From the heavy second box I take a pair of stiff black lace-ups. When I set them down on the hardwood, the sound gives away their secret—on the heel and toe each is a horseshoe-shaped metal plate, like a tap.
“You see now, Leni?” Oma says.
I don’t see at all. Unless my grandmother is trying to tell me she was in a strange kind of militaristic tap-dancing troupe in 1930-something. My hands run over the material, sensing the different textures, feeling the round edges of the blouse’s buttons. Each one is embossed with letters.
“What’s BDM and JM?” I say. “Your school?”
Instead of answering, she orders me to sit down. “I’m going to tell you something, Leni. Something I have never told anyone. Not even your father.”
“Okay.” The sound of her voice makes me wonder whether I want to know.
Oma relaxes back into the chair, loosens the grip on her cane, and starts to talk.
“I knew a girl when I was young. She wasn’t poor—her family was quite wealthy. Her father worked as a doctor, and her mother taught mathematics in the Gymnasium in my town. And Miriam and I were very good friends.” Oma’s eyes begin to shine. “Very good friends. Like sisters.” Her eyes shine even brighter, and I don’t ask whether she still knows Miriam, or where Miriam is. “My father and my great-uncle made me join the Bund Deutscher M?del as soon as I was old enough. I think you know what that means, yes?”
I work out the German. “Band of German something.”
“In English, they called it the League of German Girls.” She nods toward the clothing laid out on the bed. “My father bought me the uniform and the shoes. I didn’t like it at first, but for my birthday that year he made me a present of the special taps and he sent me to the shoemaker to have them put on. And you know what?”
“No.”
“I liked it. I wore the uniform every day to the activities after school and to the evening meetings. After a while, I started wearing it to school also. As did many of the other girls. Will you get me some juice from the little fridge?”
I find a can of apple juice and pour it out. Oma sips greedily, and her voice takes back some of its smoothness when she resumes talking.
“School became very different. After the uniforms. Girls who used to skip the rope and play other games together began to separate. My father told me I was not to speak to Miriam while I was wearing the BDM clothing.” She laughs the kind of laugh with no humor in it. “It did not matter. Miriam had long stopped speaking to me.”
There’s a long pause.
“What happened to Miriam?” I say when the pause has stretched out until it’s no longer comfortable.
“I don’t know.” Oma’s eyes flick once to the window before coming back to me. “No. I do not know. After, I joined the local Glaube und Sch?nheit group, and I began to study art.” Another laugh. “Faith and beauty. It is funny that none of my art ended up being beautiful.” Her eyes sweep the far wall of the room.
I follow them.
Most of Oma’s paintings are shades of gray and black, abstract depictions of walls and fences, the images of separation. They make me wonder what kind of art I would have created had I listened to my heart instead of my husband.
EIGHTEEN
THEN:
I sat in the back room, where my father had knocked a new window through the wall when he made me a studio of my own. The studio wasn’t mine anymore, not full-time, but I used it when I came back home during summers, or when I escaped the chill of Connecticut Februaries for the—slightly—more temperate weather of Maryland over spring breaks. This room was warm in the winter with its humming radiators, cool in the summer when the wind blew through the screen of the open window, and damn near perfect on this November day.
I should have been poring over art history texts, boning up