BLANCHE WHITE

My name is Blanche White or I should say it used to be. I have always hated my name, I mean who would name their daughter Blanche? It’s a cruel thing to do but cruelty was a talent my mother cultivated. She was The Little Engine That Could,  cruel was the fuel that kept her chugging up the endless hill of her miserable life.    And then to add insult to injury - White: frail, pale, definitely female, I was branded from the minute my name was stamped on my birth certificate. When I was in the 6th grade I tried to change it to Abbruhen Weib. Since there are Germans in my lineage,  I went to my  translator app  and came up with Abbruhen Weib.  It wasn’t easy, the German language throws in umlauts and those weird big “B’s” helter-skelter and most keyboards in America don’t have  umlauts or those big “B’s” - nothing I could do about that. I think abbruhen has something to do with cooking and weib  means white which is probably one reason why I almost married a black guy.  I thought  Abbruhen Weib had an interesting ring to it, but it was not to be because the clerk behind the counter  in the Montclair Town Hall just laughed in my face when I told her what I wanted to do. Bitch.

I grew up a fish out of water - a misguided, ill-advised child of the suburbs in Montclair, NJ. The relationship between my mother and I turned incendiary almost from the day I was born, she was scared to death of me and for good reason.  Even I was scared to death of me. If I happened to glance in a mirror I saw a tall hubristic girl with great posture, long brown hair, an insolent expression, world-weary blue eyes surrounded by an abundance of black eye makeup and cargo pants.  My wardrobe consisted of rags, usually black, I bought at the local thrift shop even though we could afford LL Beans and Macys. My days consisted of acts of defiance, my nights spent roaming the streets of Greenwich Village when I was way too young to be doing so.

    Montclair High School was calamitous for me, the entire experience was a bit like one long acid trip. It was during those four years that  I refined my poetic talents, developed my fascination for the strange and fell in love with words. I learned next to nothing. The poetry thing sprung out of nowhere. I would see someone, write a poem and slip it to them under the desk. There was this kid named Max. He loved cars, all he wanted to do was tinker with cars, he probably is raking in the bucks these days fixing old German sports cars. Anyway I wrote a poem: 

There once was a young man named Max

Who had a backseat full of  jacks.

He’s a guy I admire

He can change a tire

Or put out a fire.

I ooze with desire

To cuddle with the young man named Max.

Max read it, turned as red as a beet,  handed it to the guy sitting next to him, and so it began -  my illustrious career as a poet.

“Blanche, we want you to be happy here. How can we do that?” The three of us sat around a small round table, three blind mice, three blind mice, see how they run, see how they run. Who will run first? My mother, wearing pearls, lots of perfume,  and her “I-am-pissed-but-I-am-willing-to-listen” expression, wore stilettos, Gus Peterson, the guidance counselor, was in his usual: khakis, a pale blue shirt and Converse hightops which enabled him to kind of prance down the hall,  and me in my cargo pants and flip flops. My money was on Gus, he’s the one in those running shoes, I’m sure he could turn a prance into a sprint in a moment’s notice.  A piece of paper sat on the table, on the paper was written:

There once was a teacher named Gus

Who was neat, couldn’t tolerate a fuss

His hair was not thick

He was a bit of a prick

A pain was that teacher named Gus

Gus looked like a wannabe basketball player. During the four years I was matriculating in that cesspool of higher learning he lost most of his hair. It was always a surprise to him when he ran his fingers through his hair, only to find none.  Where did it go? His eyes were a pale gray and rather haunted - probably due to worrying about his hair loss. 

“Blanche, You are one of my smartest and most talented students,”  Gus told me glancing at the poem, one hightop resting on top of the other. “Have you given any thought to what you would like to do with your life”? He never said boo about the poem, his face was deadpan, a complete blank.

Now there’s a loaded question to ask a 14 year old.  “I’m very sorry about the poem, it was uncalled for and childish,” I said to Gus, avoiding his question. I really was sorry, it was not my intention for him to read it, and I have no idea who gave it to him.  I’ll have to be more careful with my mini masterpieces from now on.

“You can have a brilliant future, Blanche.” He ran his tremulous hand through his thinning hair, hoping to find a bit more, but it was not to be. My brilliant future was not to be either.

