“Did you know Max and Hannah, the people who took her in in Brooklyn?”
This took Grandpa by surprise. His eyes moved from the nuts to me. “You mean my grandparents?” he asked. “Of course.”
His grandparents? It took me a minute, but then I couldn’t help but smile. Max and Hannah raised Anna like their daughter, so of course they would have been grandparents to Grandpa Fred and Great-Aunt Janet. Now I was getting excited for Grandpa to read the diary. How cool would it be to read about your grandparents when they were younger, and in such detail?
“Did you know Max’s uncles?” I asked Grandpa. “The ones who owned the fur factory?”
“That would be Saul and Hymie,” Grandpa said.
Saul and Hymie! I’d almost forgotten they had real names—not just Egg and Onion!
“They died when I was a baby. But I’ve heard lots of stories. They were quite the characters.”
“Quite the characters,” I agreed. “Wait till you read about them.”
I balanced the bowl on my legs and began working at a few pistachios myself. There was so much Grandpa and I could talk about, once he’d read the diary. But for now, there was just one thing I had to ask. “Max was Anna’s dad’s cousin, right?”
Grandpa wrinkled his brow. “I don’t think so, no. If I remember correctly . . .” Grandpa thought a moment. He cracked a pistachio between his teeth and chewed it.
If you remember correctly . . . I thought, trying to mentally urge him on.
“Grandpa Max’s father was from Luxembourg,” Grandpa said finally. “That’s right. He was from Luxembourg, but he was living in New York. That’s where he met Max’s mother. She was from Russia, but she came over to be with her brothers—Saul and Hymie—around the turn of the century. Max was born in New York.”
So Madeline was right; Anna’s parents were lying when they said Max had grown up in Luxembourg with her father. But Max’s father was from Luxembourg originally . . . “Was Max’s father related to Anna’s family?”
“No,” Grandpa said. “In fact”—he raised a finger, sure of the story now—“Max and Hannah took in my mother after they got a letter from her parents. That’s it. But the letter was addressed to Max’s father, Daniel was his name. Someone in Luxembourg had known Daniel, maybe Grandma Anna’s grandparents, or maybe a friend of the family. Whoever it was, they remembered that Daniel had moved to America all those years before. They were reaching out to anyone and everyone who might be able to help them get out of Europe, you see. But Daniel wasn’t there to get the letter, because he died when Max was a baby. Max barely knew him himself.”
I imagined a family tree in my head as Grandpa talked, with each of these pieces falling into place. Of course it wasn’t technically a family tree, since Anna and Max weren’t related after all, but it still felt like one. “Her parents lied to her,” I told Grandpa. “They told her Max was her father’s cousin. Why do you think they did that?”
Grandpa frowned as he chewed another pistachio. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe the government would only let people immigrate if they were sponsored by family. Or maybe they thought it would put her at ease and make her less scared to go.”
I cracked a pistachio of my own and chewed it slowly. The truth wasn’t upsetting after all; it was amazing. He and Hannah were suddenly even kinder than Anna realized. They got a letter from a complete stranger, half a world away, addressed to a dead man. Based on that alone, they were willing to become parents to as many as six children who needed a new home. If they hadn’t done it, my grandpa wouldn’t exist. Neither would my mom. I probably still would, but who knows where I’d be. Certainly not here, sitting on this couch, eating pistachio nuts and piecing together this very story.
How did Grandpa even know all this? Did Grandma Anna tell him? When did she find out the truth? How did she feel about it? “I’m going to ask you, like, ten million questions,” I warned Grandpa, “once you’ve had a chance to read.”
“Ten million questions!” Grandpa said. “That sounds time-consuming.”
I giggled. “It probably will be.”
“Are they all about my mother?”
“Yeah, is that okay?”
Grandpa folded over the top of the pistachio bag and placed it neatly on the side table. He took the bowl of shells and placed it there too. “How about this,” he said, brushing off his hands. “I’m going to New York on Saturday, to finish going through my mom’s stuff and get the apartment ready to sell. If your parents say it’s okay, you can come help me. I’d love a weekend together, just you and me. And while we work, I can answer all the questions you want.”
