Lois Lowry - Number the Stars

For a moment she felt frightened. But she pulled the blanket up higher around her neck and relaxed. It was all imaginary, anyway – not real. It was only in the fairy tales that people were called upon to be so brave, to die for one another. Not in real-life Denmark. Oh, there were the soldiers; that was true. And the courageous Resistance leaders, who sometimes lost their lives; that was true, too.

But ordinary people like the Rosens and the Johansens? Annemarie admitted to herself, snuggling there in the quiet dark, that she was glad to be an ordinary person who would never be called upon for courage.

Alone in the apartment while Mama was out shopping with Kirsti, Annemarie and Ellen were sprawled on the living room floor playing with paper dolls. They had cut the dolls from Mama’s magazines, old ones she had saved from past years. The paper ladies had old-fashioned hair styles and clothes, and the girls had given them names from Mama’s very favorite book. Mama had told Annemarie and Ellen the entire story of Gone With the Wind, and the girls thought it much more interesting and romantic than the king-and-queen tales that Kirsti loved.

“Come, Melanie,” Annemarie said, walking her doll across the edge of the rug. “Let’s dress for the ball.”

“All right, Scarlett, I’m coming,” Ellen replied in a sophisticated voice. She was a talented performer; she often played the leading roles in school dramatics. Games of the imagination were always fun when Ellen played.

The door opened and Kirsti stomped in, her face tear-stained and glowering. Mama followed her with an exasperated look and set a package down on the table.

“I won’t!” Kirsti sputtered. “I won’t ever, ever wear them! Not if you chain me in a prison and beat me with sticks!”

Annemarie giggled and looked questioningly at her mother. Mrs. Johansen sighed. “I bought Kirsti some new shoes,” she explained. “She’s outgrown her old ones.”

“Goodness, Kirsti,” Ellen said, “I wish my mother would get me some new shoes. I love new things, and it’s so hard to find them in the stores.”

“Not if you go to a fish store!” Kirsti bellowed. “But most mothers wouldn’t make their daughters wear ugly fish shoes!”

“Kirsten,” Mama said soothingly, “you know it wasn’t a fish store. And we were lucky to find shoes at all.”

Kirsti sniffed. “Show them,” she commanded. “Show Annemarie and Ellen how ugly they are.”

Mama opened the package and took out a pair of little girl’s shoes. She held them up, and Kirsti looked away in disgust.

“You know there’s no leather anymore,” Mama explained. “But they’ve found a way to make shoes out of fish skin. I don’t think these are too ugly.”

Annemarie and Ellen looked at the fish skin shoes. Annemarie took one in her hand and examined it. It was odd-looking; the fish scales were visible. But it was a shoe, and her sister needed shoes.

“It’s not so bad, Kirsti,” she said, lying a little.

Ellen turned the other one over in her hand. “You know,” she said, “it’s only the color that’s ugly.”

“Green!” Kirsti wailed. “I will never, ever wear green shoes!”

“In our apartment,” Ellen told her, “my father has a jar of black, black ink. Would you like these shoes better if they were black?”

Kirsti frowned. “Maybe I would,” she said, finally.

“Well, then,” Ellen told her, “tonight, if your mama doesn’t mind, I’ll take the shoes home and ask my father to make them black for you, with his ink.”

Mama laughed. “I think that would be a fine improvement. What do you think, Kirsti?”

Kirsti pondered. “Could he make them shiny?” she asked. “I want them shiny.”

Ellen nodded. “I think he could. I think they’ll be quite pretty, black and shiny.”

Kirsti nodded. “All right, then,” she said. “But you mustn’t tell anyone that they’re fish. I don’t want anyone to know.” She took her new shoes, holding them disdainfully, and put them on a chair. Then she looked with interest at the paper dolls.

“Can I play, too?” Kirsti asked. “Can I have a doll?” She squatted beside Annemarie and Ellen on the floor.

Sometimes, Annemarie thought, Kirsti was such a pest, always butting in. But the apartment was small. There was no other place for Kirsti to play. And if they told her to go away, Mama would scold.

“Here,” Annemarie said, and handed her sister a cut-out little girl doll. “We’re playing Gone With the Wind. Melanie and Scarlett are going to a ball. You can be Bonnie. She’s Scarlett’s daughter.”

Kirsti danced her doll up and down happily. “I’m going to the ball!” she announced in a high, pretend voice.

Ellen giggled. “A little girl wouldn’t go to a ball. Let’s make them go someplace else. Let’s make them go to Tivoli!”

“Tivoli!” Annemarie began to laugh. “That’s in Copenhagen! Gone With the Wind is in America!”

“Tivoli, Tivoli, Tivoli,” little Kirsti sang, twirling her doll in a circle.

“It doesn’t matter, because it’s only a game anyway,” Ellen pointed out. “Tivoli can be over there, by that chair. ‘Come, Scarlett,’ ” she said, using her doll voice, “ ‘we shall go to Tivoli to dance and watch the fireworks, and maybe there will be some handsome men there! Bring your silly daughter Bonnie, and she can ride on the carousel.’ ”

Annemarie grinned and walked her Scarlett toward the chair that Ellen had designated as Tivoli. She loved Tivoli Gardens, in the heart of Copenhagen; her parents had taken her there, often, when she was a little girl. She remembered the music and the brightly colored lights, the carousel and ice cream and especially the magnificent fireworks in the evenings: the huge colored splashes and bursts of lights in the evening sky.

“I remember the fireworks best of all,” she commented to Ellen.

“Me too,” Kirsti said. “I remember the fireworks.”

“Silly,” Annemarie scoffed. “You never saw the fireworks.” Tivoli Gardens was closed now. The German occupation forces had burned part of it, perhaps as a way of punishing the fun-loving Danes for their lighthearted pleasures.

Kirsti drew herself up, her small shoulders stiff. “I did too,” she said belligerently. “It was my birthday. I woke up in the night and I could hear the booms. And there were lights in the sky. Mama said it was fireworks for my birthday!”

Then Annemarie remembered. Kirsti’s birthday was late in August. And that night, only a month before, she, too, had been awakened and frightened by the sound of explosions. Kirsti was right – the sky in the southeast had been ablaze, and Mama had comforted her by calling it a birthday celebration. “Imagine, such fireworks for a little girl five years old!” Mama had said, sitting on their bed, holding the dark curtain aside to look through the window at the lighted sky.

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