“I think you might like A School Within a School. It is a less structured environment, you might do well there. You seem to have  “a heuristic style of learning.” Would you like to try it?”

“Sure, sign me up.  I don’t know what a heuristic style of learning is, but whatever. I’m game.”

“It means you learn well through trial-and-error and problem solving.”

What a joke. School Within a School. Talk about trial and error, we were free-range chickens, coming and going as we chose, reading what we wanted, and smoking lots of weed. Our problem solving consisted in figuring out how to cut school without getting caught. I became more and more rebellious and then I fell in love with a black guy named George Brown. It all happened quite quickly. Everyone called him Crazy Legs because he ran like crazy on the football field.  

There was an Adonis named George

On the football field he did forge

His legs were amazing

His eyes they were blazing

And those kisses were great, by George

When Crazy Legs and I hooked up we found our literary soul mates, or at the very least partners in crime. We wrote poems together and scattered them throughout the halls of Montclair High.

There once was a man named Obama

Whose election caused quite a trauma

He claims he is black

While denying the fact

That he had a very white mama

     It doesn’t get any better than that, does it? One night after smoking some rather potent pot he wrapped those crazy legs around me like a boa constrictor and said “Let’s get married and move to Germany.” Germany  seemed like a good idea to me at the time, needless to say he could be quite convincing using those crazy legs as weapons. I agreed to the latter, but not the former. Marriage was not a part of my game plan but the names were perfect, my name was White, his name was Brown: (“Truth can be more cruel than caricature.” or as they say in Germany, “Wahrheit kann grausamer als Karikatur.” You gotta love it.) George was born in Germany, had duel citizenship, spoke fluent German and promised me I would never see anything like the German language when it came to words. As I told you before, I love words.

We arrived in Hamburg, a port city in Northern Germany, on a butt cold January afternoon. Although my passport said Blanche White, both George and I told everyone my name was Abbruhen Weib. I was just happy that I was finally in the land of umlauts. For awhile, everything was great, new country, new name, but it is sad but true that wherever you go, you take yourself with you.  One of the first shocks was realizing that afternoons in winter in Germany end quickly. By 3:30 it is dark. Cold cold cold and dark. Some obscure German relative had found an apartment for us, a rat hole, but at least it was a roof over our heads. George was in his element. He will always be one of the kindest, gentlest of men and I will love him forever even though he broke my heart in a thousand little pieces. As soon as we stepped onto German soil he blossomed,  it was as if Montclair had been his cocoon while he waited patiently to bloom. His skin glowed, he looked like one of those dark devil/angels that make girls salivate. He sang gospel hymns in German.  He knew where to shop, where to get the best food in the cheapest places.  He talked to everyone on the streets whether they talked back or not, and Germans  as a rule, don’t talk back, they are a taciturn bunch who dress each day prepared for battle. You don’t see many pastels on the bus. I liked it. 

Hamburg was the beginning of the end for Crazy Legs and me, it wasn’t long before those legs began wrapping themselves around sweet frauleins all over town. I should have known, he was quite a catch, but I really didn’t care, familiarity breeds contempt or as the Hamburgians would say grobe vertrautheit verachtung. I taught German teenagers English.  I loved them, most of them had the same punk wild side I had not so long ago. It was easy to see why The Ramones were so popular in Germany. We taught each other Ramones lyrics: Suzy is a head banger (Suzy ist ein Hauptknallkörper.) Try finding a rhyme for hauptknallkorper. I also taught English to two German architects. They almost wept over their drawing boards when I offered to sing Suzy ist ein Hauptknallkorper to them as a bit of comic relief.  A serious pair, those two. 

“Here’s what you need to do.” Crazy Legs and I talked shortly before he moved out. The departure was amicable, civilized and funny. I knew that as long as I stayed in Hamburg he would make sure that I was OK, and I was. I made enough euros to keep me afloat and I have always been good at landing on my feet.

“You need to be on the prowl for a Danube steamboat company captain and then you need to bump him off.”

“What???”

“You heard me, either a Danube steamboat company captain or some bozo who sells liability insurance.”

“OK, I’ll bite, why?

“It’s the word thing. The name for the widow of a Danube steamboat company captain is Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitaenswitwe.”

