That winter chilled and numbed from September to March. As usual, since my mother insisted that we never live on army posts with the other Americans, we were living in a remote village that rolled in picturesque patchwork fields over a few dozen hillsides. 

My stepfather had rented a large damp house for the four of us. He boasted on our first drive to pick home, that our new home had a wine cellar and we’d each have our own room. As usual with us, everything was a half-truth: there was an empty dirt floored room under the house where spiders lived with pungent mold spores. And yes, we did have our own rooms where ice formed on the insides of the windows and the walls over the spotted green and black mold wallpaper design. Most of our time was spent huddled in the kitchen between the stove and the space heater, or failing that by the one oil stove we were allowed to light in the living room. We rarely went to our Arctic cells except to dive underneath the feather blankets at  bedtime and huddle there till we felt warmth.  

When our German improved we learned the house had been used for cold food storage during the war. We found ourselves physically together much more often than we did back in the States. In the States, someone could always be shipped off to Grandma’s for the weekend, the week, the summer. In the States, I had a network of my mother’s single friends anxious to adopt a child for a day. I was precocious enough to be entertaining without being obnoxious. They liked that. I liked being taken to the movies, to shows, to the ballet. But now there was just the four of us and only the four of us, hunched over the oil stove in the living room, it's heat permeating only as far as three feet from the burners. The world outside was strange orange rooftops covered with snow. The world within was this forging of family out of necessity. Thus, those three feet from the oil stove burners never really felt that warm.  

My brother and I planned our lives around heat and cold. We listened to the 6 a.m. Armed Forces Network weather reports for school closures due to snow and impenetrable bus routes in the kitchen with the oven door open and our fingers held out in front of it like untoasted but hopeful marshmallows.  Most kids dreaded going to school, but for us going to school meant standing in the snow for fifteen frozen lung minutes. It also meant a full hour of warm Mercedes bus heat blown at full force. We sat eight seats back on the same side as the door to protect against wind currents. By our arrival at school, sometimes even our feet had thawed. School--a loud clanking radiator draped with scarves and gloves dripping snow crystals on old linoleum. School seemed to be the color and consistency of slush, week after week. A building caked in mud, boot streaks. If you asked military brats about Germany, perhaps their answer might be that Germany was a series of insides: school, bus, house, compound, traveling to and from the insides, never the outs. With a little bursts of snow, frosted apple cheeks and numbing winds in between.  

Our parents followed a similar schedule; they went to work and each drove a small beat-up car that they dug out of the snow every morning. No standing in the snow, but then no heat in the old VW Beetle or the ancient Opal either.      

It was on weekends that my stepfather's habits wore thinnest on my mother. Maybe it was her finding out he'd over spent the budget she made or him being passed up yet again for promotion (he was a heavy-set man who seemed to relish his size despite army regulations promoting the contrary). This closed window season brought much for us to endure. My mother's silences could last a tension filled forty-eight hours. Long enough for my brother and I to be chanting in our heads, 'Just admit you were wrong, damn it and she'll make Sunday breakfast and be nice to us.' My stepfather passed the time walking past my bedroom door offering snide remarks about my appearance and how I was going to be a slut when I grew up, he just knew it. It' s a good thing I had a brain because Lord knows I was ugly and plain not funny. No sense of humor at all, he'd say.  

Around dinnertime they'd argue loud enough to steam the window's in the kitchen--which would actually heat the place quite nicely. But my brother and I would grab peanut butter sandwiches or canned green beans and macaroni and cheese off of the stove and sit and eat by ourselves in the dining room. I'd light the oil stove, and we'd sit on the same side of the table in our socks not making a sound, being careful not to chew too loudly or swallow too hard. When the heat gave out we’d roll up our napkins like cigarettes and breathe cold air smoke ringlets through them.  

