The Upstairs Room Read online

  “What is it?” Mother asked in a worried voice.

  “You’ve always been good to me, and I like the girls very much, and I hate to do it. But, see, it’s my boyfriend.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s afraid. He wants me to leave you.”

  “Why?”

  “See, he says I might get in trouble if I keep working for you.”

  “What kind of trouble, Marie?”

  “You see, because you’re Jewish. And I don’t mind, and he doesn’t mind. We like Jews, but he’s afraid a lot of people won’t talk to me anymore if I stay with you. You understand?”

  “I do,” Mother said slowly.

  I didn’t. Why was she leaving? There had been nothing about it on that tree. Sini had to stay home and help Mother. It made her cry, Sini.

  The next month Rachel received a letter in the mail. It was written in German, but she could read it anyway. After she had, she started running up and down the living room.

  “Stop. You’re making me dizzy,” Mother complained. “And what are you doing anyway?”

  “I’ve been fired,” Rachel answered. “As of tomorrow.”

  “Annie, go out and play,” Mother said.

  I got as far as the door.

  “But I’m not taking it,” Rachel cried. “This letter came from the Germans, not from the school. The school probably doesn’t even know about it. I’m going to the principal’s house right now to get it straightened out.”

  “What a situation,” Mother mumbled as Rachel stormed out of the house.

  Rachel had been right. The principal hadn’t known anything about the letter. He was upset, and sorry. But he said it would be better if Rachel didn’t come back anymore. After all, that’s what the letter said.

  I had my own problems at school. Willy Bos, my best friend, didn’t sit next to me any longer. Her mother had come to school to talk to the teacher. When she left, the teacher told me to sit somewhere else. By myself. Because I talked too much. But Willy said later that she wasn’t allowed to sit next to me anymore because I was Jewish. Why was I Jewish anyway?

  “Don’t cry,” Mother said to me, “we like you.”

  I knew that. But why didn’t Willy? Anymore.

  Father was angry’ about Willy. He knew her father very well. Dr. Bos was a vet and had taken care of Father’s cattle for years.

  “Sophie,” Father said, “the longer we stay in Holland, the more intolerable life’s going to be for us. This time, and I don’t care what you say, I’m going to write. to Bram. I’m going to ask him to help us get out of here, fast. If it isn’t too late already.”

  How could we leave, Mother argued, when the new house wasn’t even ready?

  Father didn’t listen. He was already writing the letter.

  But it was too late. Uncle Bram couldn’t help us get to America. And nobody in Holland would give Father the papers he needed, either.

  In the spring of 1941, the tree began to have many announcements on it. We couldn’t rent rooms anymore in hotels. With Mother sick almost all the time now, we wouldn’t have done that anyway. But why did the next poster say that Jews could no longer go to beaches and parks? That wasn’t fair. Beaches and parks belonged to everybody! The tree didn’t mention woods, though, and Winterswijk had pretty ones. And so many.

  The first announcements had made Father angry, but not nearly as angry as the one which said that everybody had to register at the town hall. “Everybody,” he yelled. “Only the papers we have to carry with us have something extra on them! A big J. J for Jew! Sophie, what have you got to say now? Bram was smart. Boy, was he smart! And so was his wife.”

  “But, Ies, I never kept you from going,” Mother said. “You could have gone yourself. With the children even. I would have managed.”

  “Oh, sure.” Father laughed.

  I looked at his face. How come I was never scared before when he laughed? I slammed the door as I went outside, just as Father had done a second before me.

  Sometimes the tree talked to everyone. When food was going to be rationed, it did. We had expected the rationing, and had a lot of dried beans and cans of food in the cellar.

  “What would you like,” I asked Willy Bos. “Peas?” I answered. “I’m sorry but I don’t have any. Maybe I’ll get them in again. Maybe. Why don’t you buy beans, Willy?” I held out a can. “Here, take it. They’re good. You used to like them. Remember?”

