The Length of a String

by Elissa Brent Weissman

  “No,” I answered her. “I’m officially taking you off the case. I’m going to talk to my parents—honest—but I need to do it in my own time.”

  Her shoulders fell, but then her eyes flashed with hope. “You told me to not let you off the hook. Is this a test? Am I supposed to refuse to stop bugging you about it?”

  “No,” I said with a laugh. “You can really stop. I won’t chicken out, I promise.”

  “Maybe you’ll really do it just to prove that I can stop bugging you about it,” Madeline said slyly.

  Maybe she was right. Maybe I was reverse-psychology-ing myself into overcoming my fear. Or maybe, now that I knew that, I’d reverse-reverse-psychology myself into not doing it. Now I was confused. “Let’s just read the diary.”

  Madeline rubbed her hands together, the hint of that sneaky smile still there. “Yes,” she said, “let’s read.”

  Wednesday, 10 September 1941

  t. August 1950

  Dear Belle,

  I may have made my first American friend. It happened yesterday, when I was feeling most horrid and needed a pleasant distraction. You would know why I was so distraught. (You are a better sister than I.) Yesterday was Oliver’s birthday. He turned five. It hadn’t even occurred to me to send him a card or a gift, even though I have been very aware of the date because of writing in this journal and could have mailed a gift last week. Suddenly it was the 9th of September, and he was five, and by the time I realized, it was too late to do anything but lie in bed with Bier pressed to my nose, crying. My selfishness still turns my stomach.

  I was terrifically upset this morning when I sat down for breakfast, and Hannah could tell. She suggested I go for a walk, and gave me money to buy chicken thighs from the butcher. It was sunny and warm. The streets were quiet except for the old women who always sit in folding chairs outside my building, gossiping about everyone who enters or exits. Another group of old ladies were playing cards at a folding table, and some women were pushing babies in prams. I started walking to the butcher, but when I was on the far side of 63rd Street, I heard a boy shout, “Strike three!” I was curious, but I just kept walking, and a moment later that same voice said, “Watch out!” and I looked up to see a small ball coming right at me. I put up my hands to block my face, and the ball fell right into them, a perfect catch.

  I knew this boy was impressed because he said, “Yowza! Nice catch!” He was standing in a narrow alleyway, and wet clothes were hanging above him, pinned to a line stretching between the two houses on either side. He asked my name and I said it very quietly.

  He shouted, “WHAT?” He was wearing a big leather glove on one hand (not for warmth . . . I learned it is a special glove for a sport called baseball) and waved with it to tell me to step into the alley. I took a small step closer and repeated my name a bit louder. He said his name was Freddy and held out his glove for me to toss the ball to him. I threw it very nicely, and he caught it in the baseball glove. Then he said, “Are you ill?” and at first I was insulted, because I thought he meant my throw was very weak, but that wasn’t it . . . he wanted to know why I wasn’t at school. “It is because you’re ill? Sick?” He held his stomach and stuck out his tongue, as if to demonstrate.

  I said, “No. Are you ill?”

  This was funny. He said, “You bet. I’m allergic to spelling tests.” Then he asked if I saw any truancy officers on the street. I didn’t know what he meant, so I just said no. And he said, “Good. I’ve been dying for a hot dog.” He started walking down the street. I wasn’t sure if I should follow, but then he waved his glove and said, “Come on, Anna,” using my name and everything.

  We went down the street and around the corner to a Jewish “deli.” Freddy gave the man one coin (I am not good at telling American coins from each other) and told the man to put lots of ketchup on his hot dog. He said, “Load it up.” Then he said to me, “You want a dog?” A dog is a frankfurter, I realized. I said okay, even though I’d only just had breakfast, and the man “load it up” the ketchup on mine too.

  Belle, I wish you could see what Freddy did with his dog. First, he licked off all that ketchup. Some of it stuck to his teeth and made them red. Then he ate the bread. He went bite by bite down the roll . . . he kept pushing the frankfurter out of the way until it was hanging from just a centimeter of bread, which he pinched between his fingers. Once the bread was all gone, he put the frankfurter itself in the pocket of his trousers! It wasn’t wrapped in paper. It was just in there. He said, “Keeps it warm for later” . . . He tapped his head too, like he has such a big brain. Then he asked, “Are you going to eat yours?”

