My Family for the War

by Anne C. Voorhoeve

  I don’t remember whether I wrote to her that I considered her to be the other half of myself—the braver, smarter, more loveable side. Maybe I just wish I had written that. Whatever the case, I have thought so ever since.

  My mother forwarded my letter from Holland, and it wasn’t returned to her. So Bekka must have gotten it. What happened after that, I’ll probably never find out. Maybe she lost the envelope with Mamu’s address, and so she wasn’t able to reach me anymore.

  Not a day went by that I didn’t wait for her reply.

  Chapter 13

  Enemies and Friends

  The more the war turned in favor of the Germans, the more hostile my classmates’ glares became. The Red Army marched into Poland, and Warsaw fell before September was over. At the beginning of October the news of Poland’s final surrender reached us. In my personal war in Tail’s End, there were five children in particular I avoided: four boys and a girl named Karen.

  I had given up wondering why anything was happening to me. In Germany I was hated for being Jewish, in England I wasn’t Jewish enough, and now that all my connections to Germany had been severed, I was suddenly supposed to be what the Nazis had denied me my whole life: German! At least my new schoolmates didn’t dare bother me during lessons, or in the presence of Mrs. Collins. It was on the way home that I had to be careful, and as October wore on and the looks from my classmates became more intense, I understood very clearly that I better be the first to leave once school was over.

  By then, we were being taught in a side room of the church, where chairs and a few tables had been organized. I usually sat next to Hazel, who was still the only one who would let me. Once during a gas mask drill I did sit next to Karen for two hours, but only because she didn’t recognize me.

  The battered box for the gas mask dangled from my neck on the day that my strategy didn’t work. Mrs. Collins had instituted a rotating classroom duty, and it was bound to be my turn at some point. After I had wiped the blackboard, emptied the trash bin, and arranged the chairs, I already knew what would be waiting for me when I left. The Five, as I called them in secret, were sitting on the edge of the village well. From there they could keep watch over the entire street down to the fork that led to Tail’s Mews, and all they had to do was wait for me to walk into their trap.

  Survival plan, I thought… and was surprised by my hesitation.

  I certainly hadn’t neglected to scout out a couple of escape routes and hiding places! My practiced eye had automatically sought out hedges and piles of wood whenever I walked past them, but on this afternoon I didn’t even attempt to escape. Instead of the hiding places I had discovered over the past few weeks, there was just one thought in my head: If I run now, I’ll never stop running away.

  The Five were just as surprised as I was when I marched straight toward them. But then Jeremy jumped threateningly from the well.

  “Hey, Nazi! Stop right there!”

  “My name is Frances,” I retorted in a voice that was a little too high.

  He stood directly in front of me, but I noticed that he wasn’t quite so sure of himself. “If you want to beat me up, then kindly pick just one of you to do it,” I said with a bit more courage. “Five against one—only Nazis do that.”

  I could already tell from the looks they exchanged that they wouldn’t do anything to me. “Search her,” ordered Carl, their tall leader. I readily handed over my schoolbag, jacket, and the box with the gas mask to Jeremy. Jeremy passed the items on to the others, who inspected them silently. It was obvious that they felt rather stupid as they did so.

  “There are pictures in the gas mask too,” I informed Karen, who had opened the little tin that held my photographs.

  “Shut up,” she countered roughly, but nevertheless looked at what I had hidden in the rubber vent inside my mask.

  “Who’s that?” she asked, frowning.

  “My brother, Gary. He’s in the navy… but you can see that.”

  “Quick—give her the bag!”

  The hasty command came from Carl, and as we looked up we saw Mrs. Collins stroll across the square. Schoolbag, tin, gas mask, its empty box, and my jacket were all simultaneously shoved into my hands, and I stood there looking like I had just raided a secondhand store.

  “We’re not done with you!” hissed Carl. “Be at the bunker in an hour!”

  “I’ll try,” I said. “But when I get home, I have to work for my host family.”

