Home. Back. Again.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
Sorry.
It was the word of home. Sorry.
He froze, unable to step off the kerb. He didn’t want to go home, not again. Not ever. Not to the house where sorry came every morning with bruises and burns, where sorry followed Mama’s wet hand forced into the sugar bowl and then held under the grill until the popping of skin and the sweet-hot-pink smell made him sick all down himself.
Sorry was followed by more.
More of the same, and always, always the same sad sorry.
Rune rocked on the spot as tears burned his eyes. He pressed his hands to them to stem the flood, but they dripped through his fingers anyway.
‘Mama,’ Lotte snuffled, her thumb in her mouth, Moo Bunny under her arm.
‘One minute,’ Mama said.
‘Mama?’ Lotte said again, but clearer this time, free of the thumb.
‘Not now, Lotte, please,’ Mama said. Then gently to him, ‘Everything will be okay. You’ll see.’
‘It’s just . . . I,’ he said.
‘MA-MA,’ Lotte shouted, and he followed Mama’s gaze to look at Lotte, sitting on the big rucksack. ‘I’VE LOST MY WILLY!’
‘Your what?’
‘My willy, it’s gone,’ she said seriously.
‘You don’t have a willy,’ he said.
‘I do.’
Mama took in a breath that he thought would never end. She bent down to Lotte’s level.
‘Lotte, you are a little girl and little girls don’t have willies. Only boys have a willy.’
‘I had two,’ she said, and Rune smiled as Mama looked up at him for help. He shrugged his shoulders, bemused.
‘But . . .’ Mama started.
‘I do. I know I do. I had two, but now I have only one. It’s glittery.’
‘Your willy is glittery?’ Rune laughed.
‘And pink,’ Lotte wept. ‘With Bear Cares on it.’
Mama was silent for a whole minute and then she sat back on her heels and laughed. A sound that shocked him. He was silenced, awed by Mama. Her face softened, and her laugh was loud, as though it came from deep inside her, a forgotten part, and as her laugh rolled on itself, it caught him up too.
‘Wellies?’ Mama said. ‘Lotte, you . . .’ But she couldn’t get the words out. ‘Wellies,’ she said again.
‘It’s not funny,’ Lotte said.
‘Wellies,’ he said, as their laughter eased, but the word caught on Mama’s laugh and fed his. Laughter, loud and strong, bounced around them. He wanted to keep hold of the sound, to capture it somehow.
‘Look,’ Lotte said, and wiggled her toes.
Mama continued to laugh and hugged Lotte close.
‘I don’t want to go back,’ he cried, and his legs wobbled as he stumbled, cold and hard, onto the pavement.
She helped him up and pulled him close.
‘We’re not going back,’ she said, and looked directly at him.
He noticed she hadn’t promised.
‘But what about my willy?’ Lotte bawled.
‘First thing we will do is find some . . . shoes,’ Mama said, pronouncing the word ‘shoes’ carefully.
‘We’re not going back for it?’ he asked.
‘We’re not going back for anything,’ she said decisively and walked to the front of the taxi queue.
NOW
TUESDAY 9TH NOVEMBER 1999
SCHICKSALSTAG – DAY OF FATE
LOTTE
Joann’s tiny blue car smelled like bubblegum, syrupy and pretend-sweet. Lotte had to put her bag, with the shoebox-that-was-her-treasure-box inside, on the back seat with Roo as she couldn’t fold herself small enough to fit everything on her lap. She buckled up as Joann went whizzing off, holding on to her seat with sweaty palms.
Roo said nothing. She knew he was busy in his own head and so she didn’t turn around.
At the first set of traffic lights, Joann pulled in and got out with a turquoise purse in her hand. Lotte watched her totter to the roadside café. On her return, she had a cup and three brown paper bags. She handed everything to Lotte before taking the cup back, pulling off the lid and blowing on the coffee.
‘There’s Schneckennudeln for you both,’ she said, indicating the bags. Lotte passed one back to Roo, who folded it over and placed it on the floor by his feet.
Lotte could almost taste the coffee and cinnamon pastry as the smells filled the car. The world blurred around her as she nibbled on the Schneckennudeln. The raw spice of the cinnamon hardened coarse on her tongue. She closed her eyes.
She was standing on a chair against a kitchen worktop; she was cold and her hands were in a bowl of coarse mashed potato and quark cheese. Quarkkäulchen. A word she hadn’t heard for years, and as she tried to think, to pry further into the memory, it dissolved in a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar.
Tears pricked at the back of her eyes, and the pastry turned to ash in her mouth. She was remembering. But what?
She looked at the woman beside her and wondered if this was how Mama had been, or what Lotte was supposed to become.
Joann was a puffball blonde, full of curls and baby-pink smiles. Even sitting next to Joann made Lotte feel overgrown, as though she had morphed into twice her normal size. Standing next to each other, Joann was of a similar height to Lotte, but she had such a small frame that Lotte felt like a colossal dinosaur, able to bend its long neck at a moment’s notice and bite off the tiny Barbie’s head.
She placed the nibbled pastry back in the bag.
She wanted to know Mama, really know her.
She tried to catch Roo’s eye, but he was looking out the window. He was all alone where he was. It made her feel empty just watching him. Maybe putting Mama’s words back together would bring Roo closer to her; if she remembered Mama too, maybe he would feel less alone.
Joann turned up the volume on the radio and David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ joined them in the car. When Joann started to sing I, I can remember. Standing by the wall, Lotte passed her the paper bag with the pastry inside. Joann put the coffee in the holder between them, and started to eat, leaving Bowie to sing solo: We can be heroes, just for one day.
The news came next, and Lotte listened.
The anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall was the news; there was a special feature on how East and West had woven back together the divide created by the wall. As the news droned on in a monotone, Joann asked questions about school. Now that food and drink had been consumed, it seemed that Joann wanted to talk.
Lotte ignored her.
Roo ignored her too.
‘Ten years on,’ the newsreader said, in a tinny, nasal voice, ‘the Stasi past is still very much alive.’
Joann started humming ‘Heroes’ again, not in a gentle hum but in a ‘DooDoDoDooodoooo’ way.
Lotte looked at the tiny dials and orange backlight of the radio as though staring at it would enable her to hear the music better.
‘Known collectively as The Puzzle Women, they sit in the Stasi’s headquarters and put together the shredded files the Stasi couldn’t burn or pulp.’
Lotte turned the dial and the newsreader’s voice disappeared as she tuned the frequency instead of the volume.
Joann protested.