Serendipity's Footsteps

by Suzanne Nelson

  Pinny gulped. It was the one part of the story that scared her. “You’d disappear.”

  “Right. Taking them off before my audition would bring the worst kind of bad luck. And today my luck is changing for the better. I can feel it.”

  The corners of Mama’s smile shook, like they did sometimes right before she started crying. Pinny hoped she wouldn’t cry. When Mama cried, she couldn’t stop.

  Mama knelt in front of her. “I know I’ve had a lot of the Glooms lately. They make you worry, don’t they?”

  “Yes,” Pinny whispered. She hated the Glooms. When Mama was Sunny-Side Up, she got out of bed. She went to her job at the diner. She made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that they ate with their legs dangling over the roof of their building while they watched the sunset. But when the Glooms came, Mama stayed in bed for days, drowning in tears. She forgot about her job. She forgot about food. She forgot about Pinny. The only thing Pinny could do during the Glooms was wait. She waited, and peeled paint in curly strips from the walls of the room they shared with Hodge and Viv. She waited, and watched Viv cook her baked beans on the thing they called a hot plate. She waited, and helped Viv wash Mama in the bathtub that spit out orange water like Fanta soda.

  “Today, I’m going to fix the Glooms for good,” Mama said. “So you won’t have to worry anymore.”

  Pinny smiled. “Then you’ll be happy?”

  “Forever,” she whispered in a trembly voice. She looked past Pinny to the rows of the shoes. “Now, what you need are shoes that make a declaration. That announce who you are when you walk into a room.”

  “I know who I am already.” She giggled. “I’m Chopine.”

  Mama rolled her eyes. “Not your name, silly. The essence of you.”

  Pinny didn’t know what that meant, but she didn’t say so. Mama didn’t like explaining things over and over again. Pinny tried her hardest to understand. But some words knocked around in her head without a meaning ever sticking to them. The best she could figure at the time, “essence” meant some sort of color. She wondered, Can people be a color inside themselves? Is there a color for who I am?

  Suddenly, she saw the shoes—shiny red shoes with little silver buckles at their sides—and the answer came to her. Her color was red. The color of the Crimson Nights nail polish that Mama had painted on both their fingers and toes so they would match. The color of the 24/7 PIZZA! sign outside their smudgy brown window that sent flashing light across the ripped couch she slept on every night. The color of the cherry Kool-Aid her mama gave her on summer Sunny-Side Up nights when they sat on the fire escape. The Kool-Aid she sipped through her swirly straw while Mama recited lines for her auditions.

  “Those.” Pinny grabbed the shoes from the shelf.

  “Red patent-leather Mary Janes.” Mama smiled. “Perfect for you. Give them a try.”

  Pinny pulled off her holey sneakers, but her fingers tripped over the buckles of the red shoes. Her mama slid them onto her feet, then snapped her fingers up over her head.

  “They’re the ones,” she said. “No question about it.”

  Pinny laughed, rocking on her feet under the store lights so the shoes gleamed. She’d never had anything so pretty before.

  Mama glanced at the wrinkly man behind the sales counter. “I’m going to have that nice man help me try on some shoes. When he walks back here to me, you go see how those beautiful ruby-reds look outside. I’ll be right behind you.”

  “Okay,” Pinny said.

  She stepped into the sunshine of the humming city, shuffling her shoes along the sidewalk. They made a bright clicking sound, like popcorn popping. She loved it.

  A minute later, Mama came out of the store. “We have to hurry,” she said, pulling her so fast down the sidewalk that Pinny had to run to keep up.

  “Hey, bring those shoes back!” a man hollered. Pinny looked back to see the salesman from the shoe store chasing them. Then he bent over, cheeks ballooning. “I’ll call the cops!” But he sounded too tired to mean it.

  Mama finally let her slow down when they rounded the corner of Forty-First.

  “Did you forget your money again?” Pinny asked quietly. Lately, Mama’d been forgetting it all the time, and Pinny sure didn’t like getting yelled at in stores.

