The Baker's Daughter

Chapter Twenty

ELSIE’S GERMAN BAKERY

2032 TRAWOOD DRIVE

EL PASO, TEXAS

NOVEMBER 16, 2007

Reba entered the bakery at quarter till closing. Overhead, the tinny doorbell jingled, familiar and welcoming. Hearing it, Jane peeked through the kitchen curtains.

“Well, hello there, gal.” She greeted Reba with another hug.

Reba’s muscles tensed only slightly. She even hugged back a little and was pleased by how pleasant the reciprocation felt.

“How are you?” asked Jane.

“Living,” said Reba.

“Oh now, that’s no kind of answer. Mold on bread is living. I hope you’re doing more than that,” she teased. “If you need Mom, she’s gone this afternoon—had a doctor’s appointment. A slap-n-pap.”

“A what?” asked Reba.

Jane laughed. “It’s our nickname for gynecological exams. We treat dough better than they do our lady parts. They slap your boob on the machine like it don’t feel nothing, then add insult to injury with the stirrups and paper nightie. I’ve been on Mom for nearly four years to get a checkup. She hates the docs—even though my daddy was one.” She scratched her head. “Well, maybe it’s only the gyn-ohs. But I finally convinced her to go. You wouldn’t know yet, but when you hit a certain age, lumps and bumps and all kinds of things grow everywhere. You go to sleep and wake up with a grapefruit attached to your derriere. It’s scary.” She threw a dishtowel over her shoulder. “Never mind all that. What can I do you for?”

Reba didn’t know exactly why she’d come. She left the condo convinced she needed to get more information on German Christmas traditions, but she could’ve looked that up on the Internet just as easily. On the drive, she told herself she wanted to take a few more snapshots of the bakery in case the assigned photographer didn’t get enough, but then she’d forgotten her camera. In the parking lot, she realized she’d only eaten a couple microwaved Jimmy Dean patties for breakfast, so maybe her stomach led her, subconsciously. But now, with the question posed, she wasn’t quite sure at all.

“I—I …” Reba pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath.

Riki had officially moved out the week prior. He said he was giving her space to decide what she really wanted. For a couple days, she was relieved, even grateful for the freedom, but all too soon the old sadness moved into Riki’s vacant closet and drawers.

She rang her editor to talk word counts, headlines, and layouts; it made things better for an hour, but afterward the emptiness seemed larger than before. Riki called late Sunday while she was at the grocery store picking up a deli-made dinner. He left a message saying he was checking in. Children laughed in the background, and she wondered where he was. She played the message ten times over while scraping creamy chicken salad from its plastic container, still hungry when it was all gone.

Maybe he was staying with Bert, she thought. Riki hadn’t any family left in the city. His parents were dead, both buried back across the border in Juárez. He’d asked her to come with him to their graves during the Día de Los Muertos celebrations, but she’d said she was working a story and hid in the magazine’s editorial room while everyone else paraded about with sugar skulls and masks. She feared a day dedicated to the dead. It seemed ghoulish, unnatural, and far too intimate to hover over the bones of loved ones. Reba had never returned to her own daddy’s grave, and she didn’t want to. Riki said the dead came back to visit the living on Día de los Muertos, a religious superstition she prayed was entirely mythical. Because if she ever saw her daddy again, she knew she wouldn’t be able to contain the simmering grief within. She’d tell him he was a damn coward for leaving them the way he did, for not loving them enough to fight for himself and their family; for not being a better man. She’d tell him she’d never let anybody hurt her the way he had, never let anybody get close enough to try.

Jane watched her. “Are you here about the article or …”

Reba bit the inside of her cheek. It was exhausting to be on guard every minute. Maybe Riki was right. Maybe she did need someone to help share her burden a little.

“I’m.” Reba sighed. “Hungry.”

“Wunderbar!” Jane went behind the display. “Let’s see what we got. Mom just finished making schaumkussen earlier.” She pulled out a tray of neatly lined chocolate balls.

“Truffles?” Reba’s mouth watered.

