My mom left for work early the next morning, which was fine, because I couldn’t decide if I was going to apologize or not. Dad and Jaime acted like nothing had happened last night. I was still feeling guilty. All morning, my body was doing the things it was supposed to do—shower, brush teeth, eat a pack of mini muffins for breakfast on the way to school—but, as my tennis coach would say, my head was not in the game.
I wished I could ride the Cyclone and have my thoughts Hoovered through my ears and into outer space. But no such luck. They stayed in my brain, screwing with my focus and making me do ridiculous things. I got chicken nuggets at lunch, totally forgetting until I bit into one that the cafeteria might as well bread their chicken nuggets with cardboard. I accidentally volunteered to stand in front of the whole class and act out a scene with Magda—entirely in Spanish. And after school I changed into my tennis clothes, stretched, and filled my water bottle, only realizing when I got to the courts that there wasn’t practice today.
“What is up with me today?” I shouted, pounding the net with my racquet.
“I don’t know!” shouted some older kid who was walking by. His friends laughed and then ran away. Whatever.
I couldn’t bring myself to go home yet, and I didn’t feel like hanging out with Madeline either. I walked over to the edge of the court, sat down against the edge of the fence, and pulled out the diary.
Wednesday, October 15, 1941
Dear Belle,
I went to school today. Hannah was so excited and nervous, like it was her first day of school. She and Max presented me a nice leather book bag as a gift . . . this angered me at first. I thanked them of course, and I know they meant well, but I wish they’d spent that money on bringing my family instead of a leather bag. When I got to school, however, I was glad to have it, to be plain. Everyone else had a nice bag, and to carry my books or use my old bag would have drawn more attention to me. I just want to blend in and get by. Only one teacher (“homeroom”) wanted I stand in front of the room for an introduction, so the rest of the day I was able to drift along without notice.
How strange to be at school and not have anyone know me, or mistake me for you. A girl in my math class invited me to sit at her lunch table, but I told her I was going home at lunch, which is what Hannah and I planned. My heart started beating quickly at the invitation, so I was glad to have an excuse. But then, walking to and from the apartment, I was sad and wished I accepted. You would have accepted without a care. You probably be spending the evening with that girl and her friends tonight, and by tomorrow every other girl in the seventh grade would beg to sit with you at lunch. I don’t need that much popular, but it would be nice to make a friend beside Freddy (especially since he is still in elementary school . . . when he bothers to attend). I will try to channel you, the bold twin, and be braver and more fun. I told Hannah I will try eating lunch at school tomorrow. I don’t need to listen to the next episode of “The Romance of Helen Trent.” (This a radio “soap opera” she always likes at lunch time.)
After school, I took the subway to the factory. I used the nail getter on the floor and went to the stationer to buy more pens and ink. I helped Max arrange some pelts on the table as well. He is always staring at these things, arrange the strips of skins in different ways. When I help, I hand him pins in silence, much like the way we play Chinese checkers. Today he asked if school was okay, and I said yes, and that was all. He is so different from Hannah! She would want for me to perform a play of the whole morning while we ate lunch. I do hope Hannah gets to meet you soon. You would be fast friends, so much that Hannah will probably wish they sent the other twin from the first day. I wonder if Mama and Papa believe they made a mistake to send me. I remember the way Papa took my shoulders in his hands before I left. He said, “Be brave, Anna. You’re going to be brilliant.”
Tell Papa I’m trying. I’m trying my best.
Love,
Anna
Thursday, October 16, 1941
Ma très chère Belle,
Today I took your favorite class . . . French! Hearing French was like jumping into a cold lake . . . startling at first, but then you start swimming, and it feels natural and refreshing. The other students are just starting out, so their French is very poor. Much, much worse than my English! Mme. Veron called me to her desk after class. She asked me where I was from, and she became excited when I told her. She moved here from Paris in 1936! She has never been to Luxembourg, but she used to vacation in Marseille, close to where we would go with Mama’s family!
She said my French is very good (which it is, of course, though I have not spoken in these many months) so she will see about if I can transfer to the 8th-grade class. It will still be easy for me, but she thinks it might be “un peu plus interessant, n’est-ce pas?” To be plain, I don’t mind having 1 easy class, since I must concentrate so heavy in English the rest of the day, but I daren’t say so. Mme. Veron had another idea as well, one that I liked better.
She said she has a student who is struggling. She’s in 8th grade, name Miriam. She scarcely got by last year, and then forgot everything over the summer, according to Mme. Veron. She said, “She’s very sweet, though. You will like her. Perhaps the two of you can meet during lunch once or twice a week. You can help her with French, and she can help you with English.”
