Different Days

by Vicki Berger Erwin

  “I was provoked!” Rosie said, always glad to be able to use a word she mostly only read in books. P-R-O-V-O-K-E-D.

  “They were teasing you,” Mrs. Smith said, dismissing Apikalia’s and her friend’s actions.

  “Teasing?” Rosie couldn’t believe her ears.

  “You completely overreacted.”

  “Overreacted?”

  “Am I not making myself clear?” Mrs. Smith asked. “Perhaps you will understand this. I have called your aunt, since your parents are clearly unavailable.”

  Rosie felt like she’d been struck again and this time by someone who should have known better.

  “And she will arrive any minute to take you home for the next three school days.”

  “I’m suspended?” For three days? But the spelling bee was scheduled for Monday! And she wouldn’t be allowed back in school until Wednesday.

  “Fighting is an automatic suspension.”

  “Is Apikalia suspended?”

  “Of course not! You attacked her. You may wait for your aunt out there. I will want to speak with her before she takes you home. You are dismissed.”

  Rosie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She had never been in trouble before and Apikalia had been the one to egg her into the fight. Aunt Etta was going to be so mad. She’d have to leave work and lose wages. And, she’d be very disappointed in how Rosie had handled the situation.

  At the door, with her back turned to Mrs. Smith, Rosie gathered the courage to ask, “What about the spelling bee?”

  “That,” said the principal, “is a privilege and one you will be denied.”

  The words felt like a knife cutting through Rosie.

  It seemed like Aunt Etta entered the waiting area of the office at the same moment Rosie did. Aunt Etta said nothing to her but walked to Mrs. Smith’s door and rapped softly, then disappeared behind that door.

  Rosie waited, still not sorry for what she did to Apikalia but very sorry that she’d caused Aunt Etta more trouble.

  Aunt Etta still said nothing when she left Mrs. Smith’s office. She walked by Rosie, who stood up as soon as the office door opened and fell into line behind her. They walked silently to the house.

  Rosie sat on the sagging couch and waited as Aunt Etta paced back and forth across the small living room.

  “If I drank, I think I would pour myself a healthy dose of something right now,” were her aunt’s first words. “And to think I’ve even given up cigarettes. I could use one of those right now also.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Rosie said.

  “It’s embarrassing, what you did, and exactly the way people believe Germans are apt to behave—with violence and force. You’ve seen the propaganda posters, the big boots stomping down on Europe, and all the others.”

  Rosie hadn’t even considered that she was acting the way Apikalia hoped or expected her to act.

  “But I’m not German,” Rosie said for the millionth time. “I have a German name. At some time in the past people from my family lived in Germany. I have never even been there. I am 100 percent American.” Why, why, why couldn’t people accept that?

  “I know, but right now, oh my dear one, you have to act nobly, act better than others no matter what. I’ve heard it all, even from those I thought were my friends, the suspicion, the thoughtless comments, the hate, and the fear. Fear is driving so much of what people feel. Did you know that Apikalia’s brother is in Europe fighting against the Nazis? He faces the worst of what Germany has to offer every single day.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Rosie felt a little seed of sorry for what she’d done to Apikalia.

  Aunt Etta sat in the chair across from Rosie.

  “I didn’t think anyone knew about Mama and Papa and, you know, the internment. I was trying to defend our family honor.”

  Aunt Etta slowly nodded.

  “You know and I know they didn’t do anything wrong, but people who don’t know them assume that because they were arrested and interned they did do something. It’s not fair.” Rosie shook her head until her hair covered her face and she had to push it out of the way.

  “I think I know that even better than you do.”

  Of course she did.

  “I know that being suspended is punishment,” Aunt Etta began.

  Not really, Rosie thought. I don’t care if I never go back to that school. Missing the spelling bee was the real punishment.

  “But, I have to follow that up with punishment here at home. I promised Mrs. Smith I would. So, you can’t go to the beach or to town or anyplace out of the yard—”

  “What if Iolana needs me to babysit?”

