by Lila Perl
Helga is already getting off the bed and putting her shoes on so that she can go into the living room to explain things to my mother and father. She is so proper that heaven forbid she should walk out of here shoeless.
“No!” I hiss at her urgently. “You mustn’t say anything about the fight at the U.S.O. You’ll only get Sybil’s mother in trouble for having taken us there in the first place. Besides, none of that was your fault.”
But Helga is stubbornly continuing to fasten the straps on her shoes, when there is a sharp rap at the door and my mother slides into the room.
“Are you two all right in here? How are you feeling, Helga? Will you please promise not to frighten us like that again? It’s very dangerous for a young girl to go wandering around on the subway stations at night. Why did you do that?”
I give Helga a warning look. “She panicked,” I answer for her as hastily as I can. “It became so crowded at the U.S.O. She couldn’t breathe. So she started to walk home without telling us. But she got lost. That’s why she went into the subway, to see if she could find a policeman.”
My mother frowns at me. “Isabel, would you mind letting Helga tell it herself. She’s perfectly capable of doing so. Helga?”
“Ach, ja, Mrs. Brandt, it’s true what Isabel says. It became so hot in that place. I thought I would faint. Only, once out in the street, I became confused and lost my way. So then I thought of the subway station…” Helga’s voice has become choked with emotion and it seems for a moment that she is going to cry.
“Now, now, dear.” My mother perches on the side of Helga’s bed and pats her shoulder. “It’s nothing to get upset about. As long as you’re back, you know that you’re safe here with us. I’m so glad that police officer was wrong when he said that he spotted you as being a runaway.”
My mother advises us that she and my father are going to bed. She reminds Helga that she’s left milk and cookies for her in the kitchen. Helga and I are alone once more.
To my surprise, Helga undoes the buttons at the back of her dress and lifts it off over her head, something she wouldn’t ordinarily do in front of me. Standing there in her slip, she says, “I am a good liar, Isabel, nein?”
I’m dumbfounded. Helga’s tone is so different from her regular one. There is a bitter ring to her voice and it is more high-pitched than usual. Now I seriously am wondering if Helga is going to become hysterical.
I am sitting cross-legged on my bed, staring at her. “That was only a white lie, Helga. And thank you for backing me up and saving Mrs. Simon from having to take all the blame for what happened tonight.”
Helga shakes her head stubbornly. “It was a lie, Isabel. I have told lies before, and one very big lie that I will pay for all my life. I promised myself that after I came to America I would never lie again, not even for the smallest reason. Never! But, you see, now I have done it. And whatever happens to me for this, it does not matter. I deserve it.”
Helga grabs her bathrobe and pajamas and runs off to the bathroom. I can’t tell whether she is really crying this time or is simply in a frenzy of self-anger. Most baffling of all, what is Helga talking about when she says, One very big lie that I will pay for all my life?
Twelve
“Are you okay, Helga? You don’t feel sick or anything?”
A week has gone by, and Helga and I are sitting side-by-side in a subway train that is taking us to the very last stop in New York City. From there we’ll get on a bus that will drop us at the hospital in Westchester where Harriette Frankfurter is making a slow recovery from her operation.
Ordinarily, my mother would be with us. But today, she’s expecting Arnold to arrive on his furlough and she’s busy preparing all the food goodies she can with her limited number of ration coupons. So she’s designated me to be Helga’s guide because I’m sort of an “old hand” at getting around the city.
Helga seems especially nervous today. Maybe it’s because there are so many soldiers and other uniformed men on the trains. Maybe she’s worried about meeting the policeman who brought her home last week suspecting that she was a runaway.
Anyhow, I can’t help noticing that she keeps her head down most of the time and looks up only when the doors open to admit new passengers, and then very cautiously.
“I still don’t understand,” I say as gently as I can. “If you don’t like the trains, and the people on them scare you, what were you really doing in that subway station all by yourself last week?”
