“Excuse me for being late,” the boy mumbles.
Miss Bergstrom sighs. “Just sit down, Svante.”
Svante walks sluggishly, taking a seat at the back of the room. He’s so big he just barely fits behind the desk.
Miss Bergstrom brings the geography lesson to an end.
“Stephanie is a foreigner among us,” she says. “Because of this terrible war she has had to leave her home and family.”
Stephie gazes out over the fair-haired boys and girls. She meets their gazes, some curious, others sympathetic. Thirty pairs of blue, gray, or green eyes meet her brown ones.
“I hope you will be very kind to Stephanie,” Miss Bergstrom continues. “And that you can overlook the fact that she doesn’t talk the way you do. That is because she isn’t Swedish, wasn’t born here like all of you.”
Not-like-you-not-like-you echoes in Stephanie’s head. It reminds her of the chug-chugging of the train on the tracks. She feels weak-kneed and dizzy.
“May I sit down now?” she asks.
Miss Bergstrom nods.
Britta raises her hand. “Could she sit next to me? I know her.”
“So do I,” says Svante.
Sylvia laughs, whispering something to the heavyset girl at the desk next to hers.
They have math for the first hour. The problems are easy, simple division Stephie learned in fifth grade. She waves her hand eagerly and finally gets a chance to solve one problem at the blackboard.
“Quite right,” Miss Bergstrom tells Stephie when she is done. “Very good.”
“Verrrrry good,” Sylvia imitates in a whisper. Miss Bergstrom pretends she hasn’t heard.
When recess comes, Stephie hopes Vera will find her, but she doesn’t. Vera spends recess in a corner of the schoolyard, among a crowd of girls that includes Sylvia. Sometimes Stephie senses them looking at her. She wonders what they’re saying.
Britta, though, seeks her out and asks if she wants to jump rope. Stephie does just fine until she notices Svante staring. Then she gets nervous and misses a step. So she has to turn the rope.
While Britta is jumping, someone comes up behind Stephie. She turns her head and sees Sylvia’s whole crowd, with Sylvia in the lead.
“Say something in German,” Sylvia commands.
Stephie shakes her head and keeps turning the rope.
“Say something!” Sylvia repeats. “You can talk, can’t you?”
“Sure.”
“So say something, then,” Sylvia nags. “We want to hear how it sounds.”
“Say something,” one of her friends urges. It’s Barbro, the girl who’s always with Sylvia.
The group encircles Stephie. Vera stays in the background, pulling up a sock and rummaging through her dress pocket.
“How about a yodel?” Sylvia asks. “You’re from the Alps, after all.”
Britta misses a step now. She walks over to Stephie’s end and takes the rope from her hand.
“Your turn,” she says.
“Stop showing off,” Sylvia says to Stephie. “Don’t think you can butter Miss Bergstrom up, either. Little Princess from Vienna. Who asked you to come here, anyway?”
Stephie pretends she doesn’t understand. She doesn’t care what Sylvia thinks.
She runs in under the turning jump rope, counting silently to herself. One… and… two… and… one… and… two… and-
There’s a sudden tug and the rope is pulled tight. Stephie falls down, scraping the palms of her hands on the hard gravel. Sylvia smiles mockingly as she drops the rope and walks off with her entourage.
fifteen
Still, she’s pleased to be going to school. How would she have made the days pass otherwise? The afternoons and evenings with Aunt Marta are long enough. They never just sit chatting as Stephie and Mamma would.
The minute Stephie walked in after school, she and her mother used to sit down, Mamma with a cup of coffee and Stephie with hot chocolate. Stephie would tell her mother what she had done that day, and what she had seen on her way home. Mamma might tell her a story about her own childhood or about when she performed at the opera. They would talk about the books they were reading, or about the trips they planned to go on together when Stephie was older.
Writing to someone is not the same as talking face to face. A conversation is so much more than words: a conversation is eyes, smiles, the silences between the words. When Stephie writes to her mother, her hand can’t keep up with her mind, so it’s difficult to get everything on paper; all the thoughts and feelings run through her head. And once the letter has been mailed, it can take several weeks before she gets an answer.
Aunt Marta never asks Stephie any questions or tells her any stories. She makes sure that Stephie does her homework, cleans her room, and helps with the housework. Nothing more.
In the evenings Aunt Marta sits in the front room and knits. At seven she turns on the radio to hear the news and the evening prayers. But the minute music comes on, she turns it off. “Secular” music is sinful, Aunt Marta tells Stephie, and secular music includes everything but hymns and spiritual songs like the ones the choir sings at the Pentecostal Church. Jazz, popular music, and classical music, it’s all the same to Aunt Marta-the devil’s playground.
Sometimes when Aunt Marta is out, Stephie turns on the radio. Except for those times, the white frame house is silent.
Things are different when Uncle Evert is home. He talks to Stephie, tells stories about things that happened on board the fishing boat, asks her about school, praises her progress with Swedish, and makes a joke of her mistakes.
“I’ll take you out on the
Summer is a long way off. Stephie won’t be here then, though she doesn’t tell Uncle Evert that. She’s already been in Sweden three months. “Six months at the very most,” her father promised.
But the letters from home no longer contain updates about entry visas, Amsterdam, or America. Her father writes that he and Mamma have moved to an even smaller room, and that Mamma now has a job keeping house for an older lady. Mamma, a housekeeper! Stephie can’t imagine her mother wearing an apron and working in someone else’s kitchen.
Mamma doesn’t write anything about her work. Her letters are full of questions about Aunt Marta and Uncle Evert, about school, about whether Stephie is making friends on the island. Stephie answers that everyone is kind to her, that she has lots of friends and is doing well at school. The last part, at least, is true. She often even learns the verses of the hymns by heart, though she only just barely understands what they’re about.
In every letter, Mamma asks Stephie to remind Nellie to write home.
You’re the big sister, and I depend on you to help your little sister, Mamma writes. Be sure she writes to us regularly, and try to help her keep up her German. Her spelling has become so much worse. Of course, I’m pleased that you’re learning Swedish, but German is your mother tongue and one day you will be back.
“Tomorrow,” Nellie promises when Stephie tells her to write home. “I’ll do it tomorrow. Today I’m going to play with Sonja after school.” Sonja is a friend from class.
But when the next day comes around, Nellie has plans to go to one of her classmates’, or she’s invited one of them back to Auntie Alma’s. Nellie is popular. Every morning when she gets to school a flock of girls is waiting for