  Disgustedly I put down the can. Playing with an imaginary friend was no fun. I didn’t like this summer vacation.

  When school started again, I was in the fourth grade, but only for a few weeks: Jewish children were no longer allowed to attend school. I read the announcement at the marketplace and ran home. “I’m very glad,” I said. “I hope I never have to go back.”

  But really it was boring not to go to school. Everybody else went. My cousin Hannie didn’t go either, but I didn’t like to visit her. Aunt Billa always made me wash my hands, even when there was nothing wrong with them. Poor Grandmother, having to live with her. No wonder she complained.

  The vacation was a short one. In a couple of rooms near the synagogue a school was started for all the Jewish children from around Winterswijk.

  “There’ll be two men teachers,” Father said, “and you’re to pay attention.”

  I nodded. Sure I would. Maybe somebody would sit next to me again like before. Before I became Jewish.

  Sini took me a few times to the new school, and then I wanted to go by myself. What was the matter with my teacher, I wondered. He praised everything I did. I wished he’d stop. The other children stuck their tongues out at me. Every afternoon he asked me to stay for a minute. “Take this note to Sini and don’t lose it. I know I can depend on you. Right? Such a smart girl. And, eh, say hello to her.”

  Sini’s face would get red when she read Mr. Herschel’s note, “You give him this note tomorrow. Okay? But don’t you open it.”

  What was the matter with both of them? I should ask Rachel. She’d know.

  On my way to school I had started to notice signs saying Joden verboden (“forbidden to Jews”). The signs were on the walls of several restaurants and at the movie theater. I never went to the movies anyway. Mother wouldn’t even let me go when Mickey Mouse was playing and everybody I knew went. “It would be too exciting for her,” she always said.

  It was a pity about the restaurants. We used to go sometimes. Until those signs.

  But the other thing was worse. One day after school, a group of children from the old school was waiting for us. We kept on walking as if nothing was the matter, talking to each other as if we hadn’t noticed them. Until they started chasing us. Lots of them, all yelling:

  “Jew, Jew, ugly mole,

  Stick your face in a dirty hole.

  Stick your face in a mustard pot,

  By tomorrow Jew will rot!”

  How could we pretend nothing was the matter? We were running, weren’t we? The others were chasing us, weren’t they? When they caught up with us, they sang that song right in our ears. And hit. And kicked. To be chased by Willy Bos! I didn’t like her either, not anymore. Why weren’t we living in the new house yet?

  I told them at home about being chased. “Don’t worry,” Sini said, “from now on I’ll pick you up.”

  And then the new house was almost ready.

  “I don’t want to wait any longer,” Father said. “I’m becoming very nervous about staying in town. We’re moving.”

  “But, Ies,” Mother complained, “we can’t move into a house that hasn’t been painted.”

  “Yes, we can,” Father said. “If you don’t want to come, I’m going by myself.” He picked up the telephone and talked to somebody about the move.

  Two days later an empty van pulled up in front of our old house. Father and a man carried the furniture out, the man careful at first, until he saw that Father threw everything on the van. Mother sat on a kitchen chair, turning her head back and forth, followi
ng the men with the furniture. She stayed there until they needed her chair to put on the van.

  The Gans family waved as we left, all three of them.

  It was almost October 1941.

  2

  THE new house stood all by itself in the middle of meadows and fields. In the distance… but not too far away… I could see the top part of the church, the one in the marketplace at Winterswijk. Father brought home a little brown dog for me… Bobbie. When he gave it to me, he picked me up and hugged me, just as if there was no war. In the afternoons, after school, Bobbie and I went for walks. Instead of people, we met cows, and they were always eating. Did they keep their eyes open when they ate? I bent down to study one of them. She didn’t even notice me. She was too busy with the grass.

  I stood in the field for a long time. It was getting chilly. What time was it? Weren’t they getting worried at home? They used to in the old house. Once they even called the police when I hadn’t come home by nine o’clock, but the police never found me. I came home by myself to get more marbles. They had been so happy to see me. Maybe I should go home now, in case they were getting worried.

