Summer, 1959

121 Summer, 1959 Carolyn Ferrell My mother and her sister push the old green VW Beetle from the shed down the cobblestone drive. This is their chance to escape the drudgery of Mutti’s home, the endless polishing of wood and washing of wool and cooking of dust. The sun is high and behind them, the house stands empty. Maike, newly out of the Pädagogische Hochschule, wears a pantsuit and sandals; my mother wears a dress, a gift from Maike, one of the first store-bought outfits she has ever owned (You can have this and more, if you work hard enough! Maike promised, as my mother modeled the butter-yellow shift in the mirror at Karstadt.) The women maneuver the car into the street while clouds overhead drift smoothly out toward the Baltic. Though this is midsummer, the air reels with autumn crispness. The engine refuses to start, and so the women get back out and push the VW toward the street’s decline. There is something inelegant about this labor, but my mother and her sister don’t care. They don’t care how they look or what the neighbors think, most of whom have always been deeply suspicious of Mutti’s daughters. They know that the neighbors know that Mutti doesn’t approve of this VW (she often calls it a piece of junk while chatting in the garden with Frau Mortorf). But what does that matter? Maike drives it with obvious pride. Mutti herself drives a used Karmann Ghia, a reckless piece of car that barely gets her to and from the center of the Heikendorf, where she teaches elementary school. She earned that Karmann Ghia, just as Maike earned the VW—but there is something awful, of course, about a daughter claiming the prize in much less time than it took the mother. (Will Maike and Elke ever know what a struggle my life was? Mutti asks Frau Mortorf as they shake their heads in the twilight.) At the decline, my mother and Maike give the VW a final push, jump back in, and descend the hill. Frau Mortorf opens her curtains and shakes her head. Look at that—the one girl merely seventeen and her sister no more than twenty-two, and a teacher at that! The height of Unverschaemtheit! 122 Ecotone: reimagining place My mother and Maike wave at Frau Mortorf’s window as their car zips by, its motor finally engaged! Auf wiedersehen, Frau Mortorf! They brake at the bottom of the hill to embrace each other and to apply lipstick in the rearview mirror. They can’t stop laughing. But after a minute or so they drive off. My mother and her sister have to make good time if they want to make the festival at Flensburg, which will be starting in a matter of hours. Long Island November 2006 This was in the late 1950s. I was a student at the Pedagogic College where they trained teachers. To be honest, I was pretty mediocre. My teachers often let me slide when I mentioned that Maike Schmidt was my sister. She was the shining star, the teachers expected me to do well because of her. And I did do well in Germanistik. But basically I slid. Maike had received her degree and was already teaching in a school. She was not married. My sister was not like other women. Germany in the 1950s, you have to understand. I wanted to quit school. I wanted a job. I wanted to move out so badly. My parents had just gotten a divorce and Mutti used me as a sounding board. She complained all the time about Papa and his women—I couldn’t take it. I came out of a generation where there were no choices for women. There were no choices for girls. I wanted to work. I wanted to have my own money. There weren’t even choices for boys. My brother, the highest in his class, was taken out of school to work on the farm. He did all the work Maike had done as a young girl. After the war, we had mostly food from the farm, but...