AUGUST 1944
PENNY SAT IN THE BLEACHERS on a stifling August afternoon, cheering as Peter’s baseball team tagged out another player. Peter hadn’t made the play – in fact he made very few winning plays. But his team was winning by a score of seven to three.
Penny nudged Esther, seated beside her. “He looks a little lonely out there, doesn’t he?”
“He’s guarding left field. He’s supposed to stand way out there in case the other team hits a fly ball.” Esther had smiled as she’d said it, and Penny realized how far they had come since she had begun taking care of Esther and Peter nearly a year ago. In those first few months after Eddie went away, Esther had barely spoken a civil word to Penny. Now they sat side by side, content with each other’s company.
“I hope Peter stops looking up at the clouds,” Penny said as she watched him, “or he’s likely to miss one of those fly balls.”
“But he’s happy,” Esther said. “I’m so glad Mr. Mendel talked him into playing.”
“Me too.” And she was relieved that he was finally out of the isolation of his room and away from the fantasy world of his comic books.
“Mr. Mendel is paying for this, isn’t he?” Esther said. “And he’s paying for me to go to the music conservatory, too. He won’t admit it, but I know it has to be him.”
Penny simply shrugged. She hated secrets and longed to tell Esther that it was her grandmother who had arranged everything. Secrets had caused so much damage in Penny’s own family. “Mr. Mendel loves you two kids, you know,” she said instead.
“I know. We love him, too.”
Penny looked around at the other families in the crowd. Some of the men wore beards and little beanies like Mr. Mendel did. She couldn’t help smiling to herself. Here she was, watching a baseball game with Jewish people, at a school for Jewish children. Her parents would have a conniption fit if they knew about it. But Peter had blossomed this summer. He was no longer such a thin, spindly-looking boy but had grown strong and tan from the sunshine and fresh air and exercise. And best of all, he was happy. Maybe he would even start talking again, one of these days.
“Do you think Mr. Mendel will ever see his son, Avraham, again?” Esther asked suddenly. Penny couldn’t reply. “Tell me the truth,” Esther added.
Penny sighed. “I wish I knew. I think we have to keep hoping . . . And I know we have to keep praying. Like Mr. Mendel says, we have to trust God, even when things don’t turn out the way we want them to.”
“So you think they might be dead? Like Mama and Mrs. Mendel and Uncle Joe?”
Penny had read the accounts of the deportation camps in the newspapers. She held only a slender thread of hope for Mr. Mendel’s family. And after attending so many meetings with government officials, Mr. Mendel surely knew the chances of their survival even better than she did. She struggled to form an answer for Esther. “Remember how we were all ready to give up hope with Woofer? But she came home safe and sound, didn’t she?”
Esther looked up at her and smiled, nodding silently.
Peter’s team won the game by two runs. He looked hot and sweaty and exhilarated as he and his teammates thumped each other on the back. “Good job, Peter,” the coach said. Peter needed a bath and a change of clothes, but Penny didn’t want to go straight home to the apartment. “We need to go to the duplex first,” Penny told them. “I need to check on my parents. And your grandmother. They really suffer in this hot weather.”
“Can we buy a newspaper on the way home?” Esther asked.
Penny hesitated. Esther hadn’t seemed as obsessed with the news now that she spent so much time with her music. But deadly battles still raged all around the world, and Penny always feared news of a catastrophe. “I guess so,” she finally replied.
They bought one at a corner store, and the three of them divided up the various sections to read on the bus ride. Peter asked for the sports section, of course. Penny ended up with the front page and nearly missed their stop, engrossed in the news that the Allies had liberated Paris. She read every article and studied every picture, trying to imagine Eddie over there, taking part in this drama. She did the same thing when she read an article about the Marines fighting in the Pacific, picturing Roy fighting bravely alongside his comrades. In the battle for Saipan, twenty-five thousand Japanese soldiers had been killed. Penny couldn’t imagine that many people dying. She folded the paper closed and climbed off the bus, thinking of Mr. Mendel’s family and Esther’s question as they walked to Grandma Shaffer’s house.
