The Length of a String

by Elissa Brent Weissman

  I have to say, we kids handled our inheritance more responsibly than the adults. Isabel wasn’t there, so I got the teddy bear down from the shelf and placed it carefully in a corner. (It could have used a spin—or two, or five—in the washing machine, but it was so old, it would probably come out as a pile of stuffing, and I was determined to treat Grandma Anna’s belongings with more respect than the grown-ups.) Jaime and I had already put aside some books for Isabel too: all of the ones with pictures and a few novels we thought she’d enjoy when she got a little older. Then, while the adults were arguing about jewelry and china patterns, we had gone through the living room bookshelves, making four piles: “Imani,” “Jaime,” “Talk about,” “Donate.”

  All that was left was the big bookshelf in Grandma Anna’s bedroom. It was stuffed to the max. Grandma must have been quite the reader.

  “Hey, Jaime,” I said.

  “Yeah?” I found him in the kitchen, drinking some flat ginger ale from a bottle that had been in Grandma Anna’s fridge. The lack of carbonation didn’t bother him. Neither did the fact that it belonged to a dead person. Boys.

  “Let’s go through the books in the bedroom,” I said.

  “Are those for us too?”

  “Grandpa Fred said yeah.”

  “Is there anything good,” Jaime asked, “or just boring grown-up stuff?”

  I held out my hands. “How should I know? That’s why we have to go through it.”

  Jaime took another swig from the ginger ale bottle. “Let’s play with the marble thing I got instead. Want to have a competition? It can be me, you, and that old teddy bear.”

  There he goes with the kid stuff again. I’m in junior high. Why would I play marbles with a stuffed animal? “No,” I said, “I want to see what’s on the bookshelf. We have to figure out who gets what.”

  “You’re not fun anymore.” He frowned, twisted the cap back onto the bottle. “Go do the books. The bear and I will play marbles without you.”

  I was annoyed for about half a second before realizing I didn’t care. I’m lots of fun when I want to be, so whatever. And it’d probably be easier to do the books on my own anyway. This way I’d be sure to keep anything cool for myself. Who knows, there might be some information about her past in there—maybe even her adoption papers. Maybe I’d find something about Grandma Anna’s adoption that I could use when asking about my own. Maybe it’d give me the courage to actually do it too.

  Armed with purpose, I walked to the bedroom and piled up some dictionaries to stand on and tackle the shelf from the top.

  This collection was more varied than the one in the living room. There were worn classics, newer novels without a single crease, and a range of stuff in between. I decided to keep every Agatha Christie book—there must be something to them if Grandma Anna owned twenty. She had a decent number of chemistry books, which I decided to keep too, to go with my new set of beakers and burners. Some books were in other languages; I recognized French and what I guessed was German or maybe Dutch. Cool, I thought. Was Grandma Anna learning new languages? Or maybe she still knew them from when she was a kid in Europe. I tried to think back to my fourth-grade project on Luxembourg, but I couldn’t remember what language they speak there. (Could I be part French or German or Dutch? If I hadn’t been placed for adoption, would I speak a different language? If I found my birth parents, would we even be able to communicate?)

  The third shelf down had a bunch of old user’s manuals for outdated technology, which were funny to read. How to program your VCR, how to load “film” into something called a Polaroid camera . . . When I pulled out a guide to “using your new icebox,” another book fell to the floor. It was small and thick, and the cover was solid, though faded, black. I picked it up. The binding was soft but flat, like a couch cushion that had been sat on for too long. A frayed green ribbon hung from the top. My heart fluttered and my fingers knew to handle this book gently. It clearly wasn’t a user’s guide. It wasn’t like any of the other books on the shelf.

  The cover stretched and creaked as I opened it, as though nobody had done so in years. I felt like I was in one of the fantasy books from the other bookshelf, about to discover a portal to some magical world. But the page I opened—a random one, in the middle—had no stardust or spells, just small, careful writing. The cursive letters were precise, every line straight and every loop perfectly circular.

  I ran my hand over the old paper until my eyes stopped on a familiar word. A name: Anna. It was at the bottom of the page on the right, the way you’d sign a letter or a diary. My fingers jumped back as though the ink were hot.

  A diary! I thought. Oh my God, I found Grandma Anna’s diary.

  I went to the very first page, hoping to confirm my hunch. It had a date in the corner from 1941. But the rest was in a different language. The letters were normal—well, normal for English—but they formed words that I had no way of translating. But that random page I’d found first . . . that one hadn’t been in this strange language, had it? I turned the pages one by one, careful not to rip anything. Page after page of this other language. Just when I was starting to doubt whether I’d been right about seeing English at all, the strange writing stopped. There was one blank page, and then the writing started up again, this time in English. The date was the same as on the very first page and it began:

  22 August 1941

  t. 1950

  Dear Belle,

  All my life I’ve shared with you. Before we were born, we shared Mama’s belly, splitting the resources so equally we weighed the exact same amount at birth. The story of our arrival was our bedtime story for years and years. How the doctor didn’t realize there were two of us until nine minutes after I was born, when you followed me into life. (How you have always loved a good surprise!) How in those nine minutes, Mama and Papa had already named me Annabelle. How they were so shocked at your arrival, they didn’t think to invent a second name. Instead, they split mine in two. I became Anna, you Belle.

