Mirrors
The little girl watches her Mum and her Auntie. They both sit in front of the mirrors in Auntie’s bedrroom. The room smells of lovely perfumes and lotions. The women are dressed in identical light grey suits. The younger woman is the girl’s mother, the slighlty older looking woman is obviously the mother’s sister.
The girl thinks, that Auntie is the more beautiful looking woman with her very long curly hair. In the three way mirrors the girl can watch how Auntie brushes her hair. Her chestnut-coloured hair is very strong and long. Auntie is brushing it slighly back so it stays behind her ears and her very long blue earrings are in full view. Oh, I love those blue earrings, thinks the girl. How beautiful they look on Auntie’s ears! Mum does not wear any earrings, because her ears are covered by her hair. Mum’s brown hair is very fine and much shorter than Auntie’s. My hair is rather fine too as well as quite short, thinks the girl. She wishes she could wear her hair longer!
Both women wear identical three big rolls of hair horizontally on top of their heads. The front rolls cover the top of their foreheads, the other two rolls are rolled along behind the front roll. With their suits the women wear identical light pink angora wool tops. The girl watches how the women check that the three rolls are set in the right position. Then they spray each other’s rolls with a lot of hairspray. They both look into the mirrors, smilingly. They are very pleased with the way they look and the little girl is pleased with them.
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I was that little girl in the mirror story. Mum called me often ‘MAUSEL’ or ‘Mauselchen’, whereas Auntie liked to call me ‘HERZCHEN’ or ‘LIEBLING’. Dad sometimes said ‘HERZEL’ to me, but he usually called me by my name.
My best friend’s Mum told me one day, that my friend’s name meant ‘heart’ in the Latin language, but not to tell anyone otherwise some children would make fun of the name. I did not want any-one to make fun of my friend. So I promised myself to keep the meaning of the name to myself. I’ll call my friend here just ‘CORL’. It’s a short form of her real name and the L stands for her surname.
The year after my brother BOB was born, Corl had a little brother, who was given a name which my Mum called extremely ‘odd’. I’ll call him just TL here. It turned out he grew up with very bright red hair. The children in the street teased him about his hair. Of course Corl would stand up for her brother as much as possible. For the most part I think TL avoided playing with other children. However the children in the street still made rude remarks about his odd hair colour.
The L-apartment was on the same side as our apartment, just two floors further up. I often went up there by myself to play with Corl. There was a ‘roof-garden’ (Dach-Garten) above the L- apartment, which was about the size of the L-living-room. There was no roof above the garden, but it was enclosed by walls the same as in a room. I remember the sun shining right into it. The floor was concrete and along the walls were garden-beds . Corl was allowed to look after her own little garden-bed.. Once Corl’s Mum let me have a portion of a little garden-bed too! Corl’s Mum and Dad were always kind to me. They made me feel welcome and included.
The L family had food that no other family had.. For snacks we children were often given some kind of brown flakes and raisins. Sometimes we were given dates or figs. I loved this food! My Mum thought it was strange to eat something like that. In Mum’s opinion the L family was a bit odd because they had lived in the Middle East for a while. Corl’s father was an architect. My Mum called him ‘the Hunger-Architect’ (Hungerleider) since he seemed to get hardly any work in his profession.
The L apartment was sparsely furnished in a way which my Mum found very odd. There were a great number of shelves stacked full with books. These shelves went from floor to ceiling. Herr L sometimes showed us children books with colourful illustrations. He also told us stories. We loved one story in particular which had a funny ending. We demanded to be told that story again and again. Each time we laughed our heads off and Herr L laughed with us. The story was about a beggar who knocked at the door of an apartment.. A beautiful maid opended the door. Some time later the beggar knocked at another door of an apartment in the neighbouring building. And the same beautiful maid opened the door! We found the astonishment of the beggar very funny! Herr L explained to us, that the family had two connecting apartments across two buildings; that is, the wall between the buildings had been broken through to connect the apartments on that floor. This was actually where the family of Herr L had lived, when he was a boy.
Herr L was old and bald. He was about twenty years older then his wife. Quite a few years later Corl and I went to the same high-school and we would always walk to school together. One morning I climbed up the stairs to see why Corl had not come down to go to school with me. I rang the bell. Frau L opened the door. She was in tears. She did not let me come in but went with me to the top of the stairs. She said: Our father just died; I haven’t even told Corl yet. She looked at me with despair in her face and I did not know what to say. She hugged me and then she disappeared in her apartment.
AuntyUta 