My Family for the War

by Anne C. Voorhoeve

  Of course! If anyone knew, it was Jesus! That meant he was definitely still looking out for me, even now as our train pulled into an enormous, light-filled, columned hall: Liverpool Street Station, London. In orderly groups of four we walked through the small triumphal archway into the main hall of the station and found ourselves in a kind of warehouse that had been divided in half with rope and tarp. Friendly looking, elegantly dressed women from the local committee for the aid of Jewish refugees were already seated at tables, ready to sign us in and hand us over to the right people. We were directed to the rows of benches that took up one whole side of the hall. On the other side, a haphazardly assembled, colorful crowd of people had gathered.

  A wave of expectant murmuring broke out as we entered.

  Our foster parents! Most craned their necks, smiling or waving in our direction, immediately setting off a round of whispering, nudging, and guessing games on our side. I envied the children who were going to stay with their own relatives. They had nothing to worry about. Walter had been met by his father right on the train platform. I’d caught a last glimpse of both of them before they were swallowed by the crowd and I was driven along in the stream of children. Thomas Liebich had already boarded a bus in Harwich that was headed for a collection center for children who didn’t have a permanent address in England yet.

  My heart pounding, I tried to peer over the table from my place on the bench. Which of those people were the Winterbottoms? The noise level in the hall rose as soon as the adults were allowed to come over to us. All manner of sounds were directed questioningly to my face, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make out anything that sounded even vaguely like Franziska.

  That is how my stay in England began—with foster parents who changed their minds. I watched as one child after another disappeared through that same door with their English people, and the hall emptied. Marcus and Hermione Winterbottom were nowhere to be seen.

  “Go sit with the others, Franziska,” one of the volunteers said. When she spoke to me I realized that everyone else was looking straight at me. The ladies from the committee had gathered our guardians around a table to answer a few final questions before they had to return to Germany. There were other children there too—three of them, a girl and two boys, the only ones left waiting with me. With our bundles and suitcases and our bedraggled cardboard signs hung around our necks, we stayed well away from each another. We could have moved closer together long before. But each of us would rather have died than take a single step in that direction.

  “At least come down from the bench,” she suggested.

  With burning cheeks, I jumped down to the floor, filled with shame and the dull, terrifying emptiness of loss. I had been left behind. No one was waiting for me.

  For a brief but intense time, the Winterbottoms had been my entire future, the only reality in a fog of “perhaps,” the only thing I could rely on. Now I had lost them as well. Maybe my letter had been too short. Maybe Mamu or Uncle Erik had mixed up an important word. Maybe they had simply woken up this morning and decided they would rather take in someone from Vienna or Prague. Maybe they had been here, taken one look at me, and left again.

  I would never find out. But I did know one thing for certain: No one would have seen Bekka and left her standing there.

  Chapter 6

  The Shepards

  Three weeks after arriving in London, I felt like someone had created a new planet especially for us Jewish children, one that was far removed from any real life. We couldn’t even pronounce the name of our new planet: Satterthwaite Hall. We shared it with the residents of a nursing home in the main wing of the building. We almost never saw them. Now and then a few of them sat out on the balcony in their wheelchairs, never moving, while we were allowed to play on the lawn after our English lessons.

  The one thing we all had in common was that we couldn’t leave. Satterthwaite Hall, a small, enchanted castle with many little towers and gables of gray stone, was surrounded by a seven-foot-high wall. Beyond the wall lay England. We could hear its noise, smell its odors, and sometimes even sense the footsteps of people walking on the other side. But the longer I was there, the less I could envision that there really was an “outside.”

  Every afternoon I walked along the wall, to the left, to the right, and all around, missing Bekka like I had never missed anyone before. But Bekka was far away, and the other children came and went. Satterthwaite Hall was just a way station, and all any of us could really do was sit and wait—full of anticipation, hope, and fear—for Sunday to come around.

  Sunday was our only chance to get out of there. Clean, well behaved, and with friendly smiles, we sat at our places in the dining room answering future foster parents’ questions in our ever-improving English, although anyone could see from across a football field that most of them were only looking for the little ones. How could this young couple, that older woman, or this family know that they weren’t making a mistake by taking someone else home with them?

  With growing uneasiness I waited day after day for news of my parents. My father had been released from Sachsenhausen in poor health, but my mother didn’t write what was wrong with him. That belonged to the category of questions that you instinctively sense should not be asked. “Papa says we should have traveled to Shanghai without him,” Mamu wrote. “Now we’re waiting for approval of our new exit visas—to anywhere at all.”

  Anywhere at all? I was horrified. They had sent me to England, so it seemed perfectly clear that they would come here and meet up with me! It weighed on me more and more heavily that our future depended entirely on me. But how could I get them out of Germany when I couldn’t even manage to get myself out of Satterthwaite Hall?

  Everything at home seemed to be getting worse. My mother complained about how difficult life was without the car and her driver’s license, which she had been forced to give up. She wrote about money being tighter and that it was getting harder to buy things. She wrote about Papa’s weak heart, so damaged by all these blows that she was making every effort to keep the worst of it from him. He still believed, for example, that our car was parked around the corner in the Meyers’ garage.

