My Family for the War (21 page)

“News from Bekka!” With these words I stormed into the parlor, where Amanda was sitting at the secretary, reading her own mail. “She’s coming on September fourth!”

Overjoyed, I came up behind her and wrapped my arms around her.

Amanda stroked my hand without taking her eyes from the letter that lay before her. “Wonderful! But I’m afraid you have something else first.” She sighed. “You’ve been summoned to school tomorrow afternoon.”

“During the holiday? Have I done something wrong?”

“No, it’s just a drill for the evacuation. You’re to bring your gas mask and a light travel bag, what you would need for an emergency.”

I remembered the pamphlet I had seen in the mail, along with the word I had meant to look up. “What is…
evacuation
?”

Amanda looked at me, astonished. “But I thought… it says in the letter that you already had a drill before the holiday!”

“A drill? They took us to the tube station and back again. That was evacuation?”

Amanda hesitated. “Not exactly,” she replied. “Evacuation means that you’re to be brought to safety. You’ve already been evacuated once—from Germany. Now there’s a plan to send the children of London to the countryside in case the Germans… are serious.”

“The children?” I could feel my face turning red. “Without their parents? But… why?” I blurted.

My foster mother sat up a little straighter, adopted a firm tone, and became matter-of-fact. “Because no one can say what’s going to happen. England is an island; if the Germans cut off our sea routes, they can cause all kinds of shortages and starve us out. Not to mention the fact that if they attack London, it will be hell. You’d be spared that ordeal in the country, Frances. I remember very well living through the war in the city, and believe me, you do not want to go through that!”

“But I only just found you!” I exclaimed. “And what about Bekka?”

“If it comes to that, you two will go together. This time you wouldn’t be alone!”

“Can they make us go?”

Amanda looked past me. “Yes,” she answered.

I took a step backward. “You’re lying! I can see it!” I yelled.

“No, dear. The Refugee Committee makes that decision. There’s nothing we can do.”

“We’ll see about that! I’m going to write to my mother! If she tells the committee that I’m to stay with you, there’s nothing
they
can do about it!” I cried.

My hands were trembling so much that I could hardly write the short note to Mamu.

London, 28 August 1939

Dearest Mamu,

You’ve got to help me! If there’s war, they want to take me away from the Shepards and send me off into the countryside. Please send me the following
note immediately: “Dear Refugee Committee, I hereby request that my daughter, Frances Ziska Shepard Mangold, not be evacuated, but rather be permitted to stay with the Shepard family in London.” Please do it as soon as you can, Mamu, so I’ve got something to show them! I’ll also write to Frau Liebich so she gives Bekka the same letter. Bekka is coming September 4. More soon—I have to post this before the mailbox is emptied!

I ran as if my life depended on it. I reached the mailbox two streets away at the same time as the post office van, and gasping for breath, I gave the mailman my letter.

“Why don’t you have your gas mask with you?” he shouted at me. “If you’re outside, you have to carry it with you. That’s the rule! Make sure you get off the streets, now!”

Up the street, three small girls were playing hopscotch, holding on to the gas masks that hung around their necks. They had become an integral part of an English child’s wardrobe, like shoes and socks.

A stupid school drill during the summer holiday—what did it matter?

On Friday, the first of September, I awoke to the sun shining warmly through my window, and my first thought was the same as it had been on the previous three mornings: “I hope they’ll let me come with them to pick up Bekka on Monday!”

The radio was on in the kitchen—a very loud, excited voice. I could already hear it at the top of the stairs. The
telephone rang too, and I picked up the receiver as I walked past. “Is that you, Franziska?” I heard. “This is Mrs. Lewis. Do you remember me? I’d like to speak to Mrs. Shepard.”

I continued on into the kitchen. “Amanda, the Refugee Committee is on the telephone.”

Amanda sat at the breakfast table with Uncle Matthew, who normally should have been at work by then. Amanda stood up and walked past me; one look at her nervous expression and I knew immediately what had happened.

“Has the war begun?” Uncle Matthew put a finger to his lips so as not to miss any of the report. It appeared that German troops had attacked Poland in the early-morning hours. Poland was one of our allies—that meant war.

Poland! I thought, dismayed. Ruben!

The report was still in progress when Amanda reappeared in the doorway, and my heart froze. All color was drained from her face. “It’s time, Frances,” she said.

“Evacuation?” I heard my own voice like a faint wind.

She nodded. “We have four hours. You meet at the schoolyard, as planned.”

She took her seat, and I noticed the hasty glances she exchanged with Uncle Matthew. It was as if he were posing a mute question, to which she gave him a wordless answer— a negative answer. His shoulders sank. I saw it clearly.

“And Bekka?” I asked.

Amanda started to answer, but her voice failed, and then I finally understood.

“No,” I whispered.

“They let one last train out.” Tears appeared in my foster mother’s eyes. “But now Germany is at war, and that means
the end of the kindertransports. Bekka’s not coming, Frances. She’s not coming.”

I realized that in four hours, our time together would be over.

“I’ll send your winter things as soon as I know where your school is being evacuated. They’ll send a postcard with your address, in your case they’d of course send the card to your mother, but perhaps it would be better if they sent the address to us, and I could forward it, and then we’ll know where you are too, and if it’s not too far, I can visit you, as long as they haven’t requisitioned the trains for the war effort, although people have to be able to travel in their own country.”

