Illa - Part 10 Quest for a Brother
4 Year Old German Girl Remembers wanting a Brother during WWII
This is a true story, hand-written by Ilse and posted by her daughter on Steemit.
Sugar was rare, especially sugar cubes, so we could not understand how it could be easy to acquire some. We did not have any sugar cubes, but Michael remembered that the priest had some.
The older children in town did some volunteer jobs for the priest. Putting the songbooks back neatly, adjusting the pews, and making sure there was enough holy water in the front hall. Chores were also done outside of the church, like picking up garbage or tending to the flowers. For these chores, the children earned a holy picture and sometimes a candy.
Michael’s plan was to ask the priest for a job, and ask for two sugar cubes as a reward. Michael, the brave one, did the asking because the priest knew him better, after all, the priest had baptized him. With a stern face, the priest looked at us and thought we might be too young to get a job done well.
“Well”, he said. “You can weed my flowerbeds in my private garden.” We went to work right away. It was a hard job. There were bushes and some were prickly. We had to crawl around them. The weeds were not easy to pull out. Our backs were sore, and so were our hands but we finished it.
Chuckling, the priest put a cube in each of our dirty hands and advised us not to eat them all at once. I do not know why that made me angry, but it did. The sugar was not meant for eating, it was intended for something far more important. Before we went to bed that night, we placed our trophies on the windowsill making sure they would be visible to the stork. All we had to do now, was to wait until the next morning. We were so excited it felt like Christmas.
I got up the next morning as early as possible to check on the sugar cubes. Joseph was already up too. He was dressed and coming in from outside.
“I have wonderful new.” He said. “The sugar cubes are both gone! The stork must have taken them right away.”
That was good news, but why did Joseph have such a huge smile on his face? Michael came down and when I told him, he was excited. "We have done everything we could; now let's see what will happen next, and how long it will take to have the babies.” Full of hope and good spirit, we told our story to a group of other kids. Wolfgang, the spokes person in many matters tipped his head to one side as he always did when he thought about something.
“Michael, your plan it might not be such a good idea. What if a real baby doesn’t fit into a dolls carriage?”
“Of course it will fit,” said Mary. Babies are not bigger than dolls.”
A few days later, the most upsetting thing happened. The stork delivered a baby girl right across the road to a neighbor's farm.
How could the stork have made such a mistake? Close enough, but the wrong address. A group of women had gathered in front of the little gate that opened to the main entrance of their house. Talking excitedly about the big event, they did not notice us two little ones being very unhappy. Michael was pacing up and down in front of the picket fence repeating, “This is not right, this is a mistake.” Nobody noticed his distress. I was not happy either. A young woman finally saw that something was bothering Michael. “Michael, what are you talking about?”
“That is my baby and I worked really hard for it!”* The woman looked at him and started laughing. The next moment, Malvine the midwife, came out the front door. With a big smile, she told a group of women that mother and baby were fine. Everything was normal. Cheers arose and then a lot more chatter.
“Stupid storks!” Michael said. A teenage girl beside him said; “No, you are the stupid one, if you believe in the stork. Can’t you see that Malvine brings the babies? Whenever she comes with her big brown bag, she leaves a baby behind."
Malvine was just getting onto her bicycle with a brown bag dangling from the handlebar. Michael took all his courage and stood in front of her bike. “Malvine, you cannot leave. I want to have a look into your bag.” Malvine was surprised because Michael was known as a quiet and polite boy. Having delivered him like most all the children in town, she liked him. She was patient and asked “Michael, why do you want to do that?”
With determination he said; “I have to see the baby in there!”
I stood beside Michael, because I wanted to see it too. Only, I thought that being nice about it would have been better, so I said. “Please, please, please.”
Malvine looked at the two of us, thought for a minute and opened the bag. There was no baby. In fact, it was a horrible sight! In that bag were things we had never seen before. It was awful!
I was disgusted and scared, so I ran home as fast as I could. Up the stairs to our room, I hid behind the bed where I though nobody could find me. Especially Malvine, who I was sure, must be a witch. From then on, I would stay away from that woman with her foul brown bag.
by @susieisms
https://steemit.com/story/@susieisms/illa-part-11
Past Chapters:
https://steemit.com/writing/@susieisms/illa-part-1
https://steemit.com/writing/@susieisms/illa-part-2
https://steemit.com/writing/@susieisms/illa-part-3
https://steemit.com/writing/@susieisms/illa-part-4
https://steemit.com/writing/@susieisms/illa-part-5
https://steemit.com/writing/@ssieisms/illa-part-6
https://steemit.com/writing/@ssieisms/illa-part-7