“I love it!” It’s times like these that I realize how much I will miss my Crazy Legs.  “But insurance? An insurance salesman?”

“Yes,  it’s Kraftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung, automobile liability insurance,”

I never found that steamboat captain, but I did find a nice German man named Felix who sells insurance. We have been together for three years now. He uses me in all his ads. I sit behind the steering wheel of a Volkswagon or BMW that has clearly been in a wreck. I am a damsel in distress (ein junges Mädchen in der Qual) who is clearly in need of insurance. He dresses me in pale colors for most of the ads but I change into black as soon as the photographer leaves.

AN ANGEL IS SITTING NEXT TO MY BED

by Marianne Carlson

My twin sister, Hannah, and I  were born 12 weeks ahead of our due date. Needing intensive care, we were placed in separate incubators. Hannah began to gain weight and her health stabilized but I  only weighed 2 lbs, had trouble breathing, heart problems and other complications. I was not expected to live.

Our nurse did everything she could to make my health better, but nothing she did was helping me. With nothing else to do, our nurse went against hospital policy and decided to place both of us in the same incubator. She left us to sleep and when when she returned she found a sight she could not believe. She called all the nurses and doctors and this is what they saw.  Hannah had put her small little arm around me as if to hug and support me. From that moment on, my breathing and heart rate stabilized and my health became normal.

From the day we were born we were always together, Hannah and Sonia, the Bauer twins. Hannah watched over me as if her mission in life was to be my protector. She was 21 when she died, and I have been an empty shell ever since because when she died, my soul died with her.    We were born in Berlin and moved to America when we were toddlers, we spent our childhood in a modest home outside  Washington DC in the 1950’s and 60’s.  Because we left Germany when we were so young, Hannah and I never carried any guilt resulting from the horrors of the war.  In a way you could say we were collateral damage because our fellow classmates always regarded us with suspicion. We knew something bad had happened but we didn’t know what, and had no idea what it had to do with us. 

My parents grew up in a parallel universe. The war had impacted both their lives on a daily basis, they were heartbroken; their beloved Berlin in ruins, so many friends and relatives taken, their homeland despised. Because of this they never felt safe while growing up and were determined to create a stable, healthy home life for us while maintaining our German heritage.  Our family was extremely close, and my twin sister and I were inseparable.

My father, a career officer, worked  as an attache at Quantico, the Marine Base. Throughout his long career in the military, he always remained a gentleman,  a very gentle man, who loved poetry and must have found his position on the base difficult to say the least. The military did not suit him, he was a pacifist in a uniform, and he wrestled with this paradox throughout his entire career. The war had ended too recently for the passage of time to  even begin to heal all wounds, but both my parents managed to handle a delicate transition with grace. 

It was important to our parents that we maintain our German heritage, we spoke English at school but always German at home, and Hannah and I always spoke German to each other, creating an air of secrecy between us in school.  No one understood us which was the way we wanted it.  It must have been hard for my mother because we had each other but she had no one. Her thick hair always tied back in a knot, her calm, competent aura always created for us an environment of safety, like a comforting mother robin in her nest. My father worked long hours while my mothers’ days were spent cleaning the house. I can’t remember her having any friends, she must have been very lonely, but she never complained. She had  great dignity, great beauty, and there was a certain sweetness about her , a softness, which revealed itself every time she smiled. Losing Hannah robbed her of that softness, it was replaced by a hard edge. Every day after school we had kaffee und kuchen at the kitchen table and told her about our day. As we grew older we had other things we wanted to do but she insisted on this one tradition from her homeland, and we couldn’t say no to her.

It's strange, I can close my eyes and visualize our home, but try as I may, the only way I see Hannah is by looking in a mirror where I can see her facade, her smile and her dimple reflected back as me - but hollow, a ghost. Her essence has disappeared from my mind like a flashlight that slowly dims before dying completely, and nothing will ever replace it. The dark red hair, the pale skin, the rakish, defiant attitude is all there, but without any substance. I have become one of those life-size cardboard cutouts, an exact replica, but lifeless.  She was my touchstone. Only I knew the extent of Hannah’s mood swings, her highs and lows. To the rest of the world Hannah was the aggressor, the stable one, and I the introvert - but I knew better. As our high school days were coming to an end, her instability grew. She covered it up well but the prospect of high school ending and    leaving home to go to college was more unsettling to Hannah than to most. We often talked well into the night with the lights out.

