The Cats in the Doll Shop

by Yona Zeldis McDonough

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1 - WORDS FROM FAR AWAY

  Chapter 2 - OUT BACK

  Chapter 3 - A SWEETYEAR

  Chapter 4 - THE MAN WITH THE MUSTACHE

  Chapter 5 - WAITING

  Chapter 6 - SHANNON

  Chapter 7 - WELCOME, TANIA

  Chapter 8 - FIRST DAY

  Chapter 9 - MOUSE IN THE HOUSE

  Chapter 10 - THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE

  Chapter 11 - WHERE IS PLUCKY?

  Chapter 12 - WINTER WONDERLAND

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  GLOSSARY OF TERMS

  TIMELINE

  In memory of my grandmother Tania Brightman: tiny, fierce, and fiercely missed—Y. Z. M.

  To my sister Carla—H. M.

  Viking

  Published by Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

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  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

  First published in 2011 by Viking, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  Text copyright © Yona Zeldis McDonough, 2011

  Illustrations copyright © Heather Maione, 2011

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  McDonough, Yona Zeldis.

  The cats in the doll shop / by Yona Zeldis McDonough ; illustrated by

  Heather Maione.

  p. cm.

  Summary: With World War I raging in Europe, eleven-year-old Anna is thrilled to learn that her cousin Tania is coming from Russia to stay with Anna’s family on the lower East Side of New York, and although Tania is shy and withdrawn when she arrives, her love of cats helps her adjust to her new family.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-54811-0

  [1. Immigrants—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 2. Cats—Fiction. 3. Cousins—Fiction.

  4. Dolls—Fiction. 5. Jews—United States—Fiction. 6. New York (N.Y.)—History—1898-1951—Fiction.]

  I. Maione, Heather Harms, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.M15655Cat 2011 [Fic]—dc22 2011009312

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  1

  WORDS FROM FAR AWAY

  It all starts with the letters. Not that letters, all by themselves, are such an odd thing. Papa and Mama run Breittlemann’s Doll Shop, where they make dolls, and they get letters all the time: from Mr. Greenfield, the buyer at the big, fancy toy store uptown called F.A.O. Schwarz, and from buyers at other stores, too. There are letters from suppliers of the different materials they use: velvet and cotton, wool and felt. Sometimes they get letters from people who have bought one of the dolls and want to know if there are any new models available.

  But the letters I am talking about are different. They come all the way from Russia, where Mama and Papa were born, and they arrive in fragile envelopes that tear when they are opened. My sisters and I can’t read what is in the letters, because they are written in Yiddish, which is the language both of my parents’ families spoke back in what Mama calls the “old country.” Sophie, my big sister, can understand Yiddish when she hears it spoken, but even she—a regular smarty-pants, all A’s and gold stars at school—cannot understand the words, which are written in Hebrew letters and crowded onto the thin, pearl gray sheets of paper.

  First the letters come only once in a while. Then we begin to notice that they are coming every week, sometimes even twice a week. Mama rips the envelopes in her haste to open them—did I mention they are fragile?—and all the features on her face seem to draw together, as if pulled tight by a thread, as she reads. Sometimes she looks worried long after she has finished reading the letters. Tonight is one of those times.

  “What’s wrong, Mama?” asks Trudie, my younger sister. It is a Sunday in August, and we’re all sitting together at our small, crowded table. Dinner—cold beet soup called borscht, with dumplings and bread—is over, and I am wondering if Mama will let us go downstairs and play in the doll shop. Even though we girls are getting older—Trudie is nine, I’m eleven, and Sophie is thirteen—we still like to play with our dolls.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” Mama says to Trudie. But the tone of her voice lets me know this is not true, and because of this, I don’t ask to go downstairs after all. I decide to stay up here, so I can keep an eye on what is happening. And sure enough, after Sophie and I have finished doing the dinner dishes, Mama calls us all together in the tiny parlor that is just off the kitchen. Papa sits in his chair on one side of the room. Mama sits in her chair on the other. But instead of the sewing basket she usually brings out in the evenings, she has the letters—all of them it seems—fanned out in her lap.

  “Girls, we are going to have a visitor,” Mama says.

  “A visitor? Who is it?” Trudie asks.

  “Is it someone we know?” asks Sophie.

  “Not yet,” Mama says, glancing over at Papa. “But you’ll get to know her soon. In fact, you’ll get to know her very well.”

  “Tell us who it is, Mama!” Trudie pleads.

  “It’s your cousin Tania,” Mama says.

  “She’s Aunt Rivka’s daughter,” I say. Mama has told us about her. “She and I have exactly the same birthday and we’re exactly the same age. You said it was a coincidence that you and your sister both had baby girls on the very same day.”

  “That’s right, Anna!” says Mama.

  “So what’s she like?” Sophie asks me, as if she didn’t quite believe it when I said I remembered hearing about her.

  “Well, she has blonde hair . . .” I begin. I am not actually sure about this, but when I speak again, I try to make my voice sound very confident anyway. “Long blonde hair and bright blue eyes. Blue as . . .” I have to think for a minute. “Blue as forget-me-nots.”

