My Family for the War

by Anne C. Voorhoeve

  I stood still in disbelief. Uncle Matthew didn’t notice it because he was looking at the ground as he walked on. “In a different family you might be able to… hide. No one would ever need to know who you are!”

  When he turned around there were five paces between us, but it seemed like an entire vast ocean. “As far as I’m concerned, the whole world can know who I am,” I said. “I’m starting to feel quite content with it, actually! You can’t just send me away anymore, Uncle Matthew, because my home is with you!”

  “Send you away?! We’re worried about your safety…”

  “I know. You want to give me back to my mother unharmed, if she comes. You know, I can hardly stand to hear that anymore.” Suddenly I screamed at him, “Maybe my mother isn’t coming back! Maybe she’s already dead! Maybe I don’t have anyone else left except for you!”

  “I’ll be darned,” murmured Uncle Matthew. “I messed it up. Calm down, Frances, no one wants to send you away. Just forget what I said, okay? It was a long night. Maybe we didn’t think it through carefully.”

  “Apparently not!” I shot back, and started to tremble—not because I was seriously afraid of being sent away, but because I could hardly believe what I had just said.

  My mother might not be coming back.

  And Uncle Matthew hadn’t contradicted me. So he and Amanda had already thought of that possibility.

  Exhausted, I lay on my bed, where I had started sleeping again two nights ago, and stared at the ceiling, searching inside of me for some glimmer of hope, a prayer, to undo that terrible sentence. But there was none.

  Maybe she won’t come back.

  It wasn’t a new thought, and I had known for a long time that it was the truth. But I should never, ever have spoken it aloud. It felt as if by speaking the words out loud, I had set something unstoppable into motion.

  You can’t do anything more for your mother.

  Live! And live well!

  My home is with you now.

  One thought followed to its end. A new one begun.

  Chapter 16

  Leave

  Herr Mittenbaum had a weakness for folk songs. At first it seemed so inappropriate to be singing German songs in a Jewish retirement home. But after several nurses had poked their heads into the room and remarked that it was just the right medicine for the residents’ homesickness, and did I happen to know “Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten,” I went home and practiced everything the music teacher in Berlin had ever taught us.

  This was my second visit with Herr Mittenbaum, and I boldly made my way through all the verses of “Lorelei.” The other elderly men who shared the room sat on their beds and quietly hummed along. But I knew Herr Becher was only putting up with it until I finally started translating the newspaper for them.

  The sharp, bright tone of the sirens cut right through the song, and right through my chest. I sat with my mouth open, mute, without breathing—my first air raid! In school, I didn’t want to admit that I hadn’t been through one yet; secretly I actually wanted to get it over with soon so I could finally be in the know.

  But that wish flew out the window the instant the siren started screeching, up and down in a spine-chilling wail. “W-what do we do now?” I stuttered, frozen with fear.

  “We wait,” said Herr Becher. “Go ahead and start the first page!”

  I reached for the newspaper as if hypnotized and whispered in German: “President Roosevelt intends to increase material support of France following Italy’s declaration of war, but is opposed to the United States entering the war.”

  The door opened and a small army of nurses came in pushing wheelchairs in front of them. “Let’s go, into the wheelchairs, gentlemen!” one of them called. “Time for a trip to the cellar!”

  “Is everything okay, dear?” Amanda asked, and touched my cheek lightly before she helped Herr Mittenbaum into a wheelchair. I nodded weakly and followed them down a long hallway with a gleaming linoleum floor, where it smelled like the cabbage soup that had been served for lunch.

  At the end of the corridor, four more nurses came out of the elevator with empty wheelchairs to go collect more of the residents. Amanda took my hands and placed them on the handle of Herr Mittenbaum’s wheelchair. “You ride down with him, Frances. I’ll take the stairs,” she said.

  “Ein Märchen aus uralten Zeiten…” Herr Mittenbaum sang happily.

  The elevator door opened and there was Amanda, who had gotten to the cellar even faster than us. I stumbled out past her.

  “Would you like to push Herr Mittenbaum into the shelter, Frances?” she asked.