  “Or Iolana’s yard for the next three days.”

  Rosie watched her aunt pick at the strings on the frayed edges of the chair. Aunt Etta understood why she’d done what she’d done, she was sure of it.

  “But, we’re supposed to visit Mama at Sand Island on Sunday,” Rosie said. Today was Friday and she couldn’t go back to school until Wednesday. “Do Saturday and Sunday count?”

  Aunt Etta swallowed hard. She nodded. “You won’t be allowed to go with us this time.”

  Rosie gasped. “But …”

  “No. And I don’t relish telling her why you aren’t along.” Aunt Etta crossed her arms and looked down. Her lips quivered.

  “Please,” Rosie said quietly.

  Aunt Etta stood and turned her back. “I am going back to work. I can still put in a few hours before the end of the day.” And she was gone.

  Chapter 35

  Rosie stabbed her needle into her quilt square, thinking of Aunt Etta as she did so. Her aunt and Freddie were on their way to Sand Island to visit Mama.

  One more row of quilting and the square would be finished, or almost finished. The edges needed to be finished, but Rosie wasn’t sure how to do that. She’d planned to ask Mama to help her during this visit.

  The rain pounded the roof of their house, sounding like it might break through it at any moment. And Rosie felt the thunder. It reminded her of bombs dropping on December 7, a date which will live in infamy. She tied off the last stitch.

  Usually Rosie liked to be alone, but knowing where Aunt Etta and Freddie had gone and who they were seeing, she felt lonely and sad—and mad. At herself and at her aunt. She couldn’t even write in her journal because George had taken it to review what she’d found out about Mr. Smith.

  And next week, Rosie had to return to school—the school where Mrs. Smith and Apikalia were. Rosie felt like she could expect nothing from the principal in the way of protection from Apikalia’s mean spirit. And the spelling bee would be over. She’d never be champion anything.

  Rosie covered her face with the quilt square. She’d had too many bad thoughts as she was finishing it and had probably destroyed its aloha spirit, if it had ever had any. She threw the square to the floor. Kealani had said by the time she finished the quilting, Mama and Papa would return, and there was no sign of either. Was there any aloha spirit left on the islands or had it all blown up and away with the bombs?

  Rosie stood in front of the screen door and let the wind and stray raindrops pound around her. She opened the door and stepped onto the front stoop. The rain quickly soaked through her dress, cooling her. Rosie ran to the tall pine tree in Iolana’s yard and shimmied up the trunk until she reached a perch near the very top.

  She imagined she could see across the water to the tents of Sand Island, where Mama, Aunt Etta, and Freddie would be wading through the rain from the dinner hall to the dock. Rosie shivered more with loneliness than with cold. She wanted her mama and her papa. And she sobbed. For the first time since Aunt Etta had been taken away, Rosie cried and cried and cried.

  “Rosie! Are you out here?” Aunt Etta called.

  Rosie stayed where she was, not ready to face anyone. Perhaps she’d stay in the tree all night and even tomorrow and the day after and the day after. That way she wouldn’t have to go to school.

  “Rosie! Liebchen!”
r />   Rosie wondered if she was finally losing her mind. It sounded like her mother’s voice.

  “Roselie!”

  That voice sounded like her father’s. She couldn’t hear her papa all the way from the mainland and as far as she knew, that was where he was.

  Rosie climbed down carefully, looking over her shoulder every few feet to see if it was Mama and Papa or her mind playing tricks.

  But, standing there, drenched in rain, were her parents. They looked as wet as she felt, and their clothes, the ones they’d been wearing way back in early December, hung on them. Papa’s hair was shorter than she remembered and Mama’s was tied back with a scarf. Papa looked like the handsomest man she’d ever seen, and her mama the most beautiful woman. Freddie roosted in Papa’s arms as Mama paced from one side of the muddy yard to the other.

  “Mama? Papa?” Rosie stood under the pine branches, still not sure if she was awake or dreaming. “Papa, when did you return?”

  Mama ran to her and held her tightly. “What are you doing out here in the pouring rain?”

