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  PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF NORMA FOX MAZER

  “Mazer is one of the best of the practitioners writing for young people today.” —The New York Times

  “It’s not hard to see why Norma Fox Mazer has found a place among the most popular writers for young adults these days.” —The Washington Post Book World

  A, My Name Is Ami

  “A satisfying novel about the ups and downs of 12-year-old Ami’s relationship with her best friend Mia … The writing is light but consistently sensitive and realistic, as the joys and disasters of the characters flow towards a moving and memorable ending.” —School Library Journal

  “The atmosphere and the girls are right on target.… An accurate slice of teenage life.” —Publishers Weekly

  B, My Name Is Bunny

  “[Bunny] is a likeable, true-to-life character who hates her name and wants to be a professional clown. Her friendship with Emily is the source and depth of this simple story of two teenagers learning about life … [a] story of growth and acceptance with accurate of two teenagers learning about life … [a] story of growth and acceptance with accurate and touching emotions.” —School Library Journal

  C, My Name Is Cal

  “Deftly sketched … Mazer’s skill in telling the reader more about Cal than he knows about himself, while narrating Cal’s unique, taciturn voice, is especially memorable.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “Readers will recognize themselves.” —Booklist

  Dear Bill, Remember Me?

  A New York Times Notable Book and a Kirkus Choice

  “Highly accomplished short stories, variously funny and moving, about ordinary, contemporary girls and their relationships with mothers or boyfriends.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “Eight short stories, powerful and poignant, about young women at critical points in their lives.” —The New York Times

  “Stories that are varied in mood and style and alike in their excellence.” —The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

  Summer Girls, Love Boys

  “Featuring female protagonists, the stories mix the bitter and the sweet of life while encompassing a variety of narrative techniques, settings, themes, and tones.… Mazer writes honestly and provocatively of human emotion and circumstances while she demonstrates her versatility as a writer.” —Booklist

  Good Night, Maman

  “Mazer writers with a simplicity that personalizes the history.… Direct … honest.” —Booklist, starred review

  Good Night, Maman

  Norma Fox Mazer

  For the people of Oswego who welcomed the refugees; for Ruth Gruber, who gave so much and who still does; and above all, for the 982 souls who came on the Henry Gibbins to the United States: for them and all who endured the unendurable, and for their children, and their children’s children, world without end …

  Part One

  FRANCE AND ITALY

  1940–1944

  1

  THE VISITOR

  Madame Zetain had a visitor downstairs. Whenever this happened, everything stopped in our attic room, everything went silent. We didn’t talk. We didn’t move. We didn’t sneeze or scratch an itch. We could breathe, but it had better be silent breathing.

  As soon as we heard the knock on the door, Maman went to the mattress, I eased myself to the floor, and Marc took his Buddha pose.

  The voices murmuring below went on and on. What could they be talking about for so long? Maman said small towns had few secrets. What if Madame was telling the secret of us? Leaning across the table, whispering, Don’t say a word, my friend, but I’ve got three Jews hidden in this house. Right up there. Right above our heads. Her friend would gasp and make a terrible face, as if the very thought of Jews made her sick to her stomach.

  Marc sat on top of the black trunk like a prince-calm, his legs crossed, his hands loose in his lap. Was he thinking about home? Or girls … or Papa? He said that at times like these, he went into his mind and stayed there.

  “It’s like taking a trip. Being somewhere else. Do it,” he told me.

  Fine for him to say, but for me it wasn’t so simple. To begin with, my heart beat like a drum. I read that in a book, and it was true. Whenever someone came into Madame Zetain’s house, my heart beat just like a drum. It was doing it now, as if it were being pounded over and over, always on the same note. Huge thumps that felt as if they’d break open my chest and slam my heart straight through the floor.

  It would be just like my heart to be so noisy and stupid.

