How I laughed! Germany could fit inside New York. America had grown acres and acres—a living, vital thing, pushing farther into the vast wilderness. Right up to the Mississippi River. Amazing.
I painted landscapes. Me, inside America: atop the Appalachians, peering out the window of a Delaware train, or paddling the Erie Canal in a canoe. Sometimes I was in an elegant city parlor—New York, Philadelphia, Boston—expounding on the nature of freedom.
Like Columbus crossing the sea, I never doubted I’d find myself in America. Not Jew, half-breed. Nor German. Just Ottilie. Me. My best self.
How naïve I was!
One afternoon, when Papa should’ve been seeing patients, he burst into the parlor, surprising me and Mama. “Don’t apologize for who you are. Never apologize.” He was red-faced, furious.
Mama shooed me from the room. I could hear Papa ranting first about Rabbi Shel. “What does it matter if Jesus is a Jewish prophet or a martyred Christian? European faith can hold both. We live in Germany, not Palestine.” Next, he ranted about the politicians. “Bourgeois bureaucrats. Idiots. Fools. Aryans were not the first to settle Germany!”
Mama soothed Papa’s storm. She took him upstairs, closed the bedroom door. This was the pattern. No matter the time of day. A closed bedroom and hours later, Papa would emerge optimistic, elated. When Ludmilla and I were young, Nanny pulled us away to play with blocks and dolls. Later, I painted or read in the library. I learned to accept there’d always be hours when Mama and Papa were both inaccessible. So close. Behind a slight, wooden door, never to be disturbed. No matter the sounds: the shouts, the creaking springs, weeping, or thundering silences. The maid would leave dinner outside their door. Sometimes breakfast too.
Mama tried to explain love to me.
“Passion is fierce sometimes. You desperately want, need each other.”
“Why do you cry? I hear you crying.”
She shrugged like a lost bird. “Sometimes feelings are too much.”
For Mama, the best literature was all about love eternal. Mrs. Browning’s
Sonnets from the Portuguese
enthralled her:
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…
.
“Paint emotion instead of America, Ottilie, and the world would be at your feet.”
I’d reply, “Yes, Mama,” and she’d scribble new poems in her journal. She raved about Dante’s
Vita Nuovo
, his “new life” inspired by his unrequited passion for Beatrice.
“Your Mama is a romantic,” Papa would tease.
“No more than you,” she answered. “Marrying a Christian. Believing in true love.”
“I’ll be like you, Mama. An artist. A governess.”
“We shall see,” said Mama, teaching me mathematics and geography as if I were a boy. But declaring, “You’ll have a dowry fine enough for any man.”
Except no man would take me. The men, so pompous, so assured of their superiority, preferred me docile, silent. Slow and dull like a milk cow.
I called each one of them pigs. Swore I’d never fall in love, never marry.
Alas, childhood gave way to more complicated learning—Jean Baptiste Basion.
He was the persona of Mama’s poetry. On stage, with a glance, he could make audiences weep. Speak eloquently in meter. And when he dueled, my heart raced at even the thought of a pretend hurt. Seventeen, how could I not have become infatuated?
Mama took us backstage to meet him. Everyone inHamburg, it seemed, was crowding in! But I was proud, for it was Mama he hailed. “Rosa Maria, Rosa Maria.” Jean Baptiste flourished a bow. Mama blushed as lovely as an angel.
“These are my daughters, Ottilie. Ludmilla.” He offered us roses. Red for Ludmilla, yellow for me; then, he hesitated, picking white instead. “An uncommon color for an uncommon beauty.”
Giddy, I inhaled the roses’ perfume.
All summer, I painted Jean Baptiste instead of America’s horizons. In love with an actor? How scandalous, my grandparents, our neighbors thought! But
I painted landscapes. Me, inside America: atop the Appalachians, peering out the window of a Delaware train, or paddling the Erie Canal in a canoe. Sometimes I was in an elegant city parlor—New York, Philadelphia, Boston—expounding on the nature of freedom.
Like Columbus crossing the sea, I never doubted I’d find myself in America. Not Jew, half-breed. Nor German. Just Ottilie. Me. My best self.
How naïve I was!
One afternoon, when Papa should’ve been seeing patients, he burst into the parlor, surprising me and Mama. “Don’t apologize for who you are. Never apologize.” He was red-faced, furious.
Mama shooed me from the room. I could hear Papa ranting first about Rabbi Shel. “What does it matter if Jesus is a Jewish prophet or a martyred Christian? European faith can hold both. We live in Germany, not Palestine.” Next, he ranted about the politicians. “Bourgeois bureaucrats. Idiots. Fools. Aryans were not the first to settle Germany!”
Mama soothed Papa’s storm. She took him upstairs, closed the bedroom door. This was the pattern. No matter the time of day. A closed bedroom and hours later, Papa would emerge optimistic, elated. When Ludmilla and I were young, Nanny pulled us away to play with blocks and dolls. Later, I painted or read in the library. I learned to accept there’d always be hours when Mama and Papa were both inaccessible. So close. Behind a slight, wooden door, never to be disturbed. No matter the sounds: the shouts, the creaking springs, weeping, or thundering silences. The maid would leave dinner outside their door. Sometimes breakfast too.
Mama tried to explain love to me.
“Passion is fierce sometimes. You desperately want, need each other.”
“Why do you cry? I hear you crying.”
She shrugged like a lost bird. “Sometimes feelings are too much.”
For Mama, the best literature was all about love eternal. Mrs. Browning’s
Sonnets from the Portuguese
enthralled her:
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…
.
“Paint emotion instead of America, Ottilie, and the world would be at your feet.”
I’d reply, “Yes, Mama,” and she’d scribble new poems in her journal. She raved about Dante’s
Vita Nuovo
, his “new life” inspired by his unrequited passion for Beatrice.
“Your Mama is a romantic,” Papa would tease.
“No more than you,” she answered. “Marrying a Christian. Believing in true love.”
“I’ll be like you, Mama. An artist. A governess.”
“We shall see,” said Mama, teaching me mathematics and geography as if I were a boy. But declaring, “You’ll have a dowry fine enough for any man.”
Except no man would take me. The men, so pompous, so assured of their superiority, preferred me docile, silent. Slow and dull like a milk cow.
I called each one of them pigs. Swore I’d never fall in love, never marry.
Alas, childhood gave way to more complicated learning—Jean Baptiste Basion.
He was the persona of Mama’s poetry. On stage, with a glance, he could make audiences weep. Speak eloquently in meter. And when he dueled, my heart raced at even the thought of a pretend hurt. Seventeen, how could I not have become infatuated?
Mama took us backstage to meet him. Everyone inHamburg, it seemed, was crowding in! But I was proud, for it was Mama he hailed. “Rosa Maria, Rosa Maria.” Jean Baptiste flourished a bow. Mama blushed as lovely as an angel.
“These are my daughters, Ottilie. Ludmilla.” He offered us roses. Red for Ludmilla, yellow for me; then, he hesitated, picking white instead. “An uncommon color for an uncommon beauty.”
Giddy, I inhaled the roses’ perfume.
All summer, I painted Jean Baptiste instead of America’s horizons. In love with an actor? How scandalous, my grandparents, our neighbors thought! But
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