“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.
She’ll have to go to Göteborg. But how?
“You can walk on the ice all the way to Hjuvik.” Wasn’t that what the woman in the post office said? Hjuvik’s on the mainland. There would be a bus from there to Göteborg.
On Saturday, Stephie says to herself. When we get out of school early. I’ll have to save my lunch sandwiches, or try to make a couple of extra ones without being seen. I’ll dress warmly, and take the little compass Uncle Evert taught me to use.