17

1922

Hildemara couldn’t sleep the night before school. She pretended to be asleep when Mama got up and made Papa’s breakfast. She roused Bernhard first and pulled the covers back from Hildemara’s shoulders. “I know you’re awake. Get up and get dressed.”

When Mama gave her a bowl of Müsli, Hildemara couldn’t eat it. Her stomach felt like something had gotten in and kept fluttering as it tried to get out. She looked up at Mama. “I’m sick. I can’t go to school.”

“You’re not sick, and you are going.”

“She is a little pale.” Papa put his palm against Hildie’s forehead. Hildie hoped he would say she had a fever. “She feels cool.”

“She’s scared, that’s all. As soon as she gets there, she’ll find she doesn’t need to be.” Mama jerked her head. “If you don’t eat something, everyone in your class is going to hear your stomach growling by ten in the morning.” Hildemara looked at Clotilde, still bundled in a sleeping bag.

Papa looked at Hildemara. “I can walk them to school.”

“No. They need to learn to stand on their own. They’ll be fine walking by themselves.”

Papa ruffled Bernhard’s slicked-back hair. While Mama ran a comb through it again, Papa kissed Hildemara. “You will meet lots of other little girls your age.” He patted her cheek. When he went out, Mama went with him. When Mama ducked back inside the tent, she didn’t look at Hildemara. She picked up the small buckets with their lunch and told them it was time to be off. She grabbed Bernhard by the shoulder before he went out. “You walk with your sister. You keep an eye on her.”

They hadn’t gone a quarter mile when Bernhard kicked the dust angrily. “Come on, Hildie! Stop dragging your feet!” When she didn’t walk much faster, he started to run. She cried out, but he shouted back at her that she’d have to catch up or walk alone.

Hildemara ran as fast as she could, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to catch him. A stitch in her side made her slow down. She cried out again, tears streaming down her cheeks.

He looked back over his shoulder. Stopping, he put his hands on his hips and waited until she caught up with him. “You’d better stop crying now or they’ll all call you a crybaby.” He stayed beside her the rest of the way.

Children played in the yard. Some stopped to stare when Bernhard and Hildemara came near. Bernhard pushed the gate open. When children came over, Bernhard did all the talking. Hildemara stood beside him, looking from one face to the other, her throat dry. One of the boys looked at her. “Is your sister dumb or something?”

Bernhard’s face turned red. “She’s not dumb.”

When the bell rang, everyone lined up and filed into the building. A slender, dark-haired woman in a navy blue skirt, long-sleeved white blouse, and dark blue knitted sweater told Hildemara to share a desk with Elizabeth Kenney, the pretty girl who had worn the red and green satin dress and shiny black shoes the night of the Christmas pageant. She wore a pretty green dress today. A matching green bow tied her two long, red pigtails back. Elizabeth smiled brightly. Hildemara tried to smile back.

Bernhard made friends right away. A group of boys surrounded him on the playground. Tony Reboli stepped into the circle. “Let’s play a game.” He pushed Bernhard. Laughing, Bernhard pushed back. Tony put more force behind his next push. Bernhard shoved so hard Tony went down. Bernhard stepped forward and extended his hand. Tony allowed himself to be pulled up. Dusting himself off, he suggested they have a race. Tony took off, Tom Hughes, Eddie Rinckel, and Wallie Engles chasing after him. Bernhard caught up easily and passed by Tony, reaching the end of the playground first.

Sitting on a bench under a big elm, Hildemara watched her brother chum around with his new friends. He could run faster, jump higher, and play harder than any boy in school. By the end of the day, only the girls called him Bernhard. All the boys called him Bernie. By the end of the week, everyone wanted to be his best friend. Even the girls followed him around, giggling and whispering, wanting his attention. It amused Hildemara to see how embarrassed that made her older brother.

After two weeks, Hildie still hadn’t made one friend. No one teased her; Bernie made certain of that. But no one paid her any attention. She became Little Sis because that’s what Bernie called her and no one remembered her name. Every recess, while the others played, she sat on a bench by herself and watched. She didn’t know how to join in, and the mere thought of approaching someone and asking permission made her feel sick to her stomach. Only the teacher noticed her.

Mrs. Ransom kept a chart on the wall and put up gold and silver stars, or blue and red dots. Every morning, Hildie ran to the girls’ bathroom first thing to wash. It did no good. Following the Pledge of Allegiance and singing “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” which Hildemara confused with “God Save the King,” Mrs. Ransom checked each child for properly combed hair, washed hands and face, clean nails, and polished shoes. Not once did Hildemara pass inspection.

