Ready for chapter 4?

*****************************************************************

In desperation I moved on to another soldier and asked him, pleaded with him, to let me pass through the gates; I told him that I just wanted to get to my family. It was no use. He just shoved me off and laughed. I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat down on the ground and wailed. I wept for myself, for my family, and… Maria…. I remembered that Maria was with me. I stopped crying and looked around for Maria. She was still standing at the first soldier we had talked to. She looked pale and frightened.

I ran to her and put my arms around her. I had almost forgotten that Joyce, Maria’s sister, was over there too. “But at least Maria gets to live with all of her family except for Joyce,” I thought. “I don’t have any of my family here at all.”

Maria shook herself a little and blinked. “Greta, I… I think we had better go tell Mama and Papa.” I agreed.

We walked slowly back to Maria’s apartment. Maria’s mother was making breakfast.

“Are you alright?” Maria’s mother looked concerned when she saw our faces.

“Mama,” Maria began, “There’s…” she couldn’t finish her sentence. Maria started crying. When I saw her crying I started crying again too.

“What’s the matter girls?” Maria’s mother looked bewildered. “Are you hurt? Was someone mean to you? What? What is the matter?”

We didn’t have to answer, for just then Maria’s father burst into the house, boiling over with anger.

“Those Soviets! What are they trying to do to us?!”

By this time Maria’s mother was fairly frantic with curiosity. Everyone had just come into her peaceful home and started going crazy! Finally, Maria’s father calmed down enough to explain to her what was happening.

“Those Soviets have built a wall around West Germany to keep us from escaping. We not only can not get to freedom if the situation gets worse here, we will not be able to go to the shops and cities there were we go to buy food at good prices. And…,” his voice became soft and faint “we we won’t be able to see Joyce.”

Maria’s mother looked horrified. Her daughter was gone. She was so close, yet so terribly far away.

No one felt like breakfast. No one even pretended they were hungry. We sat down, spooned the oatmeal on to our plates, and let it get cold without even touching it. Any other time Maria’s mother would be scolding us and telling us not to waste good food, but this time even she couldn’t eat.

Maria and I moped around the house. On one of my many pacings of the parlor, I had a great idea. I wondered that we didn’t think of it earlier. We could call our house by telephone! I ran joyfully to Maria’s mother. She, too, wondered why we hadn’t thought of it before. It wasn’t as good as actually seeing my family, of course, but at least I could hear their voices. I dialed their number and waited breathlessly. The wait seemed endless. In fact, it was endless – the Soviets had cut the phone lines! Now I was completely and utterly cut off from my family. And I couldn’t help thinking, “This is all because of the sleepover. If we wouldn’t have had this sleepover I would still be trapped by the wall, but I would be trapped with my family.”

It was a terrible day.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

In the years that followed Maria’s family informally adopted me, seeing as I was basically an orphan with no way to get to my parents. I learned to call Maria’s mother “Mama” and her father “Papa.” It was hard for me to do at first, knowing that my real parents were still alive, and that they still loved me as much as ever, but I got used to it with time. It was nice to have Maria as a sister. Of course, I missed Korrie very much, but Maria was a good substitute. We didn’t always get along as well as we had when we were cousins, instead of sisters, but we formed a deep and lasting friendship.

Life in East Germany was hard. I realized that when I started actually living there. I had never known before how privileged I was to live in West Germany, where the people were free to do what they chose instead of working for the Soviet government.

One time I asked Maria’s mother why they hadn’t moved to West Germany before, while they had the chance.

“I suppose because we live in East Germany – that is our home.” she replied. I thought it a rather unsatisfactory answer, but I supposed it was true. I wouldn’t want to move from my house or my country unless it was absolutely necessary.

Life went on despite the wall. The wall was actually torn down several times, but a new wall, always stronger and more fierce than the last, was quickly put up in its place. The people of Germany didn’t always resign themselves to their fate: some tried to escape. But their bravery almost always ended in failure and death. The soldiers guarding the wall were always on the lookout, and they had orders to shoot whomever they saw trying to escape.

