Going Over Read Online Free PDF

checkers.
    I dig both sandwiches out of the oven, where by now they’ve lost their heat, and sit back down. Arabelle splits the aluminum wrap with the other end of her lighter. I unwrap my own slowly.
    â€œWill you see Peter tonight?” I ask Arabelle.
    Her mouth’s full; she shakes her head no.
    â€œYou should tell him, you know.”
    â€œWhen it’s time.” She eats slowly, her eyes on the sandwich, and tells me about her day instead, about the Turkish knitters of Köpi. Every day the women come to the shop and knit, and every day Arabelle teaches them German. The sweaters get sold and the husbands don’t know and stories get toldand there are secrets. My own patchwork sweater comes from the Köpi, and so do both of Mutti’s blankets, and also my pink and green stockings, my gray cabled tights, all of it smelling like dill and yogurt until you wash it once in the sink and hang it to dry on one of the lines that go corner to corner across the courtyard.
    I listen to Arabelle talk, don’t ask her questions. I don’t press her for the facts on Mutti, even if she is my best friend and not my mother’s. Arabelle’s older than me by four years, and she’s always keeping what she knows about my mother to herself. It mostly works out for the best.
    I eat my sandwich, savor the mustard. It’s the first taste and the last taste of a decent bratwurst sandwich. It’s the heat that you get when the meat goes cold.
    â€œYou working tonight?” Arabelle asks me now.
    I nod.
    â€œYou need the bike, you can have it.”
    â€œ
Danke
.”
    â€œYou should try pumice,” she says, about the flesh around my nails, all of it speckled and splattered.
    She yawns and I see both rows of her teeth. I think of all she’s doing for the Turkish women of Kreuzberg, who live in this part of Berlin like it’s someplace borrowed. Like it wasn’t the Germans themselves who begged the Turks to come here after the wall went up and the factories in our parts weren’t suddenly starving for workers.
    â€œCalling it a day,” she says.
    â€œThank you.”
    She looks confused for half a second.
    â€œFor Mutti,” I say. “For bringing her home.”
    â€œShe’ll get better,” she says. “I promise.”
    â€œI don’t know,” I say. “She’s always like this.”
    â€œTime,” Arabelle says.
    â€œYou should tell Peter,” I say.
    â€œYeah.”
    She stands and the light leaves her face. I hear Mutti’s bed creak beneath her, hear nothing but silence from behind the door to the room where Omi sleeps. I fit the candle in the jar on the flat of my palm and walk Arabelle to the door.
    â€œ
Nacht
,” she says.
    â€œ
Nacht
.”
    I close the door, run the chain through the lock. Put the candle on the floor, rearrange my cans of colors. I sleep a little before I go back out—find a place on the couch, hug the pillow. I think of Stefan and the feel of his arms around me. Everything solid. Everything safe. As if I’m eternal for that instant. Love is knowing that you’re appreciated. Stefan appreciates me.
    â€œMy balcony princess,” he says, when I’m there.
    â€œLeave here,” I’ll say, “and I’ll promote you to prince.”
    When I wake again it’s nearly ten o’clock. I grab my bag, head out the door, clack down the stairs, hike myself up onto Arabelle’s bike. I pedal, wobbly, across the courtyard and out through the open gate. I don’t need to turn around to know what I know. My mother’s up there: watching.

FRIEDRICHSHAIN

    Leave it to Ada to bring them to you—folded in between her foot and boot, where the Vopos did not find them. She walked extra careful, she said; her footsteps never crunched. She stood in line with her grandmother and showed her papers, paid her marks, agreed to the terms of visitation, and all that time