“If something happens to me, you need to promise me that you will be all right,” Hannah whispered one night.

“What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

“We are too close, we need to disentangle ourselves.”

“Nothing is going to happen to you,” I remember saying, the hair on the back of my neck rising.

“Probably not, but if something does happen to me, you need to know I will never leave you. Look for signs, little signals that may pop up when you least expect it.”

Boys became a factor in our junior and senior year but they gravitated towards Hannah like a magnet whereas they seemed to tolerate me as Hannah’s appendage. She was constantly arranging double dates but this “two for the price of one” wore rather thin, both for the hapless boy who was to be my partner and for me. I would have far preferred reading a good book than spending endless hours hanging out in the local coffee shop. The truth is I believe I must have been jealous of any boy who seemed to be stealing Hannah away from me but none of it mattered until Stephen came along. I rerun it in my mind endlessly, how it unfolded, how it ended, if there was anything I could have done to prevent it. 

“Heute traf ich den meisten hübscher Junge, ich denke, dass ich ihn heiraten möchte.” (I met the cutest boy today, I think I am going to marry him.”)

“Ach? Was ist sein Name?” (Oh? What is his name?)

“Stephen”

The romance, for lack of a better word, came quickly and then it ended. Hannah was crazy about him. Stephen never tried to understand how important our German heritage was, to the contrary, he insulted Germans every chance he got. He took her to the senior prom but dropped her like a hot potato shortly after and moved on with his life, leaving Hannah devastated. I can never forgive his cruelty, the way he played with her like a rag doll. Following the breakup the juxtaposition of our roles was staggering for both of us. I, who had always been the weaker, was suddenly expected to hold her up, and I was totally unqualified. I never fully understood the depths of her depression until I found her lifeless body in the car in the garage.

Years later I returned to Berlin, I work for a large publishing company, my bilingual ability has served me well as my father promised. Single, I doubt if I could ever give myself to another person as I gave myself to Hannah. The pain is too excruciating. I believe I will continue to feel as if an integral part of me is missing until the day I die. One day I was on a train headed to Hamburg to attend a conference. As was my custom, my thoughts had once again returned to Hannah. I remembered what she told me, that she would never leave me, that I would receive signs, that they would pop up when I least expected them.

“Achten Sie auf Anzeichen, Hannah told me. (Watch for signs.) I studied the list of publishers who would be attending the conference absentmindedly, when I happened to glance out the window at the German countryside. And then I saw Hannah’s sign.  My heart leapt. How like her, a perfect sign from Hannah in full sight for the world to see.

An Angel is Sitting Next to my Bed

It's All Temporary

Luften

“Guten Morgen, Blinken.” 

“Guten Morgen, Klaus.”  Even though it was 9:30 on a cold December morning in Hamburg, Germany, the sun had not fully risen, it was dark, dreary and bone chilling cold. Klaus, my perpetually sunny, perpetually youthful husband kissed the top of my head as I sat at the breakfast nook in our apartment wrapped in a blanket. The window in the nook overlooked a typical Hamburg street, veiled by a  diaphanous curtain of snow falling relentlessly on the ubiquitous bicycle racks in front of brick buildings, graffiti everywhere, mostly large block letters defying rhyme nor reason. Klaus doesn’t allow me to call it gloomy, to him it is peaceful.

Although I was born and raised in Los Angeles, it has taken me 45 years and several years in Hamburg to fully comprehend what a strange, macabre place LA truly is.  Winter in Southern California is much like summer in Southern California, give or take a few degrees. It is as if a very bright light shines on the city continually. There is no place to hide. An environment obsessed with appearances, it leaves no room for soul, either in the heart of the sprawling city itself, or in her citizens who run from their plastic surgeon to their personal trainer to their dietician to their acting coach to their shrink who tells them that she sees improvement (but need more sessions  to the tune of $200 an hour.) 

I have come to realize that all these self-serving activities serve one purpose: to obliterate the aging process. Since there is no need to fight the elements, Angelinos fight their inner demons. It is a warm place with a sordid underbelly which allows things to fester. Almost anything is permissible, even encouraged. Drugs and alcohol are everywhere, kids buy and sell baggies on every corner, they then flock into AA meetings where frustrated second rate actors practice their schtick on fellow addicts.

