Going Steady

Mama grips my chin and tilts my face left and right, examining me from different angles. “You have it backwards, Mina: red lipstick, cheeks as pale as a harlot who never sees the sun because she’s entertaining soldiers all night. It is supposed to be a demure lip and a rouged cheek.”

“Everyone wears red lipstick, Mama,” I explain.

“Wipe it off! You are not everyone.” She scrapes at my lips with her handkerchief. “And your Robert is as nice a boy as they come, but even nice boys know the difference between the woman they enjoy for one night, and the girl they’re going to marry.” She shoves a rosy pink lipstick in my hands and pushes me towards the mirror. “I can pinch the color into your cheeks.”

“I’ll use rouge.”

I fix my face to Mama’s exacting standards.

“Who else will be there tonight.” Mama doesn’t ask questions. She elicits answers. “Who is escorting Clara Beck.”

“Clara is still going steady with Leo Winter,” I answer. “That’s Robert’s friend from work.”

“The one who smells bad.”

“Everyone there smells bad, Mama, even the tidiest secretaries. It’s the chemicals in the air. They can take a hundred baths and soak their hair in lemon juice, and they still smell like burned sausage.”

Mama scrunches her nose and gives a small, pragmatic tilt of her head. “I suppose that is not a bad job for a girl, at least until she can become a wife and mother.”

I swallow the lump of emotion that suddenly came to my throat. I finish my makeup.

“I know that pout,” Mama says.

“I don’t have a single argument to make,” I tell her. “You’ve already convinced me. Our people are in danger. Our country is at war.” Mama’s words slip out of my mouth as smoothly as the pink lipstick slipped on. “If I have any sense of self-worth, I will finish high school with good grades and marry Robert as soon as possible. We will not be silenced. We will not be erased.”

Mama’s eyes shine with approval. Her lips even draw upwards. My heart swells. I think she’s right. I think I can find all the sense of purpose and importance I want, just by upholding our culture. Our traditions. Our very blood and bones.

We will not be erased.

At the restaurant, Robert and Leo are perfect gentlemen. They listen attentively as Clara and I talk, and ask questions about our studies and our families. They share a few tasteful anecdotes from work. The one where Leo got revenge on a hostile laborer by splashing him with cold water out in the winter air made us all laugh.

Clara and I each leave two bites of dessert on our plates. Mama says this shows a girl is relaxed enough to enjoy the sweet things in life without needing to pursue every crumb. We excuse ourselves to freshen up in the ladies’ room.

My reflection confronts me once again. “I hate this shade of pink,” I complain. “It doesn’t suit me.”

Clara laughs. “Thank you for broaching the topic. I didn’t want to be so rude, but…” She produces her own red lipstick from her handbag.

“Yes, please.” I run my handkerchief over my lips. “Mama wouldn’t stop her criticisms until she dolled me up like some lady from Kaiser Wilhelm’s court.”

Clara takes in a sharp breath and holds it, eyes closed, lips cinched.

Hot shame punches me in the gut. How could I have complained about Mama? It’s only been three weeks since Clara's mother died, along with the little baby who tried to come into the world too soon.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I should not have spoken like that.”

Clara breathes slowly. She blinks her eyes very quickly and we both pretend there are no tears. “It’s almost our turn,” she says. “Just a few more weeks of classes, and then it’s on us to save our people.”

I nod.

Clara asks, “Do you think Robert will propose before you graduate, or wait until after? Leo said something about having a big surprise for my birthday, but that isn’t until July.”

“Robert and I haven’t discussed it,” I say. “Well, he tried. I just got all nervous. Sometimes I think about how things are, and what he does for work, and what I wish life could look like, and…” My brain catches up with my mouth. I don’t really know how to finish my sentence.

Clara grips my arms with two tight hands. “Mina,” she says. “There is too much at stake for us to let our thoughts wander away. Sure, their jobs are disgusting, but it's important work. They’re keeping us safe. And it isn’t just me and you—”

“It’s our country,” I agree. “It’s our people. You’re right.”

“Besides, what can we do?” Clara gives me a sad smile. “We’re on the brink of erasure. They are trying to erase us.” She's talking about The Enemy, the “they” who have been systematically trying to destroy our people over generations. “It's almost our turn to keep our culture alive. If we get caught up in the details we can’t control, like how gross Leo and Robert’s jobs are, then we won’t be able to stand strong and support our Fatherland.”

