Seven Stories Up

by Laurel Snyder

  “No telling,” said Mom. “Hey—you know what I want to do? Eat a cheeseburger at the Buttery. With a vanilla milk shake. Right now. How about you?”

  I nodded. “Sure, yeah.” But when I stood up, the scrapbook fell from my hands and hit the floor, where it split open along its spine. “Oh, Mom, I’m sorry,” I said, reaching for the pieces.

  “It’s nothing we can’t fix with tape,” Mom said, sliding on her clogs. She finger-combed her hair. “Leave it. We have more important matters to address. I want mine with extra pickles.”

  “Okay,” I said. But as I set the two halves of the scrapbook in the trunk, with all the news clippings and old dance cards, a single picture came loose and fluttered to the floor. When I reached to pick it up, I found myself staring down at a strip of photo-booth shots. Black-and-white images of two blurry girls. One was Gran, for sure. The other was a faded face I’d never seen before. Yet somehow, despite the scratched and stained photo, she looked familiar.

  In the top shots, the girls were startled, unready. But in the last frame, Gran was hugging the other girl, with a huge smile, a fierce grin. That was Gran all over. Fierce. I stared at the picture.

  “Hey, Mom!” I called. She was already at the door, waiting for me, her purse over one shoulder. “Mom, wait! Do you know who this is?” I held out the picture.

  “Whatcha got?” Mom asked.

  I pointed. “This girl with the braid. Is she a cousin? She looks like Gran, doesn’t she?”

  Mom peered down at the picture and chuckled. “You’re right, there’s a resemblance. But she’s actually not related. I’m sure Gran mentioned Annie to you. She kept that picture taped to her vanity for years.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so.” Then I looked again. “Really? Annie?”

  “Yep,” said Mom. “I know Gran told you this story when you were little. You should listen better, kiddo. She was Gran’s best friend, but Annie got sick or something and moved away. I’m not exactly sure about the details. Maybe she even died? If memory serves, her family stayed in the hotel one summer.”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t remember anyone telling me this.”

  Mom laughed. “Gran insisted we name you after her. She put her foot down about it, and you know how things went when Gran put her foot down.”

  I smiled. “Yeah.”

  “That’s why your legal name is Annie, not Anne.”

  “Wow, I was named for some random kid you never even met?”

  “Pretty much,” Mom said. “Though of course, if she’s still around, she’s not a kid anymore. She’d be Gran’s age now.”

  I stared at the picture a little longer, then slipped it into my pocket as Mom reached for the door. “Come on, kiddo,” she said. “Time for supper. Past time.”

  So we left the apartment, made our way through the hallways, down the elevator, into the lobby, where we waved goodbye to Anderson the concierge and Hassle the cat, latest in a long line of Hotel Calvert tabbies. We stepped out beneath the trees and street lamps onto the familiar gray bricks.

  There was a soft breeze, and the moon was out. The Washington Monument gleamed white above us. The hotel windows were all lit up and golden. It was a perfect night, except for one thing. There was an ache, just beneath my ribs.

  “I’ll miss this place,” I said. “I’ll miss it a lot.”

  “Of course you will,” said Mom gently. She put an arm around me. “I’ll miss it too. But you know, we can always come back.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Only it won’t be the same.”

  Mom stared at me a minute, then slowly she shook her head. “No,” she said. “I won’t lie to you. Nothing will be the same. But after a little while it will get easier. We were lucky to have her as long as we did. Try to think about it that way.”

  I closed my eyes and felt the tears in them. I nodded.

  “She loved you so much, Annie,” said Mom. “More than just about anyone.”

  I nodded again, as a horn honked in the distance. “I loved her too.”

  “She knew that,” said Mom. Then she grinned and shouted out, “Jeez, enough with all the feelings, already. I need a milk shake to go with my sadness. Let’s move!” She started walking quickly toward Charles Street.

  But I didn’t follow her right away. I stood there on the sidewalk, alone, for one more second. I took a deep breath, and I smiled. Because suddenly the air smelled like cinnamon.

  It was nice.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I’ve always loved old things. Antiques stores full of junk jewelry. Faded black-and-white photographs. Dusty dolls with china heads. Remnants of the past.

  But if you’d asked me when I was a kid whether I liked History, I’d have shouted, “No way!” I thought History (with a capital H) meant memorizing a timeline of major world events. The Battle of the Bulge. The Magna Carta. President Roosevelt’s birthday. Boring.

  So when I started to write this book, I didn’t think of Seven Stories Up as History at all. I only wanted to set a magical adventure in the awesome old hotel where my grandmother grew up. This book was personal, rooted in my own weird family saga. It was going to be fiction. It was going to be magical.

  But you know what? This book took me three years to write precisely because it is History. My family is History as much as the Battle of the Bulge is. Your family is History too. Along with every black-and-white photograph or china-doll head you’ve got.

