Ruth Frank lived in Oak Cliff until February 2009, when she married a captain in the United States Army and moved to Schweinfurt, Germany.

The Bavarian people like to decorate their homes with odd little trinkets that dangle from their windows or doorways–butterflies, plastic flowers, little rabbits or eggs for Easter, strange gnomes or birds–and curtains are very, very important to them. Curtains are a staple in Bavarian decor, and without them, one would seem to be a foreigner. Now, these curtains of which I speak are not what you may be imagining. You may be thinking of long drapes that hang from the windows or lovely blinds that slide up and down with thrilling convenience. The Bavarian curtains are wretched, nasty little lace things that are hung on the lower half of the windows and are often embroidered with even more hobbit-like scenes. If they are a little more creative, some of the Bavarians will hang colorful strips of fabric in the windows with the cutest little tassels at the end you’ve ever seen. Hanging from the tassels, you may even see another adorable trinket swinging cutely in the window. People in Bavaria compete with their curtains like Highland Park residents compete with their Christmas lights.

Now when I arrived at my home in Hassfurt, Germany about a month ago, I walked in the door and found to my horror that there, on the windows, were these vulgar, cheap little lace things that looked like a fat woman’s underwear. “What,” I asked my husband Jude, breathless from hauling my luggage across town, “are those?” He informed me that the landlady had put them up for us. I felt bad that she had because I took every single one down. Luckily, she lives two hours away and doesn’t have to know. At any rate, our windows were soon very bare, and we stuck out on the street quite prominently.

The next week, Jude’s shipments arrived from Arizona. He has quite a collection of art and several African masks that have been given to him as gifts over the years. While he was away, I began to hang all the art. The African masks I hung on a narrow wall that is in direct view of our bare, exposed window in the living room. While I was hammering the nails in the wall and hanging the first mask–a bold, colorful, frightening thing–an old woman happened to walk by our house. I was hammering, and my dark hair was a mess, and I had nails in my mouth, and there were strange masks on the wall. The woman paused outside of our house and looked in with horror. I looked at her apologetically, but she hurried off, muttering something and probably making the sign of the cross.

Not more than a week later, I was doing some more work on the house. Once again, I was holding the hammer, and my hair was all wild, and I had a crazed look on my face as I tried to rearrange things. At the moment when I looked the most frightening, with nails stored in my mouth and standing next to the African mask, the very same old lady happened to walk by our house and look in to see me there. Her eyes widened and she walked by with a look of sheer terror. She must have told the neighborhood that a foreign witch moved in. Not only do we not have curtains, but we have voodoo art on our walls instead of pastoral, dangly cute things or pictures of milkmaids. Now, everyone that passes by looks in at our living room with suspicion and fear. I hope that my town does not have witch trials.