If You Move Away

The following is an excerpt of a short story from the collection The Other Place ©Regine Haensel. More excerpts from the collection will be available on this blog each Sunday this month.

It was a Saturday in 1955 when Lotte and I shared one of the wooden benches by the sandbox in front of the white stucco apartment building in Kiel, Germany. We talked about Das Doppelte Lottchen, a film neither of us had seen, but wanted to. I had the book from my Tante Dorothea, and I told Lotte about the black and white pictures and drawings.

          “Can I come look at it?” Lotte asked.

          “Later,” I said, knowing Mutti and Opa were arguing.

          Lotte had the same names as one of the twins in the story. The other was Luise, and I said I wished my name was Luise so that we could be like those girls. Two girls, separated as babies when their parents divorced, met by accident at a summer vacation home for girls, and were able to bring their parents back together.

          “My Papa is dead,” Lotte said, “and yours has just gone away for a while. And we have different Mutti’s. That’s not the same.”

          I sighed. Sometimes Lotte could be a dumm-kopf. “But I’m going away, too,” I said. “Mutti and I are going where my Papa is. “I swallowed a lump in my throat. What if I never saw Lotte again?”

          Lotte stared at me for a minute or two with her eyes scrunched up as if the sun was too bright and she couldn’t see very well. Then she jumped from the bench and stood with hands on hips, just the way I’d once seen her Mutti stand when she was scolding one of the bigger boys for throwing sand.

          “If you move away,” Lotte said, “I won’t like you anymore.”

          It seemed that a cloud had slipped in front of the sun and meant to stick there. All of the things I’d been trying not to think about tangled and made a knot in my head. I wanted to explain things to Lotte, in words slow and clear, but how could I when I didn’t understand myself? Like in the fairy tales where a wicked stepmother or a witch came and made things hard for children in the family, it wasn’t fair! I stood in front of Lotte, holding my hands in fists at my sides so that I wouldn’t hit my best friend. Lotte glared and suddenly I felt tears prick the corners of my eyes. I blinked hard. Why couldn’t Lotte see that if your family was leaving you had to go with them?

          “I don’t care if you don’t like me,” I said through clenched teeth.

 

The short story collection The Other Place is available through the Saskatchewan Library system, for purchase from SaskBooks, Other Place, The (skbooks.com), or from booksserimuse@gmail.com