The years passed quickly – my thirteenth birthday came and went, then my fourteenth. Time kept passing on. One day I celebrated my twentieth birthday. When I was twenty-two and so was Maria, Maria was married one of our neighbors’ sons. His name was Kristopher. They didn’t have much money for a glamorous wedding, so they had to content themselves with a very small ceremony. They didn’t mind too much, though. At least they had each other.

One day in April, after I had just turned twenty-two, I had a sudden thought: I had been apart from my family for 10 years. That seemed like a very, very long time. Suddenly, I had the sudden urge to escape, to flee from this horrible life and to find my family again. I knew that it was practically impossible to escape through the gates of the towering wall, but… there must be some way! I was determined to find a way, somehow, and to escape, whatever the cost would be.

*************************************************************

Do you like it so far?

***Allison***

What did Greta see?  Read on to find out!  You can see the previous chapters here.

********************************************************

It was a huge wall. Not just a wall, but a fierce concrete wall bristling with barbed wire. There were soldiers all along the wall, with faces like cold stone. It was frightening. It looked almost like, like… like we were trapped behind the wall!

I ran blindly into the house, this time not caring whether I made noise or not. I rushed up the stairs and burst into Maria’s room. I stood there, gasping for breath. I was scared.  More scared, I thought, than I should be. “After all,” I reasoned, “it’s just a wall. A wall can’t hurt you.” The more I thought about it, the more I was disgusted with myself for acting like such a baby.

Just then, Maria woke up.

“What are you doing?” she asked groggily.

“Oh, nothing,” I said, trying to look nonchalant. “I just took a little walk outside.” That was true of course, and I didn’t know if I wanted to tell her what I had seen just yet.

“OK…,” Maria yawned. “Let’s go get breakfast. I’m hungry.”

“Alright,” I agreed.

Breakfast was probably really good, but I couldn’t taste anything. I kept thinking about the wall, and the stony faces of the soldiers. After breakfast I cautiously suggested that Maria and I go take a walk. I wanted to see what she thought of the wall.

As we turned the alley corner, I watched Maria’s reaction. “Oh!” she gasped. “Where did that come from? It wasn’t there yesterday. And what…” her voice faltered, “what are those soldiers doing?” Maria began to looked frightened. I was secretly relieved. I wasn’t the only one who was scared of this strange wall.

“It feels like we’re trapped!” Maria whispered.

“I know,” I said. We were both silent for a moment, then I said, “Oh, we’re just being silly! Let’s go explore it!” I tried to sound cheerful, but it wasn’t easy with that forbidding wall staring down at us.

“Well… alright,” Maria said doubtfully. We approached a soldier timidly.

“Ex-excuse me,” I stammered. “May we go to the other side of the wall and look around?”

He looked down at us as if we were insects he wanted to squash. “No one is allowed to cross the wall,” he said, looking annoyed. “That is the whole reason the wall was built, after all – to keep you sneaking vermin from escaping to West Germany.” He said these last words with a sneer on his face. “From now on you must be content to live under the rule and reign of the great Stalin – hail his name! You will never escape – the wall surrounds all of West Germany and all of West Berlin!” The soldier grinned down at us, as if he thought it was just what we deserved.

“But, but sir!” A horrible new thought had just entered my mind. “But sir, please, my family lives on the other side of the wall! Can’t I go…”

The soldier cut me off, “You certainly may not go visit your family. You will stay on this side of the wall, forever!” He laughed a cruel laugh.

I just stood there, stunned. This couldn’t be true – was I never to see my family again?

**************************************************************

Here is a picture of what the wall was like.  The wall enclosed all of West Berlin, which was in the middle of Germany.  Greta is now in East Berlin, looking at the wall that separates her from her family living in West Berlin.  Oh, the suspense!

(I got this picture from this website: http://trainphilos.squarespace.com/home/tag/berlin

***Allison***

Here’s the next chapter!  To read the first chapter, click here.  Happy reading!