Helga shakes her head and I can’t even see her eyes. She is wearing one of the khaki-colored caps with a visor that she brought with her from England. “I already explained to you, Isabel, after these lies I tell I don’t care what happens to me. If it is something bad, it is my punishment. That one time, when the policeman comes over to me and says where do you live, I tell him. That one time and that time only.”
“So,” I say, twisting my neck at an uncomfortable angle to try to see Helga’s half-hidden face, “you really were planning on running away. But where would you have gone? Would you try it again? You can’t do that, Helga. Something terrible could happen to you.”
There is a fierceness in Helga’s reply. “I already told you what is the reason. It’s for me to suffer what happens.”
I’m suddenly gripped with the fear that Helga may actually be having thoughts of throwing her life away. All week she’s been like this, secretive and talking in riddles that are very scary.
When the train comes to a halt at its final stop at the city line and everybody gets off, I clutch her hand as tightly as I can. I watch her nervously as we wait at the bus station. When the bus comes, I push her on ahead of me and sit beside her until it’s time to get off.
“Oh, my darling girls are here!”
Harriette Frankfurter is seated in a chair in a sunny corner of her hospital room. She is wearing a long white silk dressing gown with sequin appliqués of butterflies in delicate but dazzling colors. Her hair and makeup are perfect as usual.
A white-uniformed nurse and Mr. F. are also present. Fresh flowers fill every corner of the room, and a box of sumptuous chocolates lies open on a bedside table.
Helga embraces her aunt. I follow with a gentle hug and am enveloped in Mrs. F.’s lilac-scented cologne. I tell Mrs. F. how well she is looking, and I learn that she’ll be going home soon with the private nurse, who’s now in the room, to take care of her. Mr. F. looks on approvingly.
“I want a nice long visit this time,” Mrs. F. declares. “But first, you girls must be hungry. Uncle Herman will take you down to the coffee shop for lunch.”
“Honestly,” I say, the palms of my hands encircling my stomach, “I couldn’t eat a thing. I had such a big breakfast. But Helga ate almost nothing this morning…”
The plan I’ve been cooking up for this visit works. Mr. F. goes down to the hospital’s coffee shop with Helga, the nurse takes a break from her duties, and I’m alone with Mrs. F.
Why do I get along so much better with other grown married women, like Leona Simon and Mrs. F., than I do with my own mother? The moment we’re alone I can see that we’re on the same wavelength. Mrs. F. leans forward and her black-rimmed mascara-brushed eyes take on a concerned look.
“Why is Helga wearing that depressing military cap and those awful khakis they gave her at that dreary hostel in England? She has much nicer things. And, please understand that this isn’t meant as any sort of criticism, dear, but why does she look so thin and seem so nervous?”
This is just the opening I’ve been hoping for. I know my mother would kill me for worrying her good friend Harriette Frankfurter with reports about Helga. But I think it would be wrong to hold back. It’s important to tell Mrs. F. how Helga’s been acting lately, and some of the scary things she’s been saying.
So I blab the whole story from Sieg Heil! and “Helga Hot Dog” at school to the U.S.O. fight over the soldier who called Helga a Kraut and a spy. I tell Mrs. F. about Helga running away from the dance and being brought home by a policeman who
found her in the subway station. I ask her if she knows what Helga means when she talks about deserving to be punished for telling lies. And I ask her if she knows anything about the one very big lie that I will pay for all my life.
Mrs. F. listens with a mixture of pity and alarm. “Oh, the poor child. All this after what she went through in England. Did she tell you about her life on the chicken farm and then in the hostel? But lies…telling lies she should be punished for…I don’t know about any such thing…”
I pounce at the mention of the chicken farm. “Was that where she lived when she first arrived in England? No, she never told me.”
Mrs. F. sighs deeply. “She wants to forget it. It was just very bad luck. Most of the German refugee children are being treated well over there from what we hear. But, you know, when Helga arrived in England she waited a very long time with the rest of the Children’s Transport for someone to offer her a home.
“Most people wanted the younger boys and girls, six-and seven-year-olds. Helga was twelve and tall for her age. So she sat waiting in the assignment center until she was almost the last one remaining. That made her feel so…unwanted.
