Those three words are repeated again and again and again. My God, it looks like it’s repeated a hundred times, all the way down the wall.
I overhear a whisper: “The Kittelbach Pirates, you think?”
It makes sense, at first blush. Everyone knows about the Kittelbach Pirates. As the stories go, the kids are between my age and Angelika’s. They hang out, listen to jazz and dance the swing. The girls wear lipstick and paint their nails. They do everything Hitler is against us young people doing. But then they also do stuff like beat up Nazi officials and write graffiti on walls.
Graffiti just like this.
The thing is, the Kittelbach Pirates are up north, not anywhere near us in southern Germany. But the White Rose is here in München. Are they responsible instead?
I look up at Papa, then my sister, prepared to whisper my question, when I see my sister mouthing something to someone.
It’s Sophie, the girl from the protest, even wearing the same hat and scarf.
Sophie subtly shakes her head. She mouths something back to my sister.
I’ve always been horrendous at lip reading. I remember one time during a JM meeting, I frustrated the bejesus out of Marianne when she was trying to tell me something and … none of that is important right now.
Angelika mouths something back, but ever so quietly, she says it, too. Just loud enough for my eyes and ears to make out, “Hans?”
Didn’t Angelika mention Sophie’s brother was named Hans? Is he responsible for this display of anti-Nazism?
Sophie shrugs, but she also raises her brows. Is that a yes or no? I don’t know.
Angelika smiles. Sophie’s mouth turns up ever so slightly in response, that subtle grin remaining on her face as her eyes turn to the graffiti.
Papa tugs on my arm. “Let’s keep going. The Gestapo will be here any minute to ask questions.”
Papa jostles my sister and me forward. Others are walking on, too. Some still stand there, whispering, pointing, covering their mouths in surprise, and shaking their heads in anger.
I wonder if all those who shake their head are really mad. Or do they do it like Papa did—for show?
Another crowd has gathered outside the university.
There’s more graffiti, this time written over the building’s entrance.
But this time it says FREEDOM!
Even if Papa agrees, he’s flustered. His fingers grip into my shoulder. His other hand is on Angelika’s. “We’ll walk you to school today,” he tells me. Papa guides us away. With the recent protest, the ongoing leaflets, and now this graffiti, I’m shocked Papa doesn’t guide us right out of München.
In truth, Papa wants to. He wants us to leave.
“I wrote a letter to Uncle Otto,” Papa tells my sister and me after school. He asked me to come home right after my last class. I skipped today’s JM meeting.
“Uncle Otto?” I ask.
“Yes. I think it’s time for us to leave.”
I glance at the alcove, where he’s been squirreling away money.
“It’s time for us to leave Germany?” Angelika asks. “You want us to go to Uncle Otto’s in Switzerland?”
Papa nods.
I’m in shock. I guessed Papa wanted us out of München, but I assumed we’d go somewhere safer within Germany. Where … I wasn’t sure. I was waiting for Papa to tell us where. But even the idea of leaving München and this apartment and my friends and my life here gives me enough of a heavy heart. I never expected him to say Switzerland.
I have to sit down. But as soon as I do, I realize I’ve picked the “bad news” chair. I stand as quick as I can, as if that’ll make a difference. “Why Switzerland?” I ask. “Why not somewhere else in Germany?” I’ve never left Germany before. Angelika did, when she stayed with Uncle Otto to recover from her polio. But I’m not sure Papa has ever left either.
“Switzerland is a neutral country. They never get involved or take sides in wars. It’s where many refugees go.”
I ask, “Refugees?” while thinking I understand: an evacuee.
“It’s someone who leaves their country to escape something.”
“Like when I was sick,” Angelika says, her arms crossed and all her weight to her good side.
“And now to escape Hitler,” I say, sadness in my voice.
“Yes, but we’re not going anywhere yet,” Papa says. “Soon. After arrangements are made. Ever since that last leaflet, I’ve been thinking about where we could go to disassociate from Hitler and keep our family safe. Hopefully Uncle Otto understands my letter. I told him I was giving our RSVP to his wedding.”
“But he’s not getting married,” I say.
“No.”
Oh. Papa’s scared someone will read the mail.
“You don’t think they’d let us leave otherwise?” I ask.
He nods. “It’d be a very quick way to brand us as traitors.”
And not supportive of Hitler.
“This goes without saying,” Papa begins, “but I’ll say it anyway. No one can know our plans. Understood?”
I’ve never understood so much before in my life.
* * *
I’m running late. I’m home for lunch when I realize I never packed a neckerchief for my JM meeting after school. I’d skip it if a) I hadn’t already skipped one recently—I don’t want people to start noticing and become suspicious of where my loyalties lie—and b) it meant I could simply come home after school. But now that Papa is in full-blown Papa Bear mode, he wants me to come to his boring office after school on the days I don’t have a JM event, which has been the past two days.
