“Just say hello to him,” she whispered, and the look she gave me was communicating something more than just a desire to help me tell a boy I liked him. It was as if she already knew the clock was ticking for me, and she was encouraging me to take advantage of the time I had left to speak to Gunther. But she didn’t know our days together were numbered any more than I did.
Mariko was happy to be back in school, too. She missed her brother and sister more than she thought she would, and her parents’ strained relationship—Chiyo blamed Kenji for how Tomeo and Kaminari had left them—made for a tense environment in their quarters. Mariko had been spending many hours with me rather than at home, to stay out of her father’s way.
“He’s just irritated all the time now,” she told me.
I could somewhat understand what it was like to live in a house with an unhappy father. Papa had been acting different, too, since summer had ended and autumn began. I would catch him deep in thought sometimes, staring at nothing or not hearing me or Max when we’d ask him a question. Mommi would see us looking at Papa quizzically and she’d say he was just tired or had a long day at the German school or had a lot on his mind. She was very quick to dismiss his weird moods, and I thought she was trying to make him seem strong and in control for us, rather than frail and powerless, which, truth be told, was how he looked.
I didn’t know our family had been selected for repatriation and now all that remained was seeing to the logistical details. We were to be traded for American citizens stuck behind enemy lines. We were going to be sent to Germany right after Christmas. Papa and Mommi knew this but hadn’t yet told Max and me.
By mid-October dozens of families in the camp were announcing that they’d been designated for a second round of repatriations to Germany. I didn’t know what to make of this news, because some of these families, like the Meiers, for example, seemed so very American. The Meiers never gave the Nazi salute as some of the others did; they spoke English most of the time. They liked Mexican food. Why on earth had they put their names in?
Gunther Hoeckels was also among those whose families were going home to Germany, Nell told me one afternoon in early December. I already knew she and her family were slated to leave, as was Nathalie’s. But she’d happened to see the list the night before and seen the Hoeckels listed among those being repatriated right after the holidays.
“Your family is on that list, too,” she’d said, in a tone that let me know she was miffed I hadn’t told her.
“No, it’s not,” I said. We were sitting in art class. Mariko had already left the Federal School for the day.
“I saw the list. Your name is on it.”
I didn’t feel even a tiny tremor of fear. “It’s a mistake, then. We’re not going.”
She stared at me for a moment like I was a foolish child. “Do you really think that’s the kind of list to have a mistake on it?” Nell finally said.
The first wave of uncertainty whooshed over me. “It has to be a mistake,” I said, but there was dread in my voice and she heard it.
“You might want to talk to your parents,” she said, shaking her head in pity for me.
I couldn’t wait for class to be let out. As soon as school was over, I rushed home. When I walked into our quarters, Papa and Mommi were there, sitting at our little kitchen table drinking coffee as they typically did after Papa’s last afternoon class at the German school, although in recent weeks I had noticed their afternoon coffee times had tapered off. Papa often didn’t come home now until just before roll call. I had thought nothing of this, nor of Mommi’s increasingly quiet demeanor. I knew she wasn’t happy here; she didn’t have school to go to or a best friend like I did to give her imprisonment a veneer of normalcy. I just thought Papa was busy with after-school activities like many teachers were, and that Mommi was missing the comfortable and satisfying life we’d had in Davenport.
Max wasn’t home when I stepped inside; he was no doubt at Hans’s house. My parents could see immediately how distraught I was, and Papa asked me what was wrong.
I told them what Nell had said to me. “She said our names are on a list. The same list her family is on.”
Papa and Mommi exchanged looks. I felt my heart shudder.
“Elise,” Papa said gently. “I need you to sit down.”
“Why?” The fear was ice-cold now. I wanted to run.
“Please. Sit down.”
“Why? Why should I sit down?”
Another glance passed between my parents.
“Why should I sit down?” My voice trembled as the repeated words fell out of my mouth.
“Please, Elise,” my mother said softly.