  “Don’t you worry.” She lit a cigarette and streamed smoke in a line toward the sky. “I’ll remember it next time and we’ll pay him double.” She winked at Pinny, squeezing her hand. “Now let’s go somewhere you can show off your shoes.”

  “Home?” Pinny said hopefully. It had been days since they’d been home. It had been fun at first, sleeping under the trees in Central Park. Mama called it camping. But Pinny was starting to miss her couch. It was a lot softer than dirt.

  Mama sighed. “No, baby, we can’t. The police won’t let us into the building, remember?”

  “ ’Cause we’re condemned,” she said, remembering the word Mama had used.

  “Not us.” Mama’s voice was pancake flat. “The building.”

  “Maybe it needs a doctor,” Pinny said. “A doctor could make it better.”

  Mama grinned. “There’s an idea! I’ll call one right after my audition.”

  “Good,” Pinny said. That would fix everything, and Mama would be happy. And when Mama was happy, Pinny was happy. They walked a few more blocks, and Pinny smiled, listening to her shoes poppity-popping. Then they stepped through glass doors and into Grand Central.

  As they walked through the train station, her heart went wibbly. There were so many people walking so fast. Some even ran. None of them stopped, not even for a second. She wanted to go where they were going. Because wherever it was, she was sure it was special. Why else would they be in such a hurry to get there?

  “Let’s sit.” Mama led her to a wide stairway in the large, open room, the only place there was to sit. “I’ll leave for my audition in a few minutes. But you’re going to stay right here. Nice and comfy?”

  Pinny nodded and scooted herself onto a stair, then smiled down at her shoes. They hugged her feet and made them itch to move. It was a yum feeling.

  Mama slipped an arm around her, and Pinny tucked her head into that soft place under her mama’s chin that still smelled greeny fresh from the grass they’d slept on.

  “You hang on tight to those shoes, sweetness,” Mama whispered. “Whenever you look at them, you think of me.”

  “Okay.”

  “And you never forget your beautiful name,” Mama said. “Chopine.” She said it in that special singsong way Pinny loved. She tilted her head upward and threw her arms up above her head, like Pinny had seen ladies do on TV when they were onstage. She smiled. “You were named after one of the greatest shoes in history. It was a shoe made for courtesans in Venice.”

  “Curdly sands?” Pinny tried to repeat the word.

  “Close enough.” Mama laughed. “Your daddy chose that name for you. He didn’t realize it, but he did. Shakespeare and your daddy. They both understood that shoes can write poetry. Always remember that.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  Mama stood, dabbed at her eyes with her fingertip, then smiled. “I better go before I miss my chance. If anyone comes up to you, you give them this.” She handed her a folded paper from her purse. “They’ll know what to do.”

  Pinny opened it, but she couldn’t make any sense of Mama’s curvy writing. That was long before she ever learned how to read.

  “Wish me luck?”

  “Luck!” Pinny grinned.

  Mama pecked her on the forehead and walked down the hallway, then disappeared through the glass doors into the sunlight.

  Pinny waited. She didn’t remember Mama saying when she’d be back, but then, her mind sometimes turned fuzzy over things like that.

  While she waited, she tapped her shoes together so the light on their toes jumped cheerfully. When she wondered where the light was coming from, she looked up and saw the sky overhead. Only this sky was different from the one outside—this sky was
Tiffany blue with stars all over it. Back then, before she’d come to Texas, she’d never seen stars in the teeny city sky outside. Not ever. And suddenly she knew why. Because they’d been in here this whole time, hiding in this train station! She looked closer and saw that the stars made pretty pictures. There was a horse with wings, some fish, even a big fat cow. She stared up at the sky for a long time, until the windows underneath it went from blazing white to black.

  By then, her tummy was rumbling. She remembered thinking that Mama must have had to walk a long way for her audition. When her neck got tired from all the looking up, she watched people walking by. There were more of them, with their heads bent low. Why were they all staring so hard at the ground? The sky over their heads was so much nicer to look at. But none of them looked up. None of them noticed her, either.

