East Memphis, Tennessee

April 30, 1945

The Soviets had been in Berlin for nine days. When we heard the news, Grandpa, Grandmother, and I danced around the kitchen whooping for joy. The news had reached America a day late, but when we did hear it, the war felt like it was already over. We were getting close. I could feel it. The war that had been raging through Europe for half a decade and taking so many lives was coming to an end. Already, we had more resources. Even the high end restaurants had begun serving that fake coffee that tasted awful, not that I liked coffee much anyway. Those restaurants were the first to get the good coffee back.

School was okay. It was better inside the classroom and at home studying. I didn't like having to worry about where I was going to sit or who I was going to walk home with. I still got vague looks and questioning brows every once in a while. But those began to fade more often as I became less known for being the new girl. Many times, I had been called upon in class, but my mind had been elsewhere. It had been in the fields running with Anton or in the room above the garage talking with Anton. I couldn't remember if my appreciation I had for school came before or after Anton. All I knew was that he was my teacher, the greatest teacher that I had ever had. I wasn't going to let him down.

It happened while I was in the library in Midtown. Grandmother was playing bridge with her friends a few blocks away. I escaped to the library, thankfully. I didn't like to hear her fuss over me, and I especially didn't want to be introduced to anymore granddaughters. However, I was in the library feeling very small among the stacks of books all around. There were college students sitting at tables not too far away looking very important at whatever it was that they were doing. I was supposed to be looking for a novel required for my literature class, but like many times before, I found myself in the travel section once more. Most of the books about Germany had been taken down. A lot of censoring in that department had been done since the war began.

The dust was especially thick in this section. Though the stacks were limited, it seemed as if a very small number of books were ever checked out. I sneezed three times in a row and got a dirty look from a boy sitting at one of the tables. I ignored him and bent over to peer down at a familiar word that Anton had mentioned a few times when speaking in reverence of his country. Deutschland. I opened the book and discovered as I flipped through that the entire thing was written in German. I looked at the pictures- Berlin, Hamburg, Munchen- and even Gottingen. I sat down on the floor. The paragraph on Gottingen was very small though. A picture of what seemed to be the university was to the left of the paragraph. I bent my head closer until my nose touched the book. I could make out that there was writing on a plaque near the entrance, but I didn't have a guess on what it said.

I tucked the book under my arm and was just about to get up when I saw a book pushed behind all of the others. Deutsch it read. I recognized the German word for the language immediately and gasped. I pulled the book out from behind a book on Italy. There didn't appear to be any books in Italian, so I knew I had gotten lucky. It appeared as if most books about our enemy countries had been taken down by some librarian or other who just may have had a G.I. for a son or husband. I hopped up quickly and rushed toward the section that would house my book for Literature.

The streets were only slightly crowded as I ran the few blocks back to the house where Grandmother had been playing bridge. Before I arrived, I quickly tucked the books into my backpack so I wouldn't have to explain yet again why I had books about the country she and her parents had fled from. Many of her cousins did not make it. We fell out of contact with them only to discover years later that they had suffered in Auschwitz. None of them had survived.

Later, while Grandmother and Grandpa sat with their ears pressed against the radio's speakers, I politely excused myself to my room. I stood in front of the mirror, repeating the words from the book to myself, first in German then in English.

"Hallo. Hello."

"Guten Morgen. Good morning."

"Guten tag. Good afternoon."

"Gute Nacht. Good night."

"Danke. Thank you."

I skim down the list.

"Ich suche… I'm looking for… Anton."

It became tiring after a little while, and I could only memorize a few at one time. When I was lying in bed, tucked beneath the old quilt, I whispered into the dark. "Gute Nacht, Anton."

I closed my eyes, and I could almost hear him whispering it back.

There was a nervous energy at school the next day, and I eventually gathered enough pieces of whispering going on around me to put the story together. Apparently, on a breaking news report this morning, it was announced that Hitler had committed suicide yesterday. Talk of the war ending erupted all around. I guessed it was true if big, bad ole Hitler killed himself, that meant he was scared of loosing. I smiled to myself before going on to class.

When I returned home, Grandmother and I didn't discuss it so much. We had already had our fill of information, and there was nothing left to say. She soon left the house again claiming that there were errands that had to be taken care of.

I was sitting at the kitchen table taking advantage of the free space to do my homework when I heard rapid knocking on the backdoor. My head snapped up and, immediately, my heart squeezed as if threatening to burst every single drop of my blood onto this morning's newspaper. I made my way slowly to the door and peeked behind the curtain.

Charlene Madlee stood on the back patio waving frantically. "Let me in!"

The door wasn't locked anyway. But I opened it for her, and she burst into the room.

"Patty! Patty! I know you have seen the news. And I really need to tell you something," she said looking frantic. Her curls had begun to frizz, and I could tell that she had run here.

"Charlene, where's your car? Why did you run here?"

"It's in the shop. Oh, never mind that! I need to tell you something, Missy." Charlene had her finger up and was coming toward me in an accusing manner. I had to back up into a chair to keep my eyeball from being poked out.

"What is it, Charlene?" I said just wanting her to get to the point.

"I know what you're planning. You're thinking that you can just waltz into Germany like this war is already over. Well, it isn't! You can't go to Europe right now, Patty! There have been reports coming in from this way and that. Reports telling us what's been happening to those poor Jews. Dear God, the stories of the Poles are the worst. They've got experiments going. Practically every city has been blown to pieces." Charlene looked as if she might burst into flames at any minute. Her cheeks were a red, splotchy color and were blown up like one of those blow fish that I had seen in a magazine.

