Henri

The one thing Papa forgot to do that afternoon, after sending us to our rooms, was to lock our doors behind us. Oh, Hannah, don’t look so shocked. We were locked in our rooms whenever we pressed too many of our parents’ buttons. Of course, it wouldn’t have worked now, but back then that was the only way to go – especially when there you pit two parents against four pre-adolescent sons and one wiry daughter.

Anyway, there we were. Sulking in our rooms because that’s what you do when you’re a child and you don’t get your way, when suddenly, the realization dawns on me and my brother, both. Papa hadn’t followed us to our rooms, and we hadn’t heard the click the lock makes as it slides home. It was just a bother, though, that we were hit with this epiphany at the exact same time because the second I flung my door open to try it, Freidrich – whose room was incidentally right across from my own in the hallway – opened his.

We stood there for a few minutes, trying to weigh out the pros and cons in our head. To take revenge or flee – we both seemed to think. The sound of Fraulein Hadgar’s telltale heels on the wooden staircase made our minds up for us. In one of those rare moments that my brother and I actually saw eye to eye on a matter, we reached for our overcoats, outside shoes and headed for the closest window at the end of the hallway. It was one of those windows, you know, the kind that you can open out into the street. This particular window had the luck to open out into one the many backstreets that threaded through Leipzigerstraße and snaked its’ way into the heart of Berlin.

Freidrich, being taller than I was, reached the casement seconds before I did. He slid the latch open, glanced once at me and hissed a quick ‘hurry up!’ before pushing the glass out further. I grinned at him and clambered over onto the small balcony outside before sidling up against the brick wall. There was a specific way you had to jump off it, see, or you’d end up as flat as an omelette on the pavement down below. I made the landing perfectly – practice had to count for something – and Freidrich came after me. We stood there for a second, waiting for any sound that would tell us our escape had been found out, but heard nothing. There were only the honking car horns in the distance, some kids shouting and a gramophone playing a few houses away. We were safe!

My brother brushed his hand roughly through my hair – to annoy me, I knew – and tried to push me to the ground. He did that whenever he set out to challenge either one of the rest of us to a foot race. I shoved him off of me and ran towards the Mullers home. I didn’t know where Freidrich went to but he made no move to follow me.

It wasn’t until I had reached main road that connected our homes that I remembered my hair. There weren’t many blonde haired children where we lived, then Hannah, because Leipzigerstraße was a Jewish neighbourhood and while side curls and beards were not a common occurrence, it was still quite a homogenous community. This was also one of the reasons I found Papa’s announcement about the Mullers’ being replaced by a non-Jewish family so surprising. Leipzigerstraße didn’t welcome change as much as I wished it would.

So I thought quick. I pulled out the bonnet Mama always made me keep in my coat pocket and folded my offending hair up beneath it. It was only after that, that I began on my walk. It was lovely being out, Hannah. Oh the sweetness of feeling the wind on your face, the slight bite of the cold – pure heaven. I shut my eyes – like you always do when you’re about to dig into your ice cream – and I let it all just encompass me.

It was powerful, heady and made my spirit want to break away from my body and fly. That doesn’t make much sense, I know my sweet, but feelings, my Maman always told me, were never to be thought over or rationalized. You just felt what you felt and that was that.

I was busy, feeling these things, when a rough body knocked into me. The force flew me to the paved ground and left me gasping for breath. It was my brother, I thought immediately. I knew Freidrich had waited for an unguarded moment before striking. Furiously, I glared up at the shape above me. It was a boy – Hannah, a few years older than I was, with hair as fair as the sun, and eyes as blue as the sky. He was tall, quite skinny, but very handsome. I didn’t care about any of that though, because who was he to disturb my happy moment?

“I’m so, so sorry!” he said almost instantly. Quickly, he reached down and helped me to my feet. “I didn’t see you walking. It was my fault. Please pardon my clumsiness.”

I just blinked at him. I’d never seen him before, Hannah-Belle, and so I found him strange. There were not many children in our street, so it was easy to tell the visitors from the ones who lived there. That boy who stood before me, was definitely a visitor.

Brushing the dust off of my palms, I watched him carefully. He had a long face, a dimpled chin and lashes just a shade darker than his hair.

“Oh, you’ve lost your bonnet!” he yelped suddenly, and it was only then that I realized that I had. Lost my bonnet, that was. It had been knocked right off when I fell.

It was lying just a few feet away from where we stood. Before I could make any move to retrieve it though, this boy was running after it, dusting the grit off of the lace and handing it back to me. I stared at the offending accessory for a moment, glanced once back up at him and pulled the bonnet out of his hand.

His mouth fell open. “Well, a simple thank you would suffice.”

Glaring at the boy, I quickly put the bonnet back on my head and stomped away. He yelled after me. “You’re welcome anyway, mute girl.”

I turned, poked my tongue out at the child and carried on my way.