  Soon, most of the people were gone, and the station grew quiet. That was when the man dressed in black sat down beside her. When she saw the shiny badge on his shirt, her face got hot. Mama always stayed far away from the men with badges.

  “You’ve been sitting here alone for an awful long time,” the man said. “Where are your mom and dad?”

  “Mama went to an audition,” she said. “But I think she got lost.”

  The man nodded. He had a nice smile. “It’s two in the morning. How many hours have you been waiting?”

  Pinny shrugged.

  “Do you remember where you live?” he asked.

  “The dead-end building with the red lights,” she said. No, that wasn’t right. Not dead-end. Con-con-something. “A doctor’s going to fix it.” She hoped that part might be helpful.

  “Can you tell me your mother’s name?”

  She nodded proudly. Of course she could. She never got confused about that. “Mama.”

  Then she remembered the note. She held it out to the man. He read it quickly, then sighed.

  “What does it say?” she asked.

  He smiled, but his eyes looked sad. “It says that your mama loves you. And you’re right, she must have gotten lost. We’ll have to see if we can find her.” He stood up. “Okay, sweetheart, have you ever ridden in a police car before?”

  “No.”

  “Would you like to? I’ll turn on the flashing lights.” He leaned toward her then and whispered, “We only turn those on for very special little girls like you.”

  “Okay.” She hopped off the stairs and slipped her hand into his.

  As they walked away, she looked down at her red shoes shining under the magic inside-starlight, thought of her mama, and smiled. It wasn’t until later that the Lonelies started up something awful. She kept telling the men at the police station that Mama would come back. She never did.

  But now Pinny smiled again, and hugged her red Mary Janes to her chest, walking faster through the night after Ray. She’d waited thirteen years for another chance to find Mama. Tonight, it had finally come.

  DALYA

  Dalya took a deep breath and licked her lips, tasting briny salt. After nearly ten days on the SS Liberty, she was finally able to leave her bunk for the deck. The water stretched unbroken to the horizon, and she had the disorienting sensation that if they kept on, they’d sail straight into the heavens. She gripped the rails tighter, feeling their reassuring hardness grounding her to the deck, and fought through a wave of nausea.

  “There you are!” a cheerful voice said in German, and she turned to see her bunkmate, Ruth Schwarz, walking toward her.

  Ruth smiled, and Dalya was struck by how foreign a smile looked to her now; it seemed like lifetimes since she’d seen one. She’d been introduced briefly to Ruth on the day their boat had left Lisbon, Portugal, and she’d been glad that Ruth spoke German, when so many of the others she’d ridden with on the trains had spoken Polish or Czech. As their ship pulled out of port, Ruth had been chattering enthusiastically, telling her about her family’s hurried trip from Munich to France, and how her parents had to stay behind in France to wait for visas. When Ruth had asked about Dalya’s family, she had managed to mumble that they, too, stayed behind in Germany. Her voice broke after that, and luckily, Ruth hadn’t pushed her with more questions. Instead, Ruth had rambled on about her plans for when the ship docked in America. Thankfully, all Dalya had to do was listen and nod. But from their second day at sea on, they’d hit storms, and seasickness had taken the burden of talking from her.

  “I didn’t think you were ever going to leave our bunk,” Ruth said now. “I stopped throwing up days ago.” She frowned. “It’s a shame. We’re docking later this morning, and you haven’t even seen the ship yet. There was a dance yesterday, and we had a table-tennis tournament. You missed all the fun.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dalya said helplessly. She was sure that wasn’t the right response to give, but it was the only one she could manage. She felt more relief than disappointment over what she’d missed. There were several dozen children on the boat that were fleeing Europe, like she was. A few were as young as five and six, close to Inge’s age, but there were some as old as fourteen and fifteen. Some of the younger children cried and clung to the chaperones constantly, and Dalya wondered if they’d seen the same horrors she had. There were plenty, though, who were happy to be on board and busied themselves with the ship’s daily activities. Even though she was invited to every activity, she was older than any of them—ages older, it seemed. If Inge or David had been here, she might have taken part for their sakes. But the games, the dancing…it was a distant world, a world she didn’t belong to anymore. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to go back to it again.

