I felt strange spending the rest of the afternoon with Mychailo after his Nazi remark. It got me wondering, though. At the DP camp, most people could speak many languages, but no one sounded quite like me. When we first arrived, some people had commented that I didn’t sound like my mother and we didn’t look like each other, but Marusia would always hush them.

Miss MacIntosh had Mychailo work on his Composition at the kitchen table and she continued to go through the word book with me. I was glad that he wasn’t sitting right beside me.

Whenever we paused, I would glance up at the photograph of the soldier on Miss MacIntosh’s mantel. Once, she followed my gaze and sighed. “I was going to marry him,” she said. “He died in France, fighting the Nazis.”

What did Miss MacIntosh think of me? With my blond hair and blue eyes and funny way of talking, did she think I was a Nazi too? That I was responsible for her fiancé’s death? My throat choked with tears.

Marusia thought it would be good for me to remember all that I could about the time before we met. She always insisted that I had nothing to feel guilty about. I tried to remember, but all that came to me were bits and pieces. Nothing that made sense. It was all so confusing. I looked up at this kind lady, Miss MacIntosh, and said, “I am sorry he died.”

Even though the war hadn’t come to Canada, her fiancé had gone to the war. I guess this is why it was called a world war.

The afternoon sped by. I was so caught up in learning the new words that when there was a tapping on the front door, I jumped in surprise. When Miss MacIntosh opened the door, there stood Marusia, looking sad and tired.

Miss MacIntosh let me take the word book home so that Marusia and Ivan and I could all practice our English together. I slipped my hand into Marusia’s and gave it a squeeze as we walked down the street. She looked at me, startled. Her eyes filled with tears, but she smiled.

“I will find a job,” she said. “Don’t you worry.”

That made me smile. For as long as I could remember, all I did was live day by day. It meant that I didn’t worry. But it also meant that I had stopped hoping.

As we walked down the street hand in hand, Marusia looked at me. “What is the matter, Nadia?” she asked.

I didn’t say anything for a bit. We had been through this all before, but then I blurted out, “I’m a Nazi, aren’t I?”

Marusia stopped walking. She turned and looked me in the eye. “No, Sonechko, you are not a Nazi.”

“Am I German?”

Marusia shook her head.

“Then why do I look like a Nazi?” I asked. “The other children in the DP camp didn’t look like me and they didn’t sound like me. Mychailo sounds different from me. You sound different from me.”

Marusia’s eyes filled with tears. “Has Mychailo said something to you?”

I don’t like to snitch and I don’t like to lie. “He and I don’t sound the same.”

“You are not a Nazi and you are not German,” she said firmly.

“But I remember the place that you stole me from!” I said.

Marusia put one hand on her hip and pointed a finger at me. “Have I ever treated you unkindly?”

“No.”

“Have I treated you like anything less than I would if you were my own flesh?”

“No.”

“Then trust me when I tell you that I never stole you and you are not a Nazi.”

She reached out to grab my hand but I held it behind my back. I was furious with her, although I didn’t quite know why. We walked the rest of the way home in silence.

When we got to our house, we saw a truck filled with sheets of plywood parked in front of it. Two men that I recognized from the night before—one of them was Mychailo’s father—were unloading wood from the back of the truck. A third man was holding our front door open.

“Come on, let’s see what they’re doing!” I said to Marusia.

We followed the men into the living room. I blinked in surprise. Just yesterday, this space was nothing more than bare wooden frames, but now plywood sheets had been nailed over the framework, making it an enclosed room. I stepped into the bedroom. Ivan had taken his shirt off and his back glistened with sweat. He was kneeling in the corner, carefully hammering in small nails along one side of a piece of plywood that another man held in place. Three walls of the bedroom were already covered.

Before the walls went up, the house had seemed open and airy and free. I wish it could have stayed like that. But I breathed in deeply the scent of fresh sawdust and pasted a smile onto my face for Ivan.

He looked up when he heard us step in. “Here are my girls,” he said, grinning.

“You are such a fast builder!” said Marusia.