"Charlene-"

"You are not going, Patty! So help me, I will tell your Grandparents. I'm responsible for you at least in some sort of manner, and I will not be responsible for this! I will not be responsible for the death of Patty Bergen. I will not!" Charlene burst into tears and slouched into a seat.

"Charlene," I began again. "Anton doesn't want me to see Germany like it is now. That's one of the things he told me before he left. And it's not like I'm leaving tomorrow. I mean, eventually, I will go to Germany, and I do have to find him, Charlene, because he was my responsibility. I was responsible for his going. If only I had stopped him… But I didn't because that was not what he wanted. So, I let him go. You'll have to let me go, too, Charlene."

Charlene shook her head looking miserable, but she seemed to recover herself. The old Charlene was slowly coming back. She pushed her hair away from her face and wiped fiercely at the wetness under her eyes.

"I know it's dangerous, Charlene," I said calmly. "But I have to find him."

"Just please tell me that you will wait a while before you go to Europe," Charlene pled.

"I'll try. I'm not making any promises though," I said as I saw her face brighten.

"Okay," she said looking somewhat calmer than the state in which she had arrived.

Charlene pulled out my next writing assignment, lit a cigarette, and we began going through a stack of papers together. This one was much less heart-wrenching than the one about the camps. We sat in the kitchen for the next hour as if nothing had ever been planned. But the more I thought about it, the more I had a need to plan. I had already gotten Charlene's permission. There was just one more person's opinion I cared about.

Jenkensville, Arkansas

May 4, 1945

8:00 PM

I hadn't thought that I would ever go back to Jenkensville. Now, I had exactly two hours to get to Ruth's house and back to catch the ten o'clock train. I had told Grandpa and Grandmother that I was going to a small gathering. They surprisingly let me go once I gave them the name Lucille Frank which they claimed was someone or other's granddaughter. They must have felt sorry for me, too. I felt slightly guilty about the lie. But the lie was necessary in order to get me to Jenkensville and back without worrying about them making me spend the night in town with my parents.

The only thing that I had to worry about was not being seen. From the depot, I had to walk past Bergen's Department Store in order to get to Ruth's neighborhood. I wore a hat that looked slightly silly in the dim twilight. I didn't think that anybody would be in the store, and I was right. The windows were completely dark as I walked quickly by. The whole town was becoming more and more silent as the evening stretched on. A few people were sitting on their front porch looking at me curiously.

None of them recognized me, probably because I had changed so much since last November. I had grown two inches despite the malnutrition caused by the reformatory. My hair had grown past my shoulders, too. I was beginning to see what Anton meant when he said that I would be beautiful and smart. I was a healthy five foot six.

My shoes clicked along the sidewalk as I made my way further and further into Ruth's neighborhood. The houses deteriorated more and more the farther I walked away from town. When I saw Ruth on her front porch, I had to keep myself from running the rest of the way. She had been rocking in an ancient rocking chair fanning herself in the spring heat. The fan stopped, however, when she saw me approaching.

"Is that Miss Patty Bergen?" Ruth's voice was slow and smooth like molasses but sweet as honey.

"Ruth," I breathed.

She stood, and I couldn't contain myself any longer. I threw myself into her big arms.

"Whoa now, Patty baby," she said but her arms only tightened around me. "How come you don't come see Ruth no mo'?"

"You know I would if I could. But I have been real busy lately with the school and Charlene and the paper, too." We had stopped embracing, and I sat in a chair Ruth pulled from the kitchen. The legs were uneven causing me to teeter.

"You sure is, you sure is." Ruth had begun to fan herself again. She rocked back and forth not saying a word more as if sensing that I had something important to say.

I didn't want to talk about it just then, though, so I asked about something else instead. "Have you heard any news from Robert?"

"Not since February," she said.

"Well, no news is good news," I said remembering some elderly man saying that one time when talking about his son who happened to be a G.I. as well. In fact, most every man seemed to be a G.I. in those days.

"Aint that the truth," Ruth said her eyelids drooping a bit.

The crickets took over the space in which our voices should have been filling. Ruth kept rocking though. I stood up straighter in my chair, preparing. I really wanted Ruth's advice on this, but I didn't want her to tell me not to search for Anton.

"Ruth," I say but voice cracked so I began again. "Ruth?"

"Yes, honey babe?"

Well, here goes. "I don't think Anton's dead. I mean, there wasn't good proof or anything about his so-called murder. They could have put ketchup on that shirt or something. Ruth, I've just been turning it over and over in my mind, and I have come to the conclusion that Anton is still out there. Because I know he wouldn't leave me like that, Ruth, I just know it. He still has all of those things to teach me."

Ruth exhaled through her nose. "I don't know if your Anton is alive or dead, and if you come here to ask me, I couldn't tell ya'. It's what you feel, in your heart, Patty babe. I can't tell you what its saying for ya'. You just have to listen."

"I don't here anything," I said.

"You just have to listen harder."

The train came to the station exactly on time. Ruth had walked me back to the station where we said our good-byes with tears streaming down both of our cheeks. Like Charlene, Ruth had asked me to wait until after the war to go search for Anton. She also asked me to visit her before I left on my journey whenever that would be. We didn't know if the war would be over tomorrow or next week. But we knew it would end soon. Everyone did.

I was on the train about thirty minutes into the ride when I lurched from my comfortable slouch straight up. The recurring dream of Anton and the train came back to me. Suddenly, it was like the shirt was in my hands all over again. But Anton was still on the train. He was still going. He was still out there. I pressed my face against the window to cool myself down. My eyes slipped closed, and this time, I stayed on the train.