“I don’t want to sit down! Why is our name on that list?”
“We were going to wait to tell you until closer to Christmas . . .” Papa looked over at Mommi. Her eyes were glistening.
“Tell me what?” I said, still standing.
“It’s not a mistake,” Papa said.
The room seemed to sway for a moment. “What are you saying?” I said, as everything seemed to tilt.
“We’re being sent back, too. We’re going home to Germany.”
“What?” I said, though I had heard him clearly.
“I’m sorry. It’s out of our hands. It’s been decided. We’re leaving right after Christmas,” Papa said.
“Who? Who decided?” My voice sounded high-pitched and childish in my ears.
“It’s . . . it’s complicated, Elise.”
“No, it’s not! You have to ask to be sent back to Germany. You have to volunteer for it!”
Papa inhaled and then let the air out, as though he’d needed fresh oxygen to tell me what he said next. “I knew this might happen to us. I was told that our coming here to Crystal City—so that we could all be together again—might mean we’d be sent back. I was told it was a possibility. I didn’t think the war would last this long, Elise. I thought it would be over in a matter of months after I was arrested. Germany was losing ground in Russia. German soldiers were dying by the tens of thousands in Stalingrad. I . . . I thought it would be over by the first Christmas we were here. I didn’t know it would last this long. I agreed to it.”
“What do you mean you agreed to it!” I yelled at my father, something I had never done. Not like that. I half expected him to point to the tiny space I shared with Max and say, “You go to your room and don’t come out until you’re ready to apologize for speaking to me that way.” But he merely answered my question with the same calm tone as he might have if I had asked what time it was.
“It was a condition of our coming here to Crystal City. I had to agree to it. I signed a paper. I thought the war would be over before anything came of it. I thought we’d be back in Davenport by now.”
“But why?” The question came crumpled out of my mouth, laced with a sob. “You’ve done nothing wrong!”
“I can’t prove where my loyalties lie, Elise! It looks to them like I mean America harm. They can’t look into my heart and see that I don’t. And there are Americans in Germany behind enemy lines for whom they want to trade us. I am an enemy to them, and those other people are loyal citizens, stuck where they don’t belong.”
My father looked away from me to gaze down at his hands, folded together on top of the table. He had always been gentle with those hands. I trusted them. I trusted him.
But I couldn’t make sense of what he was telling me. I didn’t know how to believe Papa had chosen this for us, that he’d agreed to it when he’d requested that we be reunited at Crystal City. Why had he even wanted to come here if he’d known being sent back to Germany was a possibility? But this was a question with edges too sharp to ponder at that moment. I would come to understand the why of this in the months to come, whenever it seemed we were in a labyrinth of hell itself and I looked at my mother’s face and saw the guilt there. She would come to blame herself for what was about to happen to us. She hadn’t been strong enough to manage her life without my father physically in it. Papa had requested Crystal City because Mommi had been unraveling and he’d been desperate to find a way to stop it.
“How long do we have to stay there?” I asked, my voice not much more than a defeated whisper.
Papa was quiet for a second. “When the war is over, we’ll decide if we want to try to come back to America. We’ve been told we can apply to re-immigrate if we want to.”
“If we want to?” I echoed, needing his assurance that he was already thinking we would. Surely he was, wasn’t he?
But all my father said was, “Yes. If we want to.”
I stood there in the spinning room, shaking my head and thinking the words No, no, no, no, no. I didn’t want to go.
“I’m staying here,” I said, sounding like a child.
“That’s not an option, Elise. Besides, we’re a family. And we stay together.”
“I don’t want to go!” I yelled.
“I know it’s a lot to take in,” Papa said calmly but with an edge of authority to his voice that had been missing from the conversation until now. “This is not how Mommi and I wanted to tell you. But it is the way it is. We are leaving for Germany after the first of the year.”
Tears that had begun to prick my eyes started to slide down my face. I ran to the room I shared with Max and slammed the door.
I wanted to scream.