A Faraway Island

by Annika Thor

  Stephie’s on the edge of her chair, holding one hand on each side of the seat, as if afraid she’s going to fall off. She can hear Nellie and the little ones in the kitchen.

  “Why did you take it?” Auntie Alma begins. Her voice has a sharp tone Stephie’s never heard before.

  “I’m sorry,” Stephie whispers. “I’m so terribly sorry it broke.”

  “I don’t mind about the dog,” Auntie Alma explains. “What I’m upset about is that you took it without asking. Don’t you know that’s stealing?”

  “I meant to put it back,” Stephie says so softly she’s almost breathing the words.

  “But it’s wrong to take things that belong to others,” Auntie Alma goes on. “‘Thou shalt not steal.’ Haven’t you learned that at Sunday school?”

  “I already knew it,” Stephie says in a louder, more defiant tone. Auntie Alma must think she never learned anything at home. As if the Ten Commandments had been invented by these islanders.

  “I’m disappointed in you,” Auntie Alma tells her. “I’ve always stood up for you until now.” She sounds offended, as if she thinks Stephie took the dog just to make her feel bad. “Why did you do it?”

  Stephie doesn’t say anything. Auntie Alma glares at her sternly.

  After some time Stephie speaks up. “I just wanted to hold it,” she says.

  Auntie Alma sighs.

  “I regret it,” Stephie says. “I truly repent. I will never do anything like that again. Please forgive me, Auntie Alma.”

  At those words Auntie Alma smiles and pats Stephie on the cheek.

  “Good girl,” she says. “I forgive you. As long as you are truly repentant.”

  But that’s not the end of it. That evening there is a prayer meeting at the Pentecostal Church. Stephie has to go along with Aunt Märta; it doesn’t help that she was at Sunday school just that very morning. At the meeting, Aunt Märta instructs her to kneel down.

  “We must pray together,” she says.

  Aunt Märta begins to pray out loud, in her powerful voice. She prays for Jesus to guide Stephie on the true path and to help her refrain from sin. Stephie’s cheeks are on fire. She peeks out of the corner of her eye to see whether others are listening.

  “Pray,” Aunt Märta commands, nudging her in the side.

  “Dear Jesus,” Stephie begins, but then doesn’t know how to go on. “Dear Jesus, help me not to be a bad girl. Make me good. And make Sylvia nicer, too. And let me soon be with Mamma and Papa again.”

  “Pray for forgiveness,” Aunt Märta whispers.

  “And forgive me for taking Mimi from Auntie Alma’s cupboard.”

  “Mimi? What kind of foolish talk is that?” Aunt Märta scolds as they are leaving the meeting. “Names are a privilege reserved for the living. And boats, of course.”

  Stephie keeps quiet. She’s thinking about a real little dog named Mimi. A little dog with brown patches in her white fur and a damp, black nose.

  Before she goes to bed she gets her knapsack ready for school the next day. There’s a piece of paper with the text to the song for Lucia. She has to know it by heart before Wednesday, Lucia Day. It’s a difficult melody, but she plans to sing softly, and mouth the words.

  It’s Sunday, and she still hasn’t spoken to Aunt Märta about the white gown she needs. Soon it will be too late. Aunt Märta probably won’t want to go all the way to Göteborg to get one. Will there be one she can borrow? Or could they make one?

  Aunt Märta’s in the rocking chair, reading the newspaper.

  “Excuse me,” Stephie begins. “It’s Lucia Day on Wednesday.”

  Aunt Märta looks up. “Is it?” she replies.

  “I’m going to be one of the handmaidens.”

  Aunt Märta nods. “That’s nice.” She turns the page.

  Stephie gathers her courage. “I’ll need a long white gown.”

  “I’m sure that can be arranged,” Aunt Märta says in a voice that is almost gentle. “Off to bed with you, now.”

  The evening before Lucia Day Stephie finds a folded, neatly ironed garment on her bed. She unfolds it. It’s a long, cotton flannel nightgown that buttons all the way up. White, but with a faded pattern of little blue flowers still slightly visible.

