My Family for the War

by Anne C. Voorhoeve

  My future room looked out over the front garden. It had light blue walls that were decorated with delicate floral designs, a bed, bookcase, and a child’s desk in front of the window, which completely filled the small room. There could be no doubt that the Shepards were expecting a boy: Pictures of ships and airplanes hung on the walls and the bookshelf was full of wooden cars and model boats.

  “All my old things,” explained Gary. He spoke very loudly, apparently so that I could understand him better.

  There I was, standing as if rooted to the floor again. “Letter!” I said, enraptured, pointing at the doorframe, where a little tube hung, exactly like the one I had seen on the front door. This one was made of metal, but no doubt about it, there was already a letter in there for me! I quickly took a step toward it, to turn the little tube around and extract the tiny note that I could just see through the small opening. Then it occurred to me that I had to kiss the container first, though that was a little embarrassing in front of Gary.

  Hesitating, I stopped and stood still, with Gary’s gaze following mine toward the little tube, and then he started laughing again.

  I tried not to show how much that hurt my feelings. Gary stopped laughing, pointed at the tube, and said slowly, “This is a mezuzah. We… are Orthodox.”

  “Orthodox?” I repeated, confused.

  Gary laid his hand on the little tube and repeated: “Mezuzah. Inside it are two texts from the Torah. Do you understand?” he asked, seeing the baffled expression on my face. “You’ll learn. Do you want Millie… your suitcase?” he gestured.

  I shook my head and he left the room with a “See you later.”

  Orthodox! I would have to digest that piece of information. Something told me that my parents wouldn’t be overjoyed, although the Shepards wore neither long beards nor sidelocks and probably belonged to an entirely different sect than the Seydenstickers. I decided to wait a few letters before gently filling them in.

  Happily, I looked around, taking in every last detail of my room. My room! It seemed like an eternity since I had last had my own room. There was nothing to do but take off my coat, scarf, and shoes and let myself fall back on the bed.

  I closed my eyes and unexpectedly felt right at home, embraced by warmth and friendliness. The people who had set up this room must have been very excited about taking in a child. I could hardly believe my luck, even if it was only for a short time, until my parents could follow me to England.

  “Francesca, tea is ready!”

  Again I heard them call my strange new name. I slowly rolled myself out of bed, went down the stairs, and followed the voices, which came from the living room. Gary was telling a story, interrupting it again and again with his laughter. “Whaaamm!” he demonstrated explosively, probably reenacting my encounter with the car door to the amusement of all.

  I recognized Mrs. Shepard at once from the photo, although she was visibly older and had cut her long hair into a dull, helmet-like style. She looked serious, almost a little intimidating. Still, when she saw me she let loose a spontaneous, hearty laugh. “What a lovely boy,” she said cheerfully. Her voice was warm and dark. Deep laugh lines ran up from the corners of her eyes like rays of sun. I stood frozen in the doorway. Mrs. Shepard was almost too beautiful to be true.

  I saw the smile freeze on Mrs. Shepard’s face, and the atmosphere grew colder with every step she took toward me. She was staring at something, I didn’t know what it could be, but by the time she reached out her hand to me, I was already paralyzed with fear.

  “What is that?” she asked, her voice now completely changed, toneless and nearly flat. I felt ice-cold fingers at my throat, and as she turned around to Dr. Shepard and Gary, my tiny silver cross was in her hand. “We wanted to take in a Jewish child!” she said, appalled.

  Dr. Shepard and Gary stood up as well and came closer to us. My head was pushed back as far as possible from Mrs. Shepard’s grip on my chain. Terrified, my eyes begged both of them for help. They were responsible; they were the ones who had taken me home with them in the first place! At the same time, it occurred to me that it wasn’t their fault. They couldn’t have seen the cross. I had worn my coat and scarf the entire time.

  Both of them silently considered the problem that hung around my neck, then began to speak at the same time, Dr. Shepard in a calm and soothing tone, and Gary upset and reproachful. I heard him say something about “Herr Hitler” and it was probably this name more than anything else that forced an immediate reaction from me. A growl rose from my throat, my head shot forward, and my teeth clamped down on the tender cartilage and delicate knuckles of the enemy’s fist. My chain came free immediately and I stormed out of the room as if the Furies themselves were chasing me.