Until now, I had known my foster mother to be an exceptionally poised person who never spoke an unnecessary word, but now she was talking nonstop, like a radio that couldn’t be turned off. I didn’t tell Amanda that I would be back home that evening. The fewer people who knew about my plan, the better.

“Here, perhaps you’d like to take this, it’s Matthew’s travel candle. He had that with him in France. Would you like it?” She wrapped a richly ornamented candleholder in a cloth and placed it in the suitcase along with several extra candles, not even waiting for my answer.

“Oh, that’s lovely, I’d love to take it,” I said anyway. I was surprised to see how calm I suddenly was. Ziska Mangold, the champion of the survival plan. Three days, I thought. I only have to stall for three or four days, and then the letter from Mamu will arrive and I’ll be able to stay!

All at once Amanda stopped packing and, with a deep sigh, sat on the bed next to my suitcase. “I’m relieved you’re taking this so well, Frances,” she said. “But we’re going to find it much too quiet here without you around.” She laughed abruptly. “Do you remember your first night here? Gary’s nonsense at the table, and how you soldiered on, trying to imitate his every move?”

“And how I bit you and set you on fire—I remember that much better!”

I sat down next to her. She looked at me, full of warmth. “I also remember what I thought that first evening. I thought somewhere in Germany, there’s a mother who sent her child alone on this long journey and has entrusted her to strangers because right now she can’t take care of her as she would like. Anyone who can do what your mother has done, Frances, must love her child very, very much.”

I looked at her, wide eyed. I hoped I would never forget a single word of what she had just said.

“And that’s why,” Amanda concluded, “she would certainly want you to be evacuated to the country!”

I’m not going!
I
knew
it, clearly and without any doubt now. I would not go! I had made this mistake once and lost my family. I wasn’t about to give up my new family. I would stay with the Shepards, because I would rather die with them than survive without them.

My first thought when we arrived at the school was that well over half the children were late; it was almost one o’clock, and there couldn’t have been more than forty students and their families there. Maybe we would all miss the train!

But as we lined up in pairs, it occurred to me that the others wouldn’t be coming. Their families were exercising their legal right not to participate in the evacuation. Everyone except the Shepards and me had this right. Hot rage surged within me—anger that I was yet again the exception, someone whose fate was determined by strangers.

Now that things were getting serious, not even the teachers were coming with us. Only the headmistress, Mrs. Collins, was carrying a suitcase and seemed to be saying good-bye to relatives. All around me there was quiet whispering and sniffling. Only a few were openly crying, among them a giant man in a white turban who was sobbing into his sleeve. Uncle Matthew had put his arm around Amanda, just like the other children’s parents. If I hadn’t already known that we belonged together, it would finally have been clear.

“It’s time, children!” called Mrs. Collins, and, waving, set herself at the front of the line. “Stay in your places and stay on the sidewalk!”

The younger children began to cry when they realized their mothers and fathers wouldn’t be going to the station with them. I turned and caught one last encouraging look from my foster parents, and then I didn’t turn around again, but instead focused on what lay ahead. I was holding hands with a strange girl, and carrying a not-so-light suitcase. And the stupid gas mask hanging around my neck was swinging back and forth. All in all, much too heavy for an escape. I would have to leave the suitcase behind at the station.

“My name is Hazel,” whispered my neighbor, and gave my hand a squeeze.

“Uh-huh,” I grunted.

“I’m sick,” Hazel informed me.

What business was that of mine? If she was sick, then she should have stayed at home! I quickly removed my hand from hers and said, “It’s nothing personal, but getting sick is the last thing I need right now.”

Hazel looked at me, puzzled, and then she smiled. She was the most beautiful person I had ever seen—delicate, almost fragile, and with skin of a color that reminded me of toffees. “I am a Sikh,” she repeated, and now I understood that she wasn’t sick, but was from India, and belonged to the giant in the turban.

I decided not to speak another word to Hazel.

We crossed the street—I was being driven away from home for the second time. But we had left Germany by night and in a darkened train. Here, the doors of many houses opened as we passed. I saw strangers coming to the edge of the road to offer words of encouragement: “Chin up! It’s not so bad! Our boys’ll show the Huns, and you’ll be back with your mums before you know it!”

In Germany it had been winter. In Germany, I had cried. Here, the sun was shining, as it had every day of that last week of peace. Birds were singing, the post office van drove past, around me was the steady tramping of feet… and I was filled with a peculiar satisfaction, like a liberation from a long wait.

Now Hitler’s demonic deeds weren’t affecting only us Jews anymore! The world was finally going to wake up!

As soon as we left the Underground and entered the train station, a bustling commotion greeted us. A vast, unmanageable swarm of children from every part of North London
crowded around their teachers and the women from the WVS—the
Women’s Voluntary Service
—who were accompanying the evacuees. A cardboard sign bearing my assigned number dangled next to the box containing my gas mask, and Hazel was dangling from my sleeve.

“You’ll be fine. They have everything under control, as you can see,” I said as I tried to free myself from her grasp. But Hazel made a face that couldn’t have been more fearful if we had been about to be pushed off a cliff into the sea, and she clung to me even more tightly.

“Listen, Hazel,” I said. “I’ve got to go to the loo, but I’ll be right back!”