Graffiti Knight by Karen Bass

Graffiti Knight by Karen Bass

Author:Karen Bass
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pajama Press Inc.
Published: 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00


Chapter Twenty-One

“Wilm, wake up! What are you still doing at home?”

“Go away,” I croaked, and rolled over. Onto my wasp-stung hand. I flopped onto my back, heard breathing. Someone was leaning over me, so I cracked open one eye.

Mother said, “It’s almost noon, Wilm. You’ve missed your morning classes.”

My eye closed again. I licked dry lips. “Georg can fill me in on history class in three minutes.” I shifted so my back was to her. “Same with literature. I know more from—”

The blanket was ripped off me. “Hey!”

Mother scowled at me. “You are going to school. Why are you so tired? You crawled under your covers last night at nine o’clock.”

I opened both eyes then. “Fine. I’ll go. What can I take for lunch?” There had been only enough leftovers for one lunch. Father’s.

A worried expression claimed Mother’s face. “I’ll see.”

“Why are you home?” My stomach growled as I pulled on my trousers.

“I cut myself on broken glass and the foreman sent me home to clean up. I stopped at the store on the way but the shelves aren’t well stocked today. It has been like that all week.” Mother stood at the table and took a few items out of her sack.

I slipped on my shirt. The cuff rubbed over my wasp stings and I winced. I buttoned it up. “Have you heard why?”

“Only rumors.”

“Of what?” I was awake now. Awake and hungry. My stomach rumbled louder.

Her reply was quiet. “Reparation payments.”

A polite phrase for the Soviets taking our food and factory goods to pay for the war, for the pain and suffering we had caused them. “That stinks like rotten borscht.”

Mother handed me a single leaf of cabbage and a single piece of bread. I almost groaned. She said, “Complaining only makes things worse.”

I thought for a moment. “I’m going to help Otto at the next bridge he’s inspecting, if I don’t faint from hunger.” I sniffed the cabbage. It didn’t smell very fresh. “Do you want me to take some ration cards and try to get something from a store in Zentrum or Zentrum-West?”

“You could try.” She gave me a ration card and a handful of coins. “Look for potatoes or cabbage. Turnips maybe.”

The cheap vegetables. The ones I was sick of eating. I agreed anyway.

“Stop at the seamstress’s on your way back from the bridge and walk your sister home.”

That cheered me up. “She went to work?”

“Yes. Your father walked her there.”

Maybe our nighttime talk had encouraged her. I put on my boots and left, the heat in the apartment telling me I wouldn’t need my coat. Anneliese had been walking to work alone before that run-in with Ernst. Was it too much to hope that he had gotten stung?

I gobbled down my cabbage and bread on the way to school and made it to mathematics class two minutes before it began. Karl crouched beside my desk. “You scared me. When you didn’t show up this morning I kept thinking about that man who died—”

My jutting finger silenced him before he could mention wasps.



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