Why Won't She Talk About It?

Why Won’t

She

Talk About It?

J. Lybrand Kuhn

Copyright © 2018 J. Lybrand Kuhn.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-8233-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-8232-3 (e)

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 03/23/2018

For my family

Who might want to talk about it

Self-preservation is the first principle of our nature.

Alexander Hamilton

Introduction

Whenever I asked my Mother about her childhood, her answer was, I don’t want to talk about it. My questions became infrequent as I grew up but I always wondered what it was she wouldn’t tell me. My curiosity continued and I’ve since pieced her story together. It’s about immigration, adoption, disease, rejection, and the will to survive. And, through it all, the search for unconditional love. Her journey spanned decades and two continents. It stretched from Post World War I Germany to the Roaring Twenties in Texas, just before the stock market crash, and into the 1940’s. It’s a search for love.

Since my Mother wouldn’t talk about it I have been asking questions, listening, and researching my Mother’s past for the last decade. I traveled to Texas, Switzerland, and Germany to fill in some of the missing pieces, and then spent lots of time writing it all down. The places and the families in my Mother’s story are real. The major events in this book, based on her life, happened. The day to day life is mostly fiction, added to make it a story, not just a list of facts about her. I created and imagined her life and her feelings as she negotiated the unwanted changes.

Her birth name was Isolde Louise Reichel. I wanted to know her as Isolde, the person she was before she became a wife and a Mother of three demanding children. A person who adapted, as many of us must, in this crazy journey called life.

Chapter 1

San Angelo Sanatorium 1941

My eyes gaze beyond the hard wind blowing the branches as it often does in West Texas. Parched pecan trees sway along the dirt driveway as a regiment of nuts dive bomb the ground below, the ping of their hard shells punctuating my thoughts. My sour mood matches the drab walls of this small, spare room; the absence of color a reminder of my life in this place.

Janey’s deep cough shakes me into the present. My roommate’s prognosis is grim. Sleeping has become Janey’s avocation and she tosses the days and nights away, struggling to a sitting position only when the nurse comes into our room urging her to eat her fruit, swallow her oatmeal. I stash extra sugar and cinnamon into my pockets when I leave the dining room, hoping it will help stimulate her appetite.

We’ve been sharing this Godforsaken room for almost five months while the hours stretch their way across each day. When I first arrived in January, a month after my twenty-first birthday, the doctors decided to do surgery to collapse my diseased lung, let it rest, and pump air into the pleura cavity. It has been painful, and a success, according to what the medical staff tells me, and all I need to do now is rest. I’ve survived and had lots of practice swallowing my coughs and hiding the splotches of blood on my pillow.

There’s a waiting list to get into this place. I know the only way out before the end of 1941 is to convince the doctors that I am no longer contagious. I am a survivor. Always have been. But my roommate’s downturn terrifies me. I lay against my pillow, exhaustion drifting through me as memories of what I want to forget come unbidden.

Chapter 2

Oelsa, Germany October 1928

I wiped the trickle of blood from the corner of Father’s mouth before attempting to feed him a spoonful of watery potato soup. He was too weak to yell at me anymore. Mother said it wouldn’t be long until the angels took him. I didn’t believe that. I’d never seen an angel and didn’t expect to.

My Father had been sick for ten years, making his way back home after the Great War ended. Many soldiers didn’t come home but Father did, walking and hitchhiking all the way from somewhere in Russia. Mother had barely recognized him when she opened the door and saw him looking so skinny, so tired. The next year, in 1919, I was born at home. I never knew my Father when he was healthy. It was the consumption that wracked his body.

He didn’t eat the soup and the next week he didn’t wake up. The angels failed to arrive, and Mother wept.

For the funeral, I dressed in big sister Charlotte’s scratchy, hand-me-down wool dress the color of pond scum. Everyone in the village showed up at the big Lutheran church that smelled of daffodils and death. We all took turns looking at Father lying in the oak coffin box Grandpa made. Reinhold Boehle, my Mother’s uncle, sailed all the way from America on a big freighter when he read the telegram that Father was dying. He stood next to Mother in the graveyard with his arm around her shoulders in his fine coat and hat, cashmere scarf, and freshly polished black boots.

I stood next to my Mother and held little Harald’s hand. Charlotte helped Grandpa who leaned against her for support, his carved cane gripped in his hand. Drizzle soaked the day that smelled of wet woolen coats. I had watched them burn up Father in his nice casket behind the church altar and later they put the ashes in a hole half filled with rain water. Mother and Uncle each dropped one of our homegrown roses on the container that held his ashes before some churchmen shoveled mud into the hole. Father and his coughs and bad moods disappeared forever.

I didn’t sleep that night because my belly ached from eating too much apple strudel our neighbor brought over. In the inky darkness I thought of Father’s ashes buried in the muddy hole. Mother and Uncle talked at the kitchen table. I heard her muffled sobs on the other side of the wall.

Reinhold, we’ve suffered. We were so proud of Germany once. Nothing is left from this horrid war but ruined buildings and money that’s worth nothing. So many dead. Or sick. My children are hungry. Grandpa can’t afford to feed us. I don’t sleep at night for worry.

I know, dear. Please don’t cry. I have an idea.

What? What can we do?

You know I own a bakery in America now. We make pastries and many loaves of bread each day. I need more workers to keep up with the demand. Let your daughter Charlotte come and help us out. She’s twelve, old enough to learn a trade and she could live with my family.

Oh no, I couldn’t let her go. She’s the oldest and a big help to me. I would miss her so.

I heard Mother blow her nose and then it was quiet. Minutes passed.

You’d have one less mouth to feed. It wouldn’t be for long, Martha. Surely things will get better here.

I don’t know if I believe that anymore.

Let her come. Maybe in a year, you’ll have a job. You could even come along to America with me and get her settled.

I have no money for such a trip.

Don’t worry, I’ll pay. I want to help you. Your Mother, my dear sister, would want me to do this for you. Say you’ll think about it.

I don’t know…Well, it could be an opportunity for her…

I squirmed in my bed, trying not to wake my sister, or Harald, sound asleep on his palette on the floor. Charlotte going to America? She’d have a hissy fit when she heard about this. Charlotte’s soft snores lulled me to sleep.

Chapter 3

In the end, my Mother agreed to Uncle’s proposal and the days flew by filled with preparations for their voyage. Although Uncle tried to bribe Charlotte with sweets and promises, she pouted and tossed her blonde curls in defiance. Mother tut-tutted through it all as she packed, her coarse, brown hair falling in wisps from her bun when she tried to squeeze another item into the already full trunk.

My job was to watch little Harald who seemed blissfully unaware of anything but his toy soldiers. Grandpa agreed to care for us until Mother returned, but I knew I would really be the one in