Letter Dated 4 August 1876, Gohra, Prussia

Liebe Berta,

Everything is changed since you left.

The house is so quiet. Mama is impatient. Papa is sad. And Johann is gone — called up for the army. Anna has stopped singing. And little Karl — what a baby! — he whines like the wind without you.

Mama says you are smart to leave now. And Papa says you will prosper. “Opportunity abounds in America,” he says.

Still, no one will say why you left when you did. What is a mail-order bride anyway? Because I am only eight, no one tells me a thing.

I wish you had never gone.

Dein Bruder,
August 

And So It Began...

Back Up

ONE RAINY AFTERNOON, after we’d eaten our fill of cookies on the back stairs, Katie-Ann and I crept farther up. Gramma didn’t like us there. I guess it was ‘cuz she couldn’t see what we were up to. But it was a rainy day in Detroit, so what else were two cousins to do?

On the left side, at the top of the stairs, was an immense, deep ledge. We passed it every night on our way up to bed, and again every morning on our way back down. It was stacked to the ceiling with boxes, folded Afghans, pillows, lamp shades, a dressmaker’s dummy, an army helmet, hat boxes, a brass-and-marble pedestal ashtray with a greyhound-shaped handle, tattered paintings, a battered steamer trunk, a lumpy green duffel; and that was just what we could see from the stairs. Katie-Ann and I wondered what else was stashed there, and why we’d never thought to have a look before. But we hadn’t. Until now.

The first boxes we opened were filled with useless oddities: rubber nipples from baby bottles, tops from Mason jars, clothes pins. We laid these boxes aside. The next box contained a blue metal airplane with military decals on its fold-up wings. I yanked it from the box and flew it around the landing, vrooming away as I banked and dipped. Katie-Ann found a beat-up doll that she tossed aside and lunged for my plane.

“Lemme have it!” she said, grabbing hold.

I gave her a push as I snatched the plane back, not noticing that I had shoved her toward the stairs.

But the crash got my attention!

I whipped around and found Katie-Ann sprawled out on the ledge where boxes and blankets used to be. Piles of paraphernalia disappeared down the steps.

The kitchen door squeaked opened and Gramma called up, “You kids upstairs? Was macht Ihr? Are you all right?”

Our eyes fixed on one another as we heard her feet treading up the stairs.

“What is all this? What’re you kids doing? Are you all right?”

The look on Gramma’s face as she rounded the corner said everything we needed to know.

“Sorry, Gramma,” I said.

“Sorry,” echoed Katie-Ann. “We’ll clean it up.”

“What were ya doin’? You’re not supposed t’ be up here,” she said as she gathered up a couple of displaced pillows.

“I see ya found Uncle Max’s airplane," she said to me. "He loved playin’ with that when he was your age.”

I had a hard time imagining crotchety Uncle Max ever playing with anything, and wondered whether, at my age, he already had wiry hairs poking out of his nose and ears.

“Papa’s letters!” sighed Gramma. She bent over to collect the yellowed envelopes strewn about the stairs. A photo slipped from one and fluttered toward the kitchen.

Katie-Ann raced to get it.

“Who're these people?” she asked, handing the photo to Gramma.

“That’s my Pa and his sister Berta. I'm named after her,” she said, smiling at the happy pair who smiled back at her. “He was your great-grandpa and she was your great-grand-aunt. And these are letters they wrote to each other when they were just a little older than you two.”

There were lots of letters. How many could two kids write?

Gramma sat on the top step and began ordering them. She became very quiet, like she was thinking about something else. She smiled.

 “Why would they write letters to each other?” I asked.

“Yeah,” said Katie-Ann. “They lived in the same house, didn’t they?”

“Ach, Ihr Liebe! You don’t know about Papa and Tante Berta, do you?” she asked, pulling a letter from its envelope. She unfolded the delicate old paper and began reading it to us...

Hands Off!

AS A BOY, there were things that I simply could not resist: stealing cookies from the jar on Gramma’s back stairs, sneaking a swim in the Horn’s pool, or secretly reading the diary Annie kept hidden beneath her mattress.