Reba’s momma made white-cherry truffles every Christmas. It was a recipe passed down from her granny, who had won first prize in the Virginia State Fair baked goods, candy truffles division. The framed blue ribbon hung in the kitchen. As the story went, Granny never entered another cooking competition, claiming it was unfair to the amateur cooks. Reba’s momma passed on the recipe to both her daughters, but when Reba took a stand for cows, she gave up the family tradition. Like everything else, she snuck one or two while everybody was distracted. Hidden in the pantry, she savored the chocolate cherry mouthfuls, though they were never as good alone.

“No—not so fancy. Foam kisses. They’re like a Mallomar,” explained Jane. “Only Mom makes them with a springerle cookie base and a foamy meringue center, then she dunks the whole shebang in milk chocolate. Lord-dee-day!” She slapped her thigh. “They’re my favorites, but we only make them in the cooler months ’cause this desert heat melts the meringue and chocolate.”

“Can I try one?” asked Reba. She rummaged in her purse for a dollar.

“Oh, honey, I wouldn’t take a dime from you, but …” She tilted her head and pursed her lips. “They got milk chocolate. Ain’t that against your rules?”

Reba tapped the display glass with her fingernail. She didn’t want to do it anymore. Couldn’t she just be? Standing before the array of colorful confections, she took stock of all the butter and cheese and cream sweets she’d publicly rejected, only to eat later with a guilty conscience. Her reflection in the glass stared back at her. She was tall and sturdy with a strong, peachy pale face despite the arid sun. Her hair fell in dark, orderly waves down her back. It never did that in Virginia’s humidity. She wasn’t the overlooked, college tomboy anymore or the scared little girl in lopsided pigtails. She’d grown up and become someone. Reba Adams. When was she going to stop pretending to be what she wasn’t?

“I’ve changed my mind.” She shrugged.

“Just like that!” Jane snapped her fingers. “Well, congratulations. I was wondering when you’d come to your senses. God gave us the creatures of the earth for a purpose. I don’t believe in all that Hindu stuff—reincarnation and washing your face in cow piss.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “Mom will be so happy. Now you can try all of her pudding-filled kreppels, butter breads, Black Forest cake, and … oh, gracious! The world’s opened up.”

Reba winced a moment, feeling the lie exposed, even if nobody knew it. But then Jane gave her a foam kiss and took one herself.

“The way to eat it is to not pop it in all at once like some factory Milk Dud. These are special. You take a little bite in the side.” She bit slowly. “And … you see … the chocolate sticks to your teeth and the middle gushes out.” Her mouth was full, but she kept on talking. “And lastly is that cookie crunch.” She closed her eyes and swallowed. “Hmm … sweet Jesus.”

Reba did as instructed, biting into the rich chocolate foam and satisfying crunch. “Oh my, that’s good.”

“Now, are you ready to eat these like a true German?” Jane winked, then ripped open the side of a brötchen, pulled out the soft middle, smooshed a kiss within and cut it in two. “We call it a matschbrötchen—a mud bread roll.”

They clinked halves as if they held champagne glasses and bit into the warm, sticky rolls at the same time. Reba couldn’t remember the last time she tasted something so real.

The bakery was busier than usual the next day. Sergio sat at his regular lunch place. Two women chatted over slices of cherry bundt cake; their three children played with dolls and racecars beneath the neighboring table. In the ordering line, an elderly gentleman squinted to read the pastry labels while a teenage girl wearing a LATINAS DO IT BETTER T-shirt texted on her cell phone.

“Mom, Reba’s back!” Jane called to the kitchen. “Perfect timing! Mom’s just put the loaves in the oven. For the next hour, she has no excuses. I wish I could visit, but like you see, we got us a full house.”

“No problem. I don’t have much new to tell,” said Reba.

She’d spent three hours at the bakery the night before, staying long after Jane had turned over the Closed sign and returning home so intoxicated with laughter and sugar that she barely noticed Riki’s absence. For the first time in a long while, she felt energized and worked late revising her résumé and cover letter to send to a handful of magazines in California. By the time she lay down, the darkness was a friend not a foe. She wondered if this was how most people felt every day and night, and if so, she was envious.

“Do you have Mozart balls?” asked the old man in line. “I had the most delicious pistachio Mozart balls in Salzburg—you ladies from there?”

“Sorry, sir,” said Jane. “My mom is from Germany, not Austria. We don’t make Mozartkugel, but I think you can buy them online.”