  Papa had called me Na Na Noisemaker—his nonsense name for me ever since I was little. I was always zooming around, making a mess, drawing and singing and talking. If I had no one to talk to, I talked to myself. When Papa came home from work, I’d fling myself at him like an arrow, shouting his name and telling him everything that had happened all day. Papa.

  Sometimes when I had to be still, when I could do nothing, then that was what I felt. Nothing. But other times, what I felt was … everything. Like now. It came over me like a huge wave, that feeling, my head turning hot as a stove and my breath rushing in and out. In-and-out, in-and-out, in-and-out—stop! I pinched myself hard.

  Maman lay on the mattress like a log. Like someone dead. Maman. Open your eyes. Maman!

  I was sure I hadn’t even moved my lips, but Marc looked at me and shook his head.

  I straightened my back. I would sit like this, utterly still, until Madame’s visitor left. For the rest of the day, and all night, too, if necessary. Marc wasn’t the only one who knew how to be patient.

  That was one of Papa’s favorite words. “Patience, Na Na Noisemaker,” he’d say. “In time, the grass turns to milk.” The first time I heard him say that, I was four years old. Grand-mère explained about cows and their several stomachs and how grass got digested. “Then I’m drinking grass?” I had shouted.

  Now I understood a lot of things, and not only about cows and milk. I understood about patience. And that Papa, for once, had been wrong. Sometimes it made no difference how much patience you had. All the grass in the world could turn into all the milk in all the milk bottles, and one thing would never change. It would still be true that Papa had been arrested by our own French police and handed over to the Germans.

  It was bad to think about this.

  All right. I’d tell myself a story, and I’d begin it properly. Once upon a time …

  Once upon a time there was a girl named Karin Levi. She was ten years old and quite nice and ordinary, like any French schoolgirl. Her brother, Marc, was two years older and skinny as a stick, although once he’d been a plump, plump boy. Karin had never been plump, but when they lived at home her knees were nice and padded. Now they were like two old bony faces, and as for her arms—

  The muscles in my legs were cramping again. Marc claimed I could uncramp them if I concentrated properly. I concentrated. I ordered my legs to uncramp. It wasn’t working.

  The last time my legs cramped, I had leaped up without a thought and stamped my feet. Maman had been furious. “What if someone was in the house, you stupid girl!” Maman had never spoken to me like that before. Marc said, “Maman, it was an accident. She didn’t mean to—”

  “No,” Maman said. “No excuses. Everything each of us does now matters. Everything. Do you understand? Karin! Answer.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I understand.”

  Maman nodded. “All right, then. It won’t happen again.” Her eyes had that swollen look, as if she’d been crying for hours.

  I bit that place below my thumb where it wa
s still a little fleshy. My skin tasted salty. When the war ended, I planned to eat everything I wanted to, salty and sweet, and no turnips or cabbage ever again. Madame Zetain was very fond of turnip stew and cabbage soup, and turnip and cabbage stew, and cabbage and turnip soup. Whatever it was, I ate it all—and whatever it was, it was never enough.

  I breathed in, breathed out, deep slow breaths from my belly, the way Maman had taught me. I breathed and listened. Listened with ears, eyes, skin. Listened for a door slamming. For heavy footsteps and voices shouting, Come out, Jews, we know you’re in there.

  2

  HER BEAUTIFUL EYES

  “Karin, you’ve mastered the art of quiet,” Maman said. She sat on the mattress next to me, brushing and braiding my hair.

  The art of quiet. What words! Elegant, like Maman. Of course, we were all quiet as mice. But every day, I still had to remind myself. I missed noise. Sometimes in my dreams I heard banging crashes, shouts, even a whole brass band.

  “Maman.” I whispered, as usual. “If I were to draw those words—”

  “What words?”

  “Maman! ‘The art of quiet.’ I’d draw me wrapped from chin to toes in a sort of dark blankety thing, with swirls of gray stuff, like clouds, all around.”