I nod again. Clara’s right. Mama’s right. My feelings about doing “the right thing” or defending against The Enemy “the right way” are just childish and self-indulgent.

I put on the red lipstick.

I follow Robert, Leo, and Clara to the dance floor in a bar. Every time I feel a twinge of dread that my people are being slaughtered, or that pang of discomfort that we’ve crossed a line in our self-defense, I take a sip of beer. The world is crumbling and if I stop dancing, I’ll crumble, too.

Blisters pulse painfully on my toes. My winter coat presses my sweat-dampened dress to my skin, cooking my insides as the cold air nibbles at my face. Robert and Leo are walking us home, which means that Leo and Clara are kissing passionately against a tree and Robert keeps looking at me with frightening intensity.

“Your eyes are so beautiful,” Robert says; “The perfect shade of blue.”
Every breath I take is laced with that awful burned-sausage-stink. Beer, sweat, and crisp wind can’t take it all away.

I can’t dance forever.

Robert leans down, his face slowly approaching mine. I close my eyes. I brace for the kiss. His warm lips touch mine. I can’t taste him, or feel the cold, or hear my best friend’s happy moans—all I know is the odor of seared flesh.

It's just like sausages.

I know his job has nothing to do with sausages. There are no pigs or cows on the other side of the fence. They aren’t really processing meat or cooking food of any kind. I can’t think about that, though. I have to think of anything else. The world is crumbling and if I let myself believe it isn’t “just like sausages,” I’ll crumble, too.

I don’t mean to pull back. Robert asks me what’s the matter, but his voice sounds hazy and distant. My lungs suck down the frigid night but I can’t get enough air. My legs are weak and my head is spinning.

Strong arms hold me steady: Robert. Soft hands clasp my cheeks: Clara.

With a good-natured laugh, Leo says, “Should I fetch a bucket of water? In this weather, nothing gets a person moving like a cold splash.”

“Person.” My voice sounds strained. “You forced a person to work in the cold and you splashed water on him.”

“Hey!” Leo’s face comes into focus. He’s scowling, defensive. “The laborers in the camp aren’t really people. The man I splashed with water gave up being a person when he started letting other men use him like a woman. Besides, if it weren’t for the number on his arm, he would be trying to abuse me.”

I want to slap Leo in the face, but driving him away could cost me my best friend and my boyfriend.

I want to drug all the guards at the camp and set all the sausages free before they’re fried, but that would betray my people, my family, my friends, my genes, my Fatherland.

I want to run away. I want to find a place where The Enemy isn’t trying to kill me, so I don’t have to turn myself into a monster in self-defense. No such place exists. The entire world is full of Them, breeding so fast that my people and our culture will be lost to history. It’s genocide, one wailing baby at a time.

We will not be erased.

I say, “I want to dance some more.”

I vomit.

One time, when I was a little girl, Mama and Papa brought me to Berlin for a cousin’s wedding. I ate too many sweets, and kept eating them after Mama had told me to stop. Ashamed that I made myself sick, I ran out to the alley to throw up where the adults wouldn’t see.
Someone from the street heard me crying and stepped into the alley.

She held my hair back and said soothing things to me. She took off a silky glove that went all the way up to her elbow and wiped my mouth with it. She helped me walk back to the door, but wouldn’t enter. She said, “Your friends won’t want to see you with a guy like me. Go on and take care of yourself, Princess.”

I’d forgotten that moment until just now, as I vomit beer and fear all over my National Socialist German Worker’s Party boyfriend.

Leo says, “Ew.”

Clara says, “You have to get all the bad stuff out before you can feel better.”

Robert pats my back. He could be my future husband and the father of my children. He works as a guard at a prison where husbands and fathers are separated from their families, forced to work outside in the cold, splashed with water… I don’t even know exactly what makes that awful smell…

I don’t want to know. I think, maybe, I might know, but I don’t really know for certain…

“Feeling better?” Robert asks.

I say, “I think I’m starting to come around.”

-

In 145 BCE, Rome, Mina’s father betrothes her to a Roman soldier who participated in the sacking of Carthage.

In 1797, Australia, Mina and her family try to eke out a living near hostile strangers who look, speak, dress, and behave in ways completely unfamiliar to her.

In 1864, The Confederate States of America, Mina is surrounded by friends and loved ones whose livelihoods are threatened by Northern Aggression.

In 1941, Germany…

In 1985, South Africa…

In 2025,