The moment Peter opened the back door, Woofer rushed forward to meet him. Penny had to smile. “I think you’re feeding Woofer too much,” she said. “She’s getting so fat! Look at her, waddling around like a penguin.”
Penny went inside to see if Mrs. Shaffer needed anything, then went home to check on her parents. Her mother began to scold Penny as soon as she walked through the door.
“Look at your face! You got too much sun today. You should wear a hat. Your father should, too. Every day he stands out there, fussing over that ridiculous garden you coaxed him to plant – in the hot sun!”
Penny went to the kitchen window and watched her father putter around outside. “He looks content, Mother.” The garden had been a big success. Peter’s plants had blossomed and flourished just as he and Esther had this summer.
“And all these tomatoes,” Mother grumbled. “I don’t know what he thinks we’re going to do with all of them.”
“I’ll take some to work with me. The other drivers loved the last batch I brought to the station. Do you want a salad for supper? I’ll cut everything up for you.”
“Somebody has to start eating all of these vegetables.”
Penny got out a chopping board and a knife and began to work. A year ago she hadn’t understood her mother’s bitterness or why she hid inside the house like a hermit, terrified of strangers. But the secrets that had grown beneath the surface all these years had been unearthed like a crop of potatoes, giving Penny a new understanding of her parents.
They had never mentioned Hazel again. Nor did they know that Penny had visited her or that Hazel hadn’t been raped after all. Perhaps that truth would come to light in the future, but for now Penny was content. She and Hazel wrote letters to each other, sharing all their news. But Hazel mailed them to Eddie’s apartment to avoid more arguments.
Penny saw her parents differently now. She would help them and be kind to them, but they no longer held her hostage with guilt. She had broken free from all the things that they feared: She drove a public bus and talked to strangers – and Jews. Penny smiled again as she remembered sitting in the bleachers at Peter’s baseball game.
“What’s so amusing about cutting up tomatoes?” Mother asked.
“Nothing. I was just thinking of something else.”
Her parents had raised her the best that they could. Rearing children was a daunting task – as Penny had discovered with Esther and Peter. Penny hadn’t had any idea what she had volunteered for nearly a year ago when she’d naively told Eddie she would take care of his children while he was away. She never could have done it alone. Mr. Mendel, Grandma Shaffer, even her father had helped Penny raise them. And now the children’s Jewish grandmother. Penny smiled again, thinking of how God was always at work behind the scenes.
Mrs. Shaffer’s screen door slammed shut with a bang, jarring Penny from her thoughts. Mother clucked her tongue. “I wish those kids wouldn’t slam that door all the time. They never listen.”
A moment later, Esther pounded on the kitchen door. “Penny, come quick! Something’s wrong with Woofer. I think she’s dying!”
Penny dropped the knife and wiped her hands on her apron. Her father came up the porch steps behind Esther with two green peppers in his hands. “What’s wrong?” he asked before Penny had a chance to.
“Woofer is just laying on the kitchen floor, panting! She won’t get up.”
“She’s probably overheated,” Father said. “All dogs pant when they get hot.”
“No, something’s really wrong, I can tell! She’s whimpering, too.”
Penny didn’t know what to do. The children didn’t need any more sorrow in their lives, especially now that they were finally happy. “Will you come with us, Dad?” she asked.
“I don’t know anything about dogs.” But he set down the peppers and followed them into Mrs. Shaffer’s kitchen. Woofer lay in the corner on one of Mrs. Shaffer’s old rugs. Her tongue lolled from her mouth like a long, pink sock, and her sides heaved up and down like a bellows. She did, indeed, look as though she was dying. Penny knelt down and stroked the dog’s head.
“What’s wrong with her?” Esther asked. “Should we call a doctor?”
Penny looked up at her father for advice and saw his shoulders shake as he began to chuckle. He tried to cover his mouth to hold it inside, but his laughter grew louder and louder until he was laughing out loud. She couldn’t recall the last time he had laughed this way. “Dad? What is it?”
He wiped his eye with the heel of his hand, grinning. “There’s nothing wrong with that dog. She’s having puppies!”
And much to everyone’s surprise, she did – four of them, sleek and squirming and beautiful.