Bath Time!

 This room in a bathhouse is a little older, but it's very similar to the ones I used to take baths in when I was a girl.

 Vati moved the caravan to the end of the commons, hooked up the stairs, and we children exploded from our tiny home, exploring our new surroundings. Geese waddled on the grassy meadow, and down a small incline we found a pond.

“Children, come eat,” I heard Mutti call from the direction of our caravan.

My stomach was grumbling. I skirted around a goose and followed my sisters home.

We crowded each other at the kitchen table. Mutti ladled out potatoes and peas and carrots for everyone. Finally she sat down with a sigh. She took a few bites.

Franz pokes Josefa, who squealed.

Mutti said, “Quit making all that noise. And look at you! You children aren’t just noisy, you are filthy.” She turned to Vati. “These children need a bath. We’re close to Giessen, why don’t we all go take a bath tomorrow?”

Vati put down his fork. “I do have some time. Okay, we’ll go first thing in the morning.”

Cool! I remembered the last time I took a bath. That must have been at the beginning of the traveling season. I couldn’t wait. It would be fun.

After breakfast the next morning I had forgotten all about bathing. I swallowed my breakfast roll and drank the rest of my milk in the cup, ready to go outside where the sun was shining.

“Just a minute,” Mutti called after me. “Carmen, Sonja, Josefa, stay here. You girls are old enough to get your own stuff for the bath. I don’t have to do everything for you.”

“What do we need to take?” Josefa asked.

Carmen, as the oldest, knew. “New underwear and socks, dummy,” she said.

Josefa and I took off for the bedroom, where our clothes were stashed in shallow drawers under the bed.

“And don’t forget a new dress,” Mutti called after us.

Carmen showed us how to wrap everything into the dress, and we were ready. Mutti had hers, Vati’s, Franz’s and the baby’s stuff in her large shopping bag.

Vati must have been glad to go to the bathhouse, too, since he wasn’t grumbling and had the car already started.

Franz and we three big girls squeezed into the back of the VW. Mutti stashed the clothes under the hood of the car and sat next to Vati, Eva in her lap.

At the bathhouse, Vati paid for all of us. We children cost 25 pfennig each, and Mutti and Vati cost 50 each, which was half a Deutsche Mark, or half of 25 US cents.

The attendant, and rotund woman with gray hair, handed me and my sisters each a bar of soap and a towel and reminded us not to take too long. I balanced the towel and soap on top of my dress, the same way Carmen and Josefa did.

Vati took Franz’s towel, took Franz by the hand, and they left for the men’s section.

Like little ducklings, we trailed after Mutti. She showed us three adjacent cabins, one for each girl, and told us she’d be in the one next to Josefa with Eva.

Mutti told me and Josefa to watch Eva in the hall while she went into Carmen’s cabin with her and started the bathwater. She did the same for me and Josefa, then disappeared into her cabin with the baby.

I found myself in a tiny cabin, just large enough for a bathtub and a wooden seat on the opposite wall. I could lock the door! That was fun. We had no locking door in the caravan. After I locked and unlocked it a few times I deposited my clothes and the towel on the bench and put the soap into the soap holder by the bathtub. By the time I had my clothes off, the tub was more than half full. I turned off the faucets and sank into the wonderful warm water. How nice it would be to have warm or hot water running out of the walls in the caravan. But that wasn’t possible; even I knew that.

In the tub I drew soap letters onto my arms and legs, splashed with my hands and feet and turned over and over like an otter I had seen in a book once. I felt like singing but knew it was verboten, forbidden. Also, Mutti didn’t like it when any one sang, so I didn’t.

Eventually I remembered to wash my always cropped hair. I dove under the water to rinse off the soap. That was so much fun. When I finally got out. I thought that I still had soap in my hair, so I carefully started the water again, the way Mutti had shown me, first the hot and then a little of the cold until it felt right. I held my head under the faucet and let the water run through my hair and down my neck.

Someone knocked on the door. I turned off the water. “Hurry up,” Carmen said, loudly, but not too loud so as not to bother other bathers. “Mutti is already out.”

I held my head against the door and said, “I’m already done. I just have to dress.” Hopefully, I wouldn’t be the last one to be out.

With the towel, I rubbed my hair and my body dry and slipped into my clean clothes. The old ones I rolled into the old dress and unlocked the door. My sisters and Mutti sat in the waiting room at the end of the hallway. My heart sank. Mutti would be mad that I was the last one out. But then I realized Vati and Franz weren’t there yet. Good. She wouldn’t single me out then.

I ran into the waiting room and plopped onto the bench next to a scrubbed and damp Josefa. From the men’s section, Vati came out, skin red and hair wet. Franz trailed after him, also with wet hair.

That night in our caravan, I went to sleep with the sweet smell of soap and lavender in my nose.