  Mrs. Shepherd herself was so thoroughly shocked that it was two seconds before she let out a cry of pain. It was echoed in the kitchen, where Millie dropped all her pots and pans as I fled up the staircase. I threw open the door to my room and sprang into the closet. Trembling, I crouched behind the boys’ clothing in the darkness and heard my teeth chatter. I tried to pray, but it didn’t work. Again and again the same film played in my mind, with a crazed soundtrack playing in the background: That can’t really have happened… not Jewish… I can’t stay here… not Jewish… something is wrong with me… not Jewish.

  I don’t know how long I sat in the closet, but it was long enough for my entire life to pass before me. Mamu, Papa, Bekka, the Refugee Committee… I had betrayed them all. The painful departure, the falling out with my best friend, the cost and effort put into saving me… all for nothing. A feeling of hopeless failure overwhelmed me with such shattering finality that I couldn’t even cry.

  They would send me back to Germany, that much was certain. I had had my chance, and I had blown it. A small voice inside me weighed in with the perspective that it was all Mrs. Shepard’s fault, but that was no comfort. Quite the opposite: Despite all my brooding about the Winterbottoms, I had never really been able to imagine what it would be like to be completely, utterly dependent on the goodwill of my foster family. They helped save my life, and at the same time I was entirely at the mercy of their judgment, their charity, their moods. I suddenly understood just what this meant.

  After a while I heard steps. “Francesca?” Gary asked. I heard him standing in front of the closet, breathing. “Come out of there!” I didn’t answer.

  “Please, Francesca!” Now it sounded as if he was sitting on the floor on the other side of the door. All at once, the tears began to flow.

  “I hate Francesca,” I howled.

  “That’s okay. I’ll give you a new name. It’s an ancient Jewish tradition. Do you understand? New life—new name?” He listened. “Do you want a new name?” he asked, tempting me. I bit my teeth together. A new name—as if that would change anything! He knocked on the door. “Come on now. I always wanted a little sister!”

  My resolve to remain in the closet for all eternity began to weaken a little. It occurred to me that Gary, at least, had apparently defended me. He had defended me even against his own mother. If there was anyone at all I could still trust, it was him. I heard him say something about “good-bye,” “school,” and “supper.” Then he sighed softly to himself and said, “What I need is a dictionary.”

  Gary looked surprised when I opened the closet door. “Hi!” he said in greeting. I crawled past him to my suitcase and took out my dictionary, handing it to him without a word. He took it with great gentleness, as if he had just tamed a small wild animal, which, considering my most recent public performance, wasn’t too far off the mark. Beneath my window the front door slammed; Dr. Shepard was probably taking his wife to the hospital.

  “Come closer,” he said, beckoning me to his side so that we could look at the dictionary together. Hesitating, I moved a little bit nearer. Gary paged through eagerly, looked up a word, and passed the book over to me. I had no choice but to sit down in front of him. “Boarding school” was what I read there, Internat in German.
I nodded.

  It seemed to take forever to piece together all the information, but by the end of the laborious process I had learned that Gary lived at a boarding school and was only home from Friday to Sunday. His father wasn’t a real doctor, but a professor of Roman studies, which had something to do with languages, and Gary’s mother worked in a Jewish nursing home every Sunday, and that’s why she hadn’t been able to accompany them to Satterthwaite Hall.

  Just my luck, I thought bitterly. If she had been there, the Shepards would certainly never have chosen me and we would all have been spared a lot of trouble.

  “So what about your new name?” asked Gary.

  I hesitated. I would have liked to say that it didn’t make any difference to me, but I was getting tired of leafing through the dictionary. So I nodded. Gary helped me up and laid a hand on my shoulder. “From now on… you will be called Frances,” he announced ceremoniously.

  “Frances,” I repeated, awed, and then again, “Frances.”

