her, competing to be her chosen playmate. Nellie laughs and jokes as if she’s known Swedish her whole life.
No one waits in the schoolyard for Stephie. Vera sticks with Sylvia’s gang, and Stephie’s not welcome among them. She has to seek out Britta and her friends if she wants someone to play with. Although they let her join in when she asks, she always feels like an intruder. They talk so easily about people and things she knows nothing about. No one ever invites her home after school. Once, she tries to ask Britta back with her.
“It’s too far,” Britta answers. “I don’t think my mother would let me. Not at this time of year when it’s so dark.”
The worst thing of all is Sylvia’s constant teasing. Stephie’s German accent, her clothes, her appearance- everything that makes her different from the others-is the object of Sylvia’s ridicule, and she nosedives straight at her target like a seagull swooping down to pick up a juicy morsel.
“Horsehair,” Sylvia says, pulling on one of Stephie’s braids. “Look, her mane is braided! Why don’t you wear feathers in it as well, like a circus horse?”
“Hee-hee-hee,” Sylvia’s crowd giggles. All but Vera, who just looks away and pretends not to hear.
Svante likes Stephie’s braids. Sometimes he strokes one furtively as he walks by her in the classroom. When he touches her, Stephie pulls back from his big hands, hands that are never completely clean.
Vera teases Svante, imitating his clumsy movements and the way he slurs his words. Vera is very good at imitation. She notices little details, gestures and expressions, and captures them perfectly.
Once, when Miss Bergstrom is out of the room, Vera imitates her. When the teacher returns with a map, the class is laughing loudly. They have to pinch one another to stop before there’s trouble. Another time Vera waves her hands and rolls her
Of course Svante’s interest in Stephie hasn’t passed Sylvia by unnoticed.
“The Princess from Vienna has an admirer,” she says with a sneer. “The Princess and the village idiot, just like in the fairy tales. Except Svante’s not likely to turn into a prince!”
One day Svante pulls a package out of his schoolbag and hands it to Stephie. This happens during lunch break, when everyone is eating sandwiches and drinking milk in the classroom. At first Stephie thinks Svante’s offering her one of his sandwiches, which are wrapped in greasy brown paper.
“No, thank you,” she declines politely. “I’ve got my own.”
Svante laughs loudly. “It isn’t a sandwich,” he says. “It’s a present. For you.”
“Come on, open it,” urges Britta, who sits next to her.
“Yes, open it,” says Sylvia, leaning forward to get a better view. “We want to see what your admirer bought you.”
“I’ll open it at home,” Stephie says, hurriedly pressing the package into her knapsack.
Svante gets angry. “Open it now!” he tells her. “I want to be there when you do.”
Stephie can’t avoid it, so she unwraps the greasy brown paper. The package contains a roughly hewn handmade frame.
“Turn it over,” Svante orders her impatiently.
Stephie turns the frame to the front. There’s a picture in the frame, a familiar face that glares at her. A face she’s seen thousands of times, in newspapers, on posters, in shop windows back home in Vienna. Black hair brushed down over the forehead, a black moustache, sinister eyes. It’s a blurry picture in black and white, probably from a magazine. A framed picture of Hitler.
“I made it myself,” Svante tells her. “Do you like it?”
Stephie stares at the picture, trying to make sense of it.
She remembers seeing Hitler once in real life. It was last March, when the German army made a triumphal procession through the streets of Vienna. Hitler was there, chauffeured in a black Mercedes.
Stephie and Evi snuck out to watch the parade, against the instructions of their mothers. At first it seemed exciting-like a special occasion.
“Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!”
People pushed and shoved to be able to see better. Lots of them raised their arms in the Nazi salute.
A fat woman shoved the girls aside. A uniformed man stared nastily at them. Stephie and Evi tried to push back through the crowd to get away, but they couldn’t. In the end they pressed up against the wall of a building, making themselves as invisible as they could, until the parade passed and the crowd began to disperse.
“Let me see,” says Sylvia from the row behind. “What is it?”
She puts out a hand to take the picture from Stephie, who holds on to it, tight. In the tussle, Stephie knocks over her bottle of milk; the milk spills out over the picture and drips onto the floor.
“Don’t you like it?” Svante asks in disappointment. “I thought you’d be pleased. You do come from Germany, don’t you?”
He leans forward onto Stephie’s desk, pressing his huge hands on the surface and bringing his pimply face right up to hers.
“Let me be,” Stephie cries. “Leave me alone, you idiot!”
Miss Bergstrom appears in the doorway. “What on earth is going on here?” she asks.
“It’s Stephie,” Sylvia tells her. “Svante tried to give her a present, but she wouldn’t accept it. She called him a stupid idiot.”
“Stephanie,” Miss Bergstrom says sharply. “That is not how we address one another at our school. Perhaps you do, where you come from. But we don’t, here in Sweden.”
Stephie rushes out of the classroom, down the stairs, and out into the schoolyard. She throws the picture to the ground, crushes it under her heel until that awful face is gone, and stamps on the frame until it breaks. Then she opens the door to the outhouse and tosses the whole thing into one of the holes, straight down into the smelly muck.
sixteen
Stephie stops abruptly. “You’re the one who doesn’t see!” she screams at Britta. “You’re just as stupid as Svante. You know nothing about it. Absolutely nothing at all!”
Britta looks offended. “But I do,” she begins. “I know Hitler is evil. My father says so, but-”
“Your father doesn’t know anything,” Stephie interrupts. “My father’s been in a labor camp, but you probably don’t even know what that is.”
She’s not being fair, she knows that. So she doesn’t wait for Britta to answer, just takes off, running along the side of the road at full speed.
“Wait!” Britta shouts after her. “Stephie, wait!”
She begins to run, too, catching up with Stephie just before she reaches the crossing where they go in separate directions.
“See you tomorrow,” she says, “at Sunday school?”
“No.”
“Jesus will be angry if you don’t come,” says Britta accusingly.
Stephie looks Britta right in the eye. “Jesus doesn’t exist,” Stephie says, putting all her father’s authority into her voice. “He couldn’t care less about me, or about you, or about anyone else, for that matter.”
Britta blinks. Her bright eyes grow large, and tears well up in them. She takes a couple of steps back.
“Of course He exists,” she cries. “Jesus lives and He loves me. But He doesn’t care about you, because you’re a vicious person. You’re-you’re not a real Christian!”
The minute Britta is out of sight over the top of the hill, Stephie wishes she’d behaved differently. Not because Britta’s friendship is important to her. She’s actually tired of Britta’s endless know-it-all talk about Jesus. And she’s tired of jumping rope, too.
