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The Fuhrer




It took Anna's husband, Eric, three full days to notice that their six year old daughter, Jessica, had taken to the wearing of a Hitler mustache and, even more alarmingly, to the heiling of herself in the hallway mirror between the master bedroom and the study. Anna was aware that her husband was not the most observant of men. She'd known that when she'd married him, but ten years later, she wondered if his powers of observation had actually worsened with time, or if she had just grown less and less tolerant.

That it took him three days to notice drove Anna mad. It drove her nearly as mad as the thing itself, which drove her to drive herself in Eric's Jeep all the way to the pier in Canarsie - because water, even dirty water, gave Anna something she called perspective, even though it was the wrong word - and ponder, tearfully, whether there was even any point in going on anymore, if this was the kind of thing that was going to keep happening. On top of everything else! Anna knew she was dramatic, but Jessica was not easy. She'd never been easy. She'd tried to be born sideways, and she'd refused to nurse. She refused to grow at a normal rate, and as a result, was disconcertingly tiny. As a toddler, she'd thrown tantrums so loud and formidable that both 4A and 4C had called the police for suspected child abuse. There was no abuse, and Anna stopped accepting packages for 4C. 4A moved out. The school psychologist had diagnosed Jessica with being gifted and talented, and said that these children could often be difficult. She said it with an apologetic tone. All that could be done was a transfer to the gifted and talented class. Jessica had been sent to the school psychologist for, among other acts, urinating in Thomas Guidry's thermos. Anna did love her daughter, but she often thought that Jessica's main gift, her main talent, was knowing exactly what to do to upset people the most. Even as she slept, her mouth curled in a mischievous sneer, that resembled, more than anything else, the face Anna made when she was crying.

The mustache appeared on the Wednesday after Jessica's class had gone on a field trip to the Museum of Jewish Heritage. Jessica wore it to breakfast and looked at her mother expectantly as she spooned Cheerios into her mouth, one oat O at a time. She wants attention, Anna reminded herself. Don't. She wasn't even sure what it was, at first. It was a small black square of what Anna thought might be construction paper, taped just above Jessica's lip.

"Mom," Jessica said. Jessica had never called Anna anything soft or small like "mommy" or "mama." For a month when she was five, she'd called her parents by their first names. Anna had begged and pleaded with Eric to do something about it, and he'd only shrugged. What was there to do. It didn't even bother him. Since her birth, he viewed Jessica less as a daughter and more as an amusing little toy, like the plastic monkey that he kept on his desk at work. It marched in place and played silent cymbals when wound up. Jessica reverted to "mom" and "dad" on her own.

Anna turned to her daughter and tried to ignore the black square on her face. "Want some orange juice, Jess?"

"No. And don't call me Jess. Ihate Jess." She wrinkled her face. "I told you that. I told you last week and yesterday." She slurped a Cheerio from her spoon, then let the spoon fall into the bowl. She looked up at Anna, who had resisted the urge to apologize for calling her daughter Jess and had gone back to emptying the dishwasher, and smiled. "Guess who I am, mom."

"I don't know. Who are you, Jessica."

Jessica giggled. Her giggle was just about the only thing about her that held the innocence of a normal little girl. It was high-pitched and delightful. "Adolf Hitler! Look at my mustache!"

Anna felt the headache come on immediately. It swept her mind clean like a tidal wave. She looked helplessly at her daughter, who was pink with laughter. The little paper mustache matched her black pigtails. She was a demon in a little yellow t-shirt. "Honey, I think you know that you're not wearing that mustache to school."

Jessica stopped laughing. "No, mom, I am."

"No, Jess, you're not."

"But I want to!"

"That's too bad." Anna knew Jessica was smart enough to know why. She knew she was smart enough that if Anna told her that it would offend people, that, in fact, it would offend nearly everyone, that it even offended her, her very own mother, it would only encourage her. It would be a waste of energy. Instead she crossed her arms and did her best impression of a stern, angry mother. She wished Eric were there to see it. He always blamed her problems with Jessica on Anna's lack of confidence in her authority. "Jessica, take it off. Now. Remove the mustache and give it to me."

Jessica's face began to turn pink again, this time in anger. Her mouth opened and closed and Anna knew it was coming. She braced herself.

But then it didn't come. Jessica scowled, and then smiled. "Fine." She ripped the mustache off and dangled it between her thumb and forefinger, her arm outstretched to Anna. "Here."