I read her private journal, cover to cover, in a single sitting. Pizza parties. Dances. Boys. Making out. It was actually pretty boring stuff. Disappointing really. But it was exciting to read because I knew I shouldn’t be doing it! Once I finished making mischief, I slid the diary back under the mattress, making certain the bedspread and pillows were properly in place.

The next morning before church, Annie looked at me strangely and asked, “Have you been in my room?”

“No,” I said, a bit too quickly. “Why? It was probably Jay-bird.”

“Somebody’s been gettin’ into my things,” she said, studying my reaction. I squirmed a bit. “Ya don’t know anything about it, do ya?”

“No,” I repeated. “Leave me alone. We gotta go t’ church.”

Did she know? She stared at me with that look!

“Ya know what happens to little brothers who snoop around their sisters’ room, don’tcha?” she asked.

I couldn’t answer. I just looked at her, wondering whether she had found me out. But she said nothing more. She just cocked her head slightly and stared at me through those squinty eyes she had when she suspected me of something.

If Annie knew I had read her diary, she would make me pay!

A few days passed and Annie said nothing more about it. So I decided I was in the clear. Unable to resist, I slunk back to her room to catch up on Annie’s latest antics.

But when I reached under Annie’s mattress, the diary wasn’t there. What’s more, Cynthia was sitting on Annie’s pillow, no longer hanging in the closet where she was supposed to be. That creepy puppet stared at me like it could actually see! Its eyes were glued on me like it was keeping watch! I raced out of the room.

In bed that night I wondered what Annie was going to do to me. I knew she knew. And I knew she would do something to get back at me. I tossed from one side to the other, imagining the worst. In the twilight between wake and sleep, a thought hit me: maybe Annie had described her revenge in her diary! I could have a quick read to find out what she had in store for me!

The next thing I knew I was sneaking into Annie’s room. I heard her in the den watching TV with the rest of the family. I wondering whether she had put the diary back under her mattress. Cynthia sat stiffly on Annie’s pillow. I slid my arm under the mattress, careful to keep my face away from Cynthia who was suddenly way too close to me. But the diary wasn’t there. And I couldn’t pull my arm out from under the mattress! I was stuck! It had me!

And to my horror, Cynthia was growing larger and larger. Her unusually huge wooden foot flopped off the bed while her wiry hair scratched the ceiling. Her lacy wedding dress brushed my face making me pull away in revulsion. She lumbered up off of the bed, her long arms swinging apelike from her marionette body. Cynthia opened her mouth and her sharp, pearly teeth flashed. A voice hissed loudly from Cynthia’s mouth:

Fiddle-faddle-flit-and-flutter,
I smell the lie of her little brother,
If I catch him near her bed
I’ll pluck his eyes and stomp his head!

It took every ounce of strength I had to pull my arm free from the mattresses. I ran from the room, my heart drumming in my chest.


The house shook as Cynthia’s couch-sized feet thundered after me. I was too afraid to look back, but I could hear her skirts brushing along the walls, growing ever closer. I knew she was gaining on me.

“Fee-fi-fo-fum,” she bellowed. “FEE-FI-FO-FUM!”

Her immense hand closed tightly around my body and hoisted me into the air. She held me so fast that I was helpless. I was entirely immobile in the marionette’s death grip. All I could do was close my eyes. I felt her cold, dry fingernail stroking my forehead, inscribing it with her signature of doom.

Her hot breath crawled into my ear and down my neck as she whispered:

Feeble-fible-fabble-fubble
I smell one’s been making trouble,
Naughty boys I like the most,
Nicely broiled AND SERVED ON TOAST!

I opened my eyes just in time to see her unlatch the door of her blazing oven, ready to shove me in.

My screams woke me up. Moonlight streamed through my window. The TV blared in the den. Strangely, I still couldn’t move. To my confusion, I found myself rigidly wrapped in my bed sheet, and tied ‘round and ‘round with Annie’s old jump rope.

Annie!

I scooted to the edge of the bed, jumped out, and wiggled and wriggled my way out of the cocoon Annie had fashioned for me. I flipped on the light and squinted back its sudden brightness.

When I looked in the mirror, there was heavy black writing on my forehead, scrawled in the garbled language of giants. It read:

!FFO SDNAH