  I grasped the left handle of the wheelchair as she took the right one. Together we steered Herr Mittenbaum through the basement.

  It was warmer and brighter down here than I had expected—not the dim, damp room where, in my imagination, the bomb raids played themselves out. There were a radio and gramophone, plenty of blankets, and even beds, which were already occupied by the weaker residents. The wailing sirens only came through quietly and from far away, as if it couldn’t possibly be meant for us. “I’ll help get the rest of the people and then I’ll come be with you,” Amanda said softly.

  “Muss i denn, muss i denn zum Städtele hinaus?” Herr Mittenbaum started to croon. But Herr Becher immediately pressed the newspaper into my hand: “Enough singing, it’s time for the news!”

  It was almost two hours before the single, sustained note of the all-clear signal released us from the cellar, and it was another hour before all the old people had been transported back to their rooms and I could catch my first glimpse outside. To my astonishment, absolutely nothing had changed. Nothing had been damaged, and people walked through the streets perfectly calmly, as if they were coming out of a department store instead of air-raid shelters. “Is that it?” I asked, puzzled.

  “Well, of course that’s it!” Amanda lifted one eyebrow. “Did you think anything would happen to us now, two days before Gary’s furlough? God’s ways may be infathomable, but I can’t imagine that his timing would be so awful!”

  I had missed Gary’s first two visits when I was in Tail’s End, and even this third home leave wasn’t a sure thing. After Italy declared war on us, an attack on the British bases in the Mediterranean was to be expected. “Now they’ll never let him go!” Amanda had fretted.

  But just a day later a telegram arrived from Gary: His well-deserved vacation would take place as planned! He would come, even if it would only be for a week.

  Impulsively, I let out a shout of joy that chased away the last bits of fear. Gary, Mamu, Amanda, Uncle Matthew, Walter… there were so many reasons to survive this war!

  For a woman in wartime, there is nothing more wonderful than to be able to meet her soldier at the train station. The melancholy record albums Amanda and I listened to every evening had convinced me of that, and I also knew just how to prepare for such an important event.

  “Will you lend me a hat?” I asked my foster mother.

  “Of course I’ll lend you a hat. But first you have to decide what you’ll wear, so everything goes together,” she instructed me.

  I spent hours roaming back and forth between my room and hers, where there was a large mirror, as I took an increasingly hopeless inventory of my closet. That morning I made several disturbing discoveries. First, I didn’t have a single outfit that went together. Secondly, there wasn’t a single piece of clothing that genuinely looked flattering. And thirdly, I looked rather awful in general, something I had never noticed before. Amanda found me dissolved in tears, with her room and mine looking like battlefields. “You can go to the train station without me!” I wailed.

  “Dear God,” she said grimly, looking around. I pushed some clothes on the floor and threw myself on her bed sobbing.

  “Leave me alone!” Experience had taught me that this was usually a good tactic for getting comfort and attention. But Amanda was not her usual self today.

  “Every free minute,” she said in a quaking vo
ice, “that isn’t spent with bookkeeping and showing films and selling tickets, I’m cleaning, cooking, and washing in this damned house. I don’t expect you to help with the housework. You’re a child. BUT DAMMIT, I DO EXPECT YOU TO NOT MAKE THINGS EVEN HARDER ON ME THAN THEY ALREADY ARE!”

  My jaw fell open and I stared at her. Amanda had never yelled at me before, and she had certainly never said “damn” twice in a row.

  “In fifteen minutes,” she said in a shaky voice, “every single thing will be hanging in its proper place and this room will be NEAT. Do you understand me?”

  I nodded silently. Amanda rushed out and was only halfway down the stairs by the time I gathered up a pile of clothes and stepped out into the hallway. Her cry as the front door opened made me drop my armful of clothing on the spot. I stormed down the stairs, but after a few steps stood still as if rooted to the spot. A marine officer in white and blue carried Amanda through the foyer to the sounds of his own triumphant cries and her muffled, halfhearted protest: “Why are you here so early? We wanted to meet you! Dad isn’t even home yet!”

