The Plum Tree by Ellen Marie Wiseman Read Free Book Online Page B

was all she could do not to pound on the table and yell at them to be quiet.
    “Come sit down, Christine,” her father said. “Your mother will be home soon enough.”
    Christine did as she was told. She glanced at Vater, searching his black hair for the gray tint of cement dust, the telltale sign that he’d found a job. But his strong, tanned face and calloused hands were clean, his brown eyes hard with anxiety.
    Unlike Mutti’s family, who could trace their German roots back for centuries, Vater was originally from Italy, which explained his and Heinrich’s dark features. The freckle-faced baby of the family, Karl, like Christine, had blond hair and blue eyes, as Oma and Opa used to, before age and hardship had turned them gray. It was a mystery to everyone where Mutti had inherited her red mane, but she had passed the reddish tint to Maria, whose waist-length hair was a shiny strawberry blond.
    “Heinrich, Karl, it’s time to be still,” her father said. “Oma needs to say Danksagung .”
    The boys stopped wiggling and turned to face the table, obediently folding their palms on their laps. Maria had spent a good half hour scrubbing their hands and faces, but their fingernails were still black around the edges, with only six jagged pieces of coal to show for their efforts. Vater waited in silence, watching until they settled, then gave Oma a nod. Christine lowered her head. She dug a thumbnail into the hollow space between her knuckles, listening for the sound of her mother’s footsteps on the stairs.
    “Der Herr,” Oma began.
    A heavy thud-thud on the front door made Christine jump and Oma stop mid-prayer. Everyone had the same wide-eyed look of surprise, because even though they were late having lunch, it was unusual for anyone to come to the door at this hour. All across Germany, the hours between noon and two were set aside for the most important meal of the day, Mittag Essen. Shops and businesses wouldn’t reopen even one minute before two o’clock. Christine and her father stood at the same time.
    “I’ll see who it is,” Vater said. “Stay here, Christine. Everyone start eating. We’ve delayed long enough.”
    Christine sat back down and tried to breathe normally, wondering if the Gestapo would bother to knock. Maria dished a hot Bratwurst and a forkful of onions onto Oma’s and Opa’s plates. Christine picked up the dandelion salad and passed it to Oma, keeping her eyes on her father. As soon as he was out of the room, she went to the window.
    A black army truck was parked on the street, gray columns of smoke spewing from the shuddering upright pipes behind the high cab, the white outline of the Iron Cross painted on the doors, a red flag with a black Hakenkreuz, or swastika, draped over the covered truck bed. Two men in Barbarossa helmets and black uniforms were unloading dark cubes from the back of the truck, handing them out to four other soldiers. Christine recognized them as SS, or Schutzstaffel, Hitler’s Nazi security, and breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t the Gestapo. She pushed open the window and looked down at the walkway between the garden and the front of her house. One of the men was at their door, talking to her father. From where she was, she could see that the dark cube in the SS man’s hands was a radio.
    “Nein,” she heard her father say. Then she saw him take the radio. “Danke schön,” he said.
    “ Heil Hitler,” the soldier said, raising his arm in salute. She wasn’t surprised that she didn’t hear her father reply. The SS man took long, purposeful strides back to the truck.
    Christine watched the other SS going door-to-door, identical radios in hand. Three of the men came back to the truck with old radios, just like the one her family had sitting on a white doily on the end table next to the couch. After a few minutes, all the men converged on the armored vehicle like rats to a hunk of Limburger cheese, disappearing into the passenger-side door and the