**************************************************************

Maria helped me bring my luggage up to her room. We unrolled my sleeping bag on the floor next to her bed, then sat on it and talked. We talked and talked until Maria’s mother called us for dinner. You would think that we wouldn’t have much to talk about because we saw each other so often, but we had no trouble chattering away until supper.

Supper was good, of course, both because bratwurst and sauerkraut is my favorite meal, and because Maria’s mother is an amazing cook. She could make cabbage soup taste like a delicacy… well, maybe she isn’t that good of a cook. I suppose no one could make me like cabbage soup.

Maria was excused from dishes clean-up because I was there. She sure was grateful. “I wish you could live here all the time,” she told me. “You’re much more fun to have around than Joyce. She always wants me to play dolls with her.”

“I know how you feel,” I said. “Korrie is always nagging me to play games with her or sew her more clothes for Percy.” Percy was Korrie’s well-loved teddy bear she had gotten as a baby. Despite the fact that Percy had a wardrobe that any good bear would think was a bit much, Korrie always welcomed more clothes, and somehow managed to stuff the new piece into the bulging box under her bed where she kept Percy’s wardrobe.

Eventually even Maria and I, the masters of chattering, started running out of things to say.

“What do you say we play salon?” Maria asked after awhile. “I bought a beautiful new hairband from Martha’s Beauty Shoppe the other day.” She got up from the bed where we were sitting and took it out from her treasure box on top of her dresser.

I gasped – “That is the very same headband I look at every day on the way to school!” I longed to buy that headband, but I thought it far too unpractical to waste my money on something like a headband. The headband was very wide, and it was a beautiful deep purple color with painted vines curving and spiraling along the edge, and in the center of each vine was a light pink rose edged with dark pink. All along the edges of the headband were beautiful golden dots. I had wanted it so badly because I thought that maybe, just maybe, the headband’s beauty would overshadow my dull, straight brown hair and make it beautiful. And here I could finally try it on!

We had a lovely time doing each others hair. I discovered that the headband, while it didn’t make my hair beautiful, did add a pretty touch. Maria was a master hairdresser on account of her long, shining, dark brown curls that she had to fix every day. My hair was short, so I usually just let it hang.

“Shall I do your hair in a crown braid or a pulled-back braid?” I asked Maria.

“I think a crown braid. They look so elegant, don’t you think?” Maria turned to me.

I nodded.

When our hair was elegantly styled, we decided to watch a movie. It was a good movie. Maria and I laughed and cried at all the same spots.

After the movie was finished Maria’s mother came into the room. “It is about time for two certain girls to be in bed, don’t you think?” she hinted, winking at us.

“Yes, Mama,” Maria said sleepily. We were both tired after the movie.

We were too tired even to whisper like we usually did, so we just brushed our teeth, put on our pajamas, and went to bed. As I snuggled down I thought how lucky I was to have a cousin like Maria, and how nice it was to have a sleepover with just her and in two minutes I was asleep.

I woke up while it was still dark. I thought that unusual because I often slept late – too late. I looked at the clock on the wall and I couldn’t make out the time from the soft, faint light of the alarm clock.  It was dark, maybe early in the morning.. I wondered what woke me up. Soon I heard it again – a sort of rumbling noise, and then some shouts.

I went over to the window and pulled the curtains aside. In the streetlights I could see shapes moving, and what looked like big trucks carrying something. It almost looked like they were building something. “What could they building at 12:30 at night?” I wondered silently. I shrugged my shoulders and went back to bed. I could see what they were doing in the morning.

The next morning I woke up before Maria. I looked over at the lump in her bed and knew that she was still sleeping soundly. If her snores were any indication, she would not want me to wake her up just yet.

Then I remembered what I had seen last night and decided to go check it out. I snuck softly down the stairs and slipped on my shoes. I opened the door slowly and went outside. The day was gray and it looked like it could rain later in the day. I trotted through the alley until I came to the spot that I saw out of Maria’s window. I turned the corner and stopped short at what I saw.

**********************************************

***Allison***