“Very hard,” Pinny said with pride.
“Don’t let me off the hook. Not anymore. I don’t know what you see when you look at me, but it’s not who I really am.” Shame burned her cheeks. “So…hate me. Go ahead.”
Pinny crinkled her brow. “Why do you want me to?”
“Because you should! You’re so…so good. So much better than I’ll ever be. And I’m…I’m…”
A liar. A thief. A bitch. Words she’d pinned on herself for years, words that built a protective wall around her. Words she hated but that, once she tried them on for size, grew on her and made her what they said she was.
“You’re good, too, Ray.” Pinny said it firmly, squeezing Ray’s hand. “Maybe not good all the time. But…good enough. Like I told you before. You’re the only one who doesn’t know it.”
Good enough. The words winged their way into her head, and as soon as they snapped into place, the tears burst out of her. Old tears. Weeks old, months old, even years old. Tears she’d locked away. But now that the well was opened, it was bottomless. There was no controlling the choking sobs as they broke over her, drowning out any other sound in the room. She’d never known until this moment how much Pinny’s faith in her meant, but now that she still had it, she realized it was the only thing that mattered. She put her hands to her face and let the flood of relief sweep over her.
She didn’t know how long passed before she finally became aware of Pinny’s arm around her, but by then her face was swollen and raw. She raised her head slowly, taking the tissue Dalya offered to wipe her eyes.
“Good enough for each other,” Dalya said, pressing her hand to Ray’s cheek, “is all any of us can be.”
Ray stared into Dalya’s and Pinny’s warm, open faces, and a lightness of being swept over her. She’d done the right thing. Her guilt was gone. So was her chance at New York, but that almost didn’t matter. “I’m tired,” she whispered. “And…I don’t want to run anymore.” She held Pinny’s eyes. “I’ll go back to Smokebush if I have to. If you’re going. I’m with you. No matter what.”
Pinny shook her head furiously. “I’m not going,” she announced. “Ever. To Horizons Assist. Or Fricasweet’s.”
“Yes!” Ray cried, hugging her. “It’s about time. The old Pinny’s back!”
Pinny giggled, then crossed her arms defiantly. “I mean it.”
“I believe you do.” Dalya gave Pinny’s shoulder a squeeze. “We’ll talk everything over with your father when he comes. Maybe there’s something we can do….”
“Daddy’s coming? Here?” Pinny’s eyes lit up as Dalya nodded, but then her brow furrowed. “What about Ray?” she asked. “She doesn’t want to go back either.”
Ray swallowed thickly. “I’ll have to, Pinny,” she said quietly. “I’m stuck at Smokebush until I’m eighteen. Where else are they going to put a foster kid halfway to juvie?”
Ray’s heart clattering seemed to be the only sound in the room for some time. Then Dalya’s sweet, soft voice broke the silence.
“What if someone adopted you?” she asked. “What then?”
Ray held her breath. She couldn’t wrap her head around it, the idea that they might have real futures before them. But when she raised her eyes to Dalya’s, she saw the promise of possibility in them. A newborn yearning, for the kind of life she’d never dared dream of, filled her heart.
“I…I don’t know.” Ray could barely speak. “Nobody’s ever wanted me enough to ask.”
“I wonder if it’s time to find out,” Dalya said. “My daughter, Inge, and her husband have a spare room now. Their son’s all grown. They’ve been talking about renting it out, but maybe…” She glanced at Ray, her eyes doing the asking.
Ray nodded, barely able to breathe. With trembling fingers, she pulled a slip of paper out of her pocket and handed it to Dalya. “This is Mrs. Danvers’s number at Smokebush. She’ll want to know where we are. I’m sure she’s been looking for us. But”—she glanced at Dalya—“could you make the call? Could you…help?”
Dalya took Pinny’s hand, then Ray’s. “I’d be so glad if you let me,” she whispered.
As Dalya picked up the phone, she smiled at them, and for the first time in years, Ray let hopefulness return. For the first time since her apricot chapel, she’d run toward something good. Better, maybe, than anything else she’d ever known.
