Free The Kingdom of Childhood by Rebecca Coleman Page B

followed more slowly, my shaking hands and legs providing unsteady support. The high and open space around me seemed foggy at the corners, surreal. I asked, “Who’s that?”
    “My mom.” Turning toward the door, he called, “Hold on a sec, I’ll be right there.” He sank onto a stool and, setting his elbows against the table, dropped his head into his hands and groaned.
    “What’s she doing here?”
    “Picking me up. She’s right on time.” With a deep sigh, he rummaged in his backpack, pulled out his thermal shirt, and tied it around his waist. Then he clawed his hand back through his hair and uttered a grunt of disgust.
    I stood a good distance away, out of sight from the door’s rectangular window. My arms, crossed tightly over my chest, shook steadily. I felt sick with gratitude that I had not bothered to unlock the door from the inside. Gratitude to whom, I had no idea.
    For the first time since the noise at the door, Zach looked at me. Inwardly I winced at the frankness of his large eyes, his gaze still a little uneven. He gave a short laugh and said, “Seeya.”
    “’Bye.”
    He shouldered his backpack and hopped down off the stool, his posture a bit bent under the weight. He pulled open the door and, with a muttered greeting to his mother, was gone.
    I forced my quivering knees to guide me over to the stool where he had been, and, teeth chattering, carefully sat in the imaginary haze of his warmth. I looked at the tools still strewn around, then at the playhouse, where the sawdust on the floor swirled into whorls where our knees had been.
    With an awful darkness clouding my mind, I thought: What have I done?

7
    1965
Mainbach, West Germany
    The line of evergreens lay beneath a cold blue sky, cloudless despite the snow-covered earth below it. At the top of the hill Judy exhaled hard, her breath blurring the scene before her, the flocked fabric of her scarf moist with condensation.
    “Go on,” said Rudi. “All by yourself. Exciting!”
    She shook her head.
    “Just one time.”
    She shook it again. “Not without you.”
    He sighed and laid down the toboggan. She climbed on and grabbed the string, and he nestled himself in behind her, his legs in his butternut canvas trousers firm along hers. He wrapped his gloved hands over her mittens and, chest thumping against her back, surged the sled forward. Cold wind shocked her face, and she screamed with pleasure.
    Toward the bottom he hit an icy spot, banked right, and again they tumbled out into the snow. His weight against herwas brief but reassuring as a thick wool blanket. As he staggered to his feet he laughed and reached for her hand, and despite all her obstructing layers of coats and wraps she felt weightless, no less so with his arm around her shoulders than when he pulled her up from the ground.
    “Let’s go home,” he suggested. “Get warm.”
    They trudged back to the farmhouse, through the cold silence of winter. Her legs felt numb where the snow had melted through her tights. With sidelong looks she studied Rudi’s face: the pink flush of his cheeks, the nubbled sheared wool that lined the earflaps of his cap, the way his hard steady breathing revealed his crooked canine teeth. When they passed beneath a tree beside the barn, a scurrying squirrel knocked a branch’s worth of snow onto their heads, and she laughed.
    “Hang your coat on the nail,” said Rudi. Inside the house it was so warm her bones ached with the sudden contrast. Nevertheless she approached the woodstove with outstretched hands, exhaling a slow breath of relief at the draw of the fire.
    “Your tights are wet,” he observed. “Take them off, or you will get sick.”
    “I’ll be cold walking home.”
    “We will let them dry by the fire. Your boots as well.”
    She sat in a chair and looked around the kitchen as she tugged off her boots. The walls were lined with wooden cookie molds, carved with designs she recognized. A heart encircled with flowers. Adam and Eve