Once, Mrs. Ransom went so far as to part her hair in a dozen places searching for lice. While the children twittered with laughter, Hildemara sat red-faced and sick with humiliation. “Well, at least you don’t have lice. But you’re not clean enough to earn even a red dot. You might earn a silver star if you bothered to polish your shoes.”

When Hildemara said she needed polish for her shoes, Mama turned around and put her hands on her hips. “Polish? With all the sand and dust you walk through to get to school? We’re not wasting money on polish!”

Hildemara dampened the hem of her dress to clean her shoes, but then Mrs. Ransom said her dress looked unwashed.

“Let me see your hands, Hildemara Waltert. Still chewing your nails, too. It’s a disgusting habit. You’ll get worms.” The children around Hildie twittered. “Hold up your arms. Don’t put them down until I tell you.” Hildemara kept her hands in the air, her face burning with shame as Mrs. Ransom pointed. “Look at this, children. When you wash your hands, wash your arms as well. I don’t want to see rivulets of dirt.” She shook her head at Hildemara. “You can put your arms down now. Next time, don’t just splash a little water on yourself in the girls’ bathroom and call it a bath!”

“The Walterts live in a tent down by the irrigation ditch, Mrs. Ransom.”

“I know where they live, Elizabeth, and it’s no excuse for being filthy. If she bothered to use a little soap with the water, she might earn a silver star.” Mrs. Ransom moved on to the next child. Betty Jane Marrow received a gold star every day.

Hot tears burned and Hildemara struggled to keep them back. She bit her lower lip and kept her hands clenched in her lap. She could feel Elizabeth Kenney looking at her, but wouldn’t look back. A boy behind them leaned forward and yanked hard on Hildemara’s hair. Elizabeth swung around. “Stop it!”

Mrs. Ransom turned and pinned Hildemara with her eyes. “Go sit on the stool in the corner.”

Elizabeth gasped. “She didn’t do anything!”

“All right. That’s enough. Let’s get to work.”

When recess came, Hildemara went out to her bench. Elizabeth Kenney left her friends and approached her. “May I sit with you, Hildemara?”

Hildemara shrugged, torn between resentment and admiration. Elizabeth had a whole row of gold stars on the class chart. The only one who had more was Betty Jane Marrow. Elizabeth looked plump and pretty. No one told her she looked skinny as a rail and pale as a ghost.

“I live on Elm Street. It’s not far. Just across the road and down a few blocks. You walked by my house once. I saw you through the window. My house is just a few doors down from the library. Do you know where that is? You can come to my house before school, if you like. We have hot water and . . .”

Hildemara’s face flamed. “I wash every morning. I’m clean before I come to school.”

“It’s a long walk from where you live. I’d be covered with dust and dirt, too, if I had to walk to school every day.”

“How do you know where we live? Did Bernie tell you?”

“My mother brought Christmas dinner to your family. She brought you and your sister dolls.”

“Did she make the rag doll?”

“No. It was from the church rummage box.” Elizabeth’s friends called for her to come back. Elizabeth said she’d come in a minute. “My mother says Mrs. Ransom treats you badly because her brother got killed in the war. Your father is German, isn’t he? That makes you German, too.” When her friends called again, Elizabeth stood. “I guess I’d better go. Would you like to play with us, Hildemara?”

“Elizabeth!”

Hildemara looked at the other girls. They called for Elizabeth, not her. Did they think of her in the same way Mrs. Ransom did? Throat tight, Hildie shook her head. When Elizabeth walked away, Hildie watched Bernie playing marbles with his friends on the other side of the playground. Why didn’t anyone care that he was German? Everyone liked her brother. Mrs. Ransom would probably like him, too, if he were one of her students.

Mama made her and Bernie do homework every afternoon when they got home. “You have to do it now before it’s too dark to see. The sooner you get it done, the sooner you can go out to play. Now, read it again.”

Bernie protested.

“You’ll never get anywhere in the world if you can’t read better than that, Bernhard. Read it again.”

After two months, Mrs. Ransom pinned a note to Hildemara’s sweater. Mama unpinned it and read it. “She says you’re a slow reader. You’re not a slow reader. What is this note all about? She thinks you’re stupid. No child of mine is stupid! Bring your book home tomorrow.”

When school ended the next day, Hildemara took a reading book from the shelf.

“Where do you think you’re going with that book?” Mrs. Ransom blocked the doorway.

“Mama wants me to bring it home.”

“Stealing! That’s what you’re about!”