It was on a windswept autumn day that Ray came back to the city. She dropped her suitcases off at Inge’s apartment on Columbus Avenue, but she didn’t stay. Inge knew, without Ray having to say it, where Ray wanted to be, and she ushered her out the door with a laughing “Go.”
So Ray ran. She ran in the bubble-gum-pink shoes that Pinny and Dalya had made for her. She ran without pain, the breeze in her face and wings in her feet. She ran over the sidewalks with her guitar slung over her shoulder, listening to the song of the great city surrounding her. She ran until she found herself standing under the burgundy awning of the Art of Heeling. She ran home.
She stopped for just a moment to look in the window, and smiled at the two heads bent intently over a pair of shoes at the worktable in the back. Dalya and Pinny. Her friends. Her family.
Dalya was frailer than Ray remembered, but she still held her tools with steady hands as she patiently showed Pinny what to do next. Pinny was beside her, her dandelion hair wisping as she worked, her glasses teetering on the tip of her nose, her face a blend of satisfaction and concentration. She’d become Dalya’s apprentice, and when she wasn’t spending time with her newfound father, Pinny worked and lived in the shop. Everything about Pinny at this moment said she’d found the More she was looking for. And when the time came that Dalya couldn’t run the store any longer, Pinny would have Kent…and Ray. Ray would be nearby, somewhere in the city, to help Pinny. She was going to make sure of it.
Ray took the front steps to the shop two at a time, scarcely believing that the long months of waiting were finally over. The inviting smell of leather struck her nose as she stepped through the door.
They looked up together, but Pinny reached her first, jumping off her stool and sending it toppling in her hurry. She launched herself at Ray, and Ray bent backward under the enthusiastic hug, laughing. Dalya moved more slowly, and her hug was feathery and fragile, but her bright eyes showed her delight.
Here, in their arms, was proof of what Ray still had a hard time believing. That she could go from having no one to having so many people who cared. But this happiness wasn’t stolen. It was real. And she was going to relish it, soak in it, live in it.
Warmth filled her as she settled into the coziness of the shop. They didn’t talk about anything important, but they still talked and laughed, with the easy, open comfort of being together again. Then Pinny asked Ray to play the song she’d composed for her audition. Ray hadn’t played it for anyone yet, but she knew that was why she’d brought her guitar with her, because she wanted Dalya and Pinny to be the first to hear it.
Carter was the one who’d sent in her application to Juilliard, along with the CD of music she’d originally made for him. He’d mailed it the day after prom, the day she’d run away. He’d explained it all in the letter that was waiting for her when she’d gone back to Jaynis in June. He’d apologized, too, for “misleading” her, as he called it, saying he hoped someday she’d understand. She’d always be grateful to him for the audition, and she tucked his kind words away in her heart, but she’d already let him go.
Juilliard was a long shot, she knew, especially with her final grades being as poor as they were. Her teachers in Jaynis had agreed to let her take her exams late, and she’d graduated, but only barely. Still, the hope of it had built a nest in her heart. Maybe it was only magical thinking, the feeling she had that Juilliard could happen. But even if magic wasn’t actually possible, the belief in the possibility of it was enough to keep people going, to make them create their own.
Ray settled the guitar in her lap, looked into Dalya’s and Pinny’s smiling faces, an
d began to play. It was a song about a pair of lost shoes found. About broken hearts mended, scars healed, families discovered, and a love built in footprints, step by step.
The melody rang out clear and strong through the little shop, like it had been created to perfectly suit this moment, this place. The notes washed over the pair of worn pale pink shoes that sat quietly in the corner. And the shoes, full of so many people’s secrets and memories, soaked up the music and the peace and the love of the three women laughing in the late-afternoon light.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Serendipity’s Footsteps is a story born from many different hearts. The idea came to me one morning while I was driving and chatting with my sister. I passed a cozy cottage in my town and saw, sitting prettily on a rock in the front yard, a single cherry-red slingback. Mystified and delighted by the sight, I mentioned it to my sister, which immediately spurred a discussion about our random “shoe sightings” through the years: trees dripping with abandoned shoes, sneakers tossed over telephone wires, lonely shoes scattered in the road. Who had been the owners of those shoes? Why had the shoes been left behind or lost?