  “Imani!”

  I snapped my head up and the book shut.

  “Pizza or Greek for lunch?” Grandpa asked from the doorway.

  “Um. Pizza, I guess. No mushrooms.”

  “No mushrooms,” he repeated. “You finding anything worth keeping?”

  “Maybe,” I said, my face making the world’s most awkward smile.

  “Great. I’m going to go order the pizza.”

  Grandpa left, and I swallowed, wondering if this diary was rightly his. He was Grandma Anna’s son, but she did leave me (and my brother and cousin) all of her books. Then again, this wasn’t an ordinary book. I don’t have a diary, but if I did, I wouldn’t want anybody reading it. Even if I was dead, though? Even if my great-granddaughter had a pressing reason to learn about my past? I don’t know. I do know that I wouldn’t want my grandkids fighting over it like money-hungry monsters.

  I obviously needed more time to figure this out. I wasn’t going to tell anybody just yet. Unfortunately, that meant I wouldn’t be able to look at it until I was back home, away from people who might barge in at any moment and ask what I was reading. For now, I was going to keep this secret between Great-Grandma Anna and me.

  CHAPTER 6

  Okay, for now I’m going to keep this secret between Great-Grandma Anna, me . . . and Madeline.

  It was so hard to keep the diary hidden from my family, but I had no choice. I initially brought it with me in the car, but there was no way to even take it out without everyone seeing and getting curious, so I transferred it to my bag in the trunk when we stopped at a rest stop in New Jersey. By the time we got home, I was dying to get back to it. Madeline texted when she saw our car pass her house, asking if I could hang out. I wanted to see her, but I couldn’t wait another second to look at the diary again, and I was itching to share this discovery with someone anyway. So I brought it with me.

  In her basement,
Madeline turned the diary over in her hands and gingerly flipped through the pages. She said, “This is so. Freaking. Awesome.”

  “I know, right?”

  “What do you think this language is?”

  “I don’t know, but she translated it into English as an adult,” I said. “See how the dates are the same on all those entries, and then she put a new date underneath? I think that t means ‘translated.’”

  “Look at her handwriting,” Madeline said. “It’s like the sample handwriting in cursive books.”

  “Seriously. This is the first time I’m actually glad I can read cursive.”

  Madeline started reading the first English page. I watched as her eyes ran across the page and zigzagged back down, reading the words that my great-grandmother wrote. I had the urge to reach out and snatch the book back. This wasn’t Madeline’s story to investigate, for the radio or anywhere. I didn’t even know if it was rightly mine.

  “Did you know that your great-grandma was a twin?” Madeline asked.

  I didn’t. I wondered if my mom knew, or even Grandpa Fred.

  “I wonder what happened to her family,” Madeline said. “All those siblings she left behind. Can you imagine growing up somewhere, not knowing what happened to your family? Your twin? Your parents? You’d probably be always wondering, forever.”

  I looked at Madeline, waiting for it to sink in. That I could imagine it, very well. That she was right: You’d always be wondering, forever. Maybe I did have a right to this story after all.

  I saw Madeline get it, an invisible lightbulb dinging on above her head. She handed the diary back to me. But what was I going to do? Make my best friend sit there and watch me read? I opened the diary and held it between us so we could both read together.

  23 August 1941

  t. July 1950

  Dear Belle,

  I am aboard a ship called the S.S. Mouzinho. It is a big and fat thing that by the strange beauty of science can float. You are at home I suppose, with a whole bed to yourself now. You are the only 12-year-old in our family. I am jealous. Yet you are jealous of me, I know. I wish we could be jealous together.

  Everything happened so quickly, I still cannot understand it. Twins are not meant to be apart. We are, and it is done for now, but I can barely add 2 and 2 without you beside me, reading my mind and telling your own. That’s why I’m addressing this journal to you. Paper and ink are no substitute for my twin sister, of course, but until you follow me to this new life, what choice do I have? I cannot mail these letters, not with the war and the censors. But addressing them to you, pretending I am telling you everything as we lay side by side in our bed . . . it’s the only way for me to try and make sense of it all.

  Just two weeks ago you were sitting on the floor of our room with your legs stretched out long as you painted your toenails red. (Ever since the occupation, we’ve had little bread and only powdered milk and that horrid black soap, but you, Belle, have enough polish to make your nails a different color every day until the Germans surrender.) I was standing in our doorway watching the adults have one of their late-night conversations. I am imagining them now, hunched over the table, rubbing their temples and whispering in Yiddish. I can still smell that odd combination of grass and herbs Grandfather has been putting in his pipe since the tobacco ran out. I was straining to hear them but could make out few words. (What they wanted, of course. Speaking in Yiddish means their words are not meant for “die kinder.”) No matter, we both knew what they were discussing . . . the war, the Nazis, our miserable life in occupation. How the Nazis were taking apart the Great Synagogue stone by stone. How we needed to get out. It is all they’ve talked of for months, ever since Rabbi Serebrenik was attacked and not even Papa and his rosy glasses could ignore what was happening.