Anna knew it couldn't be good.



Anna was right. It wasn't good. Jessica's principal, a rather genial, elderly man named Mr. Cain, called Anna at 10am, just as she was returning from dropping Jessica off at school. "Mrs. Levine, we've got a little problem here with Jessie."

Anna bristled. Jessie. Who was he to call her Jessie. No one called her Jessie. "What's going on?" she asked, guarded.

"Jessie seems to have - well, there's no easy way to put this. Jessie seems to have, uh, colored in a mustache on herself, and uh - "

Oh no, Anna thought. "Yes?" She knew she should play dumb. An improper response would be oh, I know. She had it at breakfast. I figured she'd make a new one when she got to school. What can we do! Kids! No, no, haha, I can't control my own daughter. Why do you ask?

"Well, it's a, uh, it's a - " He trailed. His stutter irritated Anna. It wasn't that big of a deal, was it? Besides, he was familiar with Jess and her antics. This wasn't nearly as bad as the pee in the thermos. Or even the tempera paint in the tropical fish tank.

"Yes? Go on?"

"It seems to be a, well, a Hitler mustache."

Anna was silent for a moment. Then she said "Hmmm" in a tone of the greatest concern she could muster.

"Mrs. Levine, your daughter has been going around telling the other first graders to say Heil to her. She is telling them that she is Adolf Hitler. She told Mrs. Biederman that she was no longer Jessica Levine, but Adolf Hitler, and this is one thing, but poor Mrs. Biederman's father, well, was a Holocaust survivor, and - "

"Oh, dear." There wasn't much else to say.

"She is upsetting people. Mrs. Biederman brought her here, and Mrs. Biederman was in tears - "

"Can't you make her take it off?"

"Well, that's the thing, Mrs. Levine - "

"You can call me Anna."

" - Anna. That's the thing. It's painted on, or something."

"Painted? How did my daughter get paint?"

"Maybe a marker, indelible, I don't know. But we tried to wash her face, and it does not come off. Certainly we--"

"Well, where would she access such a marker?"

"Mrs. Levine, Anna, we just don't know. Perhaps she took it from your home. But we are going to need you to come pick Jessie up today. She cannot remain in school if she is behaving this way. This is a sensitive topic, and as you know, Jessie's class went to the museum, so the other children know who, uh, Adolf Hitler is and what he did and what his role in history is. We cannot allow Jessie to upset every other child in her class with this behavior. Many of them, are, as you may know, Jews."

"Mr. Cain, our family is Jewish." She choked on the word "our."

"Well, maybe you and your husband can talk to Jessie about this in light of, uh, that." Anna sensed judgment in his tone. She knew. What kind of mother creates this kind of child?

"I'll be there in about forty minutes."

"I am so sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Levine."

"I'm the sorry one."



Anna decided not to call Eric at work. Every time she'd done so, maneuvering her way through cool-voiced, well trained secretaries, remaining calm until she finally got him on the line, and then bursting into tears as she relayed to him Jessica's latest, he got that tone in his voice. It went with this look on his face, one that she knew he was making at himself in the black glass of his desktop. How she hated that fucking office of his. How she hated that tone and that face. Half mockery, half disgust. "She's a little kid, Anna," he'd say, the implied follow-up being "so why can't you deal with her?" Eric never dealt with her, though. Eric never needed to. Eric never tried. Eric had no idea.

Anna went to sit in Jessica's room. She did this sometimes, when she wanted to be calm and to think. She could pretend it was her own room, and that she was a child, and that everything big would be taken care of by people wiser and larger than she was. Jessica's room could belong to any other little girl. It was entirely normal in every way: A hot pink and yellow striped bed spread, doll house in the corner, legos on the floor. Books on a shelf. A dirty soccer uniform splayed across a little white rocking chair. The carpet was white and stained from various art projects. Anna sat in the middle of the floor, Indian style, single-size Legos digging into the soft, pale skin of her thighs.

Two weeks prior to Jessica's mustache, Eric had come home from work, very late, with a weird look on his face. He'd come up to Anna, who stood at the kitchen counter, carefully, painstakingly gluing a broken, pale blue china teacup back together, less for actual usage than for posterity, than for something to do. Jessica had hurled it at the wall in a tantrum that morning.

"Um, Anna, can we talk," he said. Right out of a bad movie, she thought. Here it comes. He looked at her, his cool blue eyes even more still than usual.