The war in the kitchen would eventually permeate our neutral territory. My brother, who is hard of hearing, would take out his hearing aids and gloat over me his unique reprieve. I’d always get him back at some point that week by covering my lips when I spoke so that he couldn’t read them. As the noise of the battle grew closer to the dining room, my brother and I would separate and try to make it back to the kitchen to clean our plates and dishes to make it look as if no one had ever eaten there. At this point, my brother and I would bid each other farewell for the day. We’d warm our pajamas by the oil stove, sometimes burning little brown spots on them, throw them on and jump into our beds. I’d curl into a ball, down covers suffocated. My mother would come by the room and ask if I was asleep. I never answered; it seemed safer that way.  

One Sunday, when the front steps and banister were slicked with ice, my brother and I huddled inside my bedroom playing Monopoly on the floor next to the electric portable space heater to escape a day of screaming, whimpering, and lots of explaining. We took turns crossing enemy lines for tea that neither of us drank but used the cup and steam for extra warmth between chilling dice throws and token moving.  

It was early evening when they called us into the icebox living room--a neutral non-heated area of the house, reserved, in this case, for drawing up surrenders and peace treaties. My brother and I watched our "cigarette" breath as it hit the stale cold air. The eyes of both armies were red and puffy.  

"Kids, we are going to get a divorce," my mom said in a voice that sounded shocked at its own words. She looked exhausted.  He wasn't looking anywhere at all, just sat slumped and stuffed into his chair--the chair that I couldn't sit in without seeing the threat of his hand rise like a finished salute down onto my head.  

My brother and I squeezed each other’s hands and smiled. He began to jump up and down. I clapped my hands and shouted, "Yes!" The generals acted startled at our behavior.  

"Do you know what it means?" My mother asked, certain we'd miss understood her.  

"We're free!" I pointed at my stepfather, exercising a new immunity I thought I had. "So, we'll be going back to California, right?"       

"California? We're going to see Grandma? Disneyland!" my brother said, relishing his good fortune. And in uncharacteristic, joyful solidarity, my brother and I hugged.  

That night, military forces regrouped. My mother went to bed defeated. I awoke to my stepfather pulling me out of my fetal curl deep beneath the covers of my bed by my hair and slapping my face into a rosy, swollen red. He tossed me back into my bed as soon as my cries signaled his victory. I was a stupid, unfunny whore and as part of these negotiations of surrender, I was never to forget that. I sat up in the corner of my bed, back to the wall, moat of pillows, and listened to the army level the next occupant of the house.  

But through my open door (for we weren't allowed to close them—we were an "open door policy family), as my stepfather took my brother, his real son, in his arms and gently rocked him back and forth. My brother was soundless.

"What's that bitch done to you? You love your daddy, don't you, don’t you?"  

Divide your enemy and conquer. That’s what they say. He kept us separated after that--each to his and her own open door prison cell. Amid snow closures, Ronald Reagan would tell us all that World War III would be fought in Germany on Armed Forces Network Radio. Anwar Sadat was murdered and my mother cried profusely. John Lennon was murdered and she sank into a deep depression. The new Double Fantasy record remained unopened in its shrink wrap. In the spring, the planets aligned. The Catholic Church on the army post told us to pray for the conversion of the Jews and the downfall of the Soviet Union in one breath. My mother and stepfather made plans to move onto the army post before the start of the next winter season.  

It took ten years for us to finally divorce. We dissolved into four nation states free to cut deals and treaties with whomever we wanted. I haven't taken an order from my stepfather in over ten years. He has stationed himself in a part of Wisconsin where the temperature frequently dips below zero and months can go by without seeing a blue sky. My mother, brother and I--now veterans--live near each other in California where winters of any kind never last longer than a few short minutes; where it has never gotten too cold for us to take a long walk outside.

Author's Biography

I live in California and despite my fear of the cold  am subjecting myself to life in the Sierra Mountains this winter. 

I wrote this essay primarily, I think, as a way of defining the moments in time that both my family and the world at large like to forget. 

I teach English/ESL classes at the community college level, am expecting my first and only child, and whenever I can, I take off for Asia .

E-mail Elysia at meg_writerchick@yahoo.com

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