The Hexen of Stendahl

Today is my grandmother’s 86th birthday. I met her for the first time only a few days ago. The lonely tripod that is my family in America suddenly expands and wobbles as I gain more relationships. My mother and I have travelled to a town about a hundred kilometers west of Berlin where my mother’s mother lives in a Soviet style Neubau apartment. I have also just met my mother’s little sister, Roswitha, and her husband Wolle. I meet my cousins, Thomas and Silvia. We’re all staying at a Pension around the corner. My grandmother’s little sister Tante Minka is staying with my grandmother but they have an argument and she ends up bunking with my mother at the Pension and my mother is forced to scrub her back and tweeze out her chin whiskers.

It’s been years since I’ve spoken German. My grammar is all over the place. It’s hard to tell a story when you need to describe the key word you’re looking for like “godmother” which I call “religious mother” which, in a game of cultural charades turns out to be “Patentante” in German. Everyone is on their best behavior. I resign myself to being the family clown amazed that I am finally among my own people beyond the Wall. To be assigned a role in this extended family seems like gift.

In the evening after my grandmother’s celebratory birthday lunch, we all meet up again at her apartment. My young cousins decide to head out to a pub. I’ve forgotten to pack a warm jacket and decide to stay in. Wolle watches T.V. My grandmother reads a large print biography of Pope John Paul II. Roswitha suggests a game of Mensch ärgere Dich nicht (aka Parchisi or Sorry! in America). She takes out the original game that the sisters played in the ‘50s. The tokens are wood, the dice are wood, the board is cardboard and faded along the crease where it folds into its tattered box.

Roswitha, Tante Minka, my mother and I sit around the dining table and choose our colors. Roswitha, who I learn is a master of prestidigitation, pulls a bottle of Kreuterschnaps from her purse and pilfers four shot glasses from my grandmother’s cupboard. This is one of the hundred regional liqueurs made from proprietary recipes that include a potent muddle of herbs. It tastes bitter, it tastes sweet, it tastes like licorice which I like. Even my mother, who is generally a teetotaler, drinks the potion. Our faces flush as we bend over the board. The dice begin to smoke as we take turn after heated turn and our laughter burns away our differences. My German becomes fluent.

Tante Minka needs a three to move her piece off the board. My mother chants “Fünf. Fünf. Fünf.” Tante Minka rolls a five. My sweet, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth, mother jinxes one roll after another. This doesn’t mean she wins it just means that she will not allow anyone else to win the game.

“Du bist eine Hexe,” cries Roswitha as she moves another token back to the beginning. My mother responds with a ladylike cackle.

The four of us hunch over the board as we move our pieces around in a timeless circle. At some point I look up. My grandmother in her pink chenille robe complains about the noise, tells us to keep it down so we don’t disturb her neighbors. Clearly she is tired. She sits with Wolle and watches the returns; Schroeder receives a vote of no confidence and Angela Merkel is running for office for the first time.

My mother throws another hex. I decide we need to let my grandmother go to bed.  I am not adept at using dark juju on others but for the greater good I roll box cars. I roll again and get double sixes then two more sixes on the third roll. Eins. Zwei. Drei. Abracadabra. I’ve won the game.

While everyone is too stunned to curse I look at Roswitha and say, “Ich bin auch eine Hexe.”

-Kerstin Schulz

Kerstin Schulz is a German-American writer living in Portland, Oregon. Her work can be found in Ruminate Magazine, Wanderlust: A Travel Journal, The Bookends Review and Cathexis Northwest Press, among other publications.