  Because when you tiptoe into the past, it’s impossible to separate personal details from major world events. History is the fabric of everything that’s ever happened, all woven together. My family and your family and President Roosevelt’s family are interconnected. From the Magna Carta to the roller skates you got for your seventh birthday. All of this is History.

  Seven Stories Up took three years to write because when I realized I was writing History, I had to check all my facts. What was the price of a candy bar?1 What did underpants look like?2 Did Ferris wheels exist?3 How about kitty litter?4 These are the things I spent three years looking up. Seriously, I researched the history of kitty litter.

  The thing is that the whole time I was researching the little details, I was also researching those major world events I’d found so boring as a kid. Because you can’t separate the Depression from the price of a candy bar in 1937. They’re one and the same. You can’t write a time-travel book where a kid arrives in 1937 and have her not notice segregation. Even if major world events are not what the story is about, they’re inextricably linked to the city streets your main character is walking along.

  And the more you focus on those streets, those personal details, the less boring History becomes. The more true you make your story, the more magical it will be.

  So, just in case you’re interested, here’s some extra History, with a capital H. If you dig a little deeper and start hunting details yourself, you might be shocked at how fascinating it all is.

  CHILD LABOR

  Life for a ten-year-old in 1937 was in many ways the same as life today, but in other ways it was totally different. Most kids attended some kind of school, but plenty didn’t. Instead they worked long days in textile mills and coal mines. Can you imagine standing for twelve hours straight, at a big dangerous machine in a sweaty smoky room, hungry and thirsty the whole time?

  It wasn’t until 1938 that a law was passed that regulated child labor in the United States, the Fair Labor Standards Act. After 1938, kids under sixteen were no longer allowed to work during school hours, and kids under eighteen were not allowed to work at especially dangerous jobs. But in 1937, when this book is set, there were no such federal laws. Molly was from a wealthy family, but Annika and Olivia might well have ended up doing such work.

  THE GREAT DEPRESSION

  Molly is in a strange position, as a lonely wealthy girl, isolated from the world outside her window. She is not aware of the massive poverty of her era, even though it is surely affecting almost everyone who passes through the Hotel
Calvert.

  The Depression that began with the “Black Thursday” stock market crash in 1929—when some people jumped out of windows because they were so devastated by sudden financial ruin—was slowly improving in 1937, but there were still many Americans out of work. Breadlines and soup kitchens helped to ease the suffering of many, but lines were long and hunger was rampant. Suicide rates rose, and violence increased. At the peak of the Depression, nearly 25 percent of American workers were unemployed. Many families lived in makeshift homeless encampments called Hoovervilles, and others left home in search of work. Molly hasn’t spent much time with people like this, but Nora probably has!

  THE HOLOCAUST

  Even though this story isn’t about the holocaust, I couldn’t write about 1937 without hinting at what was happening in Hitler’s Germany. While most Americans had no clue about the concentration camps, for European Jews, deportations and harsh restrictions were an increasingly stark reality.

  Bayla’s story—that of a child sent away to America for her own safety—was not uncommon. The sad thing to remember is that Bayla, though she is an orphan, is fortunate. The rest of her family, trapped in Poland, will likely have their homes confiscated and be sent to perish in the gas chambers or labor camps.

  MEDICINE

  When you get sick, you probably see a doctor, who gives you medicine to help you feel better. That makes it hard to imagine how the world was before so many of these medicines were invented.

  Today, Molly’s asthma would be treated with inhalers and pills, but believe it or not, in 1937, a lot of people felt that asthma was an imagined illness. A child’s wheeze was thought to be an emotional cry for her mother. In the book, Molly is being treated by a family doctor, as a follow-up to her bout of pneumonia, but in truth, there was little that could be done for her long-term. She’d spend her life as an invalid.

  Additionally, in 1937, penicillin had not yet been widely introduced, and people regularly died of minor illnesses and infections. Vaccines for deadly illnesses like polio were being discovered, but they weren’t yet available to the public. In general, medicine was a very different experience. People who went to the hospital often didn’t come home, and many people feared doctors as a result.

  RADIO

  In Baltimore in 1937, Molly would not have had access to a television. TVs were just being developed at that time (largely in the New York area). Radio shows were still the main form of entertainment in the home. Especially during the Depression, when people couldn’t afford to go out, the radio was at the center of many homes. A radio back then looked more like a piece of furniture, built of wood, with heavy tubes inside it. It cost around fifty dollars, which was more than a week’s pay for the average American.

  Many early TV shows began in radio, from soap operas like Guiding Light, (which only went off the air as a TV show in 2009) to family programs like Little Orphan Annie. The radio was also one way for President Franklin Roosevelt to communicate with the country, through his fireside chats. Families would gather around the radio for news, music, and laughter.

  SEGREGATION

  This is hard to imagine today, but until the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954, schools were typically segregated. In Baltimore until 1948, neighborhoods could be legally segregated to exclude Jewish and black families. Shops and restaurants were segregated, and so were theaters and trolleys.

