In the mirror over the washbasin, Stephie’s face is pale. She looks herself straight in the eyes and cuts.
The sharp edges eat their way into the thick braid. Stephie tightens her grip until the blades meet with a firm clink.
Her cut-off braid hangs loose in her hand like a dead snake. Looking into the mirror again, Stephie sees a strange sight. Half her face looks like the Stephie she knows, the other like a strange creature with wild black hair sticking out every which way.
She hears the front door open and shut.
“Stephie,” Aunt Märta calls, “are you home?”
“Yes,” she calls back, never taking her eyes off the mirror.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing much.”
“You’ve got mail,” Aunt Märta says.
Braid in hand, Stephie goes downstairs. Aunt Märta stares at her.
“What have you done, girl? Have you lost your mind?”
“I only meant to cut off a little,” Stephie tells her. “I don’t know how it happened.”
“Ah, well,” says Aunt Märta. “Short hair’s very practical, really.”
Stephie sits on a chair in the kitchen with an old towel around her neck. Aunt Märta unbraids the other side of her hair and cuts it all to an even length. Big tufts fall onto the newspapers Aunt Märta has spread out on the floor.
Then Aunt Märta gets smaller scissors from her mending basket and evens off the ends. Stephie shuts her eyes. She can hardly believe the hands so gently and carefully touching her hair are the rough hands she knows as Aunt Märta’s.
When Aunt Märta is done, Stephie goes to the hall mirror to have a look. Her hair doesn’t look funny now, but she barely recognizes herself. Her neck appears to be long and thin and her eyes look larger. The weight of the braids she always felt when she moved her head is gone. She feels naked.
Aunt Märta passes by with her cut-off braid, throwing it and the rest of the hair into the rubbish pail. When Stephie sees her braid lying among potato peels and fish bones, she wishes she had saved it. But it’s too late now.
After Stephie has cleaned up the newspaper and swept the loose strands of hair off the floor, Aunt Märta opens her bag and gives her two letters.
One has a German stamp and Papa’s handwriting on the envelope. The other is postmarked in Göteborg and bears the return address of the Swedish relief committee.
Stephie’s heart is pounding. It must mean something that these two letters arrived on the same day. Just think if everything is arranged! Just think if Mamma and Papa have their entry visas for America!
Aunt Märta pulls the letter opener through the flap on the envelope from the Swedish relief committee, even though it’s addressed to Stephie.
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.