  “What are you doing out here?” Rosie asked. “I was watching for you to come home. If I look very, very hard, I can see Sand Island and your tent.”

  “Is it empty?”

  Rosie nodded.

  “That’s because we’re home!” Mama said. “Me and your papa.”

  Chapter 36

  Mama and Papa still had no explanation for why they had been interned, and no explanation for why they had been released, no matter how many questions Rosie asked. Papa had returned from Wisconsin on the mainland and joined Mama at Sand Island. They had been called to the superintendent’s office and told that like Aunt Etta, they were “paroled.” She finally gave up and decided she’d have to be content with her own explanations.

  Mama did not make Freddie go to school the next day. Rosie was still suspended.

  “You’ll have to stay here while we take care of some business,” Papa said after they had eaten a coconut breakfast.

  Rosie didn’t want to let her parents out of her sight so soon. “Why can’t we go with you?”

  “I want to come, too!” Freddie whined.

  Mama and Papa exchanged looks. “It will be very boring for you,” Papa said.

  “You will have to be very patient while you wait for us, so perhaps you should take a book,” said Mama, giving in easily. Rosie figured Mama didn’t want to be separated from them any more than she and Freddie did.

  Rosie grabbed a book and Freddie shoved several plastic planes and army men into his pockets.

  “So where are we going?” Rosie held on to Papa’s hand and Freddie held tightly to Mama’s as they made their way toward town.

  “To see a Mr. Weinstein, a friend of Aunt Etta’s George,” Papa said. “We are going to have to find another place to live.”

  Papa bringing up Mr. Weinstein’s name made Rosie wonder what had happened to her journal. She’d returned to writing notes on any paper she could find as she had done at Aunt Yvonne’s. She hoped George hadn’t lost her real journal.

  “Our properties have not been managed the way we expected,” Papa continued. “In fact, we’ve lost our house in the valley.”

  “I know,” Rosie paused, trying to decide how much to tell her parents of what she knew. “Malia bought the house and is running a nursery there.”

  Mama and Papa exchanged looks.

  “She was probably the one who made a report about you to the FBI to make sure you were interned,” Rosie continued, “then she could have the house.”

  “We don’t know that, liebchen,” Papa said.

  “But I think it,” said Rosie. She had failed to truly be like Nancy Drew—she hadn’t solved the mystery of the cause of her parents’ internment. She only had theories. But it was impossible, with all the secrecy, to know anything for sure! The FBI might not even know who made the report on Mama and Papa if it was anonymous.

  “You are free to think what you like. But you may not go around accusing people when you don’t know.”

  Rosie opened her mouth to speak but Papa shushed her. “We are better than that,” he said. “We must go now and find a place to live. A place fit for a princess!”

  “Please, Papa, no more princess. I think I have outgrown that title.”

  Papa looked at her, tears in his eyes. “I am sorry for that.” He put his arm around Rosie and they walked on together.

  “We are hopeful to recover our remaining properties including the Diamond Head house and move there,” Papa said. “It is small but it belongs to us. And it is not as small as this house.”

  Rosie checked on Mama and Freddie who followed more slowly. Freddie was pointing at things and talking nonstop as Mama nodded and smiled.

  “Mr. Smith said he’d rented it to the government when we told him we wanted to live there,” Rosie told Papa.

  “As I said, Mr. Smith hasn’t been quite the manager we had in mind for our properties.”

  “He took things from our house and he’s been selling them,” Rosie said.

  “Again, we cannot accuse people of theft when we don’t know—”

  Rosie interrupted him. “I saw him take quilts, one Auntie Palu gave us, to a store and sell them. And Kam, he’s one of our new friends, he said Mr. Smith was there when the government men took all the radios from your store.”

  “Liebchen, I will not be selling radios again. At least not while this war carries on.” Papa shook his head and his shoulders slumped.

  “But you’re the radio king …”

  “No longer. They do not trust me with radios.” He placed a finger over his lips and Rosie quieted.

