American Mama by Julia Poole

A waitress arrived with a pad of paper and pulled a pencil from behind her ear.

“So…you ready to order? I haven’t got all day.”

The waitress chomped gum, gazed at the ceiling, and tapped her foot impatiently. A line of retro pins trickled down her sweater—a peace sign, the Beatles in their mop-top days, I Like Ike, a Chicago Cubs logo, Make Love Not War. Tommy James and the Shondells crooned “Hanky Panky.”

“Hurry up and order so I can give your table to someone else,” the hostess said, playing her role. Toni’s face registered surprise, but she said nothing.

“See, Mama, they are so funny here,” said Paul, a reminder that rudeness was expected and considered amusing, part of the restaurant’s popularity.

Carole King warbled the last few bars of “I Feel the Earth Move.” The place reeked of grease, onions, and disinfectant. Options flooded the laminated menu, pages tacky from the pawing masses. I squelched the urge to wash my hands.

Toni blushed, unaccustomed to Ed Debevic’s schtick. “I not quite ready. Perhaps you take their order.” I didn’t want Toni to feel uncomfortable, and a thought flickered. Perhaps we should have eaten elsewhere.

The waitress’s shoulders softened. She smiled, fixed her eyes on Toni and said, “Where’re you guys from?”

Paul said, “I and my mother, we are from Germany.”

The waitress said she had spent a semester studying in Germany. She and Paul eased into a conversation, their German unintelligible to me. Toni leaned over the table and whispered, “Paul introduce you as his American Mama. At home, the grandparents refer to you this way.”

Charmed to discover the German relatives considered me with such regard, words escaped me. I burrowed into the menu and clutched this goodwill close. Toni and I had chatted by phone and exchanged several emails throughout Paul’s stay. We had openly shared our backgrounds, traditions, and cultures, often noting our similarities outweighed the differences. We enjoyed each other’s company seemingly without awkwardness or pretense.

On this June day, I played tour guide to our seventeen-year-old German exchange student, Paul, and his mother, Toni. She had arrived from Germany three days earlier, eager to see Paul’s favorite places. We lived near Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Chicago was a favorite city of Paul’s, a manageable getaway. The jewels of Chicago gleamed—Michigan Avenue, the Art Institute, a soaring skyline, Lake Michigan, and the green space of Millennium and Grant Park.

“We are ready when you arrive at the end of the month,” said Toni.

“We can’t wait to visit,” I said.

“Everything is planned for your trip,” said Toni. “My father…he plan a special day for you in Krumbach. I try…how you say…to hold him back.”

Paul chimed in, “My grandfather wanted a band to greet you at the airport in Munich…to play the American national anthem, but my parents said no.” He laughed, and his eyes left mine to survey the bustle.

“Never mind, Julia, I take care of this with my father,” said Toni, waving a hand.

Just as I had planned this whirlwind tour of Chicago, Toni had carefully outlined every day of our impending visit. The itinerary included a day in Krumbach to meet the grandparents, a day in Munich and Berlin, and a day visiting various castles and churches.

“I leave one day open so you can visit Dachau,” said Toni. Her head lowered and slanted forward. “If you still wish to go there.”

“Yes,” I said, “Alex wants to go.”

Alex, our seventeen-year-old son, was a history buff and at one point during the middle school years, had developed a mysterious fascination with the Holocaust. I had accompanied him on school trips to the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Over the years, he had picked out books about the Holocaust, and I had bought them. WWII and the Holocaust, along with sports, religion, and politics, were topics Alex enjoyed discussing. He often posed questions I couldn’t answer. After WWII, why did wars happen? After the Holocaust, how could more genocides occur?

Cambodia. Rwanda. Bosnia. Darfur.

Why couldn’t people stop killing each other?

Toni leaned closer, her fingers clasped a tall glass of ice water.  She said, “I wish to ask you…why…why do you wish to go to Dachau?”