  “Lovely,” she said, and started on the second braid, pulling the strands tight. Every day, Maman braided my hair. If the soldiers came, I would be taken away with my hair in smooth, tight braids.

  Maman tied a piece of string around the braid. “There,” she said. “Done.”

  I moved closer to her and thought about crawling into her lap. But I was too old for that. I had to be mature. Because of hiding, because of the war, because, as Maman said, our lives had changed and anything could happen, anytime, to any of us. Even to her.

  I slid as close as I could get. I breathed in the smell of Maman, closed my eyes, and told myself another story, my favorite story of all.

  I’m walking down a long sandy road. There are tall trees on both sides, the sky is big and blue like the sea, and behind me are Maman, Papa, Marc, and Grand-mère. We’re together again. They’re all here, my beloveds, watching as I dance down the road under the blue, blue sky.

  “Maman,” I said, just to say her name.

  “Yes, darling?” She looked at me.

  Her smile, into which I fell with love.

  Her eyes, her beautiful, beautiful eyes. Her beautiful, sad eyes.

  Here was what I’d learned about sadness—it was catching. Get in the way of someone else’s sadness, and before you knew it, you had it, too. And then time collapsed, and turned the day so shapeless you couldn’t see to the end of it.

  That’s when I learned something else—to turn away from Maman’s eyes. Away from the sadness. Away from thoughts of Papa and Grand-mère, of home and our little cat, Minot, and of friends and school. Yes, just turn away.

  But then there was the other thing I learned—that sometimes I couldn’t do it. I had to look at Maman. I couldn’t live without looking at her.

  So I did. I looked at her. And I never stopped looking. And loving her. Loving her so much.

  3

  NO WINDOWS

  This room where we lived was once a closet. A storage closet under the eaves, with two shelves, a black trunk, eight metal hooks, and a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. It measured seven of Marc’s feet one way, four the other.

  In this room, nearly a year had passed. I had grown taller, thinner, quieter.

  Was a year a long time, or a short time? Long, surely. Yet sometimes it seemed that time itself had been swallowed up, and that we had never lived anywhere but here, or in any other way.

  Sometimes everything that was once real seemed unreal, as if only this room was real. Marc called it the Box. It was small. “Not small,” he said. “Tiny, crammed, crowded.” We lived in it like mice in a nest. “You mean rats in a hole,” he said.

  On the very first night we came here, I was ready to love Madame Zetain, because she took us into her house to hide and also—maybe mostly—because her eyes were almost the same tiny emerald shape as Grand-mère’s. But soon I saw that Madame Zetain’s eyes slid over me, while Grand-mère could never get enough of looking at me and talking to me. Madame only said things like yes and no and “You stay in the room, you.”

  Since I couldn’t love Madame, I wanted to like her. It would have been easier, though, if she didn’t fold her hands over her belly when she came to collect the rent from Maman. And if she was politer to Maman. And if we didn’t all have to try so hard to make her smile.

  Maman said it was sinful to go on about Madame’s manners and forget the risk she was taking, forget that she was doing a brave thing. The German soldiers could come anytime, sweeping into the village in their trucks, with their dogs and guns. Jew hunt, they called it. And if they found us, then Madame would be taken, too. Jew lover, they would call her. That was almost as big a crime as being a Jew.

  Madame said that if the soldiers came, she’d rush up the attic stairs and shove the big wooden wardrobe in front of our door. But what if she couldn’t get up here ahead of them? What if they heard something? Smelled something? What if they pushed the wardrobe aside?

  But it was best not to think of that.

  Think, instead, of the roof. It leaked. Madame had given us two old pots for when it rained. I liked to gaze at the stains on the ceiling. They resembled brown clouds, or mushrooms like the morels that Grand-mère picked in the spring in the woods outside Paris.

  The finest thing about the room was the window in the far wall, a big, clear pane of glass, through which I could see the sky—clouds, sun, stars, and moon. I could see them all, day or night, any time I wished, since the window existed only in my mind.

