My Family for the War (34 page)

“Don’t you dare,” I said darkly and put my arms around my carton.

Sadly, my first chick started to fail the very next day. It huddled in a corner apathetically and was dead and buried before I got home from school. When the second one took ill I was determined to fight, and carried it around with me so I could perform mouth-to-beak resuscitation if it came to that—I even took it to bed with me!

In early December two half-grown hens and a rooster moved into the garden shed, strutted around the few square yards of fenced in grass between the shed and the shelter, and eyed Amanda’s winter vegetables.

To be honest, we were all pleased to have “Winston,” “Victory,” and “Queenie” out of the kitchen. We couldn’t walk into the room without getting tangled in the dried mushrooms hanging from the ceiling on strings or stepping on chickens. Eagerly anticipating the eggs, Amanda and I were already studying all kinds of recipes, since they had been a rare commodity for some time already.

Walking arm in arm with Amanda after the funeral, my reverie was shattered when someone drove past us on the quiet
side street laughing, honking, and waving although we didn’t know him at all. “Something must have happened!” Amanda exclaimed.

“He looked pretty happy! Do you think we’ve won the war?”

We looked at each other. “No,” we said simultaneously. The news we had been hearing for such a long time had been too awful! Still, when we reached the main road, there were cars honking, bicycle bells chiming, and people clapping each other on the shoulders.

“What on earth is happening?” Amanda stopped a passerby to ask.

“You haven’t heard?” the man exalted. “Great Britain is saved, ladies! The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor! The USA has declared war!”

Amanda put a hand to her mouth. “Oh God, how wonderful!” she exclaimed. “Finally! Frances, run back, you have to tell Matthew right away! Our prayers have been answered!”

I ran faster than I ever had before. Matthew and the men from the chevra kaddisha were startled and stopped working, asking if something had happened.

“Yes!” I panted. “The answer to our prayers! An American lady was attacked and the USA is joining the war!”

The men looked at each other, puzzled. “Who was attacked?”

“Pearl Harbor,” I said. They broke out in cheers.

I didn’t understand that Pearl Harbor was the Americans’ Pacific stronghold until I heard the radio broadcast that evening. It was the longed-for turning point in this war. For seventeen long months, Great Britain had fought the Nazis alone. Now the cards would finally be reshuffled.

My fourteenth birthday came and went, though I didn’t feel the slightest bit more important. In England, fourteen meant the end of compulsory education, and I wouldn’t have minded working, if only for the change of pace, but the Shepards wouldn’t hear of it. “Your parents would want you to keep learning,” they said, and since I knew they were right there was no more discussion. I informed Mamu on one of the telegram-like Red Cross letters we exchanged every few months; from them I learned little more than that she and Aunt Ruth’s family were still living at the same address in Groningen, they were “fine,” and thinking of me.

Shortly after my birthday we put the soldier Walter Glücklich on a train. To be a member of the Pioneer Corps in North Africa was certainly an honor, and after the long, dreary London winter I could surely understand when Walter said he was looking forward to the desert life in a Bedouin tent. But even this warm outlook couldn’t disguise the fact that our troops were suffering enormous losses at the hands of the Germans. This parting scared me.

“Don’t let yourself get shot and come back a hero,” were my parting words to Walter, and a couple hugging their son good-bye next to us glared at me. They had no way of knowing that I was quoting a friend!

Just as with Gary, it all went too fast. Amanda gave Walter a kiss and he hugged her. He shook Matthew’s hand and awkwardly patted his own father, who had tried to change his mind down to the wire, on the back. Then Walter boarded the train, appeared briefly among the other soldiers
in the window to give us the victory sign, but when the train started moving we couldn’t see him anymore.

Then the train was gone and we stood on the platform, lost in a small crowd of parents and families left behind.

A few days later, a letter addressed to Miss Frances Shepard arrived from the camp where Walter was training for a few weeks before leaving for Africa. The return address listed W. Lightfoot. Why was Walter’s superior writing to me? Something had happened to him at training camp! I tore the envelope open right there in the foyer.

Amanda, who had heard my cries, rushed out of the kitchen. I met her halfway and threw my arms around her neck. “They stole his name!” I sobbed.

Astonished, she freed one half of herself from my embrace, squinted her farsighted eyes, and held Walter’s letter at arm’s length. “He wasn’t allowed to join the British army with a German name!” I wailed. “They gave him three choices and he picked Lightfoot. Lightfoot! What an idiot!”

Suddenly I was enraged—Walter had done it again. “Is his English so bad that he thinks
lightfoot
is some kind of happiness?”

Irritated, I pushed Amanda aside to blow my nose. “Well, he could hardly call himself Happy or Lucky,” Amanda replied. “Or Frolic, in case that was one of the choices.” With growing indignation I saw that she was having trouble holding back her laughter. “Honestly, I think Lightfoot has a certain charm, especially for a man of Walter’s stature. Just imagine how he’ll sweep through the desert with it.”

“That’s not funny!” I protested, and took the letter out of her hand to skim it a second time. “That twit is practically
delirious because he has an English name now!” I whispered in disbelief.

As I looked up, I was met with the strangest look by far that Amanda, my friend, sister, and mother, had ever given me. It was teasing and tender, questioning and knowing, pleased and a little sad all at the same time, and I could only imagine one reason for such a look: Apparently she had just answered a question before I had even asked it of myself!

