She nodded out the window. “Look who’s waiting.”
At the edge of the woods, two boys stood, one blond, one dark-haired, next to a rowboat pulled up onshore, a deep rut in the sand behind it. I recognized them, unit leaders from the adjacent boys’ camp, dressed in camp uniform khaki shirts and shorts. They were part of the boat crew. Handsome boys, of course. No camper of low racial value was allowed at any German youth camp, so everyone was attractive, guaranteed to be racially pure. There’d been no need to measure our heads and noses with calipers and craniometers. We’d all submitted pure genetic histories.
They fiddled with the boat’s oarlocks, taking glances back at the craft hut.
“You know what those boys want, Pippi.”
Pippi checked her face in the mirror above the sink. Next to it a poster fixed to the wall with tacks read: REMEMBER YOU ARE GERMAN! KEEP YOUR BLOOD PURE!
“So what? I just want to try it. It’s fun.”
“Fun? We can’t finish a relay race here without couples heading for the woods.” What fun was a race if no one won?
At Camp Blossom, the staff were encouraged to look the other way if Aryan couples paired off. If a pregnancy resulted, the mother was sent to a luxurious SS spa-clinic, and the birth of a healthy child was celebrated, no matter if the mother was married. All this focus on children was understandable, of course, since the future of Germany depended on populating our country. But with my sights set on becoming a physician, I could not afford a pregnancy. I slid a pair of scissors from one of the metal cans and secreted them in my shorts pocket.
Pippi’s eyes widened. “Ever done it yourself?” she asked in a casual voice.
“It hurts, you know. And no matter what they say, if you have a baby, you’ll be sent out of the BDM, shipped off to Wernigerode. The middle of nowhere.”
Pippi pulled a stack of postcards from her shorts pocket. They featured views of Die Mutter-hauser des Lebensborns, a stately chalet. One showed a nurse tending to a ruffled bassinet on a tree-lined terrace under the SS flag.
“They say it’s like being on holiday—the best of everything. Meat. Real butter—”
“Maybe, but the father will not be involved. Once the child is born, they take it away to be raised by strangers.”
“You throw a wet blanket on everything, Herta,” she said, fanning herself with the cards.
Once the boys finished fiddling with the boat, they stood, hands in pockets. I tried to stall, waiting for them to leave, but eventually we had to go.
Side by side, Pippi and I started down the path to our cabin. We turned, saw the boys following us, quickening their pace, and Pippi bit her lip into a smile.
“Hurry,” I said, pulling Pippi by the arm.
The boys picked up speed and Pippi and I took off toward the woods. I left the path and crashed through low brush and briers while Pippi, an accomplished sprinter, lagged behind. As I ran, the sting of the scissors’ point stabbed my leg. Why did this make me feel so oddly alive?
I ran around to the far side of an abandoned cabin next to a rushing stream and crouched on the mossy bank. Catching my breath, I set my scissors down and examined the wound on my thigh. It was a surface wound but had produced a startling amount of blood. Despite the sound of the rushing water, I heard the boys nab Pippi.
“You run so fast,” she said, laughing. The three clambered into the cabin, and I brushed away the jealousy I felt. What would it be like to kiss such a good-looking boy? Did I need to tell my supervisor if Pippi succumbed?
“What a good kisser you are,” I heard Pippi say.
I heard the creak of the bedsprings, more giggling from Pippi, and then moans from one boy. Where was the other one? Watching?
Pippi put up embarrassingly little resistance, and I heard them breathing hard and loud. How could she?
“You can’t keep your clothes on,” one boy said.
“It’s so dirty in here,” Pippi said.
I crouched there motionless, for any move would reveal my position. Pippi seemed to be enjoying it all, but then she had a change of heart.
“No, please,” she said. “I need to get back—”
“It’s not fair to get this far—”
“You’re hurting me,” she cried. “Herta!”
Friends help each other, but I’d warned her. Why hadn’t she listened? Her lack of discipline was a weakness.
“Help!” Pippi cried. “Someone, please—”
Aiding her would only endanger me, but I couldn’t leave her in that situation. I took up the scissors, cold and heavy, and stole to the rotted cabin steps in the almost darkness.
The screen door lay on the ground, off its hinges, so the doorway provided a good view. There were many rusted metal beds in there standing on end, and Pippi lay on the only horizontal one. It had collapsed, the mattress ticking stained and torn. One of the boys was lying on top of her, his ass blue-white in the dark room, smooth and hard and pumping as she cried. The second boy, the dark-haired one, stood at the head of the bed pinning Pippi’s shoulders.
I stepped over gaps from missing floorboards into the cabin.
“Stop it,” I said.
The second boy lit up when he saw me, perhaps hoping for a chance himself. I brandished the scissors, a dull silver in the dark room.
“She’s serious,” said the dark-haired boy. He released Pippi’s shoulders.
The blond one slammed himself into Pippi with renewed vigor at the prospect of her backing out.
I stepped closer. “Get off her,” I said.
“Let’s go,” said the dark-haired boy.
The blond pulled himself off Pippi, grabbed his shorts from the floor, and left with his friend, both avoiding my scissors. Pippi just cried there on the mattress. I untied the bandanna from my neck and placed it on the bed.
“You can use this to clean yourself,” I said.
I left her and walked outside to make sure the boys were gone. Satisfied they were not coming back, I walked to the stream. I raised the scissors and felt for a handful of my long hair, pulled it taut, and cut. Every muscle relaxed with that release, and I continued, feeling for any stray lock, until my hair was cropped to less than a thumb’s length all around. I tossed my hair into the river and watched it travel downstream, sliding over rocks, off into the darkness.
I helped Pippi back to our cabin. With much crying, she thanked me for rescuing her and admitted she should have followed my advice. She promised to write once she got home to Cologne.
Pippi’s parents retrieved her the next day, not at all happy, if their abrupt manner was any indication. I watched her leave, as she waved through the rear window of her parents’ car, my one friend gone.
For the rest of my stay, I kept my scissors close, but in the end my self-cut hair did the trick, and boys let me be. When the sleepaway trip concluded, half of my cabin went home fingers crossed, hoping to have a baby, while I left camp happily without a fertilized egg.
1939
Once Hitler invaded Poland, mild foreboding turned to genuine panic at every New York consulate, and all hell broke loose at our office. To make things worse, Washington tightened visa restrictions, and it became almost impossible to enter the United States from Europe. France limited its visas as well. By November, people desperate to be at the head of the line braved the cold and slept the night under the stars in sleeping bags beneath my office window. Once we opened in the morning, the line of French citizens desperate to get home often snaked out from our reception area into the hallway.
My bosom friend Betty Merchant chose a gray, late November day to stop by with her donation. I heard her arrive and issue orders to Pia for hot tea that would never come. Betty forged her way into my office, dressed in an indigo bouclé Schiaparelli suit and a hat adorned with indigo and scarlet feathers, a folded newspaper under one arm. In one hand she carried an old wedding present from a New Jersey couple, a three-foot-high money tree made of sixty one-hundred-dollar bills folded into little paper fans on a wooden base. In the other she balanced a tower of nested shoe boxes.