  At the same time, she would entertain me for pages with lively descriptions of her most recent bouts with Aunt Ruth, and I pictured the two of them quarreling over the kitchen table so vividly that it seemed like I was there myself.

  As hard as I tried, though, I couldn’t imagine Papa in Aunt Ruth’s apartment. Whenever I thought of Papa, all I saw were his white feet in slippers and a bloody handprint on the wall, and I had to stop thinking about him at all.

  February 19, my eleventh birthday, was coming up. I kept it to myself, not telling anyone. To talk about a birthday was like exposing a raw wound; even worse, admitting to myself that I was completely alone on that day, without a home and with a giant question mark hanging over the coming year of my life.

  The fact that everything changed on my birthday could only mean that Jesus—the only one who knew about it—hadn’t given up on me after all, despite the disaster with the Winterbottoms and the long series of disappointing Sundays. Since the English people continued to overlook me, I needed to go out and find a family on my own.

  The porter at Satterthwaite Hall was a gnarled, elderly man. He was clearly less than thrilled about having to run a refugee hostel on short notice, and we tried our best to stay out of his way. Every Sunday, just past two o’clock, he unlocked the tall, iron gate leading to the street, hoping just as much we did that there would be fewer of us inside by the day’s end.

  With the key in his hand, he stomped back to the house, passing by the compost heap next to the wall without giving it a glance. How could he know that there was a girl hiding behind it—a girl with a plan? Resolutely, I sneaked behind his back along the wall and slipped out the gate. I was in England!

  I decided I would only speak to people who were on their way to Satterthwaite Hall, although at the moment there were no people
in sight. Cars pulled up and others drove off. Finally, after I had been leaning against the wall for half an hour or so, a number of visitors arrived all at once, and there I was, unexpectedly confronted with a question I hadn’t yet considered. How on earth was I supposed to pick the people, out of all these strangers, who were right for me? I had been terrified at the thought of being handed over to the Winterbottoms, people who didn’t know me at all. Now I realized that the alternative wasn’t any less troubling. I had to make a spontaneous decision about which people I wanted to live with, and for who knows how long?

  I was so completely paralyzed by the weight of the decision that lay before me that I let the first visitors pass through the gate without speaking a single word to any of them. Time went by, dragging on endlessly. Then I saw a couple walking toward me along the wall, followed by two elderly women.

  This was it! Brashly, I stepped in front of them and blurted out the phrase I’d cobbled together from my dictionary: “Excuse me, you look one child?”

  Without changing his expression, the gentleman reached in his pocket and handed me a coin. Not stopping for a second, the couple walked right by me through the gate.

  The ones who did stop were the elderly ladies. They looked at me sternly and were more than a little irritated, although I hadn’t spoken to them at all. They exchanged a few words, of which I understood just one: committee. Then they marched in through the gate. It was clear that I was about to get in big trouble.

  I stole a glance around the gateposts and saw that I wouldn’t have long to wait. Two minutes later, both women came back out of the house with Miss Werner between them, speaking to her, the only German volunteer at Satterthwaite Hall, authoritatively. Even from this distance I could tell that Miss Werner was extremely angry as she strode across the lawn in my direction.

  Survival plan! I dove down behind the nearest car, where my ever-dependable brain cells, well trained in running and hiding, got to work at once. If I could lure Miss Werner away from the gate, I might be able to sneak back in and act as if I’d never been away. I squatted down and ran, all bent over, around the cars, keeping both the gate and Miss Werner in sight. She had started looking underneath the vehicles. I was sure she had no chance of catching me as long as I stayed hidden behind the tires. So I was quite surprised when a loud bang brought my retreat to a sudden and painful end. A passenger door swung open and hit me squarely in the head. The next thing I knew, I was lying facedown on the asphalt with a view of two pairs of big feet in black shoes, and asking myself if that sound was really birds chirping.

  The owners of the old Rover were sitting in the car with the motor turned off discussing whether they should look for a younger or older boy. They hadn’t yet come to an agreement when they stepped out of the car, only to discover that they had knocked out a girl. Careful hands turned me over onto my back. I opened my eyes and saw the friendly, worried face of a man about Papa’s age wearing a big, black hat.

  “You look child?” I croaked.

  A second face appeared above me. Now I was sure I must have injured my head, because boys this beautiful simply didn’t exist. He looked to be sixteen or seventeen, with dark hair, and bright green eyes that looked down at me over a nobly arched nose. I blinked, and blinked again, but he didn’t disappear. He was real!

  “Ziska, for heaven’s sake!” All at once I heard a cry of horror and I saw my two English people disappear left and right from my field of vision as Miss Werner forced herself between them, filling the space above me. “Did they run you over?”

  I shook my head. The English people were discussing something. “No, she can’t get up,” said Miss Werner testily, in German. “She will lie right where she is until the doctor arrives.”

