<dl class="codebox"><dt>Title Translation | <a href="javascript: void(0);" onclick="var spoiler = this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('dd')[0]; if ( spoiler.style.display == 'none' ) { spoiler.style.display = 'block'; this.innerHTML = '-'; } else { spoiler.style.display = 'none'; this.innerHTML = '+'; };">+</a></dt><dd style="display: none;">In Grenzen Frei = Freedom In Borders (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.expatica.com/de/life-in-germany/lifestyle/Fighting-to-be-fashionable-in-communist-East-Germany-_14399.html">reference</a>)</dd></dl><br/><br/>Thunder rolled in the distant sky, louder than it should have been but not quite close enough to deafen the Volkspolizei on the street. Their eyes moved about the streets as their legs carried them down the sidewalks, yet two in particular did not move. They were having an argument that wasn’t nearly as quiet as it should have been, and it distracted them from the girl that was just slipping out of a clothing store on the other side of the street.<br/><br/>One of the guards argued that they should not have been guarding a random home about which they knew nothing. A man, a woman, and their two daughters had been ordered not to leave the house that day; the man could not go to work, the woman could not go to market, and the children - who were eight and ten - could not go to school. They had arrived that morning just in time to stop the milk man from setting foot upon their stoop, and they delivered the milk themselves and gave the milk man the empties; food that had not been ordered by the woman had been delivered a bit later. Nothing else had been said to the two Volkspolizei that had been charged with guarding this house, which was known to be a Jewish household. The guard doing most of the talking was arguing that they weren’t Nazis, and the other guard was telling him to shut up; the second guard was asking whether the first guard wished to be cast out of the Volkspolizei and interrogated as a traitor. No, they were not Nazis, for the Nazi Party had been replaced by the Deutsche Demokratische Republik long ago; but they were still to do as they were told without question or hesitation because this assignment came from the very top.<br/><br/>An outsider could thus determine very well indeed that neither was very happy at all with their station. Despite this, one was clearly an outspoken opponent of anything that even remotely resembled what he called “old Germany”; the other was clearly of the old stock in that he preferred just to “do his job”. It didn’t help that neither of these men were in any way young; they had both been Volkspolizei for more than four decades. Still, it seemed that the old opinions died hard and old tensions were made new by the oddity of today’s assignment.<br/><br/>The girl hiding in the shop across the street from the old home, a two-story red-brick house in a row of identical houses with identical front stoops and similar front yards with identical white-washed wooden fences and gates, had been watching and listening to the Volkspolizei for some time before she decided to leave the shop. It was while they were in a fierce debate regarding the oddity of their assignment that she burst out from the doorway, slamming the door behind her; yelling ensued from within the shop, for the owner of the shop did not like her front door being slammed. She lived just above the shop, after all! The shop was as much her home as it was her place of business!<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">“Das kleine göre!”</span>the woman hollered finally, and then the shop fell silent.<br/><br/>Unfortunately, the guards weren’t the only Volkspolizei upon that street at that very moment; they were merely the only Volkspolizei who weren’t paying enough attention to the girl’s attire. A whistle sounding and a bit of shouting in their direction brought the guards out of their argument. The first guard tried to follow but the second guard stopped him and shouted back that they had been assigned to the house; they could not leave. The two patrolling Volkspolizei therefore chased the girl down the alley, across another street to the tune of the screeching tires and blaring horn of a Mercedes wagon, and down another alley.<br/><br/>From the red leather of her Sparta sneakers filled by size-eight sockless feet with black-painted nails to the stylish black leather jacket that she wore, the latter complete with silver-colored buckles and zippers and a high collar, Madeline Gwerder was<span style="font-style: italic">any</span>thing but the traditional model of what adults thought a German woman should look like. The fact that she was eighteen didn’t help; neither did the short, messy mop of black hair atop her head or did the imported brown denim that she’d bought from a clothing thief a week ago; the only thing she had going for her was that her pants covered her legs.<br/><br/>Of course, all sense of decency flew right out the window the moment the Volkspolizei came hurtling around the corner onto a street two blocks from the recently arguing guards. Amber - who hated her middle name (Madeline) and all variations thereof - had stopped a half-block from the alley she’d bolted out of. Her chocolate-brown eyes gleamed as a mischievous grin danced upon her dark-pink lips. She turned and pushed the open flaps of her too-fancy jacket aside, her severely unwelcomed fashion statement momentarily forgotten as the black-painted nails of her fingers deftly hooked under the bottom of the pink t-shirt that she wore; she had cut off the sleeves of the t-shirt as a form of rebellion, and that had only been the beginning of her defiance of the “traditional is beautiful” motto of East German society.<br/><br/>At the precise moment that she spotted them, she raised her shirt and beamed a grin at them that would have made any doctor commit her to a mental institution at once. She wore no bra - she never did, as they were uncomfortable and she didn’t have enough of a bosom to justify needing one - and the cool air on her nipples made them as hard as a rock. She shivered slightly as the chill breeze rippled across her skin; it was a thrilling sensation that she relished. One of the Volkspolizei stumbled in shock, and the other ran faster in his anger at such an insult. Young ladies should not reveal themselves so brazenly!<br/><br/>But she let her shirt drop as she laughed and turned. She ran full-speed for almost a mile before she reached the railroad tracks; the gates were down but she ducked under them anyway. On the other side, she stopped and turned to watch the Volkspolizei fruitless chasing after the girl. They looked like human bulls chasing red flags, and she laughed again. She blew them a kiss and waved at them, watching until the train flew by at such a speed as to push her back with its side-wind. She was still laughing when she turned and calmly walked away, trying to catch her breath. It would be a half-hour or more before that train had passed, and by then, she would be long-gone.<br/><br/>It wasn’t her fault she was fashionable.<br/><br/>…okay, maybe it was.<br/><br/>Just a little bit.<br/><br/><dl class="codebox"><dt> | <a href="javascript: void(0);" onclick="var spoiler = this.parentNode.parentNode.getElementsByTagName('dd')[0]; if ( spoiler.style.display == 'none' ) { spoiler.style.display = 'block'; this.innerHTML = '-'; } else { spoiler.style.display = 'none'; this.innerHTML = '+'; };">+</a></dt><dd style="display: none;"><span style="text-decoration: underline">Translations</span><br/>Volkspolizei = People’s Police<br/>Das kleine göre = That Little Brat</dd></dl>