It was an unexpected question, and it prickled. Toni’s face flushed. Dark eyes searched mine as if trying to see through a mist. Why? We had asked to visit Dachau months prior and although at the time I had expected a question or two, Toni had not asked why. Today, Alex had stayed home retaking the ACT. If he were here, he would speak the words I couldn’t put together. I sensed our request to visit Dachau had offended, perhaps tainted her perfect plans for our visit. Was it a misguided request? Some argued the United States was slow and reluctant to memorialize the truth of its sins. What if Toni had requested to see the African-American Museum in Washington, D.C., or the Pequot Museum in Connecticut, which depicted the slaughter of Native-American women and children?  Or what if I drove through pockets of Chicago where crime and poverty festered? I was embarrassed to show the complete truth of my country.

The waitress appeared. She issued white paper hats splashed with Eat at Ed’s and insisted we put them on and offered to take our photo. We obliged, posed and smiled. I considered how to answer Toni’s question, one she may have pondered for weeks. I sensed there was a personal reason for her question that she had not revealed.

Before lunch, we had visited the observatory on the 94th floor of the John Hancock Building to gaze through floor-to-ceiling windows that offered striking views of the city. On a sunny day, a person could see Wisconsin to the north, Indiana to the southeast, and Michigan to the east. Today, the skies were cloudy, but that hadn’t obstructed views of Chicago, Lake Michigan and the suburbs, which sprawled from the city like spokes emanating from a wheel hub. The sight offered a perspective not found at ground-level, where crowded streets and tall buildings choked the skyline.

I had shifted from one window to the next, and at each window, I inched forward, stood on tippy-toes and searched. Skyscrapers shrouded the landscape. I couldn’t locate the façade of the Chicago Theater or the bronze lions that guarded the entrance to the Art Institute, or Daly Plaza’s 50-foot Picasso sculpture? The view was impressive, but it also frustrated me. I preferred proximity. Details mattered. But now the closeness of Toni’s question felt suffocating.

The reasons people visited places like Dachau seemed obvious, but I sensed Toni wanted more than the obvious answer. Why would we, Paul’s adopted American family, want to visit a place where heinous crimes were committed on innocents, a place not far from Paul’s home, a reminder that Nazis—Germans, like Paul and his family—perpetrated the Holocaust? Subjects of war and remembrance were personal. It was easy to rest our request on Alex—proposing a visit to Dachau had been his idea—but now, explaining myself was like gathering a tangle of yarn from a thorny bush.

Toni waited patiently, silent. I rambled on about historical significance, learning experience, honoring American soldiers and their liberation of Dachau, and, I added, my great-uncle Walter died in France during WWII.

Toni listened and nodded. Her hands released the glass, and she placed a napkin in her lap. The corners of her mouth lifted into a slight smile. She appeared satisfied. There was a pause in the music, but not in the animated voices of those seated around us. It seemed a perfect moment to segue into a light-hearted subject, and I waited for Toni or Paul to talk.

I remembered a letter written by Toni’s father, Karl. The letter arrived before Paul traveled to America. Karl wrote of his thankfulness towards us for welcoming Paul into our home and, specifically, to The United States of America, which gave freedom and liberty to Germany, especially after the Second World War. We haven’t forgotten it! I had often thought of Karl’s words over the last year. What was it like for Germans to live with their Holocaust history in the years following the war and what was the relevance of this history today? Was Germany’s struggle to atone for Nazi crimes different from America’s attempt to reconcile a legacy of Native American genocide, slavery, or Civil Rights injustice, at best a one-step forward, two-step backward progress? Remembering was an intentional act and forgetting could be deliberate.

“I have never been to see a concentration camp,” Toni said.

“What?” I couldn’t stop myself. “You’ve never been…”

Toni shook her head. “No. I have not.”

Three waiters climbed atop the front counter. Restaurant service stopped. Every Ed Debevic’s employee raised their arms to sing the Isley Brothers’ classic “Shout.”

Competing with hoots and whistles from the restaurant crowd, Paul looked at me and said, “I have been to Dachau…one time with my class from school. My sister…she also go there with her school.”

“Manfred…he, too, has gone there,” said Toni.

And you, Toni, why have you not visited? It was the question I never asked. I didn’t risk hearing an answer that may disappoint. Would I lose our shared goodwill, our friendship? Toni sometimes wore the traditional Bavarian dress, a dirndl, and I realized the Holocaust was embedded in the fabric of German history, a permanent stain, faded, yet visible. At what point in a friendship has a person earned the right to question? Listening seemed the prudent option.