  The sailor set Amanda back down on her feet, and I, watching from the stairs, was spellbound by the similarity between the two of them, which I had forgotten in the eleven months since I had last seen Gary.

  “If I had known that,” he said with a grin, “of course I would have waited half the day for you at the train station, but silly me, I thought you’d be happy for every extra minute I’m at home!” It must have been the word home that made him look around at his surroundings for a moment, and in that moment he found me! “Hey!” he called softly. “Don’t tell me that’s my little sister!”

  Just seeing him step toward the bottom of the staircase sent cold shivers down my spine. I couldn’t have said which was more wonderful, and at the same time harder to bear: looking at Gary, or noticing the way he looked at me!

  He had changed a lot. His face had grown thinner, almost angular, and he seemed much older than his nineteen years. A suntan brought out his green eyes, and they had a different sheen to them than they had had before. More serious, wiser. As if no one could remain the same in this war, even my carefree, invulnerable brother.

  As always, it was Gary who broke the spell and made the first step toward me. I finally jumped up and threw myself around his neck. “You came at just the right time!” I cried. “Mum and I just had a terrible row!”

  I suppose I had wanted to say “your mum,” but I hadn’t thought about it at all. Amanda and I were both stunned to hear me say it.

  But not Gary. “What was it about?” he immediately wanted to know.

  “Actually,” Amanda replied as we led him into the kitchen, “it was only about a hat.”

  “A hat, seriously? Look at her, Mum, she’s growing up!” Gary tossed his kit bag into the corner.

  “Come sit down and have some cake,” Amanda said.

  We sat across from him and watched him eat. “How is it that you’re here already?” Amanda asked.

  “I didn’t take the train. A medical officer drove me and two others from Plymouth,” he explained. Amanda leaned forward to serve Gary more cake, and the odd sensation that had come over me as I listened to him intensified. Something wasn’t right. He talked a little too fast, a bit too loud, and in the moments that passed as he waited for his second slice of cake, I understood why he had eaten so quickly. His right hand trembled—just a little, but still enough to want to distract us from it. Our eyes met, and when he realized that I had seen it, he gave a slight shake of his head and asked me in an almost warning tone, “Heard anything from Walter?”

  “No,” I responded, trying not to lower my gaze. “But he is doing well and I send him half my ration of sweets every week.”

  “Good girl. Nothing lifts the morale like a package with sweets. Listen, please don’t be offended, but I absolutely have to smoke a cigarette and take a nap. I want to be in good shape when Dad gets home.”

  He stood up without even touching his second piece of cake, drew a squashed pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, and was already on his way to the kitchen door. “Gary, you can smoke inside, you don’t need…” Amanda began.

  “Just let me get used to being here, Mum,” he interrupted her, and the cheerful façade fell away in an instant, without any warning. He looked young, vulnerable, and incredibly tired. Quickly he disappeared through the door and his outline flitted past the garden window.

  We practically jumped to the window to peer out. Gary wandered along the fence, smoking, gazed into our corrugated metal bunker for a long time, picked a leaf out of the hedge. “He’s so thin,” whispered Amanda, “and did you see his hand?”

  “He’ll be better in a day or two! And don’t you tremble yourself sometimes when you’re tired?”

  “You’re right. Heavens, just look at me.” She wiped a hand across her eyes. “A bundle of nerves—just what he needs right now. Promise that you’ll kick me if I start to act foolish.”

  I put my arm around her waist and snuggled up to her. “If you do, I’ll think of something else. I’m certainly not going to kick you!”

  “My sweetie! I’m so sorry about earlier.”

  “Me too. It was my fault.”

  “No. It’s just this damned war!”

  I let go of her. “What should we cook?” I asked brightly. “I’ll put everything away upstairs, then I’ll come help you. When Gary’s rested, this will be the greatest week ever, want to bet?”

  “No. Jewish people don’t make bets,” Amanda replied, and could finally laugh again, even more so when I countered: “And I’ll bet Jews don’t say ‘damn’ either.”