“Then this farm couple came in looking for an older child. They said Helga could live with them and they would send her to school if she would do some light chores in the farmhouse. So…”
I’m leaning forward, listening eagerly, when Mrs. F. stops short and flashes a quick smile at Helga and Mr. F., who have just entered the room. “How was your lunch? Herman, bring a chair here for Helga. Tell me what you’ve been up to. Tell me about school.”
I get up abruptly and give Helga the chair I’ve been using. What was Mrs. F. about to tell me? Now I’ll never know. I still feel like the whole world—war and all—is resting on my shoulders.
Mr. F. passes around the box of chocolates that’s been lying enticingly on the bedside table behind me all this time. I take one and excuse myself to go to the bathroom. Afterward, I wander up and down the hospital corridor a bit, peering nosily into some of the patients’ rooms.
When I come back, the nurse has returned and tucked Mrs. F. back into bed. She looks tired, not nearly as fresh as when we first arrived. Some of her eyeliner is smudged and I wonder if she’s been crying while talking to Helga, who has a blank expression and doesn’t say much. But Mrs. F. urges us to stay just a little longer.
Mr. F. drives Helga and me home to the Bronx. My mother’s invited him to stay and have dinner with us in honor of Arnold’s being home on furlough. The moment I see my brother, I bury my head in the coarse khaki wool of his uniform jacket and I don’t let go until he laughingly shakes me free.
If only we could stop the clock. Bring the world and all its mad, crazy, and evil carryings-on to a halt right here and now…even for a little while.
The table is set in the dining alcove with my mother’s best china. The soup bowls are brimming. We all sit down and my father and Mr. F. raise their wine glasses across the table at each other. “To the health and safety of our boys and to VICTORY!”
“To PEACE and to the defeat of Hitler!” I add, raising my water glass so vigorously that it splashes a fountain of drops onto my mother’s hand-embroidered linen tablecloth.
“Why, Isabel,” my father remarks with an air of surprise, “I didn’t know you could get so worked up about the war.”
“So what do you think of my brother? He’s pretty handsome in his uniform, isn’t he?”
It’s late, after our evening of celebration, and Helga and I are in my room getting ready for bed. Mr. F. has left to go back to his empty house in Westchester, and Arnold is sleeping in his usual place in the dining alcove.
“Ja,” Helga agrees. “But better I think not in the uniform.”
“Oh, of course, you’re right. It would be wonderful if everything could go back to the way it was before the war…” I stop myself abruptly, remembering that Helga’s memories of men and women and even children in uniforms goes back almost all her life to the time of the Hitler Youth in the 1930s. And when Jewish blood spurts from the knife…
There is silence for a while, until Helga murmurs, “And so, good night.”
But I’m much too occupied with thoughts of my interrupted conversation with Mrs. F. about the chicken farm, and it’s impossible to close my eyes.
“Helga?”
“Ja?”
“Are you asleep yet? Could I talk to you for a minute?”
“Ja?”
“You know that paper I wrote for my history class about the Kindertransport?”
“Ja?”
“Well, my teacher Mrs. Boylan liked it very much. She wants me to write more about it. Like what happened next. You know, after the refugee children from Germany arrived in England.”
This is all a terrible lie. In seventh-grade history we’re studying the Middle Ages and Mrs. Boylan has never seemed to me to be the least bit interested in anything that has happened in Germany in the last few years. The so-called assignment that I wrote for her has been sitting in a box of letters, pictures, and souvenirs that I keep hidden under my bed.
“For example, where did you live when you first arrived in England? Your Aunt Harriette mentioned something to me about a…a chicken farm. I didn’t even know they had chicken farms in England. Although that’s silly, isn’t it. Where else would they get eggs? And chicken?”
“Isabel, please,” Helga interrupts my lame attempts to get her to describe her life as a twelve-year-old child separated from her family and in a strange, new setting. “I am worried so much about the health of Aunt Harriette. I cannot talk about this sad place that I was sent. I never want to talk about it.”
I plop my head down onto my pillow in a mixture of disappointment and annoyance. “I don’t mean to upset you, Helga. But, you know, if it was awful for you, you might feel a lot better if you talked about it.”