So I’ll go to my meeting. So I’ll see Marianne. She still hasn’t spoken to me. As far as I know, she still hasn’t spoken about me either.
But first, my neckerchief. I search my room. I look inside my shirts, in case it got stuck there in the wash. In the past, I’ve found socks and underwear that way, but I have no such luck today for my neckerchief. I move on to Angelika’s drawers—and victory—that’s where I find my neckerchief, stuck between two of her folded shirts. I grab it and push her drawer closed. In a heartbeat, I leap to catch one of the potted plants teetering on the edge of her dresser.
I already imagine the mess of dirt and petals on the floor. Instead, the pot lands in my hands. I’m shaking my head at my clumsiness when I notice something strange, something peeking out from the disrupted soil.
I push aside more of the dirt. Eyes scrunched in confusion, I pull free a strip of stamps. When I unfold it, it becomes a sheet of rows and rows of stamps. Fifty of them.
My goose bumps are back.
Why does my sister need fifty stamps?
Better question: Why does my sister need to hide fifty stamps?
I return to school after my lunch break, neckerchief found, but for the remainder of my classes, all I can think about are those hidden stamps.
Angelika isn’t much for sending letters.
No one in our family is.
Letters are necessities, like when Angelika was in Ulm or how Papa reached out to Uncle Otto.
But fifty stamps?
I weave in and out of people on the sidewalk, toward the JM clubhouse.
It’d take Angelika fifty years to use all those stamps. Unless she wasn’t the one using them. Unless she bought them for someone else. Unless she was hiding them until those somebodies were ready to use them. The someone and somebodies don’t take much brainpower to figure out, but I won’t allow myself to fully think it.
Because fully thinking that my sister is in cahoots with the …
Angelika promised she wouldn’t get involved in more protests.
She promised she’d be more careful.
For my sister, did careful simply mean being better at hiding what she was doing?
In my anger I brush by a gentleman on the sidewalk, then mumble my apologies.
It’s not as if Angelika has been discreet about Sophie. Every night at supper it’s Sophie this and Sophie that.
Sophie is Angelika’s new Johanna. And while I’m happy my sister has a best friend to laugh with again, I wish it was a girl whose papa wasn’t in jail, who didn’t openly protest along the boulevard, who didn’t smile at graffiti denouncing Hitler, who isn’t part of the White Rose.
There, I thought it.
Sophie has her hand in those leaflets. I just have a feeling.
So does her brother Hans. And I also realize something about the timing of those leaflets. They stopped when Hans left for Russia, then resumed again when he and Sophie were back at the university. Sophie and Hans are the White Rose, or they’re at least part of it.
But the question is … is my sister involved, beyond buying stamps?
Even that is dangerous. “Take her away” or “put her in prison” dangerous.
None of it makes me feel good. My feet hit harder than usual on the sidewalk as I swing open the door of my JM clubhouse.
I’m not in the mood to be here. I’m not in the mood to be home either. I’d probably look daggers at my sister. I’m certainly not in the mood for Marianne’s and Rita’s never-ending cold shoulders.
It’s why I’m so shocked when Marianne approaches me.
“Hi,” she says. Then her head tilts. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Saying it makes me feel even worse. Because I’m not fine. And I should be able to tell my best friend that my papa wants us to leave Germany or that I found stamps in my sister’s room—and know that she won’t tell a soul.
What I really want to do is ask if she’s told a soul about us receiving the leaflets … that Angelika may have a hand in. I can’t help it; my teeth grind.
“You don’t look fine,” Marianne says.
I answer with, “How are you?”
“Good. Russia is over so my papa should be coming home soon. In fact, it’s why I wanted to talk to you. I can’t find my necklace he gave me. You know, the one with the horseshoe.”
I hope so—about her papa coming home. But then that’s why she’s talking to me: because she needs something. I know the pendant. “I’ll look for it tonight—”
Elisabeth enters the room and Marianne reacts. I once watched a toad jump down by the river. The toad began still, completely motionless. I wasn’t sure it was ever going to move. I blinked. Then—bang—it was gone. It jumped so suddenly and went so far that my eyes lost track of it. It was dizzying.
That’s Marianne.
She left like a toad.
Somehow she’s well across the room. And when it comes time to take our seats, she chooses Adelita’s old chair once again. I’m next to Rita, not as if she’ll talk to me.
But then she does.
“Thank you,” she says.
“Thank me?” I say in surprise.
She whispers, “For your advice. For months I felt like”—she nods toward the others in our circle of chairs—“have been watching me. Questioning me. But they don’t anymore now that …”
That she lied about her family receiving the last White Rose leaflet.
I smile at her. “Good.”
She grins back.
