Recap: Mrs. Bowers, the distant cousin, finds Hope on her doorstep and is not happy to see her. Hope is worried that Mrs. Bowers will turn her away, and so she offers to do childcare. The woman takes her to a dingy basement and tells her she can stay there if she helps with household chores and childcare.
That night, Mrs. Bowers told me to put Bonnie to bed. I helped Bonnie into some soft pink pajamas. She’d forgotten all about the suitcase incident.
“Can I read you a bedtime book?” I asked.
I glanced around the little bookshelf in her room and pulled out a copy of Good Night Moon. “My mother read this to me when I was your age,” I said.
“No, I don’t want it.”
“It’s a good story.”
“No!”
“If you listen a little, I’m sure you’ll like it.”
She grabbed the book away. “No, no!” She placed the book under her pillow and started crying.
“I won’t read it,” I said.
I helped her into her bed. “Don’t tuck me in,” she said between sobs.
It was a strange thing for a four-year-old to say.
“Why not?”
She turned her little head away from me.
“Okay, good night,” I said.
I tiptoed out of her room and gently closed the door.
“Who are you?” A girl who looked to be around 17 or so with long straw-colored hair and a turned-up nose stared at me. She must be the other daughter, I thought. I was startled by her angry tone.
“I’m Hope Henner. Our mothers are second cousins,” I said.
She strode towards the stairs. “My mother doesn’t have any second cousins. I would know if she did. Hope is a feeling, not a name. And Bonnie never lets anyone read to her or tuck her in.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. This girl wasn’t exactly making me feel at home here. I ignored her mean comment about my name. “What’s your name?” I called after her.
“Diana.” She hurried down the stairs before I could ask her anything else.
I could hear her downstairs complaining about me to her mother. “Mother, why is that girl here?” she asked loudly.
“Her relatives asked for a place to stay temporarily.”
“She’s not really a cousin, is she?”
“No, she’s the cousin of––”
I strained to hear what she said but she must have been whispering.
“It better be temporarily,” I heard Diana say as she flounced out the front door.
Mrs. Bowers saw me walking slowly down the stairs. “Please clean up the dinner dishes. My husband will be home late tonight, and he expects the kitchen to be spotless.”
I headed towards the kitchen. I hadn’t met her husband. I wondered why he came home so late and who had cleaned the kitchen before I arrived.
“You have a part-time job starting tomorrow morning,” she said.
I swallowed. What kind of job would she be sending me to?
“It’s at one of our Five and Dime stores on Main Street. We own two stores.” This was obviously a source of pride for her. I thought of my father owning a whole chain of real estate offices, but that was in the past.
…
I thought of something my grandmother had once told me:
“Hope, your Father is doing very well in business, but there’s something I want you to remember. Money is something that passes hands. It doesn’t define who you are – not in any way. It’s the kind of person you are, how you treat others, that matters more than what you have in your bank account.” She held me tight and added. “If you feel rich, and I do feel rich having you, so then you are rich. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. But if you aren’t happy, and you want more and more, then you could have a million dollars and you would still be poor.”
“Why do some people have a lot of money like we do, and a big house, and others are poor?”
“How much money you earn is determined in the beginning of the year.”
“What do you mean?” I’d asked her.
“Ach, you don’t even know anything basic about where you come from. If only Charlene would agree to your going to Hebrew school.”
“What’s that?”
She shook her head sadly. “Just remember this: There’s a holiday called Rosh HaShanah in the beginning of the Jewish year, and that is when Hashem decides how much money you will have for the year.”
I didn’t understand what she meant, but I was curious to know more. When I asked my mother, she just said, “That’s not something we celebrate, Hope. We’re in the modern world now. Grandma went through horrors in Europe because of her religion. We aren’t going to do that.”
Grandma had only told me a few stories about her time in the Holocaust. I knew about that, but she didn’t like to talk about it and I had to accept that this was the way my mother wanted it. If I ever asked my mother about G-d, she would just say, “I believe in G-d.”
Grandma had more to say about that, but she told me she didn’t want to teach me too much, because my mother might get mad, so she just told me there is one G-d and he loves the Jews, and we call him Hashem. She taught me a prayer to say at night, too. I learned to say the Sh’ma. She told me it was just the first line of the prayer, but I learned to say it in Hebrew, and I used to say it to myself every night. I’d gotten out of the habit. I wasn’t sure when I’d stopped doing it.
She died when I was eight, so I never got to learn much more.
…
Mrs. Bowers’ loud voice brought me back to the present. “They need a cashier every day from eight until four. Diana will take you there tomorrow.”
“I’m only 14.”
“You’re old enough. They need the help and I need you to pay for your food and board.”
So, I was going to be like a slave here. This was getting worse and worse, and I was going to have to go with this mean girl Diana.
I filled the sink with water and began scrubbing the dirty pots and plates in the sudsy water. I thought of Henrietta and Sarah serving and cleaning up for us. What would they think to see me doing their kind of job here?
…
That night, I sat in the dingy basement on the lumpy little cot that creaked whenever I moved, and I tried to stop crying. I wondered if my parents were in Maine. They must be by now. Would they call me? Would they send someone to bring me to them? Did they miss me at all? Of course, they must miss me. Mother was crying so hard. I tried to blot out that horrible scene when they pulled away and left me here. They would be horrified to see where I was sleeping. I was sure there must be mice and roaches in this awful basement. Suddenly, for some strange reason, I started thinking about the photo I’d seen in the attic that long-ago day when Heather was visiting. Who was that girl? Why was I thinking of that now?
I recalled when my grandmother told me about her sisters, who all died in the Holocaust. One had hair the color of wheat shining in the sun, she told me, and her name was Allie. We called her Allie. Her real name was Alyson. I could hear the longing and sadness in her voice.
Thinking of my grandmother reminded me of saying Sh’ma. Now would be a good time to say it. I said a little prayer to G-d. Please help me to leave here and go to my parents. Please keep my parents safe. Then I said Sh’ma and lay down to try to sleep.
To be continued…
Susie Garber is the author of the newly released historical fiction novel, Flight of the Doves (Menucha Publishers, 2023), Please Be Polite (Menucha Publishers, 2022), A Bridge in Time (Menucha Publishers, 2021), Secrets in Disguise (Menucha Publishers, 2020), Denver Dreams, a novel (Jerusalem Publications, 2009), Memorable Characters…Magnificent Stories (Scholastic, 2002), Befriend (Menucha Publishers, 2013), The Road Less Traveled (Feldheim, 2015), fiction serials and features in Binah Magazine and Binyan Magazine, and “Moon Song” in Binyan (2021-2022).