  You would have said, “Not like that!” but I only said it in my mind. I ate my frankfurter all together (the Luxembourgish way, I suppose?) . . . end to end, with some bread, meat, and too much ketchup in every bite. It wasn’t Chinese food, but it was good.

  We talked as we walked back to 63rd St. Freddy had lots of questions, especially because he’s never heard of Luxembourg. He was concerned when I told him where it is, until I assured him that we hate the Germans.

  I must say that it was enjoyable spending time with Freddy, despite his horrid manners and the fact that he’s only 11. (He swore it’s true, but I wish you could see a photograph, because he doesn’t look nearly 11. He’s very short . . . he only comes up to our shoulder.)

  We tossed his baseball back and forth and against the wall in the alley. He tried to do some tricks with his yo-yo, but mine were more impressive. (I did the Eiffel Tower one you taught me. He was most impressed but of course he wouldn’t admit it . . . he kept saying, “I know that one, I’m just out of practice.”) He did so much talking that I didn’t have to speak very much. But I understood everything he said, and when I did talk, he understood my English. I am proud of how far my English has come. I hope you are practicing at home.

  Freddy thought it was neat that I’ve only been in Bensonhurst a couple of weeks. “I’ve lived here 11 years,” he said proudly. “I’ll show you around.” Tomorrow we are supposed to meet again to play marbles and buy “shoe leather.” (This shoe leather is very curious. It’s a big roll of sticky candy that a man sells from a cart, cutting off pieces with a sharp knife.) And one day he wants to ride to the end of the subway line, to a place called Coney Island. He said we have to do that in the afternoon, once school is out, because there are always truancy officers waiting at Coney Island.

  It was such an enjoyable morning that I almost forgot to stop at the kosher butcher for Hannah. I remembered just before I climbed the stairs to the apartment. Luckily, they still had chicken thighs. When Hannah asked if the walk improved my spirits, I replied honestly that it did. I’m smiling right now. That frankfurter is probably still collecting dust in Freddy’s pocket!

  With love from Bensonhurst,

  Anna

  Friday, 12 September 1941

  t. August 1950

  Dear Belle,

  Freddy’s older brother found out about him “playing hooky” from school, so he hasn’t been around in the mornings. It seems to me that Freddy really looks up to his older brother. His name is Milton, and he’s 17. Milton has a very pretty girlfriend named Enid, and the two of them are always walking around arm in arm. Freddy says they are a “gruesome twosome.” (My English vocabulary is growing every day!) Anyway, Milton has been making sure Freddy goes to school in the mornings, so I only saw him in the afternoon. We played something called “stoop ball” on the steps outside one of the houses nearby, and some other kids joined in. I wasn’t very good at it, but I played anyway. Hannah is “thrilled” that I have been spending time with kids my age. She sends me out of the apartment to play every moment she can. It’s too bad Freddy won’t be there when I start school. He is still in the elementary school, but I will go to “junior high.”

  Here’s something else. Last night, after dinner with the uncles, Max
took out a game called Chinese checkers. (Chinese food . . . Chinese checkers . . . I thought I was moving to America and not China!) This is Max’s favorite game. He taught me to play, very patiently, and it’s simple, really.

  The board is shaped like a Jewish star, and it’s covered in holes for marbles.

  You start with your colored marbles in one point of the star, and you try to be first to move them all the way across the star to the point opposite yours, which Max called your “home.”

  A marble can move just one space on a turn, unless there’s another marble in its way, in which case it can jump over.

  The trick (I discovered this quickly) is to build a string across the star, so long that your marbles can jump all the way home, one after another.

  I lost the first game, but I won the second.

  When Hannah saw, she winked at me and gave Max a kiss on the top of his head. She said, “Anna is a worthy opponent. Does this mean I am relieved of my Chinese checkers duty?”

  Max said, “It appears so,” and Hannah practically danced her way out of the room. Max explained that she is not one for board games. He said, “She’s a sport to play with me once in a while, but I could play Chinese checkers every night.”