Who’s not smiling at me is the enormous portrait of Hitler on the wood-paneled wall. I get the chills.
“Is everything okay?” Rita whispers.
That’s a loaded question. “Yeah.”
“I mean,” she says, and she mouths the next part, “with Marianne.”
Tears prick my eyes. “I don’t know.”
Elisabeth claps for everyone to quiet down, and every girl reacts by sitting properly. Knees together. Backs straight. Hands in our laps. Elisabeth’s gaze lingers on me a moment longer than usual and my armpits grow sweaty.
At the end of the meeting, I say my goodbyes to Rita and the other girls, minus Marianne. It’s apparently only okay to talk to me when she wants something.
On my way home, pettiness fills me, and I tell myself I’m not going to look for her horseshoe. But I know I will, and when I get home, I ask Papa, “Have you seen Marianne’s necklace? The pendant is a horseshoe.”
“No. She spoke to you?”
I nod.
“Do you think she’s spoken to others?”
He means about me. I shrug. I’m not certain. But I remember Elisabeth’s prolonged look. And Marianne has made it clear, with her toad-like disappearance and her permanent new chair, she doesn’t want to be associated with me.
“Okay,” Papa says, the little crease between his eyebrows lingering.
I begin my search for the stupid necklace. I twist my lips and look between the couch cushions. I check the bathroom, under my bed, behind my dresser. Tigerlily is on my heels the entire time. I stop. She stops, and then weaves between my legs.
The only place left to look is my sister’s room.
It makes my heart beat faster. It shouldn’t. Those stamps can’t hurt me. They won’t suddenly grow arms, legs, and teeth and attack me. They still make me nervous, though.
“We can do this, Tigerlily,” I whisper, and scoop her up.
I go in. I start with Angelika’s bed, placing Tigerlily there. She deems it her new nap spot. The horseshoe isn’t there. It’s not anywhere I look. But of course, I haven’t gone near the dresser. I approach slowly, shaking my head at myself for acting so silly.
Just check the drawers and leave, I tell myself.
I begin checking, but my eyes drift up to the pot. As much as I don’t want to see the stamps, it’s impossible not to lean onto my tiptoes and peek inside.
Yet I don’t see the paper sticking out like I did before.
The soil has fingerprints in it, as if pressed down.
I look at Tigerlily. She’s mid-yawn. I imagine she’s telling me, “Angelika did it.”
I rub my lips together, deliberating, questioning, then I give a testing poke with my finger. Feels normal to me. I poke again. I wiggle my finger. Turning the pot, I prod in other spots.
By the time I’m done, my calves are burning and the back of my neck prickles.
The stamps have vanished.
They were here merely hours ago. Now all fifty stamps are gone.
Did Angelika take them because of me? I put them back as best I could, but could she tell I found them? Or is it simply time to use them?
“Papa!” I yell, wiping my hand against my shirt as I leave my sister’s room. I find him in the kitchen, stirring a pot.
“Find Marianne’s necklace?”
“Papa,” I say, “where’s Angelika?”
“I told her I’d handle supper tonight. She rushed in earlier, then left again lickety-split.”
“Where’d she go?”
“Study group. Why, do you need her?”
No, I don’t need her. But I’m afraid somebody else might.
It’s nearly curfew and Angelika isn’t home.
Before I know it, it’s after Hitler’s curfew and Angelika isn’t home.
Why isn’t Angelika home?
If the apartment weren’t so quiet, I’d pace a path into my bedroom. But my footsteps would echo, so I sit on my bed and bounce my knee instead. I know one thing for sure: Angelika is not being careful. She is out there doing … I don’t know what. Stamping leaflets? Writing them? Whatever she’s doing can put her at risk. She could be arrested. Her secret—that the whole family has guarded for so long—could be discovered.
I drop my head into my hands—and squeeze.
The apartment’s door clicks open and creaks closed.
My sister’s trying to be quiet, but she’s tired. I can tell by how her left footfall is louder than her right.
I stand to confront her. To say what, I don’t know either. But then I hear Papa’s bedroom door, his footsteps, then hushed words.
Their footsteps take them toward the kitchen.
I don’t dare move, but I listen. I close my eyes, thinking that’ll help me hear, but it doesn’t. Their words are too quiet.
Until their footsteps come closer again, this time louder. Angelika’s angry. Her voice also grows closer, clearer.
“So you’re telling me I can’t be her friend?”
“No,” Papa whispers. “I never said that. I only said that she’s older than you. She’s an adult. Hans even more so.”
“She’s twenty-one. You act like she’s ancient.”
“You still have teen attached to your age. Sophie does not.”
“Barely,” Angelika hisses.
“It’s there, my petunia.”
“Don’t.” It’s all my sister says, accented by the slam of her door. I stand halfway between my door and my bed, hearing the boom of her door echo in my mind.
