My Family for the War (23 page)

“Ey, Dolf doesn’t go for walks,” answered Mr. Stone, whom I had asked. “Well, all right,” he added when he saw my disappointment. “Have a try. Maybe he’ll even like it.”

By the time I had convinced Dolf of my plan, I had lost twenty valuable minutes of my free time. I pulled on his leash, but he pulled back with bulging eyes. Pearl, Herbert, and Rachel stood by the fence, cheering him on. “Good, ey, Dolf! Don’t go with her! Sit, ey, Dolf! Attack! Sit! Get her!”

Maybe it was their noise that unnerved him; at any rate, he suddenly gave up and resigned himself to trotting off with me.

The Stones lived at the far end of the village street, and just past their garden began the open country, immediately rising to a hill. When I reached the top, I looked out over the distance. The landscape was a warm, fragrant painting, caressed by a light summer breeze. There were trees of all shades, from lush green to light yellow; there were gently rolling hills and pastures bounded by stone walls as far as the eye could see. Beyond the forest, I could see a light gray strip that disappeared into the horizon… the sea! My heart began to beat faster. We must be very near the channel!

Even Dolf seemed to be enjoying himself, and he ran with me down the hill, his tongue hanging out of his mouth. His nose swayed close to the ground; he was picking up scents with relish. Now I was the one being pulled by the leash. Reaching the edge of the forest, we could already hear the sea; we ran up the last sandy hill, ready to reach the summit and then plunge into the delights below… and nearly collided with a coil of barbed wire! We stood there catching our breath. Even the dog seemed bewildered. The barbed wire stretched the entire length of the beach. We walked a few paces to the left, and then to the right, but we couldn’t find a way through.

Disappointed, I placed my hand above my eyes and peered into the distance. Out on the water there were considerably more boats than I had seen before: a few small freighters and fishing boats, but also patrol boats and a large gray ship from which multiple narrow torpedo tubes extended, which appeared to be cruising slowly up the coast.

And then I understood what the barbed wire meant. It
was set up to defend against a German landing—in case the destroyer in the bay didn’t stop the invaders.

“Come on, Dolf, we’re going!” I whispered, and the dog seemed to understand. We ran back through the woods as quickly as we could.

I hadn’t realized that the war had already come so close to us.

“But you have to tell Mrs. Collins how the Stones treat you!” Hazel whispered to me on the Friday before our second weekend in Tail’s End.

“I tried. She thinks I’m lying!” I answered hopelessly.

Hazel had had good luck with her host family. And unlike the other children, who still called me the “crazy Hun,” Hazel was kind to me. Every morning, she slipped me one of her two sandwiches. And she was the one who had pointed out the apple trees behind the church, where I stocked up every day.

“What about your mother?” she asked sympathetically. “Has anything come in the mail?”

I silently shook my head and tried to suppress the tears that welled up as soon as I heard the word
mail
. Whereas all the other children had long since heard from home, some even twice, I remained the only one without a letter. That mail delivery to and from Holland took longer now was understandable, but I simply couldn’t believe that Amanda had deserted me.

And yet I had already been here an entire, endless week, and slowly it was starting to look like she had.

“Maybe you can visit me on Sunday afternoon,” Hazel
suggested hesitantly. “We always have plenty left over from lunch…”

Although no one in Tail’s End locked their door, I was only allowed to enter the Stones’ house after I had knocked and was officially granted access. I sat in the rocking chair next to the door while I waited for someone to deign to let me in.

After about five minutes, the door opened and Mrs. Stone looked out. “There you are,” she said indifferently. “Come on, we’ve already started.”

I’ll bet you have,
I thought, and asked anxiously, “Is there any mail for me?”

The usual answer—“No”—followed by the sudden, sharp, pain in my stomach that worsened daily. I shoved my suitcase under Rachel’s bed, lay down for a few minutes on her mattress, and silently doubled up.

An impatient yell sounded from the kitchen: “Frances! Where are you?” I dried my tears, rolled myself off the bed, and joined them downstairs.

Apart from Mr. Stone, who worked in a sawmill, the family was already gathered at the large kitchen table, where they were enjoying tea and cake. “Once you’ve cut the vegetables for the cholent,” said Mrs. Stone, who held Luke on her lap, “you can have a piece of cake.”

She cut off a hard piece of crust without even a trace of the cake’s fruit topping and put it on a plate for me. What would be left of supper remained to be seen. I had a glimmer of hope that the coming Sabbath that evening would put her in a more generous mood.

About six o’clock Mr. Stone came home from work,
Mrs. Stone lit the candles, and we sat at the table. There was no synagogue in the area, and so keeping the Sabbath was limited to a prayer over the bread and wine, and two songs. “Shabbat shalom,” we wished one another—the first time that the Stone children had stooped to offer me their hands—and the meal began.

“So, here you are,” said Mrs. Stone as she set Luke on my lap.

I looked away as they filled their plates with roast, carrots, and potatoes. When Luke had finally had his mush, two potatoes in a little sauce were left in the bottom of the bowl.

“Hope you enjoy it,” said Mrs. Stone as she dumped them onto my plate.

After dinner they left the washing up to me and moved to the living room to spin the dreidel. I heard their laughter over the splashing of the dishwater. That was about all I could take, and I would have wept bitterly, except there at the sink stood poor Dolf, who had an even worse time of it than I. He stared at me as if it had been his potatoes I had just eaten, and my suspicion probably wasn’t far off.

“Let me see if I can’t find a slice of bread for you, Dolf!” I murmured conspiratorially, and—as if he had understood—he followed me as if on tiptoe toward the pantry.

But hardly had I turned the key in the lock when a knife-sharp voice demanded, “And might I ask what you’re doing?”

I spun around and saw the entire Stone family standing in the kitchen doorway.

“Dolf is hungry,” I said and pointed at the dog, who immediately folded back his ears, pulled in his tail, and denied any responsibility.

“This is the thanks we get?” asked Mrs. Stone, trembling with rage. “We take you in, give you food and shelter, and you steal from us?” She grabbed me roughly by the ear and dragged me to the staircase. “Get upstairs! I was going to give you an apple and your letters after the washing up was finished, but now you’ll have to wait a while longer for that!”

She shoved me up the first few steps, but I froze. “My letters… ?”

Mrs. Stone smiled nastily. She pulled out three envelopes from the dresser and held them up triumphantly, and she was still holding the letters when something happened that the Stones would never forget. Every time they thought about the war, they would see a small person standing in the middle of their staircase, and it wouldn’t matter that it was only an eleven-year-old girl. They would remember the coldness as she looked down on them, and the calm voice in which she said: “When Hitler invades England, he will persecute the British Jews too. Then your husband will be put in a concentration camp, Mrs. Stone, and you will lose everything you own. And if you ever have to send your children away to save their lives, like my parents have, then they’ll end up living with people who will throw them their table scraps, and hide the letters you write to them!”

Mrs. Stone put her hand to her throat, and fear and horror flickered across her face like a shadow, but then I turned around and continued up the steps. Behind me, no one moved. I wondered if I might have just cursed them, but I felt no pity. As far as I was concerned, they could stand there all night if they wanted to.

When I came into the children’s room later, the three letters were lying on Rachel’s bed. From now on they would neither steal from me nor let me starve. They would never again be able to forget why I was there.

Mamu’s letter was in the same envelope—two pages that destroyed my hopes of returning once and for all: