in a jacket that needs to be nipped in at the waist, and a trickle of men bring in shirts with loose buttons, pants with dragging legs, suits needing patches at the elbows.
It’s not difficult or inspirational work, but it’s work. It’s useful; it’s something that makes me feel useful and normal. People have hardly any money to pay with, so I end up with other things: Resoled shoes for Abek. Candles, kerosene, a carved wooden box to keep supplies in.
And then, one evening I sit in my room and finish the delicate embroidery on a handkerchief for a going-away gathering planned for that night. Miriam. She finally came back to our cottage a few nights after the wedding, but she soon realized that her reason for staying at Foehrenwald had disappeared. Now that she knows her sister won’t ever be coming, she’s decided to go back to Holland. She thinks she still has friends there. Breine and Chaim organized the gathering and asked me to make the gift. I stitched flowers around the edges, and then, in the middle, all our initials.
It’s a heartbreaking party, a party that’s trying to do a lot of different things. It seems odd to ask Miriam to remember her time in Foehrenwald when so much of it is defined by things she would like to forget. But I give her the handkerchief anyway, and she folds it carefully into her pocket.
“Do you know, my sister’s name is Rose?” she asks, sadly running her hand over the flowers. “I will think she knows you made this for me.”
After the dinner is over, I walk back to the cottage with Abek, thinking about Miriam going back to Holland, about beginnings and endings.
There’s no strict reason why I need to be in Foehrenwald. I could take in sewing anywhere. I could do it in Sosnowiec, and that would free up two beds for the other refugees who continue to arrive every day. This place is not meant to be permanent.
“Do you want to try riding again before it’s completely dark?” Abek asks. “Or, I think some people are going to play cards later.”
We’re about halfway to the cottage, walking down the dirt path. It’s chilly tonight, back to normal autumn temperatures, and I fold my arms in front of my chest. “Actually, I was thinking we should talk about the future.”
“The future?”
“What to do now. You’ve been here a little while, and now that we’ve found each other, we should have a plan.”
“Okay,” he agrees. “What are the options?”
“Well, we could go back to Sosnowiec right now,” I say slowly. “That’s the first option. It’s what I’ve always assumed we would do. We could live in our old apartment, and we could try to find our old friends. Do you remember your old room? I know Gosia would like to see you, and—”
“What else?” he interrupts. “You also said we could go with Breine and Chaim on their boat.”
“We could go with them on their boat,” I continue, a bit thrown off at how quickly he seemed to dismiss the option of going home. “Or, there are ships, I suppose, to anywhere in the world. We could go somewhere else,” I blurt out. “We could go to—to Sweden. Or Argentina, or America.”
“I wanted to go to Norway,” Abek says suddenly.
“Norway? Since when?” I laugh. “Why?”
He looks down. “There was a man who was nice to me. He was from Norway. He told me there are all these—they’re not rivers, but they’re like that. And mountains.”
“Fjords,” I supply. “They’re inlets, I think. Okay, we could add Norway to our list. Anywhere else?”
Does Josef want to go to Norway? a part of my brain wonders, but I quickly swat away the thought. This conversation is about Abek and me. It’s not about Josef. “The thing that’s most important is that you need to be back in school,” I say. He makes a face. “You do. You probably haven’t had steady lessons of any kind since Mrs. Schulman, when you were eight, and you’ve never been in a real schoolhouse.”
“Can’t you teach me?”
“That’s not really a permanent solution. I need to be thinking about how to make money and take care of us.”
“I could work, too,” he offers.
“I don’t want you to work. You’re too young. I want you to still have a normal childhood. School was important to Papa and Mama; you remember.”
He rolls his eyes. “I’m not a child.” There’s a testiness in his voice, like I