  Stephie had imagined a Lucia gown as different, prettier, with lace and ribbons like a wedding dress. But Aunt Märta must know best. Stephie folds it back up neatly, wraps it in tissue paper, and packs it in her schoolbag.

  The next morning she leaves a whole hour earlier than usual. They’re going to rehearse the Lucia performance before the rest of the class arrives. It’s snowy and windy—an easterly wind for once, so it’s against her as she walks to school.

  Miss Bergström has already let the other children in. The girls are getting ready in the classroom, while two boys who are participating change in the map room down the hall.

  Vera has on a simple white gown with a little round collar. Miss Bergström is tying a wide red silk sash around her waist. Sylvia is twirling around, showing off her lovely cotton gown with wide lace edging on the collar and sleeves.

  Ingrid, the class monitor, is changing in the corner. She, too, is pulling a completely white cotton gown over her head. All the girls have solid white gowns.

  Stephie goes over by Ingrid and starts changing. She shivers with the cold, hurrying to remove Aunt Märta’s flannel gown from her schoolbag. Ingrid, peeking out of the corner of her eye, does a double take.

  Stephie pulls the gown over her head and starts buttoning all the little buttons. The sleeves are a bit too long and keep getting in her way.

  “Look,” Barbro calls out. “Look at Stephie!”

  Everyone looks. Sylvia bursts into loud laughter.

  “She’s just got an old nightgown!”

  “Flowered!” Barbro snorts.

  Gunvor and Majbritt join in the laughter. Ingrid looks toward Miss Bergström and laughs behind her hand. Vera, pale and nervous, doesn’t seem to notice what’s going on. And she isn’t laughing.

  “Quiet,” Miss Bergström shouts. “Stop, this very instant.”

  “She can’t wear that, can she?” Sylvia asks. “It will ruin the whole Lucia procession. It’s bad enough she can’t sing.”

  Miss Bergström sighs. “Just wait here,” the teacher says. “I’ll organize a different gown. Ingrid, you keep everyone in order, please.”

  It feels as if Miss Bergström’s gone for a very long time, though it’s probably no longer than ten minutes. Stephie removes the nightgown and pulls on her cardigan over her undergarments so she won’t freeze. The other girls brush their hair and gossip in whispers. Vera repeats the Lucia verses over and over again.

  “We’re not going to have much time to rehearse now,” Ingrid complains.

  “Right,” Sylvia agrees. “And whose fault is that?”

  Finally Miss Bergström reappears with a gown. It’s too short for Stephie, but Miss Bergström lets down the hem.

  “No one will notice,” she tells Stephie. “But you’ll have to take it home and hem it back up. I borrowed it from the caretaker’s wife. It’s too small for her daughter this year.”

  They rehearse the songs a couple of times. Then they stand waiting in the map room.

  “Now,” Miss Bergström says, opening the door to the hall. She lights the six candles in Vera’s heavy crown. The handmaidens each carry a lit candle between their clasped hands. Slowly the group walks down the hallway, where the rest of the class is lining the walls, watching. Stephie and Ingrid are right behind Vera, with Sylvia and Barbro next, followed by Gunvor and Majbritt and, last of all, the two boys, dressed in long white robes and pointed hats topped with gold stars.

  They are nearly at the classroom door when Stephie feels a hand grab one of her braids. She hardly has time to react before she hears a hissing sound and smells a nasty, burnt odor.

  “Fire!” someone shouts.

  Stephie has her right braid in her hand now and is staring at it. All the hair below the
rubber band is singed, leaving only scorched ends.

  “What on earth happened here?” Miss Bergström asks.

  “I don’t know,” says Sylvia innocently. “Stephie must have tossed her head and her braid touched my candle. Or Barbro’s.

  “Right,” Barbro agrees. “That must be what happened.”

  Stephie says nothing. Sylvia is her enemy, and she’s stronger than Stephie.

  The big scissors from the kitchen drawer rest heavily in Stephie’s hand. She lifts her scorched braid and looks at it. The burnt ends reek.

  The house is silent. She’s all alone.

  She tests the scissors on the hair just below the rubber band holding her braid tight. Then she raises the scissors a little higher up, and higher again, until they graze her neck.