There is no answer from the other bed. Now what am I supposed to do? What if I’ve only made things worse for Helga with all my nosy questions? But it really is more than just empty curiosity on my part. What does happen to somebody who is sent away from home and family, probably forever, and comes to a “sad place?”
What if it had happened to me? The very least I would want was for people to know about it. Helga’s story, I believe, should be told.
“You know,” I say as casually as I can to the continuing silence in the other bed, “if you don’t want to talk about it, Helga, maybe you could write about it. Sometimes that’s easier. And then we’d have a written report in your own words. How does that sound?”
I hold my breath in the dark. Is Helga asleep or just not speaking to me anymore?
“Ach,” a soft voice finally replies, “maybe someday I write it in German.”
“German?” I’m up on my elbows and leaning over toward Helga’s bed. “No! In English. And not ‘someday.’ Now. It doesn’t matter how many mistakes you make. In fact, it will be good practice for school. Do you want to be stuck forever in seventh-grade English when you’re supposed to be in ninth? Answer me, Helga.”
“I think about it,” Helga murmurs. “But there will be so many mistakes. Always, always there are too many mistakes.”
Thirteen
Allons enfants de la patrie/Le jour de gloire est arrivé. We’re learning the words to the Marseillaise, the national anthem of France, in our intermediate French class.
Of course, as Miss Damore has already been forced to admit and has explained to us, there is no independent country known as France at the moment. The Nazis invaded it in 1940, along with Holland and Belgium (as well as Luxembourg, Denmark, and Norway).
The so-called Free French are hiding out in the mountains of southern and eastern France, trying to hold off advancing German control. They blow up trains and munitions factories, and their snipers shoot the German sentries that guard them. But things are looking pretty grim nevertheless.
So, on behalf of the Free French, our class is chanting with military gusto, Aux armes,
citoyens! Formez vos bataillons. Marchons, marchons, qu’un sang impur. Miss Damore has decided that we’re going to learn as many verses as we can, and then translate them into English.
Without even raising his hand, Billy Crosby blurts out—like the show-off that he is—that France will be free before we even finish translating the Marseillaise. Because, he says boastfully, “the U.S. and the Brits are going to invade it any day now.”
“En français, Billy,” Miss Damore cautions him in her charming accent.
I glance across the aisle at Mr. Smiley-Face. Aside from the fact that Billy is dead wrong (we’re still struggling to push the Germans out of North Africa so we can invade southern Europe sometime next year), he is hardly up to saying all this in French, a rule that Miss Damore made the first day of the term. I console myself with the fact that even if we don’t get to the subjunctive, maybe Billy will flunk out of the class just for being a wise guy.
It’s agony sitting across the aisle from him twice a week. He’s forever leaving stupid offerings on my desk…sticky peppermint candies and pencils with no erasers that are decorated with colored feathers. He draws dumb pictures of the other kids in the class and passes them to me with little “guess who” hints.
How do I know he isn’t sending drawings of me around the room to other people…elongating my nose and exaggerating my breasts, which he never seems to stop looking at. If he just wants to annoy me, that’s one thing. But if he actually likes me, then I’ve got to find a way to get rid of him. Why is it so hard to tell?
Billy is now struggling with the French words for before, finish, translate, free, invade, and the verb forms he needs to repeat his misinformation in French. With my eyes fixed on the wooden grooves and inky smears on my desk, I’m actually enjoying listening to him struggle with something as easy as “Before we finish…” (Avant de finir…).
In fact, fool that I am, I’m quietly mouthing the words to myself when Miss Damore calls my name and asks me to help Billy get his sentence started. “Pouvez-vous, Mademoiselle Isabel, aider votre ami?”
“Ami”…my boyfriend? Hardly! I turn to Billy almost crossly and supply him with the French words, in response to which his eyes sparkle and his mouth grows more smiley than ever. Only the chiming of the bell announcing the end of the period saves me from further embarrassment. Grabbing my books, I flee into the corridor and gallop down the staircase.