  “Your hair’s gotten a little longer since we left,” Ruth said. “It’s starting to look prettier.”

  “Thank you,” she said politely, trying not to give in to agitation. The comment felt callous, but Dalya reminded herself that that was unfair. Ruth didn’t know anything about why Dalya’s hair was shorn. No one knew, except Leonard Goodman and the doctor who’d tended to her in secret while she’d wrestled with illness for weeks in the Goodmans’ home. She brushed her fingers through the curls at the nape of her neck. Her hair looked boyish, and she was still getting used to the weight of it against her scalp. But she didn’t fuss over it the way she had before Sachsenhausen. Vanity, after what she’d experienced, seemed like a waste of time.

  “So, who are you staying with when we get to New York?” Ruth asked. “Are they friends of your parents, or family?”

  “No. Their name is Ashbury.” The name tripped her tongue. “I’ve never met them.”

  “I’ve never met the family I’m staying with, either,” Ruth said. “German-Jewish Children’s Aid found them for me. Esther and Herb Blumberg. I think they have a daughter my age, too. They’re getting an allowance to care for me until my parents come.” She smiled. “I’ll give you their address before we get off the boat. That way, we can stay in touch. Maybe we’ll be able to see each other once we’re settled.”

  “I’d like that,” Dalya said, and realized, with some surprise, that she meant it. Ruth’s cheeriness was energizing, and it would be a comfort to have at least one familiar face in a country of strangers.

  “I’m sure I won’t be with the Blumbergs for long, though,” Ruth continued. She looked out at the cresting waves. “I just received a letter from Muti. She hopes they’ll be here in a few weeks.”

  “That would be nice,” Dalya forced herself to say through the pinching pain in her heart. She knew she should feel grateful to be on this boat, alive, with an American visa. She’d wondered so many times about Aaron. If he was still at Sachsenhausen, if he was still…alive. He’d saved her, but she’d probably never have the chance to thank him. He was a presence she’d always tolerated more out of politeness than pleasure, but now, strangely, she found herself missing him. Not only because of what he’d done for her family, but because he’d been a quiet constant in her old life, and probably a better friend than she’d ever deserved. Looking back, she realized that maybe she’d enjoyed his admiration as muc
h as she’d been exasperated by it, and the realization stung her repeatedly. She hoped—oh, how she hoped!—he was alive. But she knew, also, that was nearly impossible.

  Herr Goodman had told her it was a miracle that she’d gotten out herself, and then that her visa had been approved. When she’d been well enough, he had told her the story of how he received word of her family’s arrest, how he went to her father’s shop the next morning, to find it gutted and burned. He managed to save a few things: one of her father’s lasts for making shoes and some of his tools. These she carried with her onto the ship in her one sparse satchel. After the night they were taken, Herr Goodman tried for months, in vain, to have Dalya’s family released from Sachsenhausen. He turned to his connections in the Gestapo, connections he explained came from help the Quakers had given Germany during a war before she’d even been born. He tried to explain that her family’s internment at Sachsenhausen was a mistake, that it was a place for men who were political prisoners, not women and children. His arguments and attempts failed, and he suspected she’d been taken there, along with the other women and children, as some sort of ghastly camp experiment.

  But then came the night when Dalya was delivered to him, barely breathing, in her coffin. She spent weeks verging on death, but Herr Goodman kept her from it time and time again. He told her the visa he’d acquired for her after her family’s arrest had long since expired. They’d have to lie and say it was still valid if she was to have any chance of getting out. To complicate matters, she was seventeen, too old to be considered by any of the Jewish-American relief organizations offering aid to refugees. Not that she understood the reasons behind that, or behind any of the other bureaucratic barricades that Herr Goodman tried to explain. The United States had limits on how many refugees it allowed onto its shores. It even had rules about their ages, and where they were coming from. None of it made any sense.

  But then her visa was honored, thanks to a family called the Ashburys from New York City, who were privately sponsoring her. She guessed that meant they paid a great deal of money to convince the Gestapo to let her out of the country.