I said I would like that, and I meaned it. Before I left, Mme. Veron took me in her arms and kissed both my cheeks. She said, “The transition can be hard. It is still hard, even for me. And the news from home . . .” She closed her eyes and shook her head . . . she understands. “If you need someone to talk to, when the words won’t come in English, you can always come to me.”
Would you believe I started to cry? It was so sudden, I couldn’t stop myself. Mme. Veron gave me a hug again, and even though I knew her less than one hour, it did not seem strange to be crying into her shoulder. When I stopped finally and pulled away, I saw that she was crying too.
“Hey,” said a familiar voice. I turned around, which was really awkward, since I was so close to the fence. It was Ethan. He was wearing jeans and a jacket, because he’s not an idiot.
“Hey,” I said. I closed the diary and placed it in my backpack.
“Practicing on an off day? You’re such a Williams.”
I tried to think of something witty, but thinking clearly wasn’t my thing today. Better to tell the truth. “I thought it was a Thursday. I’m stupid, I know.”
Ethan walked onto the court. He took off his backpack and sat down next to me. Well, pretty close. We both leaned against the fence. “Once,” he said, “I got up at six forty-five, showered, got dressed, ate breakfast, and walked halfway to school before I realized it was a Saturday.”
I looked at him with my eyes wide, my mouth halfway open and halfway smiling. “No way.”
“You’re right, no way. I just wanted to make you feel better.”
I punched his arm lightly. “Hey!”
“Oh!” Ethan said. “But I did stay up late last night to finish that essay for Mrs. Magill’s class.”
I cocked my head. “Why? That’s not due till next week.”
“Exactly.” His voice cracked on the ack part, but he didn’t even blush.
I grinned. “So, your form of being an idiot is being an extra-good student.”
“And yours is being an extra-good tennis player.”
“Right. That, and I’m having an identity crisis.”
Ethan didn’t have a response to that. To be fair, how could he? It must’ve sounded totally random and like way too much information. I was suddenly glad to have my tennis racquet in my lap. Fiddling with the strings gave my fingers something to do and my eyes someplace to look. I had to explain, but I didn’t want to talk about the Skype call and my mom’s record-setting bath. So I told him about the other thing consuming my mind, starting with, “My great-grandma died a few weeks ago.”
“Oh,” Ethan said. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay,” I said quickly, “she was really old. But when we were at her apartment for shiva, I found this diary she wrote when she was our age. She had a whole bunch of siblings—a twin sister, even—but her parents sent her over to America by herself, to escape the Holocaust.”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah.” The sun moved behind a cloud, and goose bumps rose on my bare arms. Some leaves blew across the court and flapped against the bottom of the net. “I’ve been reading her story, and just . . . I don’t know. Thinking about it a lot.”
“My great-grandpa was on the Kindertransport,” Ethan offered.
I looked up from my racquet. “What’s that?”
“It was this program that helped get kids away from the Nazis. No parents, just kids. They took a train to England—all these kids—and foster families took them in. My great-grandpa and his brother went.” He’d been talking quickly, but then stopped. His cheeks got red. “I’m researching it for my bar mitzvah project,” he explained.
As Anna would say, my insides turned to mush. If only he knew how cool I found it that he was into his great-grandfather’s story; he didn’t need to be embarrassed for my sake. “How old was your great-grandpa?” I asked.
“When he died?”
“When he left his parents.”
“Oh. Nine, maybe? Ten?”
“Did he ever see them again?”
“His dad, yeah. His mom didn’t survive. But apparently when he and his brother did finally see their dad again, things were really weird between them.”
“How come?”
“It’d been a long time, I guess. They’d all changed.”
I plucked at the strings of my racquet. That made sense. I assumed happy things would have come if Anna had been able to reunite with her family, but she’d only been away for a couple of months. To see them after a few years, when they’d been in a concentration camp, that would be . . . well, different. If I did find my birth parents, and we reunited after all this time, what would that be like? It could go a million different directions.
“According to my grandma,” Ethan continued, “he didn’t get along with his foster family very well either. He moved to America to go to college and, like, never talked to them again.”
“Wow,” I said. “Why didn’t he like them?”
“I don’t know. But I watched this documentary about the Kindertransport, and it seems like it was pretty common. Some families didn’t really want the kids; they just took them for the money the organization would pay.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Some had kids of their own who were jealous. And the Kindertransport kids had all sorts of stuff to deal with too. It was a new culture. They missed their parents.”
“They didn’t speak the language,” I added. “They might have looked different.”
