My Family for the War (24 page)

When Mrs. Stone pushed Rachel and Luke into the room, they found me on the floor in front of the changing table, filling page after page of my writing pad. But I was writing neither to Mamu, who I felt had betrayed me, nor to Amanda, who hadn’t put up the least bit of a fight on my behalf. I wrote to Bekka, a friend like no other I would ever find, and I wrote as if this were my very last chance to do so.

I told her what had happened over the last few days, described the evacuation, my attempted escape, the Stones. I comforted both of us with the knowledge that our wonderful life with the Shepards wouldn’t have lasted anyway, and at least Bekka would never have to meet the Stones. I told her about Hazel, about the lessons on the village green, and about my walk with Dolf.

But I also told her what I had been doing ever since I’d arrived in England, and what I would continue to do whenever I had an important decision to make: I thought about what Bekka would have done—and then did just that!

I don’t remember whether I wrote to her that I considered her to be the other half of myself—the braver, smarter, more loveable side. Maybe I just wish I had written that. Whatever the case, I have thought so ever since.

My mother forwarded my letter from Holland, and it wasn’t returned to her. So Bekka must have gotten it. What happened after that, I’ll probably never find out. Maybe she lost the envelope with Mamu’s address, and so she wasn’t able to reach me anymore.

Not a day went by that I didn’t wait for her reply.

Chapter 13

The more the war turned in favor of the Germans, the more hostile my classmates’ glares became. The Red Army marched into Poland, and Warsaw fell before September was over. At the beginning of October the news of Poland’s final surrender reached us. In my personal war in Tail’s End, there were five children in particular I avoided: four boys and a girl named Karen.

I had given up wondering why anything was happening to me. In Germany I was hated for being Jewish, in England I wasn’t Jewish enough, and now that all my connections to Germany had been severed, I was suddenly supposed to be what the Nazis had denied me my whole life: German! At least my new schoolmates didn’t dare bother me during lessons, or in the presence of Mrs. Collins. It was on the way home that I had to be careful, and as October wore on and the looks from my classmates became more intense, I understood very clearly that I better be the first to leave once school was over.

By then, we were being taught in a side room of the
church, where chairs and a few tables had been organized. I usually sat next to Hazel, who was still the only one who would let me. Once during a gas mask drill I did sit next to Karen for two hours, but only because she didn’t recognize me.

The battered box for the gas mask dangled from my neck on the day that my strategy didn’t work. Mrs. Collins had instituted a rotating classroom duty, and it was bound to be my turn at some point. After I had wiped the blackboard, emptied the trash bin, and arranged the chairs, I already knew what would be waiting for me when I left. The Five, as I called them in secret, were sitting on the edge of the village well. From there they could keep watch over the entire street down to the fork that led to Tail’s Mews, and all they had to do was wait for me to walk into their trap.

Survival plan,
I thought… and was surprised by my hesitation.

I certainly hadn’t neglected to scout out a couple of escape routes and hiding places! My practiced eye had automatically sought out hedges and piles of wood whenever I walked past them, but on this afternoon I didn’t even attempt to escape. Instead of the hiding places I had discovered over the past few weeks, there was just one thought in my head:
If I run now, I’ll never stop running away.

The Five were just as surprised as I was when I marched straight toward them. But then Jeremy jumped threateningly from the well.

“Hey, Nazi! Stop right there!”

“My name is Frances,” I retorted in a voice that was a little too high.

He stood directly in front of me, but I noticed that he wasn’t quite so sure of himself. “If you want to beat me up, then kindly pick just one of you to do it,” I said with a bit more courage. “Five against one—only Nazis do that.”

I could already tell from the looks they exchanged that they wouldn’t do anything to me. “Search her,” ordered Carl, their tall leader. I readily handed over my schoolbag, jacket, and the box with the gas mask to Jeremy. Jeremy passed the items on to the others, who inspected them silently. It was obvious that they felt rather stupid as they did so.

“There are pictures in the gas mask too,” I informed Karen, who had opened the little tin that held my photographs.

“Shut up,” she countered roughly, but nevertheless looked at what I had hidden in the rubber vent inside my mask.

“Who’s that?” she asked, frowning.

“My brother, Gary. He’s in the navy… but you can see that.”

“Quick—give her the bag!”

The hasty command came from Carl, and as we looked up we saw Mrs. Collins stroll across the square. Schoolbag, tin, gas mask, its empty box, and my jacket were all simultaneously shoved into my hands, and I stood there looking like I had just raided a secondhand store.

“We’re not done with you!” hissed Carl. “Be at the bunker in an hour!”

“I’ll try,” I said. “But when I get home, I have to work for my host family.”

“Fine, we’ll wait until five. But you better show up, or we’ll have another chat after school tomorrow, and that won’t be so pleasant.”

I watched them as they took off across the square, then ran back to the Stones’ house. Dishes from breakfast and lunch, two bedrooms to clean, maybe a little ironing and chopping vegetables… I could have it done by four at the latest. All of a sudden, I could hardly wait to meet the others at the bunker!

The bunker was in the woods in between Tail’s End and Tail’s Mews. It was a relic from the Great War, and so well hidden that from a distance it might have been mistaken for a normal hill. But when I came running with Dolf shortly after four, no one was around. “Hello? Anyone here?” I yelled, walking around and then to the top of the hill, and looked around, disappointed. “Where are you, then? You said you’d wait until five!”