She looked at him. Something was strange about his posture. He was trying too hard to look casual, that's what it was. He stretched his arms in a square over his head, his left hand holding his right elbow. She put the teacup down. It immediately fell apart. "What is it." As though she could not guess.

"Let's go talk."

"Let's talk right here." She wiped her gluey hands on the back of her jeans.

"Well, all right then." He sighed. "Anna, I think we need a break." He sounded as though he had read a book called "How to Tell Your Wife You Are Leaving" at Barnes and Noble during his lunch hour. Anna wouldn't have put it past him.

"A break?" She sounded unconvincingly bright. This was happening. Pretend we're talking about tomorrow's breakfast, she thought. We are a normal couple and we are talking about making eggs. Our daughter eats eggs.

"Anna."

"Eric." Her voice was more strident, more desperate, than she'd have liked.

"Anna, I'm not feeling - "

"Right." She nodded, looked down, touched the teacup.

"Hold on a second. Let's sit down. Let me talk."

"So sit." She folded her arms.

"Let me talk, Anna. Just - "

"I am always, always, always letting you talk, Eric." She laughed, a short, bitter ha. "Go ahead. By all means. Talk. I'm listening."

He talked. Later, she could barely remember anything he'd said. There was someone else. She remembered asking that, putting her palms to her eyes as though to hold the tears back, her mouth a gaping, wide-based trapezoid of tragedy. She felt like a cartoon. When he said that there was, she had screamed. She remembered that, for sure. She had screamed and crumpled into a ball on the kitchen floor. He'd knelt beside her and cradled her in his arms, but he might as well have said "there there" and patted her shoulder. There was no fixing it. She'd told him as much, and told him that he was not leaving her. He said that yes, he was. She'd asked when, and he'd said soon. But he hadn't left as of yet, and he still slept beside her at night. They'd never spoken of it again, which Anna would have found more strange if she and Eric had ever functioned normally, or if Eric did not work fourteen hour days.

When she'd asked him what was wrong with her, how he could love another woman, what was so much better about her, he'd had answers. A decent man does not have answers for those questions, Anna knew. A decent man also does not give as a reason for leaving "I need a break from all this stress, this drama." Flitted his hand in the air. When he'd said that, Anna slapped him. He had no way of fathoming the amount of stress and drama (his imprecise words! How she hated them!) she spared him by raising their daughter with hardly any input from him. How dare he; but he did.

He was leaving her, and he was leaving her with Jessica.

Completely alone.

It made Anna sick to know that there was ever a time in which she was thinking about him, but he was shoving his dick into that other woman. It didn't match up somehow; it symbolized a great unfairness in the universe. It made her sick to know that there were times she was alone with Jess, struggling, fighting, desperate for help, and he was lying next to that other woman, running his hands through her disgusting, fake-blonde, dirty-looking hair, in a cool, dark room, quiet save for the post-coital murmurings and rustlings of sheets. It was so easy for him to do. Anna, more than anything else, could not accept how easy this all was for him. It was so easy that it wasn't even an urgent matter: she'd have preferred it, perhaps, if he'd left right away. A fit of anger would have been something, or, if that other woman had demanded that he immediately make a decision. But there was nothing of that sort. He was taking his time. It didn't matter. To Eric, none of this was a big deal. He could even - and when Anna thought about this, she cursed herself for her weakness, for her disgusting lack of respect for herself - change his mind and stay. That is what killed Anna most of all: she hoped, that if she were somehow good, he would stay.



Upon being picked up from school, Jessica adopted the sweetest of moods, and did not at all acknowledge that there remained a Hitler mustache over her lip.

"Jess, what did you use to draw that," Anna asked, turning around to face her daughter while idling at a red light.

"What?" Jessica widened her eyes and was unable to stifle a tiny smile. She knew perfectly well what, but it was clear that the new game was pretending it didn't exist.

"Fine," said Anna. "Fine." She gripped the steering wheel so firmly that her knuckles turned white and she couldn't feel her fingertips. She'd get it off. She would. It would have to be off by the time Eric came home. She couldn't face the idea of Eric knowing that she let their daughter walk around with a Hitler mustache all day. He was never going to find out that she had to go get Anna from school again. This was their secret. Jessica was, despite everything else, very good at not telling her father things if Anna made the request.