  We could seat Gary and Uncle Matthew as far apart as we wanted, but at some point the conversation always came around to the war. While Churchill and Lord Halifax ranted against Chamberlain and Lloyd George in the House of Commons, Gary and his father were having the same heated debate in our dining room.

  Even Amanda resorted to sarcasm after a few days. “Why don’t we invite the BBC to broadcast our dinners? Then the politicians could take a vacation,” she suggested.

  But it was no use. The war, which had already driven a deep gouge in the European map, now divided the Shepard house as well.

  “How can anyone even seriously consider surrendering to these pigs?” Gary ranted. “And especially my own father, a Jew! Do you want to sign your own death warrant, Dad? Yours, mine, and Frances’s? Mum they’ll at least wave through, and be thrilled by her perfect Irish Catholic pedigree.”

  “It’s not about surrender, it’s about reaching a peace agreement with Germany!” Uncle Matthew turned red in the face. “Our death sentence, if you dare speak of such a thing, would be the invasion. If we make a peace treaty, they won’t touch us.”

  “Don’t be so naive, Dad. You can’t trust those people! They’ve broken every single treaty they’ve ever made.”

  “Have you looked at a map lately? Eight countries around us are in German hands. All our heavy artillery was left in France. The only power that could still save us has decided to remain neutral. It’s not a question of wanting to, Gary, we don’t have any choice anymore!”

  “Wrong! Roosevelt will convince Congress. It can’t be in America’s best interest to have the Nazis ruling Europe.”

  “Would anyone else like another baked apple?” Amanda asked. In reply she heard: “Congress?! The entire American public is against the war! Haven’t you heard? We won’t sacrifice our American boys to save the Jews!”

  “Okay,” said Gary. “Let’s just imagine that we do sign a peace treaty with the Germans. Our island remains intact at first. And what happens forty miles away?”

  Uncle Matthew bristled with anger. “I’ve seen what’s happening there. I was there myself, you know!”

  “Which is why I can’t understand you! These tyrants have to be stopped! You may be too old to understand this, but I don’t want to live in a world where the Nazis are in charge!” With those words, Gary threw his napkin onto
the table and left the room.

  “Matthew,” Amanda said through gritted teeth, “in a few days our son is going back to his ship to fight! He’s lost four mates that he knew personally, and I won’t listen for one more minute while you attack him!”

  Uncle Matthew turned pale. “You’re right,” he said. “I at least owe him moral support.”

  “He didn’t tell me that he’s lost friends!” I muttered, after Uncle Matthew left the room.

  Amanda replied: “It’s a pleasure for him to have someone he can still talk to about normal, everyday things.”

  She was right. As soon as we were alone, the comfortable familiarity between Gary and me returned. For several days we even shared a new secret—though it was one I would much rather not have known about!

  Happily, I handed tools to my hero while he dismantled the corrugated metal bunker in our yard. “I hope the Home Guard is teaching Dad how to build a decent shelter,” he teased, after he had exposed the muddy hole that hadn’t been sealed off when our shelter had been built the first time. “The shovel, Frances!”

  I adjusted my straw hat and moved gracefully to carry out his command. Gary’s bare upper body gleamed in the sunlight, and I admired the muscles in his shoulders and arms as he shoveled wet earth out of the hole. “You’re incredibly brown,” I commented.

  “But only to here!” Gary revealed a pasty white stripe below his hips. “Without clothes on I look like someone dipped me halfway in mud.”

  “So you spend all day on deck in the sunshine,” I answered wittily.

  “Well, my assignments include a certain amount of scrubbing and mopping outdoors,” he replied with good humor. “But did I tell you that I’m going to be transferred to one of the brand-new battle cruisers? The Princess of Malta! Sounds good, doesn’t it?”

  “Fantastic!” I sighed. “Too bad I’m not in Tail’s End anymore. I could make them so jealous talking about you!”

  Gary laughed and leaned against the shovel. “Tail’s End! How I enjoyed your letters!” He took a deep drag on his cigarette. “I’m writing someone,” he added casually.