“You need to write a book about those shoes,” my sister told me, and the seed for this story was planted.
But this book isn’t just about lost shoes; it’s about lost people finding comfort and peace in a rare, extraordinary pair of shoes. It’s about these shoes drawing lost people together in friendship and giving them a chance to find love in unlikely connections. Each one of us, whether we’ve realized it or not, has experienced the magic of serendipity; the connections between those we love and the things they love; the mysterious pull of an old photograph, a tattered baby blanket, a worn shoe. Connections, as Pinny would say, are the More of life.
The characters in this book, their connections and stories, are fictional. However, many of the historical details and events portrayed here are based in truth.
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
Some of my dearest friends have shared their families’ stories of survival during the Holocaust with me through the years, and their tales of courage and resilience helped to inspire Dalya’s story. Sachsenhausen, the concentration camp where Dalya and her family were sent after Kristallnacht (the Night of Shattered Glass), was one of the first concentration camps in Germany. It was built in Oranienburg, only a short distance from Berlin, in 1936. Created as a “model” concentration camp, it was an example of what the Schutzstaffel (also known as the German SS) thought was an ideal camp in design and form.
Between 1936 and 1944, over two hundred thousand people were imprisoned at Sachsenhausen. Following Kristallnacht, on November 9 and 10, 1938, approximately six thousand Jews were arrested and taken to Sachsenhausen. In the next months, some Jewish prisoners were released from the camp if they could provide proof of their intent to leave Germany. Others remained, and the number of Jewish prisoners steadily increased. While the main camp of Sachsenhausen, where Dalya lived in the story, predominantly held Jewish men and male political prisoners, some women and children were imprisoned there as well. Very few women or children would have passed through the main camp during the time of Dalya’s internment. Subcamps were built to house women and children later on in the war, and Ravensbrück was one of the satellite camps where, beginning in 1944, women were kept. By April 1945, near the war’s end, there had been a total of almost twelve thousand women imprisoned at Sachsenhausen, primarily in its subcamps. Many of the women who passed through the main camp were only transferred there during the final weeks of the war. Between 1936 and 1945, three thousand children passed through Sachsenhausen and its subcamps. Most of them were boys—Jews, or prisoners brought in from the Soviet Union. There is no record of a girl Dalya’s age living at Sachsenhausen or its subcamps until 1942.
The shoe-testing track that Dalya’s father marched on was real and can be seen today at the Memorial and Museum Sachsenhausen. The track was made up of nine different materials, including sand, gravel, and broken rocks. Prisoners who marched on the track were part of the Schuhläuferkommando, the shoe-testing unit. Wearing military-style boots made by local shoe factories, they marched on the track for hours at a time to test the durability of the boots. Sometimes they were forced to walk in boots that were too small, carrying heavy sandbags as they marched. There were instances when men fell during the march, and they were left to die or were beaten as a result. I fictionalized the account of men being shot while marching the shoe track. In reality, prisoners who failed in their duties were hanged or shot at guards’ discretion as part of larger “killing campaigns.” The shoe-testing track was the primary reason I chose Sachsenhausen as the setting for Dalya’s imprisonment. Until I began research for this book, I had never heard of the track. When I came across a reference to it in my readings, I knew I had to include it in my story. Shoes played such an important role in Dalya’s life and her family history. For Dalya, watching her father march on the shoe track would have been life-altering, and I wanted this moment, painful as it was, to be part of her journey and her struggle.
