Not that it was easy to make friends. It had been a long time since Anna spoke to a child she wasn’t related to. There were awkward moments. Who to sit by at meals. Sleeping in the vaulted dorming hall, where iron bed frames lined the walls and only eight inches separated her mattress from those on either side. Worst of all was Anna’s first experience in the bathing room.
Three nights a week, on a rotating schedule, the girls soaked in one of the large zinc tubs that were packed into the room. The experience was pretty much like it sounded, Anna supposed. Warm mineral water, a bathtub. Like any bath. Except for the three other girls who shared the room with her and the nurse who made sure each girl submerged completely and spent the requisite forty-five minutes soaking in the mineral solution.
Nurse Methfessel half pulled off Anna’s dress her first evening assigned to the baths, undid the buttons, and slipped off the shoulders before Anna objected and covered herself. “Don’t be ridiculous,” the nurse snapped. Anna held desperately to the bust of her state-issued dress. She wouldn’t budge, no matter how Methfessel hectored her.
The other girls chased out the nurse. “We’ll take care of her,” they promised.
Anna was fifteen, although she hardly looked ten, the hollow look around her eyes, her chest sunken between the arrested buds of her breasts. The thought of exposing her deficiencies was stultifying. Anna was aware of her absurdity. But the other girls didn’t make demands like the nurse had. They let her alone in the corner while they disrobed and got in the water. Anna watched the three girls tiptoe over dewy tile and climb in without peeking. Anna had yet to discover that she could trust these girls. “Go on,” one of them said. Her name was Mina. “We won’t watch.” The three turned their heads, their bodies, so Anna could uncover in peace.
It had been a long time since she’d been naked in front of anyone. And now it was required in front of these girls. Mina with her hair tied with ribbon so her ears stuck out. Her large eyes made her look nervous. She was the tallest, the most developed, and you couldn’t tell anything was wrong except for her hips, her giant rump, and the flab around her knees. None of them were perfect. Kate’s left elbow jutted severely, and her long body could twist nearly all the way around like a contortionist. Sylvie was stuck crooked in the shoulders and hips, like she was posing on a pageant stage, and all that hair under her arms and on her privates. These girls had been residents longer than Anna. There was meat on their bones. They lay submerged up to their chins and stared blankly at the ceiling.
Anna peeled her undergarments over her flange of hipbone, her knobby knees, and crawled over the high side of her zinc tub to sink into the mineral water then float back to the surface. The water was amniotic and warm.
“There you go,” Mina said. “We told you. Listen to us. We’ll take care of you.”
Visits to the bathing room soon became the best part of living at the lodge. Four girls floating with water over their ears, long hair adrift around their heads. It was sort of quiet. Anna heard pipes clank inside the walls. How there was someone clacking down the hallway outside, back and forth, Nurse Methfessel with the towels. These noises louder to Anna with her ears under the water. Subterranean and baritone noises. She imagined being someplace else, her ears under the water, in that enveloping white noise of the state sanitarium for girls.
They lined up on the cedar bench after, the bathing room opaque with steam, crisp towels wrapped around their frail, tanned bodies. It took a while to come back from wherever they’d gone under the water. Until one of them said something, “It’s hot in here,” and broke the spell.
The treatments worked. Anna was getting better. Her family saw this each time they visited—how she stood straighter, how she moved more natural, her steps more fluid and assured. If not strong and lively, she was stronger, livelier. Even Karel saw how she improved. He came in September 1918, the only occasion he visited.
They rented bicycles at the train station and arrived around lunchtime. Herr, Karel, Theresa, and Silke. Anna met them on the veranda and led a tour. First around the lodge, the lobby with its green upholstered sofas and shelves of paperback books, a pitcher of lemonade asweat with condensation. Then to the dining room, a cook setting out places for lunch. Up to the classroom and the hall where the girls slept. Back to the lawn until lunch was served. Anna didn’t know what else to say. All but Karel had visited before, several times. Her sisters didn’t need the tour and were bored walking the halls, mocking admiration at the woodwork, how clean everything was. Karel didn’t care either. He straggled behind, waited in doorways, chewed a hangnail in his thumb the whole time. He was too busy looking at the other girls. Girls who whispered to each other and giggled when Karel stopped to see them. It wasn’t very often a real live boy was up in the hallways of the lodge. One who was tall and swept wild hair off his forehead with his hand.
At least on the veranda they could sit in rocking chairs and stare out into the woods. There were katydids to listen to. Anna didn’t need to speak. They breathed deep because the air was fresh way out here. The aroma of walnut trees was strong this time of year, and it was cool on the veranda, where ceiling fans spun above them, the blade mechanisms connected to a single motor by a long rubber belt. They could smell trees. They could investigate how a ceiling fan worked. They didn’t have to talk.
Karel was much bigger. Broader in the shoulders, his voice deeper. He didn’t hardly look like Karel, except he did, of course. He was dark, hollows under his eyes, like always. His hair long, down past his ears, and undercut on the sides. He was just older. He’d grown.
After a while Herr and Silke and Theresa went inside to see what was holding up dinner. They hadn’t brought anything to eat on the train and then that bike ride. Now lunch was late. What had they been thinking? It was a Sunday, and lunch was often late on Sundays. There were no treatments either. Most of the staff was at home or at a church picnic, besides a cook and Nurse Methfessel. What was the rush? The girls who lived here looked forward to a lazy day.
The two of them alone, Karel asked Anna how she liked it at the sanitarium.
“It’s fine,” she told him, so quiet she wasn’t sure if she’d actually spoken or just moved breath over her lips and thought the words. “I feel better up here. It’s the truth.”
“Yeah? That’s good.”
Karel was quiet too. He looked exhausted, the way he slumped in his rocking chair, one close to the railing, where the sun angled in to wash over him. His words sounded forced out, his voice straining to civility. Anna supposed he was trying to be nice to her.
“I didn’t get to say good-bye,” he said. “I was a little sore about that for a while.”
“You were mad at me?”
“Yeah. But don’t worry. I forgave you for it. Herr told me it wasn’t your fault.”
“Of course it wasn’t my fault. They took me. How on earth could you be mad at me?”
“Don’t get angry. We didn’t say good-bye. That’s all.”
He bit at his hangnail and stared into the trees.