  “Fine, we’ll wait until five. But you better show up, or we’ll have another chat after school tomorrow, and that won’t be so pleasant.”

  I watched them as they took off across the square, then ran back to the Stones’ house. Dishes from breakfast and lunch, two bedrooms to clean, maybe a little ironing and chopping vegetables… I could have it done by four at the latest. All of a sudden, I could hardly wait to meet the others at the bunker!

  The bunker was in the woods in between Tail’s End and Tail’s Mews. It was a relic from the Great War, and so well hidden that from a distance it might have been mistaken for a normal hill. But when I came running with Dolf shortly after four, no one was around. “Hello? Anyone here?” I yelled, walking around and then to the top of the hill, and looked around, disappointed. “Where are you, then? You said you’d wait until five!”

  My voice echoed through the trees, and the woods answered with a silence like I had never heard before. There wasn’t the slightest whisper from the dry leaves of the trees; not a single bird sang. Only a tiny rustling noise behind me, and it stopped so abruptly that it could only mean one thing: Whoever made the noise had frozen in mid-step. I stopped breathing. My body was seized by a force over which I had no control. The hairs on Dolf’s neck stood on end like a ragged gray brush, and although he didn’t make a sound, I could see him baring his fangs.

  The invasion!

  A twig snapped, sounding like a shot from a pistol. “Ey, Dolf! Run!” I screamed as I let go of his leash. Branches struck my face, and I collided with something large, soft, and loud. I tried to scramble onward, and was thrown onto my back.

  “Watch out, you idiot!” screamed Karen, whom I had pulled to the ground with me.

  I opened my eyes and realized they were all there—the Five who had told me to meet them there, as well as half a dozen others. Carl’s group and the gang led by Lesley and Wesley, the Howard twins, stood around me as if I were a wild animal they had just trapped.

  “Get up!” snarled Wesley, and gave me a light kick. I jumped up quickly.

  “Hey!” Carl butt in. “She’s ours! We’re the ones who brought her!”

  “So you are, you git… A brother in the navy—rubbish! That could be a picture of anyone. And did you hear what she called her dog?”

  “What then?” Distrustful looks wandered back and forth between Dolf and me, and I obediently opened my mouth to call him, “Ey, Dolf…”

  Then it struck me like lightning. After more than four weeks with the Stones, I finally understood the poor dog’s name. “Only Nazis name their dogs Adolf,” asserted Wesley.

  “Nonsense,” I said reflexively. “They wouldn’t dare. What do you think would happen if they went around in public calling, ‘Sit, Adolf! Stay, Adolf! Get lost, Adolf!’”

  Some of my captors snickered. “Only enemies of the Nazis think that’s funny,” I continued, feeling bolder. What was the point of this strange meeting? Somewhere in my belly I had the feeling there wouldn’t be much of that boldness left if this lasted too much longer.

  “Say something in German,” Wesley’s sister Lesley ordered.

  “How do you get to the beach, please?” I asked politely in German.

  “No, real German! Loud!”

  I thought for a moment, then yelled with all my strength, “You stupid morons with your rotten old bunker! Scaring girls and dogs, that’s all you know how to do!”

  They were delighted. “What does that mean?” asked Lesley eagerly.

  “It means ‘Everyone gather at the bu
nker for the attack,’” I answered, and then wanted to go home even more urgently, because Wesley, Lesley, and Carl signaled to each other, then stepped aside and had a whispered conversation.

  “I think I’d better be going now,” I announced as casually as I could and reached for Adolf’s leash.

  A boot appeared and stomped down on the leash. My eyes slowly made their way up Wesley’s leg. “As of today,” he said, “you’re a German spy. Sometimes for us, sometimes for the others. When you get captured, your side will try to free you before your enemies have gotten you to confess your secrets. Understand?”

  What could I do? There were twelve of them. They slapped me playfully on the back and immediately started arguing about which of the two gangs would be the first to capture and tie me up the next day! I comforted myself with the thought that being a German spy was better than having no friends at all.