“I wanted to have the walls up before you got to Brantford,” said Ivan. “But I’ve been working overtime the past few weeks and the days got away from me.” He gestured toward the other men. “What would I do without my good friends?”

“You all must be hungry,” said Marusia. “We shall make you something to eat.”

The sound of nails echoed through the kitchen as I helped Marusia put something quick together. Once the men had eaten and finished up their work, they left, promising to be back the next day.

Ivan and Marusia sat on the cinder-block step, sipping mugs of tea after everyone had left. I sat on my swing and listened to their conversation.

“When do you sleep, Ivashko?” Marusia asked, brushing his forehead with her fingertips. “You barely closed your eyes last night before it was time for you to get up.”

“I will sleep once the house is finished,” said Ivan.

“Can you take a rest now?” asked Marusia. “Why don’t you lie down on the mattress?”

“It’s still light out,” he protested. “I can get some more work done on the house.”

“Come.” Marusia took his hand. “We’ll lie down for a few minutes together. Just to rest our eyes.”

I wanted to give them some time on their own. After all, they hadn’t been married for very long, and they had been apart for a year. I got up from the swing and headed toward the front yard.

“Where are you going?” called Marusia.

“Exploring,” I called back, trying hard to look happy.

“Stay in the neighborhood,” she said. “And come home before it gets dark.”

I smiled to myself at that. Did Marusia really think I would go very far? I sat on the front steps for a while and looked up and down the street. Maybe I would just sit here for an hour. I could hear children playing in the distance and a car or two passed. Once, a man wearing a suit and carrying a lunch box walked by. He tipped his hat to me and smiled, so I smiled back. That small gesture made me feel safer, I don’t know why. Maybe this new life we had invented would be all right.

Mychailo had said that Central School was down the street from me. It couldn’t be very far. I took a deep breath and stood up. I am a Canadian girl now, I told myself. And Canadian girls walk down the street by themselves without fear.

I forced myself to walk away from the house and down the street. I felt a little bit scared to be doing this, but I was proud of myself too. And the soft breeze on my face felt good. I walked past Miss MacIntosh’s house until I got to George Street and then I saw what had to be the school: a huge old yellow brick building two and a half stories high, with a circular driveway in the front and a huge lawn.

There weren’t many buildings this big left standing in Germany. It felt eerily safe to be walking in this unfamiliar area all by myself. There were no bombs, no men in uniform, no burnt-out buildings, no barbed wire.

I walked up to one of the windows and peered in. It was a classroom with rows of desks and various posters pinned to the wall. This one had a portrait of King George above the chalkboard—I recognized him from some of the coins I’d seen.

Which rulers had been on the walls of my other classrooms? I drew a blank. I sat down in the grass and leaned against the wall of the school. It wasn’t time to go home yet. Perhaps I could walk just a bit farther? Three blocks away was a beautiful park, a church, and some rich-looking buildings across the road.

The building beside the church caught my eye. It had four marble pillars and a set of white steps leading up to fancy double doors on the second floor. I walked up the steps and stood on my toes so I could peer through the glass. I could see a marble entranceway, and beyond that, a room lined with books. How I longed to touch those books. To smell them …

“It’s the library,” said a familiar voice behind me.

“Why did you creep up on me like that?” I said, turning to face Mychailo.

He had a silly look on his face. “I didn’t,” he said. “You just didn’t hear me.”

I tried to stare him down but then noticed that he was holding a thick book.

“Did you get that from in there?” I asked.

“It is a library,” he said. “What do you think?”

“How much did it cost?”

“It’s free for me to read,” he said. “As long as I return it.”

“Who gets to use the library?” I asked.

“Anyone,” he said. “You just have to fill out a form and they give you a library card. Then you can take out books as often as you want, as long as you return them after you’ve read them.”

“Who decides what books you can read?”

“It’s not like that in Canada,” said Mychailo. “You can read any book in the children’s department, as long as you have a library card.”

“Can I go in now?”

“It just closed,” he said. “But do you want to go tomorrow after our class with Miss MacIntosh?”

I was beginning to warm to Mychailo. He could be rough and rude, but that could be said of any boy. This one liked books.