“Is there still a lot of stuff in the apartment?” I asked.
Grandpa blew air through his lips. “Too much. Who knows what we’ll find.”
I could hardly believe my luck. Ethan was right. Who knew what we’d find!
“I take it that’s a deal?” Grandpa said.
“Deal.”
We shook our salty hands. My heart was full of hope, just like Anna’s was at the start of 1942. What Grandpa said had to be true—the diary wasn’t the end. If anything, it might be the beginning.
CHAPTER 34
Grandpa and I left early Saturday morning and made it to Brooklyn by eleven. We parked near Grandma Anna’s apartment (which is not, to my disappointment, the same one she lived in at the time of the diary; Grandpa said we weren’t anywhere near Bensonhurst). We ate some bagels at a place around the corner, and then headed back to start working. It had only been six weeks since the shiva, but so much had changed since then, it seemed like a completely different lifetime.
“Yikes,” I said when Grandpa opened the door. “There really is a lot of stuff. You couldn’t go through all this alone.”
“No,” Grandpa said, patting my shoulder. “I couldn’t.”
Grandpa started with the big stuff: taking the plastic off the couches, stripping the beds, cleaning the furniture. I started exactly where I’d left off the last time I was here: the books. The stack I’d designated for donation was still there in the bedroom, and I went quickly through all of them, to make sure there wasn’t another diary in the pile. There wasn’t. The dressers didn’t have any treasures inside either, just clothes and mothballs. I was about to open the closet and look at the fur coats when Grandpa called from the other room.
“Imani,” he said. “You might want to see these.”
He was holding a stack of photos in frames. The top one was my school picture from fifth grade, when my mom made me wear the ugliest shirt ever made. “This used to be on the shelf over there, right?”
“Yes,” Grandpa said. “Janet took them all down after shiva, but we never decided who’d get which.”
I started taking the frames off the pile one by one. Photos of me, Jaime, my cousin Isabel. My parents’ wedding.
“I love this one,” I said with a laugh. It was a shot of Aunt Jess, when she was just three or four, riding a big-wheel tricycle that was covered in stickers, just like the motorcycle she’d ridden to Grandma Anna’s funeral. In the background, on the steps of the house, you could see my mom with a Popsicle in her hand and a smug look on her face, and Uncle Dan pointing at her, crying.
“Some things never change,” Grandpa said with a chuckle.
The pictures got older as the stack went on. Grandpa Fred’s bar mitzvah. Great-Aunt Janet as a baby. Grandma Anna’s wedding. And then there was a photo I’d seen a hundred times—it used to sit on top of the bookshelf in the living room—but had never given a second thought. It was of a young girl sitting at a table, across from a man. The girl (Anna, I realized now) was smiling very faintly. A pretty woman my mom’s age knelt beside her, staring right at the camera with a broad grin.
I gasped. “Is that Hannah?”
“Yep,” Grandpa said. “That looks like her.”
Hannah
! Anna wasn’t lying; she was gorgeous. Curled hair pinned up, perfect teeth, and lips so defined that they almost looked red, even though this photo was black-and-white.
And the man in the picture had to be Max! I could only see his profile, but he looked different than he did in my head. Older, and balder. Look over here, Max, I thought illogically. But he was paying no attention to the camera. Instead he was staring thoughtfully at the table, where there was—I squinted to make sure—a Chinese checkers set.
I didn’t know whether to click my heels or to cry. I wished Madeline were here; she would freak. If Anna’s diary were a book, this photo would be the cover.
“Grandpa Max loved Chinese checkers,” Grandpa Fred told me. “I used to play with him after school. Do you want to keep this picture?”
I swallowed, nodded. Grandpa smiled and handed it to me. This trip felt worthwhile already.
I kept staring at the picture as I walked back to Grandma Anna’s room. I laid it carefully on the bed and stared at it a while longer. Then I slowly opened the closet and found the fur coats.
