Kindertransport by Olga Levy Drucker Read Free Book Online Page B

about her shoulders. She had a way of tossing her head when she spoke that made them dance as if they had a life of their own. Her eyes were as blue as mine. But I had this creepy feeling that evil lurked behind them. Evil? Well, perhaps just … hate. Just looking at them made me shiver. She wore Shirley Temple shoes. Patent leather. Black. I looked down at my own sturdy oxfords. Laced. Brown. I wished I could hide my feet under the plush carpet.
    We had tea in a glassed-in breakfast room that led into the garden. I tried to follow the conversation, but no luck. Jill was obviously talking about me. She pointed at me
several times and giggled maliciously. But from Mrs. Gordon’s voice I could tell that she told Jill to stop it. Jill stuck out her tongue at me, then pouted.
    Lunch was served an hour later in the formal dining room. A fire roared in the fireplace. If it hadn’t been for Jill, everything would have been perfect.
    Mrs. Gordon spoke to me in German. It sounded funny, and I was dying to laugh at the way she pronounced the words. But in my head I could hear Mama telling me to be polite. Mrs. Gordon said I could come along to watch Jill have her riding lessons.
    The girl changed into her riding clothes. She left her frilly white dress rumpled on her bed, jumped into her jodhpurs, and pulled up her wondrous boots. Oh, to have an outfit like that, I thought. Then, with her helmet under her arm, she stepped into the waiting car, ahead of her mother. I followed slowly, kicking pebbles along the driveway. The chauffeur drove us to the stables.
    Jill pranced merrily around the field on a fine-looking mare, while Mrs. Gordon and I perched on the rail, watching her. For the first time in all my eleven years, I knew what envy was. To wear those riding clothes—that would have been one thing. But to sit proudly atop a sleek, muscular animal such as this horse—oh, that would have been paradise itself! Its long, blond mane flowed in the wind; its gentle eyes grew wild with excitement as its hoofs, barely touching the ground, thundered past. Oh, I wanted to ride! I became obsessed by the thought. I would
learn English quickly, so that I could tell Mrs. Gordon that I wanted to ride.
    But when I learned enough to ask, the answer was always the same: “Soon. Maybe next time. Yes, soon.”
    Days melted into weeks, weeks into yet another month. On Sundays, Jill went to church with her parents, while I stayed home with the housekeeper. On Mondays and Thursdays I was taken along to Jill’s riding lessons. Always I hoped that this time my prayers would be answered.
    They never were. Was Mrs. Gordon so insensitive? Or was she simply unaware that this strange little creature, me—whom she surely had rescued from a life of poverty in the slums of London, and from certain persecution, possibly death, in Germany—could think of wanting anything more?
    In Stuttgart I had been the spoiled darling of my family. All I had to do was ask, and sooner or later I’d get what I wanted. I thought of the longed-for scooter, and the roller skates, now unused and rusting in back of some closet at home. Now I was the onlooker; Jill the spoiled darling. I … I was merely the guest passing through, until a “more permanent” home could be found for me. For I knew that Mrs. Gordon had no intentions of keeping me. Whatever would she do with this little Jewish refugee?
    I began to fight with Jill.
    I fought for what I had come to expect from the world. I fought for what I thought were my rights. I used my
feet, my hands, my fingernails. I changed from being an easy-to-please, cheerful child into a screaming, snarling, scratching, spitting little monster. The world, as it turned out, didn’t care. But Mrs. Gordon did.
    â€œIf you don’t behave yourself,” she told me, “I will have to send you back to Germany.”

8
    BOARDING SCHOOL
    W ell, of course, that didn’t happen. Though, as