  “You’ve never even seen a forget-me-not,” says Sophie. She tosses her own shining brown hair—always brushed, always neat, and always perfect—back over her shoulders.

  “How do you know?” I say hotly. Sophie and I get along pretty well most of the time, but every now and then she acts like she knows everything and I know just about nothing. I don’t know why it’s important to me to insist that Tania is blonde and blue-eyed. Maybe it’s because I know Sophie wishes she were both.

  “That’s enough, girls,” says Mama. “Tania does have blonde hair, or at least she did when she was a baby. It might have gotten darker by now. And Rivka says her eyes are very blue. But that’s not what’s important right now.”

  “What is important, Mama?” Trudie asks. She is clutching her doll, Angelica Grace, to her chest. “The reason she’s coming here?”

  “Yes, that’s it,” says Mama. “The reason that she’s coming here.” Mama puts her arm around Trudie. “You see, her papa died when she was a baby, and she has no brothers and sisters.
So for a long time, it was just Rivka and Tania, living together in their little village. But now Aunt Rivka wants to move to the city. She’s going to be a maid in a very fine house in Moscow.”

  “Isn’t that a good thing?” I ask. I know about the Great War that is still going on in Europe. Papa has said that jobs are scarce, and so I would think Aunt Rivka is lucky to have found one.

  “It is, except the house where Rivka will be working has no place for Tania.”

  “Then where will she live if she can’t live with her mother?” asks Trudie. She runs a finger across her doll’s smooth, painted face.

  “That’s exactly why she’s going to come to live here,” says Papa, leaning forward in his chair. “And if she lives here, she’ll be able to go to school, like you girls do. She’ll learn to read and write and add and subtract. That means she’ll have some choices about what she wants to do when she’s grown up—just like all of you.”

  “I’m going to be a teacher,” Sophia declares.

  “And I’m going to be a ballerina!” adds Trudie. Trudie does love to dance.

  “You can’t just decide to be a ballerina,” Sophie says. “You have to study for a long, long time.”

  “Oh well,” says Trudie. “So I won’t be a ballerina. I’ll be an actress then. Or a singer.” She seems to consider the possibilities. “I know—a nurse! Just like Nurse Nora.” With her jaunty little outfit and sweet, caring expression, Nurse Nora is the most popular of the dolls we make in the shop.

  I can see that Sophie does not believe any of this. She has that I’m-so-grown-up look on her face. Maybe I shouldn’t even say what I want to be. Sophie will find some way to make me think it’s not possible. Or that it’s silly. But I decide I don’t care.

  “I’m going to be a writer,” I announce boldly. “I’ll write stories and poems and maybe even plays.” Everyone turns to look at me. “My books will be published in beautiful leather-covered volumes with gold lettering on the front. People everywhere will read them. They’ll be in libraries all over the city. No, all over the country.”

  I happen to love libraries. Once a week, I walk up to the Tompkins Square Library on Tenth Street where I can check out books. I have my very own library card. The librarian, Miss Abbott, is so nice. She sets aside things she thinks I will like. She’s always right, too. What if one day Miss Abbot were able to give a book I wrote to some other little girl coming through those doors? Wouldn’t I feel proud!

  “Those are all fine dreams,” says Mama. “If you work hard in school, you’ll make them come true. And Tania—we want her to have a chance to dream, too.”

  “How long will she be staying?” Sophie wants to know. “Will we have enough room for her?” I have to admit these are good questions. Our apartment has only four small rooms—kitchen, parlor, and two bedrooms.

  “Your mother and I have talked about that,” Papa says, glancing over at Mama. From that glance, I can tell that some of the conversations haven’t been so smooth. “Tania will be here with us for about a year,” he continues.

  “A year! That’s a long time,” says Sophie.

  “Aunt Rivka needs that much time to make the money for her own passage,” Mama says. “And then she’ll come over, too, and we’ll help her find an apartment of her own nearby.”

  “It’s going to be crowded,” Trudie says. Sophie nods vigorously.

  “Yes,” Mama says, lifting her chin a little. “It will be. And it may not be easy to have another girl living in your room.”

  “We’ll manage,” I tell Mama. “You can count on us.” Sophie and Trudie don’t say a thing. “When will she be here?”

  “That’s what Rivka and I are trying to arrange now,” says Mama. “I’ll let you know as soon we’ve figured it out.”

  Shortly after that conversation, September starts and with it, school. Trudie is in fourth grade now. She has the same teacher I had back when I was in that class. Sophie is in eighth grade, her last year in our school. Next year she’ll be in high school, which seems impossibly grown up to me. And I’m in sixth grade, right smack in the middle, where I always am.

  I begin to take more careful notice of the letters. I ask Mama what they say, so she reads them to us at night, after our lessons are done. It seems I have more schoolwork than last year. History, arithmetic, geography, spelling, and reading—my favorite. Sometimes I don’t finish until late, and so Mama reads the letters while we are already in bed. Of course she has to translate from the Yiddish, or Trudie and I won’t understand.