Two hours later, Anna realized, in a tired panic, that she probably could not get the mustache off. Jessica sat, wearing only her little purple underwear, on the counter of the master bathroom. Her eyes were large and round, and the skin over her upper lip was bright red, framing the little black square. It uncannily resembled a solar eclipse. Anna had tried everything. Soap. Noxzema. Shampoo. Alcohol. Peroxide. The cream bleach she'd tried once on her own, admittedly less offensive, small mustache. Toothpaste. Even a small amount of Tilex, diluted with water. And, in a fit of silly desperation, peanut butter. It had worked once to get gum out of Jessica's hair, so perhaps it was a miracle solvent, Anna thought. It wasn't.

Jessica hadn't spoken a word. Anna could tell she was afraid.

"Jess," she said. "Please tell mommy what you put on your face." Mommy sounded alien from her own mouth. Anna had never called herself Mommy before. She was hardly even okay with Mom.

Still the big round eyes. Jessica looked a lot more like Eric than she looked like Anna.

"Tell me. Please. Please, Jessica. We have got to get this off your face." She could hear the tears in her own voice.

"No."

"Yes. Tell me. I have to know what it is so I know how to get it off."

"Didn't you try everything in the house already?" Jessica was, at her core, a logical child. "So it doesn't matter, right?"

She was right.

"Am I in trouble?" Jessica fiddled with the ends of her hair. Lately she'd been chewing on it. "Are you mad at me?"

Anna stared. She thought. There was just no point. "No."

Jessica smiled a wicked smile. "Good." She bounded off the counter and out of the bathroom, screaming, to Anna's utmost chagrin, "Heil!"

Anna slowly began to put away the bottles of liquid on the counter. Her every step sent waves of pressure through her bones, like tiny earthquakes. She felt heavy, wobbly, of uncertain form.



Eric came home at 1am. Anna pretended to be asleep. She heard him take off his pants and throw them into their hamper - does he still expect me to wash his goddamn pants, she wondered. She figured she probably would, and she hated it. He slid into bed, and, probably thinking Anna was asleep, leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. The hell! Still! Now! Still! She was still for what felt like a year, until she couldn't hold it in any longer. She sobbed. By this time, Eric's breathing was rhythmic and loud. She sobbed until she had to throw up, and then she ran to the bathroom and did it, retching as violently as she could.

The next morning, Eric was gone before she was awake.

She went to wake Jessica, but stopped when she saw that the mustache was still there. She couldn't send Jessica to school with it, for sure. To the teacup and to Canarsie. Anna called a babysitter for Jessica and went to cry by the water. She came home to an angry babysitter who demanded thirty extra dollars and said "never again." "Never again!" she said. "And you people are like, sick racist fucks. What the hell are you teaching your kid?" Anna gave her fifty and the most apologetic look she could muster. What else was there to do. Her limbs hung from her torso like those of a marionette. There was only so much. There were legos all over the kitchen floor.

"Pick up your toys, Jess!" Anna called. But Jessica remained in the living room, watching a rerun of Donahue. Anna swept fans of small plastic bricks to the edge of her room with her feet.

The next day, she called a doctor. No, she said, it wasn't exactly an emergency. She thought about it. It was certainly strange that nothing could get the mustache off, but it wasn't a matter of life or death. Jessica was fine. Heiling herself in the hallway mirror, but fine. She wasn't sick. Maybe it would wear off. It had to be the work of a Sharpie, Anna told herself. It's nothing weird or supernatural. Just a lot of ink. That kid of mine, she thought. She scheduled a doctor appointment for three mornings later.

Eric came home from work early that night. He'd hurt himself at lunch, something with a fork and his hand and, Anna guessed, too many martinis. He had a whole story he tried to tell her - Eric was the kind of person who enjoyed going into gleeful, gory detail about how he sustained injuries - but, in the middle of it, Jessica came out of her room and sat at the kitchen table with her parents. "Daddy," she said.

"Jess!" he broke into a grin, all pain in his bandaged hand apparently forgotten. "Hey, kiddo, what's that on your face?" he reached across the table and fingered her lip gently. Anna was surprised that she let him. Jessica usually hated being touched, even by Eric.

"Who am I, Daddy?" This game again.

"You look like Hitler," he said, laughing as though he knew that could not be the right answer. "Or Charlie Chaplin. You know who Charlie Chaplin is?"

"Nope." She smiled and shook her head. This kid was going to be some flirt someday, Anna thought.

