Isabel’s War by Lila Perl Page B

belongings and found the chocolate box with the picture of the parents and the three little girls, one smaller and the other two older.
    â€œWell,” Sibby’s mother says, “first of all, you should try to get more information about how Helga managed to leave Germany and be sent to England. My guess is that she was put on one of the Children’s Transports. In 1939 the Germans were still letting the Jews leave.... if some other country would take them. Now, of course...” Mrs. Simon takes the forefinger of her right hand and draws it across her throat, as though she’s slashing it with a knife.
    Even Sibby gasps and I say, “You mean...?”
    â€œWhat,” says Mrs. Simon, “you never heard the Hitler Youth marching song? It goes all the way back to 1934, the year after Hitler became chancellor of Germany. And when Jewish blood spurts from the knife, then things will again go well. Today, nobody gets out alive. If the rest of her family stayed behind in Germany they could be in prison or in a slave labor camp. Or worse.”
    All this information about what’s been going on in Germany is giving me the heebie-jeebies. Why don’t we read more about it in the newspapers? All we keep hearing about are the Japs and the war in the Pacific, and that our government is moving the Japanese people who live on the West Coast into camps fenced with barbed wire because they might be spies.
    Could it be that some people suspect that maybe Helga is a spy working for the Germans? Was that why Mr. Lockhart and our home-room teacher, Mr. Jeffers, didn’t get really angry at Danny Brill’s Sieg Heil ? It’s all a mystery to me, wrapped in a tall, silent riddle that goes by the name of Helga Frankfurter.
    It’s later that evening and I’m doing my homework at the kitchen table when my mother and Helga return from their hospital visit to Mrs. F. My father is out seeing one of his insurance clients, as often happens on weeknights.
    â€œHow is Mrs. F...Frankfurter?” I nearly said Mrs. F. My mother would have killed me.
    â€œNot doing well. Very weak,” my mother replies, as Helga merely nods a polite hello to me and goes to our room. As soon as Helga is out of hearing, my mother adds, “She looks like death warmed over. Now clear your books off the table so I can put some supper together.”
    I’m not sure what “death warmed over” means, but I suspect it has something to do with Mrs. F. not having a chance to put on her makeup since the operation.
    In the room we now share, Helga is sitting on her bed and reading her program schedule for school tomorrow.
    â€œMay I see it?” I ask.
    â€œ Ja , perhaps you can explain to me what is P.T., what is Alg., what is Eng. comp?”
    It turns out that Helga does have ninth-grade classes in physical training and math, while history is eighth grade and English is seventh grade, so her program is a mish-mosh.
    I still don’t see, though, why they put her in a seventh-grade homeroom. She towers among most of the kids except for a few overgrown brutes like Danny Brill. And, even if she does have a German accent, her English is better than people like Billy Crosby who always says “ain’t” and drops all his g’s.
    â€œListen,” I say, as my mother calls us in to supper (a macaroni and cheese casserole that’s been heating in the oven), “I’m sure things will get straightened out at school and you’ll get to feel comfortable there. And I’m really sorry about your aunt being so sick right now.”
    â€œAh, about the school it’s no problem,” Helga says lightly over her shoulder, “because soon, anyway, I’ll return to live with Auntie Harriette.”
    I purse my lips and don’t say a word. My mother didn’t seem to have such high hopes for a quick recovery for Mrs. F. but Helga has her mind made up. Can I ever get her to tell me