  I didn’t even have to go inside to hear what was going on. “Sophie, … I shouldn’t have listened … America.”

  I turned around again. “C’mon, Bobbie.”

  Every day I wandered a little farther from the house. I discovered a farm close by. I asked Father about it. “Sure,” he said, “I know them. That’s the Droppers’ farm. They have all those children.”

  “Eleven,” I said. “They’re very nice. I like Frits. He’s in fourth grade, too, in the other school.”

  “Ies, she’s spending too much time with them,” Mother complained, “and I don’t like it. From what Annie told me about Frits, he isn’t very bright.”

  “That’s not so,” I yelled. “He knows plenty. How to climb trees, lots of things.”

  “That’s all right. But maybe you shouldn’t go there so often,” Father said.

  But where else could I go? From now on I wouldn’t tell them everything. That would be better. At least at the Droppers’, nobody was fighting. And nobody had a headache. Like at home.

  Mother was right about the new house. We didn’t even know what went on in town one night in October, not until the next day, when it was over and we were told about it.

  Early in the morning when it was still dark, German soldiers had gone through the streets in trucks. They drove slowly, with a list in their hands of the names and addresses of the Jewish men. With them on every truck was a Winterswijk policeman to show them the way. Most everybody was still sleeping. Many of the men were in their pajamas when they came to open the door. You can get dressed, they were told; but hurry; the truck is waiting, and we have more to do. The soldiers ran to the telephones to cut the wires, so nobody could be warned.

  They came to our old house. The policeman didn’t say that we had moved. After the soldiers realized that the house was empty, they ran across the street to the Gans family. They didn’t take the parents. Only their big son.

  “Father, where did the Germans take the men?” I asked.

  Nobody knew for sure, he told me, but they were probably put on the train to Mauthausen, that place in Austria, where a lot of Jews had been sent before. German, Austrian, and Polish Jews. Mauthausen was the name of a jail camp. A concentration camp, people called it, where Hitler told his soldiers to beat Jews any time they felt like it.

  Now why was I scared the next day when I went to school and saw three German soldiers in town? They wouldn’t beat me. They ignored children. But I closed my eyes tightly when their boots were close to me. The sounds they made were so loud. Funny, why did I do it? I wasn’t a man, like the Ganses’son.

  Mrs. Gans came to our house with a yellow card. “Please,” she said to Rachel, “what does it say? Our son wrote to us, but it’s in German, and we can’t read it.” Her hand shook as she handed Rachel the card.

  “I’m in Mauthausen since October 10,” it said in typewritten letters. “I’m number 5562. Room B.” In the left-hand corner were the words: “Write in German only. Add stamps for return letter.”

  “That Rachel. She’s so capable,” Mother said proudly.

  I nodded.

  Nine days later the letter that Rachel had written for Mrs. Gans came back from Mauthausen. unknown was stamped across the envelope.

  “Funny, that they wouldn’t remember him,” Mother said.

  The tree still talked, even to us outside of town. Jews weren’t allowed to travel anymore, it said. But we would be allowed to travel in a truck, I thought. If the truck was one of theirs.

  Father said he did not want to end up in Mauthausen, or in Germany, or in Poland where there were camps just like Mauthausen. “Listen,” he said. “Phil and I have a plan. We might be able to get to Switzerland.”

  “How would you do that?” Mother asked.

  “Somebody’s going to drive us to the Swiss border. All Phil and I have to do is to get across it.”

  “What about us?” Mother asked.

  “After we get to Switzerland, we’ll send for you. And as soon as you arrive, I’m going to get the best doctors to look at you. Well, that’s settled then. The day after tomorrow I’m leaving.”

  “But, Ies, you said it was a plan.”

  “Yes, yes.” Then he noticed me. “Annie, why aren’t you out playing? Listen, don’t tell anybody about this. You understand?”