  They walked along, dodging soldiers and sandbags, Papa looking this way and that. “Changes, so many,” he mumbled.

  Papa stopped suddenly and Rosie stumbled. “Ah! This is the office we seek.” He pushed open the door and held it while Rosie, then Mama and Freddie entered.

  A thin man with dark hair and round rimmed glasses stood at the desk staring at stacks of papers. He looked up as they came inside.

  “Mr. Weinstein?” Papa said.

  “You must be Mr. and Mrs. Schatzer!” Weinstein stepped from behind the desk and shook first Papa’s then Mama’s hand.

  “Are you Rosie?” he asked.

  Rosie couldn’t imagine how he knew her name.

  “I’m George’s friend and he talks about you and your brother often,” Weinstein explained.

  Rosie hoped it was good talk. She hoped George hadn’t mentioned her fight at school.

  “In fact, I’ve used your diary to track some of the actions of your property manager.”

  Mama and Papa both turned to look at Rosie.

  Rosie didn’t know what to say.

  “And I was able to make a strong enough case that Mr. Smith has been removed and I have been appointed in his place.”

  “That is wonderful news.” Papa shook Mr. Weinstein’s hand vigorously. “Wonderful.”

  “Thank you so much! That does mean that the remainder of our properties will not be sold, correct?” Mama asked, wringing her hands.

  “I could not save the valley home, but I have managed to stop any further action on the Diamond Head house, the storefront off King Street, and the other pieces of land you own in the hills. And, I fear, I cannot recover any personal property that seems to be missing.”

  “We must be content with what we still have,” Mama said.

  Mr. Weinstein turned to Mama and Papa. “I have heard reports of some of the managers profiting from their not-so-honest activities, but they do have signed authority from you to manage the property. There isn’t much we can do.”

  Rosie knew he was right, no matter how much she wanted to make sure Mr. Smith never took advantage of another family.

  “We don’t want to make any trouble or bring any attention to ourselves,” Papa said in a low voice as he stood between Rosie and Mr. Weinstein. “We must keep our heads down and make it through these different days.”


  Being with her parents again, Rosie realized having her family together was more important to her than bringing Mr. Smith to the justice he deserved.

  “There were others we talked to when we were …” Mama paused, “interned.” She swallowed hard. “They, too, had no chance to pack or store personal belongings and now,” she snapped her fingers, “their things have disappeared.”

  “I do have some understanding of what you’ve been through. I, like George, am Jewish. If we were in Germany, we would be the ones picked up for no reason except our heritage and placed in camps. Although, from what I have heard, the camps there are far worse and fewer people find their way out alive than the people interned here.” Mr. Weinstein picked up papers and shuffled through them, not looking at the Schatzers.

  “It is a shame and a stain on Germany,” Papa finally said.

  Weinstein dropped the papers on the desk and gave the family a wan smile. “No one seems to want to help the Jews in Europe either.”

  “When do you think we will be able to take back our house near Diamond Head?” Mama asked.

  “Soon. I have already notified the renters they will have to move.”

  “But doesn’t the government have the lease on the house?” Rosie asked, sure that’s what Mr. Smith had said.

  “Mr. Smith’s cousin is living there presently.” Mr. Weinstein pressed his lips together.

  “We are very grateful for all your help,” said Papa.

  “It is my job. I spend my days trying to help internees and I’m glad I could help you.” He pulled out a brown envelope from under the many papers stacked on his desk. “Rosie, this is yours. And this as well.”

  Rosie opened the envelope—her Christmas journal! And Mr. Weinstein also handed her a brand new journal with a red, white, and blue cover. “Thank you,” she whispered, stroking the cover.

  “You deserve it,” he said. “As I said, your notes were most helpful in tracking Mr. Smith’s movements and his selling off of personal property belonging to internees.”

  “We will hear from you when the house is available?” Papa asked.

  “Soon,” replied Mr. Weinstein. “And I will also give you an accounting of funds due you and an inventory of any personal property and real estate I can locate.”