Because of the poor sanitary conditions at Sachsenhausen, the inhumane treatment of prisoners, and the lack of proper food and clothing, thousands of prisoners died of starvation and disease. Initially, bodies were taken from Sachsenhausen to crematoriums in Berlin, like the one that served as Dalya’s escape route in the novel. But in April 1940, a crematorium was built on-site at Sachsenhausen, and in March 1943, a gas chamber was built in an area of the camp called Station Z. It is estimated by the Simon Wiesenthal Center that over thirty thousand people perished at Sachsenhausen during the camp’s years of operation.
In writing Serendipity’s Footsteps, I took liberties with the time frame and living arrangements for Dalya’s stay at Sachsenhausen. Although some boys were arrested with their fathers during the pogroms, entire families were not imprisoned at Sachsenhausen following Kristallnacht. Camps interning entire families did not come into existence until later in the war. The women and children passing through Sachsenhausen would have lived primarily in its subcamps, without contact with the male prisoners. I fictionalized the internments of Dalya’s and Aaron’s families by keeping the families in close proximity within the camp and having the children remain with their parents in the barracks. I chose to have Dalya go to Sachsenhausen before the outbreak of the war so that she could escape Germany in 1940. By 1941, with Europe increasingly engulfed by war, it became nearly impossible for Jews to leave Germany. Prior to the implementation of the Nazis’ Final Solution, there was a narrow window of opportunity for those with visas. In some cases, such as Dalya’s, the Gestapo could be bribed to honor expired visas. Dalya, at age seventeen, would have been considered an adult, and her odds of getting out of Germany would have been incredibly slim. It may be that I gave Dalya a better chance of survival in the book than she ever would have had in reality, but that, in my mind, is one of the most wonderful gifts fiction gives us—a chance to seize the impossible, to give hope in hopeless situations.
For more information about Sachsenhausen, the following resources are helpful:
Morsch, Günter, and Astrid Ley, eds. Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, 1936–1945: Events and Developments. Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2008.
“Concentration Camps: Sachsenhausen (Oranienburg),” Jewish Virtual Library, American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/sachtoc.html.
“The Forgotten Camps,” JewishGen: An affiliate of the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. jewishgen.org/forgottenCamps/Camps/SachsenhausenEng.html.
Memorial and Museum Sachsenhausen, Brandenburg Memorials Foundation. www.stiftung-bg.de/gums/en/.
“Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp,” Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota. chgs.umn.edu/museum/memorials/sachsenhausen/.
“Sachsenhausen: Timeline,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. ushmm.org/wlc/en/
article.php?ModuleId=10007774.
Jewish Refugees in America During World War II
While many individuals advocated relief and aid for Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution, the immigration laws of the United States prior to and during World War II, and complications arising from the Nazi occupation of Europe, made it difficult for refugees to gain safe passage to America. Between 1934 and 1945, one thousand children ranging from sixteen months to sixteen years old came to the United States from Europe to escape Nazi persecution. These children came to America without their parents. They were placed with temporary foster families in hopes of being reunited with their parents later on. Tragically, only a small number of the children ever saw their parents again. A variety of nonprofit refugee and aid organizations, both large and small, helped to orchestrate and fund the children’s safe passage from Europe to America and oversee their placement with foster families.
In doing research for this book, I read many first-person accounts of these children’s experiences settling into their new homes in America. Many did not speak any English when they arrived, and attended classes with much younger children at school as a result. Siblings were sometimes separated and fostered by different families. Although attempts were made to place children with Jewish families sharing similar religious customs and traditions, many of the children had trouble adjusting to their new lives and homes.
At seventeen, Dalya would have been too old to qualify for the official Jewish refugee programs, which is why she came to America under different circumstances and moved in with the Ashburys, a non-Jewish family. Dalya’s friend Ruth was sixteen and therefore qualified for refugee aid, which is why she was placed with a Jewish family, the Blumbergs. It was very rare for older teenagers to obtain the papers needed to leave Germany as the war was getting under way. But there are accounts of people like Leonard Goodman, the fictitious Quaker in the story, helping to bring refugees like Dalya from Germany safely to America.
Serendipity's Footsteps Page 26