Ethan nodded. I saw him glance at me, the shade of my skin, and then look away, squint through his glasses past the courts and into the trees. “Maybe my great-grandpa’s foster family was fine, but he was angry and wouldn’t have liked anyone. Who knows.”
We sat there in silence for a while. I thought about Anna’s day at Coney Island, and the photo postcard of her with Max, Hannah, and the others. When it came to adoptive families, Anna and I lucked out, I guess. A lump rose in my throat.
“Well,” Ethan said finally.
“Yeah.” I stood up. “I guess I’d better start my private tennis practice.”
“With no ball,” Ethan pointed out.
I laughed. Ethan laughed.
“Hey, what’s your cell number?” he asked. He sounded like he was working very hard to make it seem like it’d only just occurred to him to ask, this very moment. I warned him that my phone is not smart, so he took out his: a flip phone that looked even older than mine. “Our parents went to the same store,” he joked.
“In the same time machine,” I added.
He grinned, added my number, and texted me so I’d have his. “Okay,” he said awkwardly. “See you tomorrow.”
I gave a wave that was sort of like a salute. Then I bent down quickly to gather my stuff and pretend I hadn’t done that. (I mean, really, Imani? A salute?)
After he disappeared behind the school, I stood there for a minute, enjoying the breeze and wondering how to smooth things over with my parents. I didn’t have the guts to do it with words, but maybe I could do it with actions.
It’s amazing how productive you can be when you have something to prove. By the time my parents came home from work, I’d done all my homework, including the essay for Mrs. Magill’s class that was due next week. I’d also picked up all the clothes and junk from my bedroom floor, and—for the first time ever—“Hoovered” the carpet without being asked. It was a total coward’s apology, for what I said last night and also for my snooping, which they didn’t even know had happened, but it seemed to do the trick. My parents—cowards themselves, I guess—accepted it without any words, but with an act of forgiveness: tortellini for dinner.
Friday, October 17, 1941
Oh Belle,
I had again a terrible dream last night. I must have been screaming, because my throat hurts today. All day I was worried that something horrid had happened, and I think I’m right because I came home to find that all of the letters I’ve sent in the past month came back unopened . . . a terrific stack of them were placed on the desk in my room. Hannah tried to warn about it before I saw, and I could tell she was worried too, but nothing could have stopped the buckle of my knees, or the weight that seemed to push me down to the floor.
“Not at this address,” the letters say. Why are you not at this address?
“Perhaps they moved,” Hannah said stupidly. Not even she sounded convinced. I don’t know why she bothered.
“They could be on their way here,” she said.
Are you on your way here, Belle? But if you were, Papa would have found a way to telegram, or Mama would have written. I haven’t received any letters in weeks and weeks . . .
“The war,” Hannah said. “Surely all the mail is held up by the war.”
The war. It is starting to sound like at home, with the war to blame for everything, all the time. Remember our joke . . . only not really a joke . . . that Mina’s first word would be “Krich”? War.
Max said he will try to telegram tomorrow (but to what address, if you are not at home?), and Hannah spent all evening telephoning women from the synagogue to see if anyone has a way to get information. We are all afraid. Me most of all.
Thinking of you always,
Anna
Saturday, October 18, 1941
Belle,
Still no information. I feel as though the string connecting you and me is stretched thin as a hair, but still intact. I close my eyes and imagine messages flowing across that string, winding their way across holes and objects, like a little marble in a game of Chinese checkers. That’s what I need now . . . that is why I continue to write this diary as though you are here. I need my words in this journal to you, my twin, to be like a game piece, making its way across the stars to chart a path home. It has a long way to travel, and the string may zig and zag, but it will find its way somehow and let me know you are okay.
Are you okay?
Sunday, October 19, 1941
Where are you, Belle?
We still know nothing. Hannah is every day reading the uncles’ copy of “The Jewish Daily Forward” and even listening to the Yiddish radio station instead of music, but we have no answers.
I have been trying to think of other things, anything but our family, but it’s impossible. I played with Freddy and other neighbors in the street today, but my head was elsewhere. During a game called Johnny on a pony, I got crushed against a brick wall and I barely realized it, though now I’ve a terrific scrape on my elbow and my neck is sore. Then we played hide-and-seek. When it was my turn to count . . . and I opened my eyes to find everyone gone . . . I realized what a cruel game it is. I didn’t look for anyone. I just ran back to the apartment and cried.
I wonder how long everyone stayed hiding. They probably think I played a trick on them, and they won’t ever want to play with me again. Well, I don’t care. I’d give up every person I know here for a single breath of news about you and Mama and Papa and Kurt and Greta and Oliver and Mina and Grandmother and Grandfather. Where are you?