  Sometimes I dreamed about real windows, the ones in our apartment at 86 rue Erlanger. Narrow windows, tall as doors. Windows that opened out to let in voices and the honking, hooting sounds of the city and fresh, cool air.

  Sometimes I heard the sounds of schoolchildren on the street outside Madame Zetain’s house. One day, I was sure I heard a girl calling, “Odette! Walk with me.”

  “Marc,” I whispered, “what if it’s Odette Marie Breton?” Marc raised his eyebrows, as if my question wasn’t worth answering.

  He was right. Odette Marie was safely home at 80 rue Erlanger with her family. She and I used to walk to school together. Did she know that I was gone? Gone from our school like all the Jewish girls—yes, of course she knew that. But gone from the street, from the city? Where did she think I went? Maybe she thought the same thing happened to me as to Sarah Olinski. Taken in a roundup by the Germans. Or maybe she didn’t think about it at all.

  If I wasn’t who I was and where I was, would I want to think about such things?

  When I asked Marc this question, he said, “You’re now out of the realm of reality and, therefore, there’s no possible answer.”

  4

  THE POSTCARD

  Every morning, I was the first one awake. First on my feet, first dressed, first out of the room. Maman slept in, and Marc, the minute he woke, began reading. I couldn’t understand it. This was the best chance, sometimes the only chance in a day, to leave the Box. We could go downstairs to wash and use the bathroom without hurrying. Madame was not so nervous about visitors this early in the morning.

  I ran barefoot across the attic floor and down the steps. At the bottom, I turned and ran back up lightly and silently. I did it again. Down and up. I thrilled myself with my light dancing feet. Down again, and up, and down.

  I was panting, my face was warm. I drew in a breath, then opened the door to the kitchen. A jar of wild-flowers was on the table. A wonderful smell filled the air. Biscuits? Madame Zetain was sitting at the table.

  “Good morning, madame.”

  “Yes,” she said, and covered her food with her hand, as if I might steal it. I would have liked to do that! I imagined leaping across the kitchen, snatching a biscuit, then stuffing it into my mouth.
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  “Barefoot again?” Madame said. “What a little savage you are. That’s not how nice French girls acted when I was growing up.”

  “Yes, madame.”

  “Tell your mother it’s the end of the month.”

  “Yes, madame.”

  “Tell your mother I have sewing for her.”

  “Yes, madame. Would you have work for me, also?”

  “Certainly not.”

  Marc sometimes scrubbed the floors for Madame, and Maman sewed, which meant they got to leave the Box. “I’m sure I’m a good worker, madame.”

  She waved her hand. “Phfft,” she said. “Go ahead, go wash.”

  In the bathroom, with its damp smell, I splashed water over my face. I stared at myself in the mirror. My face was pale, my chin was pointy. My eyes were too deep. Marc was handsome, as well as brilliant and kind. God got lazy when it was my turn. “Phfft,” I said, waving my hand at myself. Madame was right. I was a savage, worrying about silly things like being pretty.

  Maman was awake when I went back. “Did you say good morning politely to Madame?” she asked.

  “Yes, Maman. Yes yes yes yes.” Maman asked the same question every morning. “She has sewing for you. She says it’s the end of the month.”

  Maman nodded. “Brush your hair. I’ll go down now.”

  I slung myself on the mattress, untied my braids, and brushed a few strokes. “Why does it matter if I brush my hair? Marc. Marc! Did you hear me?”

  He was lying on his back, on the floor, with a book held above his head. “What?”

  “No one sees me, except you and Maman. What if I didn’t brush? What if my hair was tangled all day, what then?”

  “You know what Maman says, Karin.”

  “I know, Marc! Maman says we have to carry on as normally as possible.”

  Normal meant that every day we had what Maman called a routine. We brushed, we washed, we exercised and studied. We kept our space neat, we weren’t rude, and we never complained.