  My head was spinning. Switzerland? With Hannie? Aunt Billa better not bother me too much about getting washed all the time.

  I looked at Mother. Father’s heavy winter coat was lying on her lap. With the tip of the scissors, she was opening the hem. When it was all done, she placed rolls of money in it and sewed it up again.

  “You won’t tell anybody, Annie, will you?”

  I was getting annoyed at Father. Of course not. It was strange, though. How could he pay for things if he couldn’t get at the money?

  Very early in the morning, when it was still dark, Father waited by the back door for the man who would drive him to Switzerland.

  “I’m too hot,” Father complained, “with this heavy coat. Here he is. In a few days he may come for you. Be ready. I’ll see you soon.”

  He slipped out of the house.

  Two nights later, the doorbell rang. We ran down the stairs, picked up the suitcase we had packed, and opened the door. But it was not the man. Father stood by the door looking exhausted. They had not been able to get across the border, he said. It was too late for that.

  I thought they could tell just by our faces. Rachel had said so. But maybe the star made it easier. Now everybody could tell by looking at our chests. Jood (“Jew”) the star said, in black letters on a yellow background. And they weren’t just ordinary letters. No, they had curlicues, especially the d.

  Father was furious. “They even make you pay for these things,” he shouted, “and textile coupons they want for them, too.”

  But the stars weren’t so bad. I fingered mine. It made me look grown-up. Not all Jews had to wear the star, not children who weren’t six yet. One little boy had a star on his tricycle. His father had had to make him one out of cardboard, because the little boy wasn’t old enough for a real one made out of cloth. Like mine. And I had three more stars at home, real ones too. We needed that many, for we had to wear one all the time. Taking the star off one coat or jacket and sewing it on to another would have been a nuisance. If we could have just pinned it on our clothes.… But we weren’t allowed to, the tree said so. No, I didn’t mind about the star. Grandmother did, but she was old. She probably didn’t like fancy things on her chest.

  Many people wearing stars were at the station that afternoon, getting on the train. And many more were on the platform, staying behind. “Until after the war,” the people in the train were shouting to the ones on the platform.

  “Sure thing,” the ones on the platform were shouting back.

  The train was leaving for
a Dutch camp, a labor camp, where work had to be done for Germany. Many Jews had received letters just like Rachel had, telling them they had been fired. A few men shook Father’s hand. “De Leeuw, won’t it be better to go to work for a little while than to sit around the house? It won’t be for long, and they have told us we’ll be treated well. So what can happen? Stay well, take care.”

  The tree had asked for Jewish volunteers. They were the people on the train.

  “Fools,” Father said angrily, “to just go. C’mon, Annie, let’s not look any longer.”

  At home Rachel had set the table for four, because Mother no longer got out of bed.

  “I don’t understand why they went,” Father said.

  Oh, the men on the train.

  “Annie, stop playing with that piece of bread,” Rachel warned.

  But I didn’t want to eat. It tasted like sawdust. It even smelled like sawdust.

  “Please eat up,” Rachel said, “so I can do the dishes. I have so much work to do before three.”

  I knew why Rachel wanted to be ready by three. That’s when we were allowed to shop. From three until five, every Jew ran through the streets from one store to the next. By three not much was left in the stores to buy. There was not even much to buy before three. Yesterday it had been Sini’s turn to shop. She had come home without anything. Instead of shopping, she and Mr. Herschel had gone for a walk. Rachel had been furious.

  I stuffed the last bite of food in my mouth. I was going to see whether Frits Droppers was home.

  The tree said more volunteers were needed to work in labor camps. You could be as old as sixty. The Gans father was pleased he wasn’t too old to go. Maybe someday he’d be sent out of Holland to another camp, he said. It had happened to a lot of people already. They had been put on the train to Poland. But maybe he’d be lucky enough to get sent to Austria and Mauthausen. And maybe he’d find his son there. Just in case, he took along his son’s favorite sweater, the one with the cablestitching on the sleeves.