Free Going Over by Beth Kephart Page B

were small black fish inside two big oceans, and she could barely keep her hand in yours, and you were the man of the house; you remember.
    The bells tolled. The pastor lowered his hands. The birds flew back into the trees. The snow fell. And when you turned around there were only four now on the other side of the wall—Ada and her mother and her grandmother and another woman, too, in a bright blue coat. She had blond hair, long curls, blue eyes. She had a fern pressed to her chest, a shine on her shoes despite the weather.
    â€œTanja?” your grandmother said. “Tanja?” Her mouth fallen open and her teeth starting to chatter, a goose in her throat.
    â€œTanja!” She screamed it louder than any word you’d ever heard. She dropped your hand—tossed it away. She ran between the tombstones, beneath the trees, beneath the birds, beneath the snow that was flying again—ran right up to theedge of the first wall, the dividing line. Flying. Falling. Crash. But now Tanja was running, too, running away through West Berlin. The shine on her shoes was running. The bright blue coat. The hair like your hair—blond and curly. When your grandmother reached the wall—the signal fence, the concertina wire, the spaces in between, the division, the watchtower down the way, also above—there was no going on, there was nothing. There was Ada’s grandmother reaching for your grandmother, but their arms couldn’t touch, and there was your mother, running. It was the last time you would ever see her. It was the last time, and after that, the letters stopped, the small things she might send, the birthday cards. Her love.
    â€œBut where did she go?” Ada asks all the time.
    â€œFree,” you say. “She’s free.” And you hope Ada understands, takes it all in, does a little math on the bigger picture. You wish that she would. You leave or you stay. You’re free or you’re not.
    There are always consequences.

SO36

    â€œIt’s good,” Omi says. “We already tried it.”
    â€œ
She
already tried it,” Mutti says. “
I
said we should wait.”
    I look from one to the other, each of them small in their own way and now, each of them glistening with white.
    â€œHow are you, Ada?” Mutti asks.
    â€œShe’s better,” Arabelle answers.
    â€œBetter,” I parrot. Because the truth is that I fell back to sleep, that I’m not even sure what I dreamed and what I didn’t. Maybe Gretchen came and went. There’s noise past the doorway, down the long, dark hall. The black cat crying.
    My mother’s eyes are dark. It’s like the storm has clocked her forward forty years. The crystal fur in her hair. The hard lines where the wind blew in. She’s left her boots by the door and there’s a lake of melt beneath them. The tip of her nose is the first edge of a flame. The skin beneath her eyes is purpleshadows. She sits at the ridge of the couch with her coat zippered on while Omi, at the table, stirs the pot. Omi uses the splinter of an old wooden spoon—bangs it around like she’s playing a drum. Now she jacks the whole thing up with her tiny hands and brings it to me so that I can see. Cabbage, leeks, potatoes, onions in a chunks-of-parsley vegetable broth.
    â€œHenni made this?”
    â€œWhile we waited,” Omi nods. The carrots look like orange eyes. The whole thing smells like pepper. Omi carries the pot back to the table, her elbows out like pointy weapons, her knees a little wobbly with the weight, and I try to picture my mother and grandmother walking through the mess of Kreuzberg, the pot of Henni’s
Eintopf
between them. The snow falling down and the steam rising up, putting its heat on their faces. I try to think of what they would say to each other. I cannot think of a thing.
    Mutti unzips her coat to the halfway mark and stands on the fuzzy rug in her fuzzy socks. Finger by finger she