Stephie removes the nightgown and pulls on her cardigan over her undergarments so she won’t freeze. The other girls brush their hair and gossip in whispers. Vera repeats the Lucia verses over and over again.
“We’re not going to have much time to rehearse now,” Ingrid complains.
“Right,” Sylvia agrees. “And whose fault is that?”
Finally Miss Bergstrom reappears with a gown. It’s too short for Stephie, but Miss Bergstrom lets down the hem.
“No one will notice,” she tells Stephie. “But you’ll have to take it home and hem it back up. I borrowed it from the caretaker’s wife. It’s too small for her daughter this year.”
They rehearse the songs a couple of times. Then they stand waiting in the map room.
“Now,” Miss Bergstrom says, opening the door to the hall. She lights the six candles in Vera’s heavy crown. The handmaidens each carry a lit candle between their clasped hands. Slowly the group walks down the hallway, where the rest of the class is lining the walls, watching. Stephie and Ingrid are right behind Vera, with Sylvia and Barbro next, followed by Gunvor and Majbritt and, last of all, the two boys, dressed in long white robes and pointed hats topped with gold stars.
They are nearly at the classroom door when Stephie feels a hand grab one of her braids. She hardly has time to react before she hears a hissing sound and smells a nasty, burnt odor.
“Fire!” someone shouts.
Stephie has her right braid in her hand now and is staring at it. All the hair below the rubber band is singed, leaving only scorched ends.
“What on earth happened here?” Miss Bergstrom asks.
“I don’t know,” says Sylvia innocently. “Stephie must have tossed her head and her braid touched my candle. Or Barbro’s.
“Right,” Barbro agrees. “That must be what happened.”
Stephie says nothing. Sylvia is her enemy, and she’s stronger than Stephie.
twenty
The house is silent. She’s all alone.
She tests the scissors on the hair just below the rubber band holding her braid tight. Then she raises the scissors a little higher up, and higher again, until they graze her neck.
In the mirror over the washbasin, Stephie’s face is pale. She looks herself straight in the eyes and cuts.
The sharp edges eat their way into the thick braid. Stephie tightens her grip until the blades meet with a firm clink.
Her cut-off braid hangs loose in her hand like a dead snake. Looking into the mirror again, Stephie sees a strange sight. Half her face looks like the Stephie she knows, the other like a strange creature with wild black hair sticking out every which way.
She hears the front door open and shut.
“Stephie,” Aunt Marta calls, “are you home?”
“Yes,” she calls back, never taking her eyes off the mirror.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing much.”
“You’ve got mail,” Aunt Marta says.
Braid in hand, Stephie goes downstairs. Aunt Marta stares at her.
“What have you done, girl? Have you lost your mind?”
“I only meant to cut off a little,” Stephie tells her. “I don’t know how it happened.”
“Ah, well,” says Aunt Marta. “Short hair’s very practical, really.”
Stephie sits on a chair in the kitchen with an old towel around her neck. Aunt Marta unbraids the other side of her hair and cuts it all to an even length. Big tufts fall onto the newspapers Aunt Marta has spread out on the floor.
Then Aunt Marta gets smaller scissors from her mending basket and evens off the ends. Stephie shuts her eyes. She can hardly believe the hands so gently and carefully touching her hair are the rough hands she knows as Aunt Marta’s.
When Aunt Marta is done, Stephie goes to the hall mirror to have a look. Her hair doesn’t look funny now, but she barely recognizes herself. Her neck appears to be long and thin and her eyes look larger. The weight of the braids she always felt when she moved her head is gone. She feels naked.
Aunt Marta passes by with her cut-off braid, throwing it and the rest of the hair into the rubbish pail. When Stephie sees her braid lying among potato peels and fish bones, she wishes she had saved it. But it’s too late now.
After Stephie has cleaned up the newspaper and swept the loose strands of hair off the floor, Aunt Marta opens her bag and gives her two letters.
One has a German stamp and Papa’s handwriting on the envelope. The other is postmarked in Goteborg and bears the return address of the Swedish relief committee.
Stephie’s heart is pounding. It must mean something that these two letters arrived on the same day. Just think if everything is arranged! Just think if Mamma and Papa have their entry visas for America!
Aunt Marta pulls the letter opener through the flap on the envelope from the Swedish relief committee, even though it’s addressed to Stephie.
The letter is typed. The ribbon must be old, because some words are blurry. It begins with the word “Dear” followed by a handwritten “Stephanie.”
“Dear Stephanie,” Aunt Marta reads aloud. “The relief committee wishes you a Merry Christmas and hopes that you feel at home in Sweden now.”
Aunt Marta straightens her reading glasses, glancing at Stephie over the top. Stephie nods eagerly. All right, she feels at home. Anything to make Aunt Marta keep reading. She wishes she could just grab the letter and read it herself. Does it or does it not contain the message she is hoping for?
“… be obedient to your foster parents and grateful to them for having taken you in… Try your best to improve your Swedish… Learn from your Swedish friends.”
With every sentence Aunt Marta reads, Stephanie loses more and more hope. If she were going to be leaving soon, such admonitions would be unnecessary. Yet she listens impatiently until the very end, just in case the words she longs to hear are there after all.
“Never forget,” Aunt Marta reads, “that ungrateful, lazy children do a great disservice not only to themselves but also to our work as a whole, and to all the Jews.”
Aunt Marta puts the letter down.
“Is that all?” Stephie asks.
Aunt Marta nods. “Except ‘Our very best wishes’ and the signature.”
She pushes the letter across the table. Stephie picks it up and glances quickly through it. Nothing but admonitions.
“Wise counsel,” Aunt Marta says. “I hope you’ll take those words to heart. Save the letter and reread it now and then.”
Stephie folds the letter and closes the envelope. She intends never to open it again.
After dinner she goes up to her room and shuts the door. With trembling hands she opens Papa’s letter. Perhaps he and Mamma have gotten their entry visas after all, but the relief committee ladies don’t know.
There are two sheets of paper in the envelope. One is in her father’s handwriting, the other in her mother’s.
My sweet Stephie, Papa writes. When you and Nellie left, we believed we would be apart only for a short while. Now four months have passed and it seems that we will not be reunited for some time. In spite of all my efforts, we have not been granted entry permits to America. The future looks bleak, but we must not give up