  I looked at him in amazement. He had simply taken the other half of my name. Now I had half a name for Germany, and another half for England.

  Shyly, I picked up the dictionary and asked, “Will you help me?” I thought about the new school I would have to attend and the language I didn’t understand. I thought of helping my parents. I thought of the help I would need with Gary’s mother. There were so many things I needed help with that it seemed extremely unlikely to me that anyone would volunteer for the job.

  Gary didn’t seem to have the slightest idea what he was getting into when he confidently replied, “Of course! I’ll stay for supper and show you everything you need to know.”

  “Everything I need to know?” I repeated silently. What in the world was he talking about?

  For the second time that Sunday I stood in the Shepards’ living room doorway waiting to be introduced, but this time I didn’t stand there alone. Gary laid his hand on my shoulder and said, “Mum, Dad… this is my sister, Frances.”

  Mrs. Shepard’s right hand was bandaged and there was a deep crease between her eyebrows. It was clear that Gary’s parents had already discussed the question of whether or not they should keep me. I saw his mother swallow hard when he introduced me as his sister.

  Apparently, however, the two of them couldn’t deny their son anything. I was invited to sit on the long side of the dining room table, directly across from Gary, and told that this would be my place from now on. Gary had brought my dictionary with him and set it down on the table between us, where it lay between the candlesticks, strange dishes, and odd bowls, looking every bit as lost as I was.

  The evening meal began with rinsing our hands with water poured from a pitcher into a bowl. We were only allowed to dry them after Dr. Shepard had recited a long prayer in a language that sounded like nothing I had ever heard. Then he began to cut the bread and I thought we would get on with the meal, but instead there was another prayer before he cut each of us a slice. I politely reached out my hand, but he just looked right past it and placed the bread on my plate.

  My stomach was all in knots. I was deeply offended. But then Gary picked up the dictionary, paged through, and explained that his father had not placed the bread directly in my hand because that would signify begging or poverty.

  I said nothing. Slowly but surely, I began to panic. This must all be a horrible mistake! Completely unknown people had sat me down at their table to take part in their mysterious, complicated rituals. If I didn’t do something soon, everyone would think I was one of them!

  In the meantime, Dr. Shepard had blessed the vegetables and the wine. Then he sat down, and the meal began. Gary pointed to the plates and bowls, saying that there was vegetable soup, eggs, cheese, and fish, all of which I could eat at the same time. But after eating meat or sausage I’d have to wait six hours.

  I didn’t belong here! I wanted to go home! I was becoming so foreign even to myself that when Gary put a piece of fish on my plate, it felt like I was literally observing myself sitting there.

  My legs twitched violently underneath the table, as if they wanted to run away, but then the strange feeling was gone again. I sat there quietly, glad that no one had noticed the inappropriate thoughts that had been running through my head.

  “Just do what I do,” Gary advised me.

  That was just what I had in mind. Firmly determined not to make any more mistakes, I put the same things on my plate that he did, even though I didn’t like fish. I tried to hold my fork just like he did, and when he rinsed out his mouth between the fish and the cheese courses I did the same. I barely noticed Dr. Shepard buttering bread for his wife because she couldn’t use her hand.

  Then Dr. Shepard turned and spoke to me directly for the first time this evening. “Well, Frances,” he said, with help from Gary and the dictionary, “naturally you can’t call us Mother and Father because you already have a mother and father. What would you think of calling us Uncle Matthew and Aunt Amanda?”

  The food I was swallowing stuck in my throat. I nodded so violently that I knocked my fork to the floor.

  “She can also just say Uncle and Aunt, if she wants,” Mrs. Shepard said calmly.

  Or nothing at all, I thought.

  Once this matter had been settled they left me in peace and I could concentrate on making it through the perils of an Orthodox meal. I gradually started to suspect that eating was only the smallest part of the procedure. Gary took his knife and fork in the opposite hands when he switched between hard and soft cheese, and he laid his napkin over his glass while buttering another slice of bread. I bravely soldiered on with him. I noticed in the background that the room was becoming quieter and quieter, until Gary’s parents stopped talking altogether and watched the mirror pantomime the two of us were performing in fascination.

