though,” she adds.
She looks pleased with herself, standing there in her yellow suit. Before Stephie can stop herself, she has grabbed a handful of gravelly sand and tossed it at Nellie. Just at her legs, but Nellie begins to cry and Auntie Alma comes running. She grabs Stephie by one shoulder and gives her a shake. Then she comforts Nellie, leading her back to the water to rinse off.
Stephie stays on the blanket, perspiring in the sunshine. If she hadn’t been mean to Nellie, she might have taken off her shoes and waded in the shallow water. But now she just stays where she is, watching Nellie and Elsa collect seashells along the shore while Auntie Alma plays with John. The blanket is like her own little island.
The kids out on the rocks are getting out of the water. Some of the girls giggle as they take turns holding up towels for each other while they change out of their suits. The boys keep trying to get a peek.
When they pass by Stephie, she looks the other way. She hears a girl say something, but she doesn’t move a muscle. If she pretends they aren’t there, maybe they’ll just disappear. She starts digging in the sand with one hand, staring straight down.
The youngsters go their way, a laughing, chattering crowd. Stephie watches their backs. The blond girl is at the center of the group. When they get to their bikes the redhead turns around, raising a hand in what might be a wave to Stephie.
When Stephie gets home, Aunt Marta points to her rolled-up towel and then to the clothesline that runs from the house to a wooden pole in one corner of the yard. Stephie’s first instinct is to show Aunt Marta that neither suit nor towel is wet, but she has second thoughts and just goes over to the line. Seeing a green pump next to the woodshed, she tries it, and it works.
Stephie holds the bathing suit under the pump, wetting it thoroughly. She rolls it back up into the towel and holds it until she sees a damp spot emerge. Then she hangs the suit and towel on the line. Aunt Marta will never know.
eight
Every day, Stephie goes on a long walk from the white frame house at the end of the world to the yellow house with the enclosed veranda.
Every day, Auntie Alma takes the girls along with her own children to the beach.
Every day, Stephie sits on the blanket, fully dressed, watching Nellie and the little ones splashing at the shore, and the older children diving from the cliffs out on the headland.
Auntie Alma probably thinks Stephie doesn’t know how to swim and is ashamed to show it. In any case, she doesn’t make any further attempts to persuade her to go into the water.
One morning Stephie wakes up and doesn’t see the sun shining in; she’s relieved. It’s a cloudy, gray day, and windy, too. She puts on a sweater before walking to Auntie Alma’s. Aunt Marta points to the suit and towel on the line, shaking her head and saying something. Stephie catches the Swedish words for “swim” and “cold.”
“Not swim,” Stephie says. “Nellie…” That exhausts her Swedish vocabulary.
Aunt Marta nods, ushering Stephie into the room with the wall clock. She points to the three.
“Come home. Three o’clock,” she says.
Stephie nods. “Three o’clock.”
“Evert,” Aunt Marta says. “Uncle Evert’s coming home.”
Stephie pretends to understand. It’s easier that way.
In Auntie Alma’s kitchen Nellie and the little ones are sitting around the table drawing, and Auntie Alma is mixing something in a bowl. She always keeps busy cooking, baking, washing the dishes, polishing, and dusting. But unlike Aunt Marta, who does the housework gravely and resolutely, Auntie Alma never appears to think anything is any trouble. Ladles, dust cloths, and brooms seem to dance in her hands as if working all on their own. She kneads dough lightly on her baking board, and the dishes seem to fly from the sink into the drainer.
Nellie looks up from her drawing. “We’re not going to the beach today,” she announces.
“Phew,” Stephie replies.
She helps herself to a piece of paper and a pencil and begins to draw a girl’s face, with large eyes and curly hair. She spends a long time on the mouth, trying to make a thin, arched Cupid’s bow. She has to erase it several times before she’s satisfied. The girl looks glum. Pretty and sorrowful. A little like Evi, her best friend back in Vienna.
Elsa admires Stephie’s drawing. She’s been busy drawing princesses with long blond hair and pink ball gowns. John is too little to do anything other than scribble what looks to Stephie like a jumble of lines and spirals.
Stephie walks around to the other side of the table to look over Nellie’s shoulder. She’s drawn a man and a woman, both on their knees on the sidewalk. Standing over them is a man in a uniform. He’s got a pistol in one hand, and is lashing at the couple. Behind them is a shop window, on which someone has written, in big red letters: JEWS.
Stephie recognizes the scene in Nellie’s drawing. She was there, too, one day just after the Germans invaded Vienna, nearly a year and a half ago.
The girls had been on their way home from the playground. Outside the furrier’s shop, where their mother bought her fur coats, they saw the furrier and his wife on their knees, scouring the sidewalk with scrub brushes. A man in uniform was guarding them, a pistol in his hand. They were surrounded by a crowd. No one stepped in to help the elderly couple. On the contrary, people were laughing and mocking them. Someone had written JEW in yard-high red letters across their shop window. Stephie took Nellie by the hand and ran home.
“You shouldn’t be drawing things like that,” she says to Nellie. “Make something pretty instead.” She grabs Nellie’s drawing and crumples it into a ball.
“What did you do that for?” Nellie protests.
“Draw something nice,” Stephie says. “Something for Auntie Alma.”
But Nellie doesn’t feel like drawing anymore.
“Come with me and I’ll show you something,” she says to Stephie, pulling her by the hand into the front room. There’s an old-fashioned overstuffed couch with a stiff back, a little round table with a crocheted cloth, and armchairs with puffy cushions. There’s a little white organ, too. That’s what Nellie wants Stephie to see.
“A piano,” she says, “there is a piano.”
“That’s not a piano, it’s an organ,” Stephie corrects her. “You remember, we had one at school.”
“Who cares?” Nellie says, sitting down on the organ bench. Her short legs just barely allow her to reach the pedals.
“I’m allowed to play it. Auntie Alma said so.”
She starts playing a children’s song, while Stephie investigates everything in the room. Against one wall, she sees a glass-paned cupboard filled with knickknacks: a little box decorated with all kinds of seashells, a porcelain basket full of china rosebuds, two statuettes-a shepherd and shepherdess-and many other treasures.
There’s even a small china dog. It’s brown and white, with a gold-tipped, rather than a black, nose. It has a blue collar and is standing with its head cocked.
“Nellie,” Auntie Alma calls from the kitchen. Nellie stops playing, hops down from the organ bench, and runs out of the room.
Stephie remains mesmerized by the china dog. It’s adorable and she longs to hold it. She notices a brass key in the cupboard door. She turns it, opens the door, and carefully removes the dog. The china feels cool in the palm of her hand. She inspects the dog from every angle, stroking it gently.
“Mimi,” she whispers. “Your name is Mimi.”
“Stephie!” Auntie Alma is standing in the doorway.
Instantly, without thinking, Stephie drops the dog into her dress pocket. She closes the door of the cupboard surreptitiously with her elbow.
