“Stephie,” Aunt Märta calls from the kitchen, “come help with the ironing!”

Aunt Märta has spread a blanket over the kitchen table, and an old, threadbare sheet on top of it. One of Stephie’s jobs is to see to it that there’s always a hot iron ready. When the one Aunt Märta is using gets cold, Stephie is supposed to hand her a hot one from the stove top and put the cold one back on the wood-burning stove to heat up. She’s also supposed to dampen the laundry by shaking a bottle of water with a sprinkle top, and help fold the ironed clothes.

It takes them all the way to dinner to get through the pile of wrinkly shirts, blouses, dresses, and aprons. Stephie doesn’t have a chance to read Papa’s letter until after the meal.

Stephie, my big girl! Our hopes of making our way to America are dwindling. I know we are asking a great deal of you, and that you are still a child, but I would be very grateful if you could try to help your mother and me.

Papa is asking her for help! Almost as if she were an adult. Stephie reads on eagerly.

Perhaps Sweden, which is not involved in the war, would take us in. Please ask your foster parents to help you contact the authorities. Tell them that we are being persecuted here, and that we need to get out. For the moment the Germans are not stopping us from leaving, as long as there is a country that will take us in. Do your best, my dear one, and write and tell us how it is going.

She will show them she can do it. The relief committee will surely arrange for Mamma and Papa to come. She’ll talk to Auntie Alma after school and ask her to phone immediately.

The next day she goes right to Auntie Alma’s after school. She pretends she’s come to play with Nellie, but it turns out Nellie is leaving.

“I’m on the way to Sonja’s,” Nellie says. “We’re going to build a snowman in her yard.”

“Oh, well,” Auntie Alma says. “You come in anyway, Stephie. I’m sure you’re ready for a snack, now that you’ve come all this way.”

She puts milk and sweet rolls on the table.

“We don’t see much of you nowadays,” she says. “But I suppose you’re very busy with school and your friends.”

Stephie waits until Nellie has left before she speaks up. Taking a sip of milk, she gathers her courage.

“Auntie Alma,” she beings hesitantly, “my father’s asked me to try to arrange for him and my mother to get permission to come here. Things are very difficult for them at home now.”

Auntie Alma looks distressed. “Oh dear,” she says. “I would help you if I could. But politics… I can’t get involved. Sigurd wouldn’t like it.”

“Politics?” Stephie doesn’t see what Auntie Alma means.

“Well, what do we really know about what’s going on down there? After all, they wouldn’t put innocent people in prison, would they?”

Stephie stares at Auntie Alma’s round face and her hair, curling at the temples. She has always thought Auntie Alma seemed kind, but at this very moment she’s afraid the kindness is a kind of barrier, one that Stephie can’t penetrate.

“Thank you for the snack,” she says. “I have to go now.”

Uncle Evert is out on a long fishing trip and isn’t expected back for another week. Aunt Märta is her only alternative.

“I heard from my father,” Stephie begins.

Aunt Märta nods without looking up from her darning. “Ah.”

“They haven’t been granted entry visas to America. Papa doesn’t think they will be, either.”

“Our destinies are in the hands of the Lord,” Aunt Märta replies.

Stephie feels like grabbing her and shaking her up.

“They can’t stay in Austria,” she says. “They just can’t! Don’t you see, Aunt Märta?”

“Don’t you use that tone of voice with me, young lady,” Aunt Märta retorts.

How could she ever have imagined Aunt Märta would help her? No one can. She’ll never see her mother and father again.

Her tears overwhelm her so fast she can’t get out of the room first. Stephie is sobbing, loud and hard.

“I want to go home!” she wails. “I want to go home!”

“Settle down now,” Aunt Märta says. “I’ll phone the relief committee tomorrow. Not that I think it will do any good. But it’s the duty of a good Christian to help those in need.”

Stephie stares at Aunt Märta through her tears. Aunt Märta’s face is solemn and determined. She looks like someone who has made up her mind.

“Go wash your face,” she tells Stephie. “And I want no more tantrums, do you hear?”

While Stephie rinses her burning-hot cheeks with cold water, she thinks that maybe there is a glimmer of hope. If anyone can make people do what she wants, it’s Aunt Märta.

twenty-five

“What did they say?”

Stephie’s in the kitchen doorway, out of breath and red-faced. She’s run the whole way home from school.

Aunt Märta, standing at the stove, turns toward her.

“What on earth is this? Coming in here with your snowy boots on? Go right out in the vestibule and take them off!”

Stephie obeys. By this time she knows Aunt Märta well enough to be sure she will never get an answer to her question until she does.

“Wipe up that mess,” Aunt Märta instructs her when she comes back in.

Stephie takes the floor rag and wipes up the few little wet spots she can barely see on the floor. She rinses the rag, wrings it out, and hangs it up to dry.

“Aunt Märta, did you phone the relief committee?”

“I s’pose you think I haven’t got anything better to do than spend the whole day on the telephone,” Aunt Märta says.

“Not at all,” Stephie placates. “I was just wondering…”

“It took me over an hour,” Aunt Märta tells her.

“I’ll peel the potatoes,” Stephie offers. She has to improve Aunt Märta’s mood to find out what’s happening.

“Yes, please,” Aunt Märta, says, softening up a little. “Use the enamel basin.”

Stephie pours water into the pale yellow basin with its green edge. She goes to the root cellar and gets some potatoes, then takes out the paring knife.

Aunt Märta’s cleaning a cod, pulling out musty-smelling purplish innards from the slit belly. Stephie holds her nose and her breath to escape the smell.

“So, Aunt Märta, did you reach someone at the committee office?” she asks tentatively again.

“Finally, yes.”

“What did they tell you?”

“The woman said there was nothing they could do.”

The knife slips in Stephie’s hand, gliding right off the potato she is peeling. Her left index finger stings and there is a drop of blood.

“Aren’t you the clumsy one, though?” Aunt Märta asks. “Let me see that finger.”

She holds Stephie’s finger under the running water, rinsing off the blood. It’s only a tiny cut, but the finger throbs and aches.

“Why not?” Stephie asks.

“Why not what? Let me clean this cut.”

“No, no-why can’t they do anything?”

“Because the relief committee is only allowed to help children. Government policy. No adult refugees are admitted, unless there are special circumstances.”

“And aren’t there special circumstances for us?” Stephie asks. “Nellie and I are already here.”

“You and five hundred other children,” Aunt Märta says. “What if every single one of you wanted your parents to be let in?”

“But my father’s a doctor. He would be of use. He could work on the island, and the other nearby islands, if someone could just take him around by boat.”

Aunt Märta bandages Stephie’s finger. “Well, that’s what the lady told me. Sorry to say, nothing to do about it. You finish those potatoes, now.”

Stephie peels all the potatoes and rinses them in clean water. If only she could make one single person understand!

There’s only one way out. She will have to talk with the ladies on the relief committee herself. If she could tell them everything, show them her father’s letter and really explain the whole situation, surely they’d understand they had to help Mamma and Papa.