  So I asked, “Do you want to play tomorrow?”

  Max looked surprised and almost shocked when I said that. No wonder, it was probably the most words I’ve ever spoken in his presence. But I’m grateful he didn’t say something stupid, like “It talks!” like Kurt’s friend used to say when I opened my mouth around him and Kurt. (Pierre, of course . . . it’s just as well his family moved to Vichy.) Max . . . who is kind and polite, unlike Pierre . . . just considered my question and said, “Yes.”

  So tonight, we played Chinese checkers again . . . two games. Without Hannah there, we sat in silence, putting all our attention on the marbles and holes and building a long string to home. It wasn’t uncomfortable, though. It was pleasant. I hope we play again tomorrow.

  Between Freddy and Cousin Max, it seems I have two new friends here in America. Today I even got a letter from Frida in Chicago, so that makes three. Four counting Hannah! They are no replacement for you and the rest of the family, of course, but they are something. Since this is my home now, I am happy to have something.

  Love,

  Anna

  CHAPTER 15

  Madeline leaned conspiratorially into me. “Imani,” she whispered. “Isn’t your grandpa named Fred?”

  I gasped. How had that occurred to Madeline and not to me? I was so glad we’d read this part together. “Yes!” I said. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” My body started to tingle.

  “Do you think he’s Freddy?” Madeline asked.

  Yes! I wanted to scream. But then I came to my senses. “No. It can’t be him. Grandma Anna was Grandpa Fred’s mother. Not his wife.”

  “Oh,” Madeline said, her shoulders sinking. “You’re right.”

  Of course I was right. But it was still a major disappointment.

  “What was Anna’s husband’s name?” Madeline asked. “Was he named Fred too?”

  “I don’t know,” I realized. “I never met my great-grandpa. I think he died before I was born. But I doubt his name was Freddy, since Jews don’t give their kids the same name as their parents like that.”

  “Oh. Right,” Madeline said, clearly bummed. “They name after someone who died.”

  “Who are you named for?” I asked.

  “My great-aunt Mildred,” Madeline said. “What about you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “My parents kept the name my birth mom gave me.”

  Wait, I thought. My parents kept the name my birth mother gave me. It wasn’t like a lightbulb clicked on, but I could sense there was a switch nearby.

  Madeline was still focused on Freddy. “Maybe Anna did marry Freddy, but he died before your grandpa was born. Like, while Anna was pregnant or something!”

  I gave her a look to show how unlikely that was—if it were true, I’d probably know that story (though maybe not, seeing as I don’t even know my great-grandfather’s name). But Madeline must have thought my look meant that she was being insensitive, getting excited about my great-grandpa dying young, because she apologized.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Maybe my great-grandpa was named Milton.” I raised my eyebrows twice.

  “Scandalous!” Madeline said with an exaggerated gasp. “Milton and Enid are a gruesome twosome!”

  I laughed, and Mr. Garonzik, the librarian, looked our way. “The bell is going to ring any second, girls,” he said.

  We both kept giggling as we packed up our bags. Until Madeline remembered that she had a test in social studies next period. “Quiz me,” she said, handing over a list of famous explorers, the countries they represented, and the places they explored.

  I skimmed the paper, full of names and places. “Vasco da Gama,” I said, but in my head, I was thinking about my own name and history, and the words I’d spoken minutes before: My parents kept the name my birth mother gave me.

  CHAPTER 16

  Those words bounced around in my head all through school. They stuck with me while I walked home and the whole afternoon. I don’t know how I know that my parents kept the name I was born with—I don’t remember ever being told; it’s just a fact of my existence, like my birthday being June 15.

  But it had to be a good sign that my parents kept my name—Jaime’s too; that was the name he was given in Guatemala. After all, if they wanted us to completely forget that we were born to different parents, they would have changed our names.

  That wasn’t the only thing, though. I wanted to know more about my ethnic background, right? I hadn’t found the answer in the mirror, or in that old Children of the World book, or even in the filing cabinet under IMANI—ADOPTION. But maybe I’d been focusing on the wrong part of the label on that empty folder. Instead of looking up stuff about ADOPTION, maybe I could look up stuff about IMANI.