“No!” Blubbering, Hildemara tried to explain.

“I don’t care what your mother wants, Hildemara.” She snatched the book back. “Tell her to take you to the library. These books are expensive and paid for by American taxpayers. You don’t have a right to it.”

When Hildemara came inside the tent without the book, Mama wanted to know why. “Mrs. Ransom wouldn’t let me have it. She said you should take me to the library.”

Mama’s eyes went hot, but she calmed down by the end of dinner. “We’ll go to the library on Saturday.” She put her fingers beneath Hildemara’s chin and made her look up. “Try to make a friend. One friend can make all the difference as to whether you will be happy or miserable with the world. Rosie Gilgan is my friend and has been since the first day of school. She comes from a wealthy family who owns a hotel. I was a tailor’s daughter. She lived in a large house. Our family lived upstairs from the shop. I could share my thoughts and feelings with Rosie and never fear she would tell tales or make fun of me. Rosie was always kind, a true Christian, and I knew I could trust her. You find someone like that, Hildemara Rose, and you will be a much happier girl than you are right now.”

“Did you name me after your friend, Mama?”

“Yes. I did. I hope you’ll grow up to have her fine qualities.”

Hildemara imagined Rosie Gilgan had been fearless like Mama and popular like Elizabeth Kenney, with no worries about how others might treat her. Hildemara cried herself to sleep. She wished she could get sick like she had on the train. Maybe then Mama would let her stay home from school. Maybe then she would never have to go back and face Mrs. Ransom.

No amount of crying and begging changed Mama’s mind, even on Saturday, when Mama found out she couldn’t borrow books until the family had a permanent address.

Papa leaned close to the lamp and translated a story from his German Bible every evening. One evening he would pick from the Old Testament, the next from the New. Bernie liked to hear about warriors like Gideon and David and Goliath or the prophet Elijah calling down fire on the altar and then killing all the priests of Baal. Clotilde didn’t care what Papa read. She crawled into his lap and fell asleep within minutes.

Hildemara liked the stories of Ruth and Esther, but tonight she didn’t want to get into a squabble with her brother and sister after being picked on all day by Mrs. Ransom. She had heard Mama and Papa arguing earlier, and she didn’t want to add fuel to Mama’s temper by complaining about anything.

“No warriors or war stories tonight, Bernhard.” Papa tweaked Clotilde’s nose. “And no love stories. You’re going to hear Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.”

Papa read for a long time. Bernie usually sat cross-legged, eager to hear. Tonight, he flopped on his cot, his hands behind his head, half-dozing. When Clotilde fell asleep, Mama tucked her into her blanket sack. Hildemara poked the needle through the sampler Mama gave her. No matter how hard she tried, she made a mess of the stitches. Mama took it and plucked at the knotted thread. She handed it back. “Do it again.” Hildie hung her head, wanting to cry. Even Mama didn’t approve of her efforts to do things right.

Papa kept reading.

Hildemara didn’t understand most of it. What did it mean to be salt and light? Why would someone hide a lantern under a basket? Did they want to start a fire? What did adultery mean? When he started reading about enemies, Hildemara took slower, more careful stitches. “Love your enemies,” Jesus said. Did that mean she had to love Mrs. Ransom? Mrs. Ransom hated her. Surely that made her an enemy. “Pray for those who persecute you,” Jesus said. “What does persecute mean?”

Mama stabbed a needle through one of Papa’s work shirts. “It’s when someone treats you cruelly, when they spitefully use you.”

Papa left the Bible open in his lap. “Jesus was treated cruelly, Hildemara. When He was nailed to the cross, He prayed for the people who put Him there. He asked God to forgive them because they didn’t know what they were doing.”

“Are we supposed to do that?”

Mama gave Papa an angry glance. “No one can be as perfect as Jesus.”

Papa didn’t look at her, but spoke to Hildemara instead. “God says if you love only those who love you, then you’re no better than those who are cruel to you. If you are kind only to friends, you are no different than your enemy.”

Mama tied a knot and snipped it. “That doesn’t mean you let people step all over you. You have to stand up—”

“Marta.” Papa’s quiet voice held a note of warning that made Mama press her lips together. Papa put his hand on Hildemara’s head. “It takes someone very special to love an enemy and pray for someone who is unkind.”

“She’s not Jesus, Niclas.” Mama tossed Papa’s shirt onto his bed. “And if she was, she’d end up like Him, too. Nailed to a cross!” She went outside the tent, arms crossed against the cold night air.

Papa closed the Bible. “Time for bed.”