  “July 7, 1915,” reads Mama one night just after school has started. She smooths the thin sheet of paper with her hand. “Today I went into town to get the papers Tania will need to make the trip. I’ll fill them out and then next week, I’ll deliver them to the proper office.”

  “July?” says Trudie. “It’s already September.” She leans over to get closer to the letter—not that she can read it anyway—and her elbow pokes me in the side. Ouch. My sisters and I sleep together in one big bed. I didn’t mind so much when we were little, but now that we are getting bigger, I wish we didn’t have to share. Papa says since Tania is coming, he will be getting us new beds, one for each of us. No more sharing! I am looking forward to that.

  “It takes time for the letters to get here,” Mama explains. “A long time.”

  “Keep going,” I say, inching away from Trudie as best I can. “What else does she say?” So Mama continues reading, and even though I can sense my sisters losing interest, I want to hear every word. I crane my neck so I can see the foreign letters on the page.

  “Mama,” I ask. “Will Tania be able to speak English?”

  “No,” Mama answers. “So I hope that’s something you girls can help her with—learning English.”

  “I can do that,” Sophie says, rather boastfully in my opinion. “I’m going to be a teacher, remember?”

  “That would be wonderful,” Mama says. “Just what we need.”

  I don’t say anything, but privately I think that if Sophie is going to act like a know-it-all with our cousin, she isn’t going to be much help to her.

  To my surprise, the next day there is another letter. Mama reads it to us after supper. “Tania’s application was finally approved. Now I have to buy the ticket and start packing.” As I listen, I wonder if Tania has a favorite doll. Will she bring it along with her? Then I wonder if she has a doll at all. For a long time, Sophie, Trudie, and I did not have dolls of our own, even though our parents had a doll repair shop. Dolls, especially bisque and porcelain dolls, are very costly. We used to play with the dolls our father fixed, but we did not own them.

  Then the Great War broke out in Europe. America sided against Germany. All of the doll parts Papa used for repairs came from Germany. Because of the war, the parts were no longer available. Some of the dolls, including the ones we named Bernadette Louise, Victoria Marie, and Angelica Grace, were abandoned by their owners. It was only for that reason that we were able to keep them. Now Mama and Papa do not fix dolls but make them instead. They produce Nurse Nora—who was my idea and is now everyone’s favorite—and also a fairy doll and a queen doll.

  Mama told us that Aunt Rivka is poor, and it has taken her a long time to save the money for Tania’s ticket. So I am pretty sure that Tania will not have a doll, or even if she does, it will not be a very nice one. Well, if Sophie decided that she will be Tania’s English teacher, I decide that I will be the one to help her get a doll. Maybe it will be one of the dolls that Papa and Mama make. If I ask Papa, he will probably let Tania have Nurse Nora. I wonder if Tania would like her.

  But then I get another idea. A much better idea. I will make a doll for Tania, all by myself. A Russian princess ? A Spanish dancer? A bride with a long train and a lace veil? I don’t know yet. But what I do know is that she will be a very special doll, a gift to my cousin that comes straight from my heart.

  2

  OUT BACK

  Although the big calendar Papa keeps posted in the
doll shop says September 1915, the days are as beautiful, warm, and golden as summer. I lag behind my sisters on the way to school, wishing I could stay outside and play instead of going inside to join my class. And on the way home, I let them get even farther ahead, stopping to look in all the shop windows along the way. There’s a shop that sells only buttons, and another that sells hats of all kinds. My favorite is the store that sells the prettiest undergarments for ladies and girls. I love the frilly petticoats and delicate camisoles, the embroidered nightdresses and matching robes. I wish I could buy Mama a set like that for her birthday.

  When I get to the candy store at the corner of Hester Street, I check my pocket. Empty—too bad. If I had any money from my allowance—two cents a week—I would stop for a soda or a milk shake.

  When I finally do get home, I still don’t want to go inside, so I head out in back of the shop, where there is the barest sliver of a yard with hard, parched dirt that grows exactly nothing. Even the weeds struggle back here.

  “There you are!” I turn to see Sophie, who has followed me outside. “Trudie and I have been home for an hour. We were wondering where you were.”

  “I came home a different way,” I tell her.

  “I’ve just about finished my lessons. You haven’t even started yours yet,” Sophie says.

  “In a minute,” I tell her.

  “Suit yourself,” says Sophie, and goes back inside.

  I sigh. There was a time not so long ago when I thought Sophie was beginning to view me not as a little sister but as an equal. Lately though, it seems she has gone back to thinking that I am just so far behind.

  Sophie is changing, both outside and in. She has gotten taller, and though it pains me to admit it, even prettier. She no longer wears her hair in braids and is occasionally allowed to wear it up, like when we go to shul on the holidays or when Mama and Papa invite company for dinner. And on her last birthday, Mama gave her a pair of earrings with real garnets at the center. The dark red stones glow against Sophie’s pale skin. I am so jealous of those earrings! They belonged to Mama’s own mother, and Mama says when I am a little older, she will give me a pair, too, but it is hard to wait.