“All right, I guess I’ll have a pretzel,” he conceded. “But you gals really should think about making Mozart balls. There’s big money in them.”

“I’ll pass your advice along to the head baker.” Jane pinched a pretzel with her tongs and placed it in a paper bag.

“Dank-a sh-ay-n,” said the man halfway out the door.

Reba grinned. “I’m sure Mozart would be thrilled to know he’s German.”

“Most folks don’t know the difference anyhow. I tell you—we Americans are something to behold.” She laughed. “I saw this little girl on the TV—a celebrity, Kelly-something-or-another—she didn’t know that France was a country. Can you imagine! Child should have had her nose tied to a globe.”

Miss Latinas Do It Better put away her cell phone and stepped up to order.

“If they know Germany’s in Europe, they get an A for effort. Can I help you, hon?” Jane asked the girl.

“Uh, yeah, I’d like some cheese bread.” She popped her gum. “To go, please.”

“Easy does it.” Jane swiveled her tongs like a six-shooter.

Reba went to a free table across from Sergio. She felt the inkling to say hello but sat with her back to him instead, precluding any awkward contact.

“Here again you are.” Elsie’s voice boomed through the bakery. Even the three children beneath the table paused in their make-believe to look up, then resumed running over their dollies with speedsters.

Elsie wore a brown, fringed skirt with a cobalt V-neck; her hair was swept back in a matching striped handkerchief. A flattering color, Reba thought.

“Jane said you came here yesterday.” She took a seat. Her freshly washed hands were dewy and smelled of floral soap. “I was at the doctor’s—nothing of importance.”

“The slap-n-pap?” Reba’s cheeks flushed hot as soon as the last syllable left her lips.

Elsie laughed. “You have it! Jane told you our little code, I suppose.”

Reba looked round to make sure neither the children nor their mothers heard. The ladies continued to move their hands in casual conversation; the children slid across the tiles on their kneecaps.

“But you are not here to talk about all the cookies you and Jane wolfed down either, correct?” Elsie lifted an eyebrow.

“They were awfully good.” Reba smiled. “I came about the story.”

Reba’s deadline was past, and her editor had insisted that the article be on her desk by morning; otherwise, the local publishing press wouldn’t have time to run it in the holiday issue. Reba had a mission to complete; as long as her mind was focused on that goal, she could forget about Riki and everything else. She needed one good quote pertaining to Christmas in Germany and could already hear what she wanted said: Christmas is a wonderful time; we have many German traditions that we continue wherever we are. BAM—that’d be it. One unambiguous statement that did not involve Nazis. She took out her steno and pen.

“You see, I didn’t do my job last time,” Reba explained. “What I mean is, I didn’t ask the questions I need for the article. I need to know about Christmas, about the holidays, about how you celebrated with family and friends.”

Elsie tipped her chin up and squinted at Reba.

The two mothers beside them discussed hyperactivity, debating if it was a symptom of attention deficit disorder or the effects of chocolate and Coca-Cola.

Reba tapped her pen and waited for an answer.

“To tell you honestly, I cannot remember what we did before the wars. I was very young when the führer came to power and by the time he was gone, it was a new Germany. We had to reinvent ourselves, our traditions, our families. It was not the same. As I’ve told you, those years were … traumatic.” Elsie shrugged. “Even the happy moments are clouded by pain. So you see, I cannot tell you about celebrating with family and friends without betraying.”

Reba shook her head. “Betraying whom?”

“Myself. It would be a lie—a made-up story of what I thought you wanted to hear. Oh, we danced and sang to oompah music, toasted with beer steins, marked the birth of Christ, and waited for Saint Nikolaus to come to our snowy Alpine lodges. Is this what you want me to say?”

Yes, yes, it was. Reba pinched the bridge of her nose.

Elsie shrugged. “I am sorry. Those are not my memories.”

“Then what are your memories? Give me the truth,” begged Reba.

Elsie sucked her top lip then began, “In Germany, I remember Christmases without a lot of food, my father trying to run our bakery on a cup of sugar a week. Cold Christmases. So cold a person could freeze to death. Drunk soldiers in wool uniforms. Dirty boot prints in the snow. Families unable to see each other and secrets that had nothing to do with Saint Nikolaus or reindeer or magic …”