  The situation between the Stones and me was more than a truce and less than genuine peace, but at least it was some kind of an agreement. They still expected me to work hard for them, but now they took care to treat me decently—as if their own fate was intertwined with mine. I got plenty to eat, was allowed to take my mattress into the larger bedroom shared by Herbert and Pearl, and always had the afternoon off as soon as the work was done.

  Sometimes there was even conversation. “How’s your brother faring in the navy?” asked Mr. Stone.

  “He’s in a Merchant Marine convoy, making sure the German U-boats don’t sink our supply ships,” I answered with pride. “Two months of war and still no attack on London! Three children from Finchley are already back with their families.”

  Mr. Stone shook his head. “Funny war, this! Britons under French command—unbelievable—and everyone’s sitting patiently behind the Maginot Line and watching the Germans as they build their fortifications.”

  It was true. The “Sitzkrieg” on the French border wasn’t exactly inspiring for our war games.

  Walter was delighted to receive mail from “the underground,” as he called it, and reciprocated with lively descriptions of his attempts to find his way home after dark. The blackout was in effect in London—streetlights weren’t turned on and every household was required to hang blackout curtains over their windows. In an attempt to confuse any invading Germans, all street and place-name signs were removed as well, a measure that so far had only caused exasperation for the British. I tried to imagine how they wandered without direction through the darkness of their cities, falling victim to the cars whose headlights could not be turned on. “Add to that the fog,” wrote Walter, “and the best you can do is to crouch in a corner and communicate by calls as soon as you hear footsteps.”

  But the most surprising message from Walter arrived in November.

  As you know, Dr. Shepard is going to France to entertain the soldiers with his portable cinema. But did they tell you who’s going to hold down the fort while he’s gone? None other than yours truly! The Shepards’ offer was so good my father couldn’t say no. Now I’ll sleep in the room behind the ticket office, and share it during the day with Mrs. Shepard. Officially I’m supposed to help her, but don’t tell anyone—I think it will rather be the other way round. She’s so angry with him, they hardly speak to each other anymore. Men don’t want to just experience the war on the radio! And since Dr. Shepard is too old to enlist, this is his only chance.

  I had to read that paragraph several times before I grasped his words. “As you know,” Walter had written, but I hadn’t known—this was the first I’d heard about Uncle Matthew going to France, even though I got mail every week from Amanda! She hadn’t said anything to me about it.

  Why did she write me at all if she only wrote lies all the time? Because keeping secrets is also lying—she had to know that! I would have been one hundred percent on her side. I was so angry with Uncle Matthew for leaving Amanda alone that I could hardly sleep that night. But by the next morning, my fury at Amanda took the upper hand, and I decided not to answer her again until she finally told me the truth.

  Which she did a week later. In a cheerful tone, she described her struggles with the film projector, which behaved completely differently with Walter than it did for her! Uncle Matthew was already on the Continent, “following that call to which the average female ear is obviously completely deaf.”

  It was this bitter little half sentence in her letter that immediately dispelled my anger. Amanda was without Gary and Uncle Matthew, without Millie, without her flower garden. She must have felt like I did whenever I started thinking about my earlier life.

  For several days after receiving that letter, I sensed the closeness that had meant so much to me in London, and I longed to return. But other things forced themselves into the foreground: life with the Stones, which was sorting itself out; school, which was becoming more and more fun; my first little circle of friends. More children returned to London at Christmastime, since a German attack had failed to occur. I didn’t even ask if I was allowed to go with them. I had only been with the Shepards for half a year, and now they were gradually fading into memory.

  The situation was much the same with my parents. I could still picture Papa when he was arrested, but wasn’t able to imagine him in his spotless, white bed at the sanatorium. And when I thought about my mother I thought about fields of strawberries, as if all the other, more recent reports from her simply hadn’t reached me.

  In addition to the three subjects Mrs. Collins taught us in Tail’s End—English, math, and geography—we girls picked up a fourth that winter that became an addiction in no time: knitting. We tirelessly made scarves at first, and then as we improved we knitted socks and mittens for the soldiers. And we mailed them off with personal Christmas greetings.