Leaning closer still, Toni said, “Do you know…my father was there. The night the synagogue was burned in Krumbach. Kristallnacht. Night of breaking glass. He saw this occur.”

The restaurant quieted as the chorus sang: “a little bit softer now, a little bit softer now.”

Paul displayed the look—tilted head, eyes squinting, his face a question mark—an expression of incomprehension he often presented while living amidst English speakers in a country not his own. And now I didn’t understand his puzzlement. He stared at Toni and said, “But, Mama…there are no Jews in Krumbach. There were no Jews in Krumbach.”

Toni shook her head and said, “No, Jews not there now, but at one time there were Jews in Krumbach. They were all killed. I can tell you which homes in Krumbach were once Jewish homes.”

Paul accepted her explanation, but his confusion lingered. My wordless gaze shifted between mother and son. The chorus switched to “a little bit louder now.” People danced in the aisles, some with the wait staff. Subdued, Paul stared at the spectacle, perhaps wondering how he had not known about Toni’s revelation, perhaps realizing he had seen in Krumbach only what Toni had wanted him to see. The song slipped into a chord progression and Paul’s eyes closed and his head bopped to the beat. Bangs, molasses-colored like his mother’s, fell forward and concealed his eyes. His knee bounced, jiggling the tabletop.

During Paul’s stay, he had asked tough questions about America and our family’s choices, a game—uniquely German, perhaps—of social questioning and finger-pointing to win moral superiority. Why don’t you recycle more? Why do so many teens in America become pregnant? Why do so many Americans die from gun violence? I played, reluctantly. Why are German children tracked for college or trade school by third grade? Why are German working mothers scorned as neglectful for leaving children with caretakers? Why do prostitution businesses—legal in Germany, and patronized by some companies to reward male workers—employ poor immigrants for their source of labor? Paul and I lobbed opinions from American and German viewpoints. We engaged in intense discussions, open-minded and honest. Debating respectfully with Paul was a mixture of disquiet and calm. The concept of winner and loser faded and the desire to learn and understand transcended. Such was the earned dividend of our relationship: no topic was off-limits, and clarification was an accepted rule of the game. The American Mama would ask one more question.

“Paul, didn’t you know Jewish families had lived in Krumbach?”

Paul, contemplative, eyes glued to the surrounding chaos, swiped bangs from his forehead. He turned and looked at me.

“No, I did not know this.”

I said nothing. Toni, too, was quiet. I felt unable to absorb the full impact of Paul’s words. The room swirled. Singing. Dancing. I blamed my lightheadedness on lack of food. I broke from Paul’s gaze. Earlier, at the John Hancock Building, I had looked straight down 94 floors to the street below. I had watched the vehicles—black dots—maneuvering, stopping and going. I didn’t expect what happened next: A sensation of plunging, the bottom of my stomach sinking, a loss of perspective. My eyes couldn’t break away from the vehicle I had zeroed in on, and I couldn’t stop as I imagined falling to the pavement below. Vertigo.

I felt riveted—shocked and saddened, too—by this disconnect between what Paul had learned at school and the truth. Here, thousands of miles from home, Toni felt comfortable enough to reveal a heartbreaking truth. I understood that she trusted me enough to be part of the conversation and I wondered what questions, if any, Paul would ask Toni in private.

The last chant of “everybody, shout, shout, shout” reverberated. A server stopped at our booth, plopped three baskets of food on our table and said, “Here’s your grub. Eat up. If there’s a problem with the food, we don’t want to hear about it.”

We left Ed Debevic’s and walked east toward Michigan Avenue. It rained, and Toni and I opened umbrellas. Paul’s lean frame sauntered between us, hands in pockets. I looked down to avoid puddles. We walked in silence, a shared reflection of the ineffable understanding among us.


Julia Poole is a writer and retired speech-language therapist. Her writing has appeared in Carbon Culture Review, Minerva Rising Journal, DoveTales, an International Journal of the Arts, The East Bay Review, The Dime Show Review, Dime Show Anthology, MOON Magazine, and Motherlode: Essays on Parenthood. Julia lives is Rockford, Michigan. More of her writing can be found at www.juliapoolewrites.com.  

Photo courtesy Pikwizard.


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