  In the mirror over the washbasin, Stephie’s face is pale. She looks herself straight in the eyes and cuts.

  The sharp edges eat their way into the thick braid. Stephie tightens her grip until the blades meet with a firm clink.

  Her cut-off braid hangs loose in her hand like a dead snake. Looking into the mirror again, Stephie sees a strange sight. Half her face looks like the Stephie she knows, the other like a strange creature with wild black hair sticking out every which way.

  She hears the front door open and shut.

  “Stephie,” Aunt Märta calls, “are you home?”

  “Yes,” she calls back, never taking her eyes off the mirror.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “You’ve got mail,” Aunt Märta says.

  Braid in hand, Stephie goes downstairs. Aunt Märta stares at her.

  “What have you done, girl? Have you lost your mind?”

  “I only meant to cut off a little,” Stephie tells her. “I don’t know how it happened.”

  “Ah, well,” says Aunt Märta. “Short hair’s very practical, really.”

  Stephie sits on a chair in the kitchen with an old towel around her neck. Aunt Märta unbraids the other side of her hair and cuts it all to an even length. Big tufts fall onto the newspapers Aunt Märta has spread out on the floor.

  Then Aunt Märta gets smaller scissors from her mending basket and evens off the ends. Stephie shuts her eyes. She can hardly believe the hands so gently and carefully touching her hair are the rough hands she knows as Aunt Märta’s.

  When Aunt Märta is done, Stephie goes to the hall mirror to have a look. Her hair doesn’t look funny now, but she barely recognizes herself. Her neck appears to be long and thin and her eyes look larger. The weight of the braids she always felt when she moved her head is gone. She feels naked.

  Aunt Märta passes by with her cut-off braid, throwing it and the rest of the hair into the rubbish pail. When Stephie sees her braid lying among potato peels and fish bones, she wishes she had saved it. But it’s too late now.

  After Stephie has cleaned up the newspaper and swept the loose strands of hair off the floor, Aunt Märta opens her bag and gives her two letters.

  One has a German stamp and Papa’s handwriting on the envelope. The other is postmarked in Göteborg and bears the return address of the Swedish relief committee.

  Stephie’s heart is pounding. It must mean something that these two letters arrived on the same day. Just think if everything is arranged! Just think if Mamma and Papa have their entry visas for America!

  Aunt Märta pulls the letter opener through the flap on the envelope from the Swedish relief committee, even though it’s addressed to Stephie.

  The letter is typed. The ribbon must be old, because some words are blurry. It begins with the word “Dear” followed by a handwritten “Stephanie.”

  “Dear Stephanie,” Aunt Märta reads aloud. “The relief committee wishes you a Merry Christmas and hopes that you feel at home in Sweden now.”

  Aunt Märta straightens her reading glasses, glancing at Stephie over the top. Stephie nods eagerly. All right, she feels at home. Anything to make Aunt Märta keep reading. She wishes she could just grab the letter and read it herself. Does it or does it not contain the message she is hoping for?

  “… be obedient to your foster parents and grateful to them for having taken you in…. Try your best to improve your Swedish…. Learn from your Swedish friends.”

  With every sentence Aunt Märta reads, Stephanie loses more and more hope. If she were going to be leaving soon, such admonitions would be unnecessary. Yet she listens impatiently until the very end, just in case the words she longs to hear are there after all.

  “Never forget,” Aunt Märta reads, “that ungrateful, lazy children do a great disservice not only to themselves but also to our work as a whole, and to all the Jews.”

  Aunt Märta puts the letter down.

  “Is that all?” Stephie asks.

  Aunt Märta nods. “Except ‘Our very best wishes’ and the signature.”

  She pushes the letter across the table. Stephie picks it up and glances quickly through it. Nothing but admonitions.

  “Wise counsel,” Aunt Märta says. “I hope you’ll take those words to heart. Save the letter and reread it now and then.”

  Stephie folds the letter and closes the envelope. She intends never to open it again.

  After dinner she goes up to her room and shuts the door. With trembling hands she opens Papa’s letter. Perhaps he and Mamma have gotten their entry visas after all, but the relief committee ladies don’t know.