  We were infinitely pleased when the greetings were returned several weeks later, and it wasn’t long before each of us had her own soldier. Mine was named Frank Duffy, a twenty-two-year-old from Cornwall, and I tried as hard as I could to look serious and grown-up in the photo I sent him. On one wall of the classroom, Mrs. Collins hung a map of the world so we could keep track of our soldiers’ movements. But Gary was the only one who moved: I pushed the flag with his name across the Atlantic, between Europe and the USA, while all the others remained in France.

  For Hanukkah, Gary sent me a necklace made from tiny, smooth, white shells. “I hope you’re still learning Hebrew and not neglecting your prayers!” he wrote on the accompanying card.

  That remark put a serious damper on my joy about the necklace. My Hebrew book had been in the things Amanda sent with me to Tail’s End, but I hadn’t opened it since I had been here. While I had lived with the Shepards, it had been my greatest desire to be entirely Jewish. How could it have lost its importance for me so quickly? Whatever it was, the mystery I had experienced before was gone. The Stones’ relaxed Judaism, which recognized no laws and only the most important of festivals, was enough for me now.

  That evening I took out my tin box and buried Gary’s necklace deep beneath my letters and photos. I wasn’t worthy of wearing it.

  January 26 arrived, the one-year anniversary of the day I had left home. It upset me a little that Mamu didn’t mention it, but to my surprise I received a letter from Papa! We had been separated since November 9—I hadn’t seen my father for fifteen months.

  Dear Ziska!

  Who would have thought that we’d have to spend such a long time apart? I am so proud of you, and how well you’re finding your way in a foreign country! But next year I don’t want to have to write you on January 26, as I hope we’ll all be together again by that time.

  I’m doing much better. Every day I take a one-hour walk—very slowly—and I look out over the sea toward England. On your birthday, at eleven in the morning, I plan to be standing there. Will you come to the beach too? I hope you’ll come, so our thoughts can meet out over the water.

  At first Hazel cheerfully accepted my invitation to walk to the beach with me on my twelfth birthday, but when the day arri
ved, I was in for a surprise. With a conspiratorial smile, she took me aside before school started and whispered, “I’m glad to come with you, but you should know that someone else would be even happier to go!”

  She gave a significant half nod over her shoulder, and I saw Wesley Howard, beet red, leaning against the wall. “Wesley?” I asked, puzzled. “Why him?”

  “I guess he has something to tell you,” responded Hazel knowingly.

  The walk with Wesley seemed interminable. If he had something important to tell me, he must have forgotten it. At the Stones’, where we picked up Adolf, he did manage a “Good day,” but then he just marched along next to me in silence, driving me to exasperation.

  “Just imagine if the Germans landed on the beach at the very moment we got there! What would you do?”

  “Uh…”

  “We’d be sure to hear guns firing if they did, don’t you think?”

  “Hmm… yeah…”

  “Personally, I don’t think they would try to land without taking out our fleet first. In that case we’d have plenty of time to run back to the village… or would it be better to hide in the woods?”

  “Well… er…”

  Disappointed and angry, I shoved my hands in my coat pockets and gave up. After a while I called, “Come, Adolf, let’s run a bit!” and simply ran away from him.

  Wasn’t this my birthday? Wasn’t this my walk to the beach?

  If the Germans were planning to land on our beach, my birthday wasn’t the day they had chosen. The sea stretched out pale and gray before me, and only one ship—a tiny bright spot far, far out—was visible. The pebbles crunched with the cold as the waves quietly rolled up and broke on them. I thought about my previous birthday, when I had resolved to find a foster family myself. In that sense, the Shepards had been my birthday present. That one wish had been fulfilled in a most beautiful way.

  Would I be granted another wish? I didn’t dare say it out loud as I looked over the sea in the direction where Holland had to be. Somewhere over there, my father was standing on the beach and thinking of me, making the same wish as me, and I simply thought, “Jesus, you know.”