“Three coats,” Grandpa said, appearing behind me. “Janet took one, I think. I’ll take the others back to your house. I know why fur went out of style. But it is beautiful, isn’t it?”
That was for sure. I reached out and touched the sleeve of one jacket. It was so brown, so smooth and soft. I wondered how many skins it took to make these. Had Anna ever solved the puzzle and helped the factory save money?
“Did Grandma Anna work at the factory when she was an adult?” I asked.
“No,” Grandpa said. “Max took over after his uncles died—they were too cheap to retire, you know. One died at his desk, looking at sales figures.” He chuckled. “But fur started to go out of fashion. Max kept at it, made a nice living. My mom helped out with the books and things, and then she became an accountant. It was rare for women to work in those days, but she did well for herself. Met my dad one day on her lunch break, at the automat.” He started to explain what that was, but I told him I already knew.
“My mom always did our taxes,” Grandpa continued. “She loved it. If there was a mistake, she would spend hours poring over the numbers until she found it. It was like a puzzle to her.”
“She always loved puzzles,” I said.
“Yes, she did,” Grandpa said with a sad smile. After a few seconds, he took out one of the coats. It was very big and very long. He put it on. It fit, but it was clearly meant for a woman. “How do I look?” he said, spinning.
I laughed. Grandpa did another twirl, then took it off and put it back into the closet. Then he pulled out another. “Oh, would you look at that. My mom tried to get Janet to wear this one when she was a teenager, but she refused. It sat in storage for years. I can’t believe it’s here.”
This was the coat Max and Hannah gave Anna for her thirteenth birthday. I knew it, as sure as I know my right hand from my left.
I remembered the first day Anna went to the factory, that buyer asking her to model the coat. How transformed Anna felt. The way Hannah sighed. The feel of your first fur coat.
“It’s probably just about your size,” Grandpa said. “Want to try it on?”
I inhaled slowly. The answer, of course, was yes. Remembering the way Anna felt the silk on her bare arms, I removed my sweatshirt, leaving only a thin layering tee. Grandpa held the coat open, and I slid it on.
The coat was so warm and heavy, it reminded me of when I used to give Jaime piggy-back rides. The silk was cool and smooth on the inside. The fur was soft and lush. Grandpa closed the closet so I could see myself in the mirrored door. I spun slowly, the way Anna did for the buyer.
“Gorgeous,” Grandpa said quietly, his eyes shining. “If only my mother could see you now.”
* * *
• • •
We worked all afternoon, finally stopping for the day at six o’clock. At dinner, Grandpa cracked me up with funny stories he’d heard about Max’s uncles, and a few classic memories about my mom and her siblings when they were kids. He even told a few stories about me and Jaime, which I relished even though I’d heard them ten million times before. Hard to believe I was really the little kid in those stories. I thought about Anna reading her diary in 1950, translating it all into English. That was eight years later, when she was twenty or twenty-one. Did she still feel like the same girl who’d written it?
Grandpa put his arm through mine as we walked back to the apartment. At home I would have slipped away, embarrassed to be out with my grandfather, but tonight I didn’t. It was cold out, but I felt warm and fuzzy, like I had the best family in the world.
“It’s okay to wonder about your past, you know,” Grandpa said as we neared the apartment.
I felt a ball forming in my stomach, threatening to harden every soft feeling from today.
“It’s hard for your mom because she loves you so much,” Grandpa continued. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t be honest with her.”
I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know what to say. Grandpa squeezed my hand tighter in his. When he let go, I felt something firm in my palm. It was a quarter. I looked at Grandpa. “How’d you do that?”
He shrugged. “Magic.”
CHAPTER 35
I’d brought my sleeping bag, assuming I’d sleep on the floor of the living room, but Grandpa insisted I take Grandma Anna’s bed. It was weird, lying there. I exchanged a few texts with Madeline and Ethan, read a little from the book I’d brought, but it was hard to concentrate. I knew I’d have to talk to my mom when I got home, but for now, I wanted to focus on Anna. Today was productive for sure, but I had an itchy sense that there was still more to know. To find.