  The rituals involved in eating fruit were by far the strangest. Gary laid the napkin over his right arm while cutting up an apple, and then laid a small piece from each individual slice in an orderly row next to his plate. I thought this was rather messy on top of the clean tablecloth, but all right, then. I set out my apple pieces in the same way, moving them around a bit to get the spacing just right. Gary waited, friendly and patient, until I was finished. He then pressed his middle finger to his thumb, watched me copy him, and laid his wrist on the table in front of the apple pieces.

  Our eyes met across the table and I saw him grin. Before I knew what had happened, he flicked a piece of apple at my arm. My jaw dropped. A full barrage of apple pieces flew across the table until finally it dawned on me: Gary had been pulling my leg the entire time!

  My shock lasted for about two seconds, then without a second thought I pushed my plate out of the way and shot back. Gary cackled like a hen and began to crawl under the table to resupply himself with ammunition.

  “Gary, that’s enough. Sit back down!” His mother tried to put a stop to it, but it was no use. Even Dr. Shepard fired off an apple piece at his wife when one strayed over to his side of the table. Finally, she simply gave up, covering her face with both hands as my first evening meal under their roof came to a close in a suspiciously unorthodox fashion.

  After we were finished eating, Dr. Shepard recited prayers of thanks that seemed to go on forever. I wasn’t quite sure if that was part of the normal routine or a kind of apology for flinging food around. When it seemed like he was coming to the end of the prayers, Mrs. Shepard looked at me and said that he had forgotten something.

  “Right you are,” Dr. Shepard answered, and everyone smiled at me as he launched into another prayer. It seemed to be a prayer about me. I blushed bright red, but luckily no one expected me to say anything.

  Later, as I was about to go upstairs to my room, Mrs. Shepard asked me if I wanted to come along to bring Gary to his boarding school. She stood at the front door in her coat and waited for her son, who had run upstairs to get his suitcase. I hesitantly shook my head. Of course I wanted nothing more than to go with them—but that would have meant being
alone with her on the ride back to their house.

  “Then we’ll see each other at eight o’clock for breakfast,” she said, turning away and looking through the pieces of paper that lay in a flat bowl next to the telephone. That must have been her way of saying “good night.” I waited another moment, then turned away too, and went upstairs without a word.

  Gary came toward me carrying his small suitcase and patted me warmly on the shoulder as I squeezed past him. “We’ll see each other on Friday!”

  I forced a bucket of tears down my throat and managed a smile. I watched as he bounded down the stairs and put his arm around his mother, both of them touching the mezuzah with their fingertips and then bringing their fingers to their lips. I ran into my room to watch their car drive away, but the tree right in front of the window kept me from seeing more than a pair of headlights.

  Chapter 7

  Becoming Frances

  A hot, bright flash struck me directly in the eyes. I threw both my arms up to protect my face and screamed at the top of my lungs, “No!” Poor Millie, who had done nothing more than pull aside the curtains to let in the morning sun, was so startled that she jumped backward and smacked into the wall behind her.

  “Goodness! Get up!” Millie prompted me as she set something on my nightstand and left. It was an alarm clock, and according to the clock it was half past nine.

  Half past nine! Horrified, I instantly forgot about being blinded and jumped out of bed. Mrs. Shepard hadn’t said much to me, but the one thing she had said was “breakfast at eight o’clock.” I quickly grabbed some clothing, scooted down the hall to the freezing cold bathroom, washed myself quickly, and got dressed. After I had spent about five minutes on the landing, I dared to go downstairs.

  At the far back of the house, where it looked like the house ended, was actually the kitchen, where Millie was already busy making me breakfast. She set a cup of tea, two slices of buttered toast, and a fried egg in front of me. It took me longer than one would expect to eat an egg and two pieces of toast. The bread tasted as if she had put pure salt on it! When Millie stood up to get something out of the cupboard, I folded the second slice of toast in half as fast as I could and shoved it under the waistband of my skirt.