  I went online first thing after dinner—the rest of my family was still in the kitchen, so I wasn’t being too sneaky—and googled people named imani. I clicked to search for images. That’s what I wanted to see first.

  Suddenly, a whole screen of faces was looking at me. Girls and women, all shades of black and brown, with hair that was curlier or straighter than mine, and noses that were smaller or bigger, and teeth that were straighter or more crooked, and eyes that were lighter or darker or rounder or more angled. I scrolled and scrolled, staring at all these Imanis, their black and brown and almost familiar faces staring back at me. My birth mother might have looked something like the women on the computer screen. Or maybe she didn’t, but she had something in common with them, at least. Enough to give me the name Imani without caring that it’d take teachers a few tries to say it correctly, without an invisible question mark at the end.

  Back to Google. A regular search this time.

  what kind of name is imani

  The answer popped up in a neat little box at the top of the search results.

  Given Name IMANI. USAGE: Eastern African, Swahili, African American. Means “faith” in Swahili, ultimately of Arabic origin.

  I read the words hungrily, then again slowly, then once more out loud, in a whisper: “Eastern African, Swahili, African American.”

  My thumb tapped a drumbeat against the desk, quick and then slow. That didn’t really answer much, did it? I already knew my birth mother was black. I’d always assumed she was African American, but was she actually from Eastern Africa? Were her ancestors? And what about “ultimately of Arabic origin”? Arabic is different from Swahili.

  I tried not to get overwhelmed as I scrolled down the list of results. The word faith appeared a lot. That box said imani means “faith” in Swahili, and another result said that it was from the Arabic word for faith, iman. One site said it’s a Muslim na
me for a girl who has a strong belief in Allah, which totally threw me. If I hadn’t been adopted, would I be preparing for a Muslim coming-of-age ceremony instead of a bat mitzvah?

  That made me remember something else: Doesn’t my Hebrew name, Emunah, mean “faith” too? I googled it. Sure enough, I was right. Emunah sounds a lot like Imani. What did that mean?

  My breathing picked up in pace as I began to get frustrated. Who’s to say my name held any answers at all? Most people just pick a baby name they like. It’s not as if my birth mother sat there thinking, I know! I’ll pick a name that provides a concise historical summary of my daughter’s genetic makeup.

  I googled meaning of name madeline as an experiment. The box at the top told me that Madeline comes from Magdalene, like Saint Mary Magdalene. My back slouched in the desk chair. That showed just how reliable a name is in terms of your race or religion. Madeline—my Jewish best friend—was obviously not named for some Christian saint. But Magda probably was, which meant a name could hold important clues, and maybe mine did too.

  Some laughter drifted in from the kitchen. When it’s my night to clean up dinner, I load the dishwasher so fast my dad stresses that I’ll accidentally smash a plate. (I won’t. I’m fast but in total control.) When it’s Jaime’s turn, like tonight, he runs the sponge over every inch of every dish, and it turns into social hour, with him and my parents hanging out and chatting like BFFs. Their laughter meant I could probably go over my allotted thirty minutes of screen time without being found out.

  I took a deep breath and tried one more time, this time typing imani faith. Google suggested I add Kwanzaa celebration. My eyebrows rose. Kwanzaa?

  A random memory bubbled up from deep inside my brain: In first or second grade, everyone was supposed to bring in an object from home for a school-wide holiday party. I brought a Chanukah menorah that I’d made at Hebrew school using little tiles for a base and metal bolts to hold candles. I remember being really excited to show off my menorah, and to stuff myself full of holiday desserts. But when my class arrived in the cafeteria for the party, a teacher I didn’t know assumed my menorah was for Kwanzaa, and she said she’d bring a group of her students to me to learn about my holiday. Too scared or shy to correct her—and totally freaked out at the prospect of talking to a bunch of older kids about a holiday I knew nothing about—I told my teacher I had a stomachache. I left my menorah with her and spent the rest of the party in the nurse’s office, curled up on a row of small chairs.