  There are two sheets of paper in the envelope. One is in her father’s handwriting, the other in her mother’s.

  My sweet Stephie, Papa writes. When you and Nellie left, we believed we would be apart only for a short while. Now four months have passed and it seems that we will not be reunited for some time. In spite of all my efforts, we have not been granted entry permits to America. The future looks bleak, but we must not give up hope.

  “Not give up hope.” Where is Stephie supposed to get hope from, when all she ever feels is disappointment? The tears in her eyes make Papa’s handwriting go blurry. She wipes them away and continues reading. Papa writes that he is now being allowed to work at the Jewish Hospital.

  It is very tiring, because there are so few of us and so little equipment and medicine. But this is my only opportunity to work as a doctor, and every single day I am aware how sorely my services are needed.

  Dearest Stephie, you are a big girl and must be brave. Take care of Nellie, she’s younger and cannot be expected to understand things as well as you. We must all continue to see this as a passing situation, and believe that we will soon be together again. It is a great comfort to your mother and me to know that you two are safe, whatever happens.

  Her father’s letter ends with best regards to Stephie’s “Swedish family.” Please tell them how grateful Mamma and I are that they are taking care of you, he writes. Grateful, grateful, and more grateful!

  She puts down the sheet of paper with its tiny handwriting and opens the letter from her mother.

  My dear one! I miss you and Nellie so. Every day I look at your framed photographs and at the picture from our picnic in the Wienerwald. But the pictures are old now and you have surely grown in the salt sea air. I would so much appreciate receiving new photos. Has anyone taken your pictures recently? Perhaps with your Swedish families in them, too? Please send any you might have! If you have none, perhaps you could ask someone with a camera to take your pictures? Tell them your mother so badly wants to see what you look like after four months in Sweden.

  Stephie’s hand flies to her neck, touching her hair and the naked flesh below it. What will Mamma say when she sees Stephie without her braids? She used to love them so.

  Last summer, when they’d first arrived, Auntie Alma took some pictures of Stephie and Nellie playing with Elsa and John. Perhaps Stephie could send them to Mamma and say there are no more recent ones.

  Sooner or later Mamma will find out. But hair grows faster after it’s cut. Perhaps it will be back down to her shoulders by the time they get to A
merica.

  Sylvia sneers when she sees Stephie’s hair.

  “Goodness, did your whole mane burn up?”

  “No, she must’ve chopped it off with sheep shears,” Barbro comments.

  Stephie doesn’t reply. Back home she was good at defending herself with words. Whenever anyone said something nasty to her, she would make a quick retort. But in Swedish her words come out so slowly and are so insufficient. She just turns away.

  After the end-of-term program Stephie walks home, filled with good feelings from the beautiful Christmas music and all the candles.

  “Lo, how a rose e’er blooming …,” she hums to herself, almost unaware of Nellie’s presence beside her and of what her sister is talking about.

  “Sonja gave me a Christmas present,” Nellie boasts. “But I mustn’t open it until Christmas Eve. And Auntie Alma’s going to take our pictures today, too. I’m going to send one to Mamma for Christmas.”

  Stephie stops in mid-step. “Who told you that?”

  “Mamma wrote that she wanted one,” Nellie replies. “Didn’t she write and ask you, too?”

  “No,” Stephie lies.

  “Oh, well, she asked me,” Nellie says. “So I’ll buy a frame when we go into Göteborg to do our Christmas shopping. We’re going to a pastry shop, too.”

  “There are no pastry shops in Göteborg,” Stephie asserts. “No real ones, anyhow, like in Vienna.”

  “Oh, yes there are.”

  That’s when Stephie notices that Nellie is answering her in Swedish, although Stephie has been speaking German.

  “Why are you speaking Swedish with me?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Because we speak German, that’s our language.”

  “It sounds so stupid,” Nellie says. “If anybody else hears.”

  “So do you think you’re Swedish now, or something?”

  Nellie doesn’t say anything, just takes a wrapped present out of her pocket and rattles it near her ear.

  “Mamma and Papa would be upset if they heard you,” Stephie tells her. “Very upset and angry.”