  “No need doctor,” I murmured, heaving myself into a sitting position and leaning against the wheel of the car. There seemed to be something working its way out through my forehead from the middle of my skull. I poked around in the general area and, my heart sinking, discovered a bump the size of an egg. No one would pick me today with this on my forehead!

  The older Englishman spoke a sentence directly out of chapter two of our English grammar book. “I am a doctor.” He crouched down in front of me, felt my head, and moved his index finger from right to left in front of my face. Finally, he pulled my eyelids open and seemed pleased with the annoyed expression he saw there. “She’s much better already,” he concluded.

  “You look child?” I asked desperately.

  Miss Werner looked down at me, enraged, while apologizing to the English people for the trouble I had caused them.

  The Englishmen exchanged a glance. “Well,” said the older one, “we were indeed… looking for a child.”

  Considering that we had barely exchanged a word, it was unbelievable how quickly we came to an understanding. By the time I had gone to the dormitory and packed my things, they had already taken care of all the necessary formalities. I had only just shaken hands with Miss Werner to say good-bye, and there I was following my saviors, Dr. Shepard and his beautiful son, Gary, to the gate, accompanied by the envious looks of the other children. It was only as we drove through London that I was able to get everything straight in my head: My goal was not to find an English family, but to bring my own family to England! The nice Shepards in the front seat of the car just didn’t know it yet.

  I saw the famous red double-decker buses that made their way through the streets in such great numbers that London appeared to be colorful, narrow, and entirely chaotic. When we stopped at an intersection, to my dismay, a little boy shouted directly into our window. He wasn’t in any danger; he just stuck a newspaper through the opening and was given a coin in exchange.

  Soon, we left the lively downtown and drove on far outside the city along tranquil suburban streets lined with rows of identical houses. There was one street with two-story, white duplex houses, and another with three-story brown ones, and a third that seemed to consist of a single, endlessly long building curving its way around a bend. When we finally came to a stop I saw little towers on the roof and tiny front gardens. The space between the houses was so narrow that an adult with both arms outstretched could touch the walls of each building.

  “Our house,” Gary said proudly. A low step led to the front door, and a small canopy covered the entire entrance area. It looked pretty, like a toy house, but the biggest surprise was the itty-bitty mailbox attached to the doorframe! The glass tube, just six inches long, was decorated with incredibly delicate little ornaments. While they had been away, someone had apparently stuffed a small piece of paper with a message inside it. But instead of taking out the note and reading it, Dr. Shepard and Gary touched it with the fingers of their right hand as they walked by, then brought those fingers to their lips and kissed them.

  I was astounded. English people kiss their mail! Right there and then I took the entire country into my heart. What a respectful, fitting gesture to make toward those who had taken the time to write to us!

  Inside the house it was warm and smelled good, a mixture of coal fire, fresh-baked bread, and herbs, some of which sat in a vase in the entryway. A narrow, steep staircase led upstairs. The living room was right next to it, but I didn’t have a chance to do more than glance at it quickly. We had only just stepped inside when a small, plump woman came toward us, smiling and drying her hands on her apron.

  I liked her immediately, although I had not pictured her being quite so old. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Shepard,” I greeted her politely, as I had been taught to do.

  Dr. Shepard and Gary broke out in ringing laughter. The small, plump lady had a dignified, though somewhat embarrassed, expression on her face. This was Millie, the housekeeper.

  “And this is Francesca,” said Dr. Shepard.

  Who? I thought, baffled.

  Millie also looked a little surprised. “That a boy?” she asked.

  The Shepards seemed to be a cheerful family, for once again they laughed before replying “No,” whereupon Mil
lie, full of anger and loathing, pointed at the bump on my forehead and declared, “Bloody Nazis.”

  A flood of words followed, of which I was able to extract only one, the word tea, not one of my favorite things, after which Millie hurried back through the narrow hallway to the kitchen. Dr. Shepard said something to Gary that included my name. Since Gary then said, “Follow me,” I gathered that his father had asked him to show me my room.

  I followed Gary up the steps, but soon fell a bit behind. The entire wall next to the stairs was covered with framed photographs. They featured Gary as a baby, as a toddler, in his school uniform, and wearing his yarmulke, in an embroidered prayer shawl and with a thick book in his hand. Gary was obviously the focal point of this household, his parents’ pride and joy.

  “Are you coming?” he called in English from one of the rooms upstairs. I was just about to take the stairs two steps at a time so that I wouldn’t keep him waiting when suddenly, at the top, one more picture caught my eye. It was the kind of image that made you stop and stare. There was Gary, maybe five years old, leaning against a chair with a knowing smile on his face, so thoughtful and deep, extraordinary, especially for a such a young child. His smile was paralleled exactly on the face next to his. That had to be his mother. She had the same eyes, the same nose, and the same beautiful, elegantly proportioned face, framed by dark hair. Her hand, emerging from a white tailored blouse, lay on Gary’s arm. A strange shiver went down my neck, as though my own arm could sense that tender touch.

  “Francesca?” Gary stood in a doorway looking at me with a questioning expression. I hurried to follow him.