THE BUS STOP: Chapter 3 (kinda sorta)

As we were reviewing, the two women were finishing up with the housecleaning, and just at that point where Lena would sneeze. And she did just that, rather loudly, as always. But right between the first and second sneeze—just as Lena began rolling her shoulders back and pushing her chest forward to pull in a sufficient volume of air for the next sneeze—there came such a violent banging on the front door that it scared the sneeze right back to wherever it is sneezes come from. As she wiped her startled and somewhat disappointed nose, Oma opened the door to find a rather voluptuous, so to speak, woman standing on her front step. Lena smiled and cocked her head to one side and walked to the door. It was her neighbor, Frau Janss, one of her family's oldest friends, whom Lena had known since before memories began. Frantic and out of breath, she was leaning on the porch post and trying to recover from what was evidently some fairly serious exertion. As soon as she'd recovered enough to stand up straight Frau Janss lurched through the doorway, shoving Lena back inside the house, nearly knocking her off her feet and slamming the door behind her.
She was a fairly grandmotherly woman herself—Frau Janss was—though a good thirty years Oma’s junior. Yet despite the intruder’s relative youth, nor even the fact that this intruder wouldn’t have looked a bit out of place on stage with a Viking helmet on—these seeming setbacks had no deterrent effect on Oma, and Lena only just managed to fend off the blow from Oma’s cane before it dented the younger Frau’s unfortunatley helmetless cranium.
Frau Janss, however, far less interested in Oma than Oma was in her, merelyy grabbed the cane and tossed it across the room before locking Lena in a bearhug. Oma stood there, stunned and listened, through Frau Janss breathless sobs, as she said, “Lena, Liebchen, you can’t go home.”

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Lena introduced the two old women, and Frau Janss set about telling the horrible tale of what had happened at Lena's house earlier that day. After buckets of tears and prayers and swearing, and after much earnest cursing of Nazis, the two old Fraus decided right then and there that Oma’s was about as safe a spot as one could find for a "a, …uh,…well, for a girl who is just a wee tiny bit, uh…well…slow, you know,” Frau Janss said quietly to Oma after Lena left the room to go make some tea. Oma nodded knowingly as Frau Janss volunteered to bring whatever surplus food she could scrape up, and get to work on getting her hands on the medicine Lena took to control her palsy.
“Without it liebchen will be shaking like a child in the snow,” said Frau Janss. “She just won’t be able to function, at all, and she’ll…. she’d…probably…. Well, suffice it to say, Oma, she’s just got to have that medicine. There’s no two ways about it. You understand that, Oma?”
Oma laid her spindly fingers across Frau Janss’ massive forearm, looked over the tops of her bifocals at her and said, “She’s a precious child. The lord Jesus won’t let those hounds touch a hair on this child’s head. I just know it.”
“Hmph,” Frau Janss grunted, turning to Lena as she returned with the tea. “I’ll be back with some food and clothes as soon as I can scrape them together. DO NOT answer the door to anyone. ANYONE, mind you! And if anybody comes, Liebchen, you run hide under the bed; or the two of you find some better hiding place. Do you understand, Liebchen?” Lena nodded rapidly, understanding the urgency, if not the big picture. Wide-eyed with fear as she was, her lips still couldn’t help but betray her incorrigible, albeit nervous smile. Frau Janss kissed Lena on the forehead, whispered some encouragement in her ear and left.

Lena and Oma stared silently out the window and, as the buxom woman waddled away down the path and disappeared into the forest, Oma slipped her spindly arm around Lena's waist.