When Kennedy Went to Berlin
Chapter 1 — Abandonment Wounds
The muffled screams in a language he could barely understand were unbearable to Klaus. He flipped his pillow over, tucked the ends around his ears, and hummed his favorite tune to drown out the arguing in the bedroom across the narrow hallway. He sang to himself.
“There’s a world where I can go and tell my secrets to
In my room, in my room
In this world, I lock out all my worries and my fears
In my room, in my room.”
Those were the only words of a Beach Boys song that Klaus memorized. He loved the words and the melody, which gave him comfort.
When dawn broke Monday morning through the homemade curtains of the tiny room he shared with his younger brother Rolf, Klaus opened his eyes to the ceiling fan rotating above his head. He focused on the blades and tried to slow them down by catching one and following it as far around as he could. The aroma of bacon frying made its way through the gap at the bottom of the door, rose, and caught the wind of the fan. It is enough to coax his nostrils out of bed. As he pulled his red velour shirt from the dresser drawer, he recalled the evening’s fight between his mother and father and vowed to learn the rest of the words to that song.
Maria, in the kitchen unwavering, says not a word as Klaus greets her with a cheerful “Hi, mom.” She can barely look at him. With a timid smile on her face, she turns the bacon, cracks the eggs into the cast iron skillet, and slowly and methodically scrambles them. “Smells good, mom,” Klaus says with a cheerful lilt, but Maria doesn’t reply. Maria continues with the chore at hand, slowly turning the bacon in the crackling lard she bought from the butcher the day before.
“It smells so good I can hardly wait,” said Klaus.
Klaus just turned nine and was learning if he could crack the stillness of the air ever so slightly, it would provide an opening for a happier atmosphere. Verbal gymnastics is an art form that would take him years to master. He won’t come to understand his mother’s deep-rooted pain until much later in life. A pain that would prompt her to deploy silence and guilt as weapons.
“Can you wake up your brother Rolf?”
“Oh, I will in a minute.”
The argument the night before wasn’t the first his parents had. He couldn’t recall how many; he stopped counting, always hoping it was the last. He sits at the grey speckled Formica chrome-legged table in the tiny kitchen and turns on the green leather Nordmende radio with the sleek golden grill; the word Mambo written in cursive next to the brown dial. The radio was brand new in 1958; his dad traded a Bulova wristwatch for it soon after they arrived in America. It’s been sitting on that table for as long as Klaus can remember. He sinks into the well-worn chair, lays his head on his arm, and gazes at the beauty of his mom. Her long brown hair shines, and her petite figure in the dress she made from a McCall’s pattern given to her as a tip by one of her customers fits her like a glove. Her sadness permeates the room. Klaus instinctively tries another tactic to break the ice, as he often does. He sings, “Hey Mambo, Mambo Italiano, Hey Mambo, Mambo Italiano. Hey Mambo!” The ice is too thick, so he tunes the dial to WBNS 1460, and the crazy sounds of the fab four reverberate around the kitchen.
Paul McCartney is singing, “Well, she was just 17, if you know what I mean, and the way she looked was way beyond compare; I’ll never dance with another, as I saw her standing there.”
Little Klaus can’t help himself; he claps to the beat, gets up, and dances around the kitchen to the rhythm of John Lennon’s Rickenbacker guitar. He brushes up against his mom and grabs her hand. Reluctantly she begins to thaw ever so slightly. He tries to get her to dance. He stops.
“Why are you crying, momma?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I like the music. Who is that?”
“The Beatles. Don’t you remember, they were on The Ed Sullivan show last night?”
“Oh, yes,” she says solemnly, but she doesn’t remember.
“Are you ready for school?”
“I haven’t even eaten breakfast yet.”
“Have you gathered your books? Did you do your homework?”
“I did that on Saturday.”
“You have to make sure you do your homework. You can’t get ahead if you don’t do your homework.”
“I know.”
“Your grades Klaus, your grades.”
“Yes, I know,” said Klaus.
“Now go wake up Rolf before the eggs get cold.”
Klaus rises and heads toward the bedroom. Rolf is at the door wiping the night’s sleep from his eyes. Wrapped in a blanket, Rolf heads toward the kitchen. “Don’t say anything that will make her upset,” Klaus says.
“I smell bacon,” Rolf says.
“It’s almost done. Tell her it’s good,”
“I haven’t even tasted it,” said Rolf.
“It doesn’t matter. Just say it’s good!
“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” said Rolf.
“I’m nine, you’re four. You don’t know anything yet,” said Klaus.
Rolf walked past Klaus and into the kitchen. “Good morning, mom. The bacon’s good.”
