The Christmas Train by Rexanne Becnel Page B

the wide station hall. “No.”
    â€œNo? None at all?”
    â€œYou are too young to understand.” The old woman shook her head. “It was very different then. When I leave my village I am only fifteen. And then after the war, I leave Germany and I never go back.” She rubbed absently at her chest. “And then I work in Amsterdam until I meet my Paul and we get married and we come to America and have Paulie. I make new friends. Good friends. And so will you.”
    Anna digested that for a moment. “What about Karl?”
    â€œKarl?” She gave Anna a hard look. “What about him?”
    Anna hesitated. “He’s your brother, right?”
    â€œJa.”
    â€œWell, does he have old friends from Germany?”
    An odd expression came over the old woman’s face, a blankness, like a fog floating up and circling around her. It made Anna nervous. Why did talking about Karl always make Miss Eva get that confused look in her eyes? That lost, panicky look?
    â€œKarl,” Miss Eva began, only to drift away without finishing her thought. Then she began to cry, a slow, silent weeping as she stared off at nothing.
    Anna’s hands tightened on the chair arms. Miss Eva was sad, and Anna didn’t know how to make her not sad.
    Miss Eva took a heavy breath and blew it out. She fumbled in her pocket before drawing out a handkerchief with yellow embroidered trim and blotting her eyes. “Karl said the Madman wanted to change Germany, and the people, also, mostly by using fear. He warned us, though, that the fear would turn the people mad, too. Mad with hate.”
    She paused to take a steadying breath, then studied Anna with sad eyes. “They say we must never forget. But I think it is better that children like you never have to know about such madness.”
    â€œNana Rose told me not to look at the TV about the airplanes that crashed into those buildings. She didn’t want any children to see. And the teachers, too, they didn’t want to talk about it at first. But us kids, we talked about it anyway. Allison Green said her uncle was in one of those buildings, and her cousins don’t have a daddy anymore.”
    Miss Eva stared up at the television mounted on a shelf near the ceiling. “ Ja , the TV tells everything these days. We don’t have the TV when I am a girl, so at first we don’t know anything that goes on outside our village. But then we start to know things. Bad things. Even then, though, we don’t know the worst things. And always we hope and pray. Oh, how much we pray that it will get better. That it will be over and there will be no more war. That Karl und Papa will come home to us.”
    â€œBut they never came back?” Anna asked, her voice small, like when she whispered to Nana Rose in church. She was afraid of Miss Eva’s answer even though she already knew what it would be.
    â€œ Nein , they never come back. Things are not right anymore. First comes the Mischlinge signs against the poor Jews. Oh, it was very bad. Very bad. But it gets worse. The Nacht und Nebel comes, the night and fog, where people are taken away and we don’t know where or why. So much fear and suspicion. Soon there is no food in the shops, only what we grow in our little garden. And even then the soldiers take it like we are the enemy. We are hungry all the time. All the time. And then comes that last winter. I never forget it. I want to forget it,” she added in a lower voice. “But I cannot.”
    She pressed her lips together, breathing heavily through her nose. In the background Christmas music played. Just the music, no words. But Anna knew the words from the Christmas pageant. The fourth-grade chorus had sung “Let It Snow” and now her mind sang the words alongside the music until an announcement broke in, a departure for Chicago and points east.
    Anna propped her elbows on the table, resting her chin in her cupped hands.