  It is only in places of work—the market and the docks—that Annie sees everyone working together and realizes what a bubble she’s been experiencing at the hotel, and in the neighborhood surrounding it. In fact, African American Baltimore was a vibrant community, with beautiful theaters, restaurants, and hotels of its own, as well as black colleges and churches. In the 1930s, it was home to important Americans like the singer Billie Holiday and Thurgood Marshall, who argued and won the historic Brown v. Board of Education case mentioned above. In 1937, however, because of segregation, Molly and Annie would never have crossed paths with either of them.

  If you want to learn more about any of these topics, I highly encourage you to do a little digging on your own. In some ways, History is the wildest, most improbable story you’ll ever read. Truth is, as they say, “stranger than fiction.” So do yourself a favor and hunt for the details, starting with things you know you enjoy.

  If you love basketball, begin there. If you like ninjas, research those. If you’re addicted to cartoons, try reading up on some old ones. Or begin with your own family, the same way I did with Seven Stories Up. Pull out an old family photo album, and ask questions about the people you find there.

  What you’ll discover is that with any topic, the smallest bits of History will interweave with the greatest events of the age. Because everything is History. Including you! On any given day, just walking down the street or reading a book, you’re becoming part of History.

  Pretty cool, right?

  * * *

  1 Surprisingly little! The answer is on this page.

  2 Kind of ugly, really. See this page for the answer, or better yet, find a book with a picture.

  3 Yes, totally, and a description can be found on this page.

  4 Nope, but that didn’t stop people from setting up cat boxes. Check out this page to see what they used instead.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Anne Conway Hamill Dietz

  This book belongs to my grandmother, Anne Conway Hamill Dietz.

  When I was a kid, she seemed like a magical creature to me, eccentric and full of wonder. Among other things, she was a children’s librarian who scoured the bookstores of Southern California to send me signed first editions.

  But as we both grew older, it became clear to me that my grandmother was not a happy person. In the final years of her life, she isolated herself. This was difficult for everyone in the family. I can’t begin to explain.…

  The last time I flew to California to see her, her heart was failing. She was in physical pain, but beyond that, she was revisiting hard memories of a childhood spent (amazingly) in a grand hotel. “Like Eloise,” she’d told me when I was little. Only this didn’t sound like Eloise.

  I didn’t know how to help her, so I just listened. The last hour I spent with her, in the hospital, she kept going back to one particular summer, a lonely season spent in quarantine because she had rheumatic fever.

  After she died, I returned over and over to that image—of a kid, locked away at the top of a hotel, in unrelenting solitude. Some part of me wished that I could open the door to her room, that I could lead her out.

  And so (as often happens in the magical world of children’s books) my wish became a seed, and the story of Molly and Annie took root, blossomed.

  This book is fiction. Molly is not my grandmother. But I do hope that wherever she is, my grandmother knows I’ve spent the last three years thinking about her daily, staring at her picture, and trying to make something happy from her saddest memory—a memorial to a singular woman, who lived through more than one lonely summer.

  “Magic is what people call it when the universe corrects itself,” says Fortunata in the pages of this book. We do what we can to help it along.

  Of course, this book does not belong only to my grandmother. It went through many drafts, and many early readers. Massive thanks to: Emma Snyder, Rachel Zucker, Marc Fitten, Kate Milford, Sally Burke, Lisa Brown, Natalie Blitt, Gwenda Bond and Beth Revis, along with the other members of the Bat Cave Writers’ Retreat, Jennifer Laughran, Cynthia Von Buhler, Rebekah Goode-Peoples, Elizabeth Lenhard, and especially Paula Willey, who not only read this in its roughest state, but also helped me look up all sorts of weird 1937 Baltimore facts, librarian-goddess that she is!

  As always, I’m grateful for the constant support of my dear friend Tina Wexler, who also happens to be my literary agent (lucky for me). I’d have thrown the second draft from a bridge if she hadn’t been there to talk me down.

  And Seven Stories Up could not possibly exist without the very sharp eyes and endless
patience of my editor, Mallory Loehr. She’s what people imagine when they picture a true editor: committed, insightful, smarter than me.

  I also want to thank everyone at Random House who contributed to this book—Alison Kolani, Paul Samuelson, Tracy Lerner, Tim Jessell, Nicole de las Heras, Jenna Lettice, and Lisa Nadel. I’m lucky to have such a great team.

  I suppose I should also acknowledge my fantastic parents, who never locked me up in a hotel room. Not even in high school, when I probably deserved it.

  Last but not least, I want to thank my family. My husband, Chris Poma, who (almost) never complains when I turn on the light in the middle of the night to scribble. And my hilarious, wild, beamish boys, Mose and Lewis. We are never alone.

  LAUREL SNYDER

  (age 11)

  Laurel Snyder is the author of many books for kids, including Bigger than a Bread Box, Penny Dreadful, and Any Which Wall. Though she now resides quite happily in Atlanta, she will always be a little homesick for her native Baltimore.