  Do you remember what I said to you that night, just two weeks ago? I said, “Where do you think we will go?”

  You guessed France, to Mama’s family. I said, “It’s even worse there,” and you said, “Belgium, then.” But we both knew Belgium wasn’t safe either.

  Then Oliver came into our room. He was wearing his pajamas . . . the ones that were once Greta’s, pale blue with dots of pink hearts . . . and dragging his bear along by one paw. He knew where we were going . . . America.

  Maybe Oliver could hear better from his and Kurt’s room, but he can’t know more Yiddish than we do. He was likely just being Oliver . . . picking up on all the small clues the rest of us missed. I had no doubt he was right. Neither did you . . . I could see stars in your eyes. You said, “I hope we go to Georgia, like in ‘Gone with the Wind.’ Or Hollywood! That’s even better, because that’s where they made ‘Gone with the Wind.’” You said (remember?), “Golly Anna, we could be discovered!”

  I get a stone in my throat now, to think of it, my movie star sister.

  You said, “We must practice our English!” very slowly, in English.

  Is this why Papa has always spent the money on our English lessons, a language so useless in Luxembourg, except at his university? Why we kept up the lessons even in secret, after the Nazis insisted on nothing but German? Was he preparing us for America all this time? Is this why I was sent away, because I take more naturally to languages? You must practice, Belle. No one knows Luxembourgish outside of home, and you will not be able to use your beloved French in America. You must teach Oliver too. It should be an easy task. Our clever Oliver can likely learn to pass for an American in a few short weeks.

  We talked a bit about America that night, the three of us. When Oliver gave a big yawn I noticed the time, 10:30, so late. I took his hand and began to walk him down the hall. That’s when I heard Mama say “Anna.” Looking back now, it was the very first sign of what was to come. Papa cut in, hissing in Yiddish, so fast and fiery his words were like steam from a kettle. The only thing I could make out was “Belle.”

  Oliver pulled on my sleeve, his face a portrait of worry. I held him close and touched the soft curls of his hair. I did not want him to be scared. The adults kept arguing, talking over each other, as we tiptoed to the boys’ room. Kurt was spread all over his bed, fast asleep. Oliver climbed into his own bed and snuggled with Bier on his pillow. I pulled the old blanket up to his nose and tucked the sides under his small body (I hope you remember, since I am not there, that he likes to be wrapped tight like a bug) and kissed him good-night.

  I was back in the hall when I saw your head out of our door. You were listening to the adults and put a finger to your lips. Mama and Grandmother were still talking, but very softly now . . . calm. All I knew then was that their argument was settled.

  I heard Mama say “Anna” again. Then “Anna un Kurt.”

  Believe me, Belle, at that time I did not know the question, but I knew the answer was Kurt . . . and me.

  CHAPTER 7

  When I finished the page, I glanced at Madeline to gauge her reaction and make sure she wanted to keep going. She didn’t even notice me looking at her, she was so sucked in to the story. Good, because I definitely wanted to keep reading. I wanted to know what Anna’s parents and grandparents were whispering about in Yiddish, what secrets they were keeping from their children and grandchildren. It made me think of my own parents and the big secrets about my past that they’re keeping from me. They don’t stay up late having conversations in a language I can’t understand—as far as I know, anyway—but they are keeping information from me. Things I’m dying to know but can’t find the courage to ask.

  “You ready?” Madeline asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Can I turn the page?”

  “Oh. Yeah,” I said. “I want to see what happens.”

  24 August 1941

  t. July 1950

  Dear Belle,

  The sea is rough today . . . many people have taken ill. My stomach is as rolling as the water out my tiny window. (“Porthole,�
�� I am told it is called.) Am I so ill from the sea or from missing home? I cannot say. I cannot stop thinking about my last days at home. I did not appreciate it enough, and you and I barely talked . . . forgive me, I was just so worried about the future.

  After I heard Mama say my name that night (with Kurt’s), you fell asleep right away but I did not. I could not fathom what was to happen to me and Kurt alone. Everything we do, we do as a family . . . so much, it’s often embarrassing. Everyone came to watch me in the school science contest, even Grandfather and Grandmother. The 9 of us took up the whole front row at your ballet performance. Remember, before the Germans came, when we would go to the symphony? All of us except the baby, in our finest clothes. Mama will not even allow us to go to the Luxembourg Fair with our friends, we have to attend as a family instead. I blush even now to think of it . . . 10 people, 2 of them identical, 2 of them elderly, walking as a group through the Schueberfouer. We might as well be on display in one of the tents. With all this togetherness, what could Mama possibly mean by just “Anna un Kurt”?

  I close my eyes now and imagine us there in bed that night. One of your feet was sticking out the bottom of the blanket. I could see the fresh red paint on your toenails despite the darkness. You sighed in your sleep and a pleasant feeling washed over me . . . you must have been having a nice dream.