My voice echoed through the trees, and the woods answered with a silence like I had never heard before. There wasn’t the slightest whisper from the dry leaves of the trees; not a single bird sang. Only a tiny rustling noise behind me, and it stopped so abruptly that it could only mean one thing: Whoever made the noise had frozen in mid-step. I stopped breathing. My body was seized by a force over which I had no control. The hairs on Dolf’s neck stood on end like a ragged gray brush, and although he didn’t make a sound, I could see him baring his fangs.

The invasion!

A twig snapped, sounding like a shot from a pistol. “Ey, Dolf! Run!” I screamed as I let go of his leash. Branches struck my face, and I collided with something large, soft, and loud. I tried to scramble onward, and was thrown onto my back.

“Watch out, you idiot!” screamed Karen, whom I had pulled to the ground with me.

I opened my eyes and realized they were all there—the Five who had told me to meet them there, as well as half a dozen others. Carl’s group and the gang led by Lesley and Wesley, the Howard twins, stood around me as if I were a wild animal they had just trapped.

“Get up!” snarled Wesley, and gave me a light kick. I jumped up quickly.

“Hey!” Carl butt in. “She’s ours! We’re the ones who brought her!”

“So you are, you git… A brother in the navy—rubbish! That could be a picture of anyone. And did you hear what she called her dog?”

“What then?” Distrustful looks wandered back and forth between Dolf and me, and I obediently opened my mouth to call him, “Ey, Dolf…”

Then it struck me like lightning. After more than four weeks with the Stones, I finally understood the poor dog’s name. “Only Nazis name their dogs Adolf,” asserted Wesley.

“Nonsense,” I said reflexively. “They wouldn’t dare. What do you think would happen if they went around in public calling, ‘Sit, Adolf! Stay, Adolf! Get lost, Adolf!’”

Some of my captors snickered. “Only enemies of the Nazis think that’s funny,” I continued, feeling bolder. What was the point of this strange meeting? Somewhere in my belly I had the feeling there wouldn’t be much of that boldness left if this lasted too much longer.

“Say something in German,” Wesley’s sister Lesley ordered.

“How do you get to the beach, please?” I asked politely in German.

“No,
real
German! Loud!”

I thought for a moment, then yelled with all my strength, “You stupid morons with your rotten old bunker! Scaring girls and dogs, that’s all you know how to do!”

They were delighted. “What does that mean?” asked Lesley eagerly.

“It means ‘Everyone gather at the bunker for the attack,’” I answered, and then wanted to go home even more urgently, because Wesley, Lesley, and Carl signaled to each other, then stepped aside and had a whispered conversation.

“I think I’d better be going now,” I announced as casually as I could and reached for Adolf’s leash.

A boot appeared and stomped down on the leash. My eyes slowly made their way up Wesley’s leg. “As of today,” he said, “you’re a German spy. Sometimes for us, sometimes for the others. When you get captured, your side will try to free you before your enemies have gotten you to confess your secrets. Understand?”

What could I do? There were twelve of them. They slapped me playfully on the back and immediately started arguing about which of the two gangs would be the first to capture and tie me up the next day! I comforted myself with the thought that being a German spy was better than having no friends at all.

The situation between the Stones and me was more than a truce and less than genuine peace, but at least it was some kind of an agreement. They still expected me to work hard
for them, but now they took care to treat me decently—as if their own fate was intertwined with mine. I got plenty to eat, was allowed to take my mattress into the larger bedroom shared by Herbert and Pearl, and always had the afternoon off as soon as the work was done.

Sometimes there was even conversation. “How’s your brother faring in the navy?” asked Mr. Stone.

“He’s in a Merchant Marine convoy, making sure the German U-boats don’t sink our supply ships,” I answered with pride. “Two months of war and still no attack on London! Three children from Finchley are already back with their families.”

Mr. Stone shook his head. “Funny war, this! Britons under French command—unbelievable—and everyone’s sitting patiently behind the Maginot Line and watching the Germans as they build their fortifications.”

It was true. The “Sitzkrieg” on the French border wasn’t exactly inspiring for our war games.

Walter was delighted to receive mail from “the underground,” as he called it, and reciprocated with lively descriptions of his attempts to find his way home after dark. The blackout was in effect in London—streetlights weren’t turned on and every household was required to hang blackout curtains over their windows. In an attempt to confuse any invading Germans, all street and place-name signs were removed as well, a measure that so far had only caused exasperation for the British. I tried to imagine how they wandered without direction through the darkness of their cities, falling victim to the cars whose headlights could not be turned on. “Add
to that the fog,” wrote Walter, “and the best you can do is to crouch in a corner and communicate by calls as soon as you hear footsteps.”

But the most surprising message from Walter arrived in November.

I had to read that paragraph several times before I grasped his words. “As you know,” Walter had written, but I hadn’t known—this was the first I’d heard about Uncle Matthew going to France, even though I got mail every week from Amanda! She hadn’t said anything to me about it.

Why did she write me at all if she only wrote lies all the time? Because keeping secrets is also lying—she had to know that! I would have been one hundred percent on her side. I was so angry with Uncle Matthew for leaving Amanda alone that I could hardly sleep that night. But by the next morning,
my fury at Amanda took the upper hand, and I decided not to answer her again until she finally told me the truth.

Which she did a week later. In a cheerful tone, she described her struggles with the film projector, which behaved completely differently with Walter than it did for her! Uncle Matthew was already on the Continent, “following that call to which the average female ear is obviously completely deaf.”