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 Märta reads aloud. “The relief committee wishes you a Merry Christmas and hopes that you feel at home in Sweden now.”

Aunt Märta straightens her reading glasses, glancing at Stephie over the top. Stephie nods eagerly. All right, she feels at home. Anything to make Aunt Märta 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 Märta 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 Märta 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 Märta puts the letter down.

“Is that all?” Stephie asks.

Aunt Märta 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 Märta 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 hope.

“Not give up hope.” Where is Stephie supposed to get hope from, when all she ever feels is disappointment? The tears in her eyes make Papa’s handwriting go blurry. She wipes them away and continues reading. Papa writes that he is now being allowed to work at the Jewish Hospital.

It is very tiring, because there are so few of us and so little equipment and medicine. But this is my only opportunity to work as a doctor, and every single day I am aware how sorely my services are needed.

Dearest Stephie, you are a big girl and must be brave. Take care of Nellie, she’s younger and cannot be expected to understand things as well as you. We must all continue to see this as a passing situation, and believe that we will soon be together again. It is a great comfort to your mother and me to know that you two are safe, whatever happens.

Her father’s letter ends with best regards to Stephie’s “Swedish family.” Please tell them how grateful Mamma and I are that they are taking care of you, he writes. Grateful, grateful, and more grateful!

She puts down the sheet of paper with its tiny handwriting and opens the letter from her mother.

My dear one! I miss you and Nellie so. Every day I look at your framed photographs and at the picture from our picnic in the Wienerwald. But the pictures are old now and you have surely grown in the salt sea air. I would so much appreciate receiving new photos. Has anyone taken your pictures recently? Perhaps with your Swedish families in them, too? Please send any you might have! If you have none, perhaps you could ask someone with a camera to take your pictures? Tell them your mother so badly wants to see what you look like after four months in Sweden.

Stephie’s hand flies to her neck, touching her hair and the naked flesh below it. What will Mamma say when she sees Stephie without her braids? She used to love them so.

Last summer, when they’d first arrived, Auntie Alma took some pictures of Stephie and Nellie playing with Elsa and John. Perhaps Stephie could send them to Mamma and say there are no more recent ones.

Sooner or later Mamma will find out. But hair grows faster after it’s cut. Perhaps it will be back down to her shoulders by the time they get to America.

twenty-one

Sylvia sneers when she sees Stephie’s hair.

“Goodness, did your whole mane burn up?”

“No, she must’ve chopped it off with sheep shears,” Barbro comments.

Stephie doesn’t reply. Back home she was good at defending herself with words. Whenever anyone said something nasty to her, she would make a quick retort. But in Swedish her words come out so slowly and are so insufficient. She just turns away.

After the end-of-term program Stephie walks home, filled with good feelings from the beautiful Christmas music and all the candles.

“Lo, how a rose e’er blooming…,” she hums to herself, almost unaware of Nellie’s presence beside her and of what her sister is talking about.

“Sonja gave me a Christmas present,” Nellie boasts. “But I mustn’t open it until Christmas Eve. And Auntie Alma’s going to take our pictures today, too. I’m going to send one to Mamma for Christmas.”

Stephie stops in mid-step. “Who told you that?”

“Mamma wrote that she wanted one,” Nellie replies. “Didn’t she write and ask you, too?”

“No,” Stephie lies.

“Oh, well, she asked me,” Nellie says. “So I’ll buy a frame when we go into Göteborg to do our Christmas shopping. We’re going to a pastry shop, too.”

“There are no pastry shops in Göteborg,” Stephie asserts. “No real ones, anyhow, like in Vienna.”

“Oh, yes there are.”

That’s when Stephie notices that Nellie is answering her in Swedish, although Stephie has been speaking German.

“Why are you speaking Swedish with me?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because we speak German, that’s our language.”

“It sounds so stupid,” Nellie says. “If anybody else hears.”

“So do you think you’re Swedish now, or something?”

Nellie doesn’t say anything, just takes a wrapped present out of her pocket and rattles it near her ear.

“Mamma and Papa would be upset if they heard you,” Stephie tells her. “Very upset and angry.”

Nellie thrusts the present back in her pocket. She sticks out her bottom lip and doesn’t say another word the rest of the way to the house.

Auntie Alma has set the table and prepared raspberry juice, saffron buns, and ginger cookies. She asks to see their report cards and praises them for having worked so hard.

“Before you know it you’ll both be best in your class,” she tells them. “As soon as you’ve really mastered Swedish.”

“I think we’ll get our next report cards in American English,” Stephie tells her. “If our English is good enough by then.”

Auntie Alma’s forehead creases. “Oh, my dear,” she tells Stephie, “I don’t think you ought to count on being able to travel to America this spring.”

“But,” Stephie begins, “Father wrote…”

Elsa and John are tired of sitting still. They leave the table and start chasing each other around the kitchen, shouting loudly. Nellie slides off her chair, too, catching John in her arms. She tickles him and he laughs so hard he’s near tears.

“I don’t doubt that your father is doing his very best,” Auntie Alma continues. “But travel is not easy when there’s a war on.”

What is Auntie Alma trying to tell her? Will they be staying on the island all the way to the end of the war? How long is that going to be?