I thought about the connection Anna described between herself and Belle, like a string tied between paper cups. It was as though the diary had formed a new connection, a thread running between Anna and me, and here in this room, that connection was so electric, it could be an actual telephone wire. It could’ve been creepy—Grandma Anna was dead, after all—but it wasn’t. It was cool.
I closed my eyes. Anna always felt her connection with Belle strongest when she slept. When I fell asleep, would my dreams fill in every remaining blank? It could happen. For weeks I’d slept with Anna’s diary in a shoebox under my bed, and now here I was, lying in her bed.
My eyes snapped open. That was it. The answers were here—I could feel it—but they weren’t in Grandma Anna’s bed. They were under it.
CHAPTER 36
You seriously found this under her bed?”
“I swear. Remember how she kept letters from home under her bed? She did the same as an adult!”
“A shoebox.” Madeline ran her fingers over the smooth cardboard. “Just like you used for her diary.”
“Crazy, right?”
Madeline stared at me, her head shaking slightly. “It almost makes one believe in the paranormal.”
“Almost,” I said with a grin. I’d waited the whole four-hour car ride from New York to show Madeline the contents of this box, and I couldn’t wait a second longer. “Open it!”
She gasped when she lifted the lid, just like I did. Looking at the contents made my skin tingle now, just like it had when I’d opened it for the first time.
“Letters,” I said. “Ticket stubs, photos, playbills.”
“No way,” Madeline whispered. She picked up an envelope, ran her finger over the childish handwriting. It was addressed to Anna Hirsch, Sixty-fifth Street in Brooklyn, New York. What was more amazing was the return address, an apartment in Chicago. And the name: Frida Gottlieb.
“Frida,” Madeline said, her voice full of wonder. She carefully took out the letter and unfolded it.
“It’s in German,” I said.
Madeline stared at it, like if she looked long enough, she’d be able to translate it. I was too excited to let her go at her own pace. I’d sta
yed awake for two hours going through this box Saturday night, and then spent another hour sharing it with Grandpa the next day. I couldn’t wait any longer before showing Madeline the most amazing items.
I rummaged through the box, found one of them: a picture of a boat, drawn in pencil by someone very young. “I think Oliver drew this,” I said.
“Oh my God,” Madeline said. “You’ve got to be right.” She took it from me slowly, but I kept going.
“Her ticket from Fantasia is in here. And one from a Dodgers game in 1943. Oh, and there’s a bowling scorecard. Hannah beat her and Miriam by, like, a hundred points!”
“Are you kidding?”
“Nope. And get this.” I fished around the box until I found the best thing of all.
It took Madeline a second, but then her eyes nearly popped out of her skull. “The photo postcard from Coney Island!” She grabbed it from me.
“They’re all there,” I said. “Max, Hannah, the uncles, Freddy.”
“Their heads really do look like an egg and an onion!” Madeline said with a laugh.
“This must be the hat that blew off on the human roulette wheel,” I said, pointing.
“Who’s that?” Madeline asked.
“Freddy’s brother, Milton.”
“And his girlfriend!”
“Enid.”
“This is incredible.”
“Oh,” I said, “look at this. This must be the letter my grandpa talked about. The one from Anna’s parents to Max’s father.”
Madeline looked at it with wonder. “What language is this?”
“Yiddish. My grandpa told me, but he couldn’t read it.”
She nodded slowly, taking it all in. “Is there anything from later?” Madeline asked. “Like, shortly after the diary ends?”
I knew what she meant, and I’d looked for it too. Some document that gave closure, like a notice from the Luxembourg government that her parents’ bodies had been found in the ruins of Auschwitz or something. But there was nothing so definitive. I couldn’t even find the letter from Kurt, the one that said that Oliver had died. I decided it was a good thing she hadn’t saved it. I told myself that it may have taken years, but she eventually tore it up and tried to move on.
The Length of a String Page 18