"So, who are you?" he looked at Anna and winked. Her chest hurt. He winked. As though everything between them were perfectly fine. It mattered that little.

"I AM Hitler! Say Heil to me!"

Eric's smile faded. "Jess, honey, that's not something we joke about, okay?" He looked at Anna. "What has she been watching on television? What is this crap on her face? You're letting her run around with this on her face? What, did she go to school like - "

"She hasn't been to school in days, Eric."

"What?" He blinked hard, held his hands out to the side. Yeah, Anna thought. God help you.

"She did that to her face at school, and they couldn't get it off, so they called me to come get her. And I tried to get it off, and nothing worked. Nothing. So we're going to the doctor on Friday morning. It's the earliest appointment - "

"Anna, are you fucking kidding me." He laughed. "You're a little kid. You're a child. You haven't the faintest idea of what to do when the - "

"Right, Eric. Because you knew what to do. Go ahead. You do something. You never do a thing. Believe me, I'd love if you did something. I'd love if you took over. Hey, why don't you? Do something. Fix this. Get it off her face."

"Heil me!" screamed Jessica.

"Jess, go to your room," said Eric.

"Don't call me Jess. My name is Adolf Hitler and I am King of Germany!"

"Jess, listen, Hitler wasn't king of anything, kiddo - " Eric changed his mind. "Now. Your room. Go."

"No!"

Anna crossed her arms smugly. "See?"

"What, a kid who won't go to her room is such a big deal. Christ, Anna." He stood up, scooped Jessica into his arms, and headed to her bedroom as she flailed and screamed. Anna heard the door slam, and she buried her head in her hands.

She felt Eric's hand on the back of her neck.

"When are you leaving me, anyway?" she asked, barely audible through her crying. "You see what you're leaving me with? What am I supposed to do? Oh, God, Eric, what am I supposed to do now."

"If you don't want Jess, I can take her," he said, sitting down. He was perfectly calm.

"When, Eric."

"Soon."

"When is soon? What are you waiting for? Aren't you moving in with - " Anna's face contorted with a dry heave - "her?"

"Anna, I - "

"Why? Why not just go now?"

"Would you like me to?"

Anna stared at him. His eyes were so clear and his face had no expression at all. He'd been angry about Jessica's Hitler mustache, but could not summon up any emotion for the fact that he was leaving his wife. "Yes. I would. Please go."

"Really?"

"Yes."

His eyes widened. Perfect circles, just like Jessica's when she knew she had been bad. "All right." He rose to his feet. "I'll get a hotel room tonight."

"Okay."

"Are you sure?"

"Goddamnit, yes I'm sure. Are you sure you're leaving me?" She narrowed her eyes, shook her head. It was a challenge he could not answer.

He nodded once. "Can I come back for some things tomorrow?"

"I'll make sure to be out."

"Okay." He hesitated, as though he were waiting for something, but did not know what.

"Go, Eric." Her voice was so low it was barely audible. She put her head down.

She heard his footsteps, and she heard the door.

Slowly, she rose to her feet and walked to Jessica's room. Jessica lay on the bed, face down. Anna coughed. "Come on, Jess" she said.

"What, mom?" Her voice was muffled by her pillow, which was covered in white eyelet. Anna briefly wondered if the mustache would leave a print.

"We're going to the emergency room right now, kiddo. We have got to get this thing off of your face, or at least figure out why I can't."

Jessica sat up and looked at her mother. Anna screamed. Jessica screamed back. Jessica's entire face was black, now, the same as the mustache. Everything. Lips, eyelids, ears. Anna realized that she must have had colored the rest in. "I tried to fix it, mom," she cried. "I don't have to be Hitler anymore!" This was the most shaken Anna had ever seen her daughter. She sat on the bed and hugged her to her chest. The pillow, and now Anna's shirt, was smudged with inky black. As she petted Jessica's hair, Anna looked around the room and saw an empty tube of black oilpaint.

"Turpentine," she said. That was it.

"What?" Jessica sniffled.

"Don't worry, Jess. We're going to fix your face." Jessica's eyes were big and round again, especially surrounded by what Anna now took to be Ivory Black (where had she gotten it? The art room at school? Anna had no idea) but she had stopped crying. "We're going to be all right, okay? It's going to be all right." Anna supposed that it probably could be. It could probably be all right. [an error occurred while processing this directive]