Los Angeles is a land of beautiful women and beautiful cars. Maintenance is the key to both. Hamburg is a land of hard working women  without cars waiting for the bus on a cold corner with a wool hat pulled down over her hair, maintenance an afterthought. Conversely, museums in Los Angeles are full of paintings of dark, tortured souls, most paintings in German museums are gay and colorful (except for Otto Dix whose people are beyond bizarre.) 

“Give me a kiss to build a dream on,” Klaus sang to me as I spread a thick layer of quark on a hard roll.

  “Do you want to come watch us shoot today? We’re filming on the harbor.”

“Are you out of your mind? It will be freezing down there.” 

“OK, but please give me a kiss to build a dream on before I go, and my imagination can thrive upon that kiss.”

“You are such a jerk.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”  

Klaus always got the last shot. He did again this morning as he looped a wool scarf around his neck, German style, and put on his heavy boots. 

“Happy shooting,” I said as he lumbered down the stairs leading from our fifth floor walk-up. 

Klaus and have been married for 15 years.  He was drop dead gorgeous when we met, and continues to be so even though we are both in our middle 40’s. Half Swedish, half German, he has dark blonde hair, Paul Newman eyes that smile when he laughs, an iron man torso, and those rare genes that enable him to age into a distinguished gentleman.

The fact that he still calls me Blinken, which means twinkle in German, is a bit of a misnomer. It has been many a moon (if ever) since I have twinkled, but I find it endearing and I love him for it. My eyes never smile when I laugh, my adolescent photographs show a teen ager who is very uncomfortable in her own skin. Why? I do not know. I am tall, slim, have great skin, if I do say so myself, but my over active negative thinking processes tend to show on my face, giving me a somewhat petulant expression most of the time - at least this is what I see when I unexpectedly catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror. 

Germans tend to be a serious bunch, but in our marriage I am the worry wart, Klaus the happy warrior. We met in Los Angeles where he was filming a documentary on pre World War 2 Germany and I was being paid as a consultant. European History was my major in college, my thesis was on The Third Reich. Being married to a German hunk isn’t always what it is cut out to be, but I prefer it to being married to an obese bald man. We compliment each other, Klaus makes movies, he loves the hustle and bustle, the intrigue, the acting. I write. I like staying home.

Nowhere is the juxtaposition of LA and Hamburg more pronounced than in the German’s obsession with fresh air and their daily habit of luften, where every window is slung wide open. It’s an airing out the likes of which I have never seen. Curtains blow wildly out of most windows at any given moment.

“We Germans worry about mold,” Klaus explained.

“Mold?”

“Yes, mold? We build very tight buildings. Like people, buildings need to breath fresh air every day.”

And so it began. Every day between noon and 1:00 there was a sharp rat-a-tat-tat on my door. “Freulein von der Hyde, öffnen Sie die Tür. Offnen Sie die Tur. Open zee door.” I knew what was coming, so I close my lap top, open my windows, open the skylight in the bathroom, and brace myself for his wrath. Herr Bauer, my landlord, has arrived. His English and my German are both shaky. We communicate in bits and pieces, but we both know that he is not at all happy with my luften, I am not doing it properly.  It is beyond me how there can be an improper way to open a window, but apparently there is. He communicates his displeasure through his gestures, waving his arms wildly as he points to my half open window. It is cold, very cold in the apartment, yet beads of sweat form on his brow as he unzips his jacket, loosens his scarf and stamps his heavy boots. I am used to bare feet and flip flops, these boots almost frighten me.

After three years in Hamburg we returned to La La Land and moved into an apartment on Doheney, just off of Pico.  It’s a snazzy address, Klaus’ career has taken off due to the success of his Hamburg Harbor movie. We have lots of money which is a good thing because our electric bill is astronomical. I keep the air conditioning on high day and night so that I can walk around our apartment wrapped in a blanket. Klaus wears a heavy sweater. We both miss luften.

It's All Temporary

Goodbye, Puddleduckpuppet Plaza

Hello, Germany

It's All Temporary