Lying on her cot, Hildemara heard Mama and Papa talking in low voices outside the tent wall.

“One of us should go and tell that—”

“It’d only make things worse, and you know it.”

“She’s having a hard enough time without you telling her she has to put up with people walking all over her. She has to learn to stand up for herself.”

“There are different ways of standing.” Papa’s voice lowered even more.

Hildemara muffled her crying in her blanket. She didn’t want Mama and Papa arguing about her. She prayed Mrs. Ransom would stop persecuting her. She prayed Mrs. Ransom would be nice tomorrow. She thought about what Elizabeth Kenney had told her about Mrs. Ransom’s brother. Hildemara knew how sad she would be if anything bad happened to Bernie. Just thinking about Bernie dying made Hildemara feel even worse. Hildemara hadn’t done anything to deserve Mrs. Ransom’s hatred. Maybe Mrs. Ransom was just like those people who killed Jesus. Maybe Mrs. Ransom didn’t know what she was doing, either.

All the way to school the next morning, Hildemara prayed quietly. Bernie told her to stop mumbling. “If you start whispering to yourself, people are gonna think you’re crazy!”

The rest of the way to school, Hildemara thought her prayers instead of saying them aloud. When Mrs. Ransom led the children into the classroom, Hildie thought a prayer for her. Jesus, forgive Mrs. Ransom for being so mean to me. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.

The prayer didn’t change anything. In fact, everything got a whole lot worse. When the hygienic inspection was over, Mrs. Ransom grabbed Hildemara by the ear and dragged her from her seat. “Come up here, Hildemara Waltert, and let the other children have a good look at you!”

Heart thumping, Hildemara tried not to cry. Mrs. Ransom let go of her ear long enough to grab her shoulders and spin her around to face the class. “Hold up your hands, Hildemara. Show these children what I have to look at every morning.” Hildemara closed her eyes tightly, wishing she could become invisible. Mrs. Ransom slapped the back of her head. “Do what I tell you!” Trembling, face on fire, Hildemara held up her hands. “Look, children! Have you ever seen such disgusting fingernails? She’s chewed them down to the quick.”

For once, no one laughed or even twittered.

“Go to your seat, Hildemara Waltert.”

When Papa finished reading the Bible that evening, Hildemara asked if he had fought in the war. He frowned. “Why do you ask such a question?”

“Mrs. Ransom’s brother died in the war.”

“I was in Canada when it started.”

Mama interrupted before he could go on reading the Bible. “Had your papa been in Germany, he might have been killed, too, Hildemara. Hundreds of thousands died: Frenchmen, Englishmen, Canadians, Americans, and Germans.”

Bernie asked who started it.

Papa closed the Bible. “It’s too complicated to explain, Sohn. One angry man shot a royal and two countries went to war. Then friends of those countries took sides, and soon the whole world was fighting.”

“Except Switzerland.” Mama went on sewing. “They were smart enough to stay out of it.”

Papa opened his Bible again. “Yes, but they made plenty of money on it.”

Hildemara couldn’t make sense of it. “Did anybody you know die, Papa?”

“My father. My brothers.”

Mama’s eyes went wide. “This is the first I’ve heard of them.”

Papa gave her a sad smile. “I wasn’t hatched, Marta. I had a mother and father and brothers and sisters. My mother died when I was Hildemara’s age. My sisters were much older and married. I don’t know what happened to any of them. I’ve written letters.” He shook his head, his eyes moist. “Only God knows what became of them.”

When Hildemara got up the next morning, she asked Mama if there would be another war. “I don’t know, Hildemara.” She sounded angry and impatient. She finished braiding Hildemara’s hair and turned her around. “Why all these questions about the war? The war is over!”

Not for some people. She didn’t want to tell Mama what Mrs. Ransom did to her every day because Mama would get mad, and if Mama got mad, Mrs. Ransom would have all the more reason to be angry with Germans.

Hildemara felt sorry for Mrs. Ransom. She must be very sad to be so angry all the time. Hildemara prayed Mrs. Ransom would find another way to get over her brother’s death, and not take it out on her.

Mama tipped Hildemara’s chin. “Who told you Mrs. Ransom’s brother was killed in the war?”

“Elizabeth Kenney.”

“Well, it’s no excuse. God says not to hold a grudge. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?” When Mama’s eyes grew moist, she stood abruptly and turned away. “Don’t forget your lunch bucket. You’d better hurry, or Bernhard will be halfway to school before you catch up.”

When Hildemara looked back, she saw Mama standing outside the tent, her arms wrapped around herself, watching. Hildemara ran down the road.