“Why am I getting so upset, anyway?” I grumbled.

“Bravo!” Amanda laid an arm around my shoulder and led me toward the kitchen. “That’s a very good question! Definitely worth thinking about sometime. But right now let’s go raise a glass to our old and new friend, Pioneer Walter Lightfoot, that he not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor his light foot strike a stone—loosely according to the psalms.”

“You’re right,” I said. “He can call himself whatever he wants. What difference does it make to me?”

Chapter 19

On the day Gary’s ship went down, invisible trains traveled through Europe, supposedly unnoticed, and students in Munich who called themselves “The White Rose” distributed flyers urging resistance to Hitler. On the day Gary’s ship went down, the World Jewish Congress informed Western governments about a monstrous document that had been signed in a villa at Wannsee. On the day Gary’s ship went down, American troops landed at Guadalcanal.

On the day Gary’s ship went down, we read
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
in school with different people speaking each part. Matthew mounted the letters GREER GARSON IN MRS. MINIVER above the entrance to the Elysée, and Amanda washed and fed old people. That was our seventh of August 1942, and two days later, when the
Princess of Malta
pulled us down into the depths as well, none of us could say what we had done at a certain time.

I would never understand why fourteen-year-old boys were allowed to deliver those telegrams. As soon as they were spotted in the distance in their uniforms, a wave of cold fear
preceded them; women who had just been standing at their garden gates chatting fled into their houses, where moments later there was movement at the curtains:
Please go away! Please don’t come to our house!

I had seen the telegram boy go to the Beavers’ in spring, the second house just past the Godfrey ruins. He looked serious and afraid. The Beavers were still hiding from him, because they had a second son at the front.

We didn’t see our messenger coming. Amanda and I were cleaning up the rest of our lunch; I had vacation and wanted to visit Hazel, who had returned to London in August. When the doorbell chimed, Amanda dried her hands and walked the few yards to the door with a perfectly light step. Amanda moved just the length of the hall, a few steps. The way back lasted almost a year.

I didn’t hear a word. When she didn’t come back, I glanced into the foyer and saw the house door wide open, and a pale gray sky outside. When I saw her shoe on the bottom step I finally understood. She must have lost it when she crawled up the steps, where she sat halfway up, staring at a thin piece of paper with a furrowed brow.

“Okay,” she said in a calm voice. “Now. Call Matthew. Cancel work at the nursing home. Inform the rabbi. They’ll let us know about the shiva.”

“Amanda,” I whispered. “Mum!” Her name wasn’t getting through. “Letters to the Shepards, the O’Learys, and the Coles,” she continued. “They will want to know, even if…”

She must have been trying to prepare herself for this moment for a long time, and gave the telegram another
intent look, as if her next steps were written there. Carefully I took the paper out of her hands and set it aside. “Come, let’s go upstairs. I can call Matthew. You should lie down for a few minutes.”

“But Ziska,” she answered, puzzled. “I can’t just go lie down now.”

“Just for a moment. Please,” I pleaded. She had never called me Ziska. She didn’t even seem to be sure who I was anymore. “I’ll come with you. We’ll go together.”

“Well, all right. I do feel a little…”

“Give me your hand. It’s just a few steps.”

There had been another time, in my other life, that I felt I had to be stronger than the person who gave me strength and security. Mamu’s confusion after Papa was arrested, when she was suddenly alone and had to make all kinds of decisions by herself, was suddenly so vivid that it might have been her I helped up the stairs and tucked into bed. But then the moment passed, and it was neither a dream nor a memory. With an abrupt and very real pain, Amanda balled up, dug her fingers into the blanket, and whispered, “Oh my God.” I stroked her cheek, her hair, murmured her name, hoped she would start to cry, but she couldn’t yet. I knew all too well how that felt.

There were quiet steps on the stairs and Mrs. Beaver appeared in the bedroom doorway. “I saw the messenger,” she whispered bravely. “Can I help?”

“Could you call Matthew? The number’s next to the phone.”

She nodded and disappeared. I slipped under the blanket at Amanda’s back, put an arm around her and my chin on her shoulder, as she had so often done with me. I was always
sure she would be there for me. But now, as I wrapped my arms around her stiff body, I wasn’t sure anymore. No matter how strongly my love for this, my second mother, might burn… it might not be enough. It hadn’t been enough for Mamu either.

When Matthew came home, silent, pale, and resolute, and closed the bedroom door firmly behind the two of them, and I had gone down the stairs with stiff, unsteady steps, my concern for Amanda slowly made way for other thoughts. The telegram still lay on the steps. No one had touched it, and I sat on the same step where Amanda had sat earlier.

“We regret to inform you…”

No! Desperation, rage, and denial broke over me simultaneously, a hot wave of distress, dizziness, and tears. It wasn’t possible. Not him, not my brother, my wonderful, laughing brother, who was the first of the Shepards to love me, gave me my name, and made up “Dictionaryish,” our shared language. Not him. Things like that didn’t happen! I summoned all my strength and looked at the telegram again.

“. . . that Midshipman Gary Shepard has been reported as missing since the demise of the HMS
Princess of Malta
on the 7th of August 1942 off the Portuguese Azores…”

Only missing! The Azores! I could see the world map in Mrs. Collins’s classroom before me. A whole group of islands lay between southern Europe and the USA—he must have managed to swim to one of the beaches! If not, then he paddled a rescue boat, or floated on a plank.