This is a follow up chapter to Lois Lowry's Number the Stars. In this sequel chapter the characters are reconnecting as adults. Number the Stars is an incredible story. She would probably do this very differently. This was an assignment for school for my son that we did together. This writing has no association to Lois Lowry.
I'LL TAKE TEN
Kirsti ran as fast as she could to the bakery, pulling Annemarie along with her. Annemarie glanced over her shoulder. Since the war, she'd been wary of anything rushed or urgent or secretive, but Kirsti seemed elated, like she was going to burst, so she allowed her sister to pull her along this once, down the cobblestone street, past the tailor's and the fishmarket and the shoemaker's shopfronts where their mother had bought them shoes made from fishscales when they were little girls. Kirsti had hated those shoes.
"Kirsti, please slow down, " said Annemarie. "Why are we running. Where are we going? "
"Shhhhh. You'll see."
Behind the glass she looked at the French pastry hearts that the Germans had called Scheineohoren and at the eclairs and muffins and magnificent cakes frosted with sugar that looked like fallen snow. Kirsti looked at the same rows of sweets and breads and croissants until finally her eyes settled on exactly what she wanted.
Pink frosted cupcakes.
"I'll take ten," Kirsti said.
"Kirsti," she said.
"Shhhh."
When they had paid for the cupcakes Kirsti told her she was taking her to the hospital where she worked and that someone very special was there and had asked to see her. Kirsti was a nurse at St. Margaret's Hospital and loved to care for the sick, but hospitals made Annemarie nervous.
Kirsti led her down the corridor to a patient's room and knocked on the door and opened it and told Annemarie to take the cupcakes and go in. Before she knew it, Kirsti had turned and left and she was there alone in the room with Ellen Rosen.
It had been almost fifteen years since she'd seen Ellen. She approached the bed where Ellen lay and Ellen told her to come and sit beside her and she told her that she and her husband Erik had just had a baby girl. Annemarie hugged her and told her how happy she was that she was safe and that she was thrilled to hear of her news.
"Do you work here with Kirsti?" Ellen asked her.
"No," she said. "I learned to care for my Uncle Henrik's farm after the war. Especially my favorite cow, Blossom."
She told Ellen that she helped sell the fish Uncle Henrik caught and that she made and sold cheese that got shipped all the way to England and she told her that she took care of Uncle Henrik and that her parents had both died and Ellen said that she was sorry.
"The war seems like yesterday," said Ellen.
"Yes," she said. "It really does."
She asked Ellen what she had thought about it when it was all over and Ellen said she was so happy then but now she thought of the war like she thought of the sea and that she was angry that she had had to be a part of it back then but that in a few moments her little daughter had healed all of the sorrows she had ever felt in her life.
Annemarie reminded her of how King Christian planned for everyone to wear the star of David, so that when the Nazi's wanted to take all the Jewish people they would not know who was Jewish and who was not. "We were all one together."
"You know what, though?" said Ellen.
"What?" she asked.
"He never did that."
"No, he didn't." She looked down and then up at Ellen again and she took a bite of her cupcake. She said that she had just thought of King Christian so fondly because it made her think of Ellen and she had missed her so much everyday and wished that she had found her sooner.
"I'm sorry," said Ellen.
She said that it was okay and then Ellen said she also remembered when as girls they told stories about King Christian and Scarlett O'Hara and she said that back then she really thought that anything was possible and now she took a bite of her cupcake and took a sip of water and looked at the street before them out of the hospital window.
"Things are better for people now."
"A little," said Ellen. Then Ellen said that many of the friends her family had before the war were no longer their friends. Her husband had refused to do business with many of the men and women he knew when they returned from Sweden because he said that they had cooperated too much with the Germans and he said that they would have been better off to try to sell their rifles to him because they were brand new and only dropped once.
Annemarie giggled like she had when they were ten and Ellen giggled but her laugh was different than it was then.
It was hesitant.
Ellen said she was a teacher now and that they had come back to Denmark because they had experienced almost as much hatred toward them because they were Jewish as when they had left Denmark, running from the Nazi's. She said that Sweden sounded wonderful because the word neutral sounded peaceful but her papa had told her that it only meant that they didn't stand for anything. Then she said, "but you know what?"
"What?" asked Annemarie.
"I am here with you and my daughter and we are alive and that is what I'm happy for no matter how we got here."
Then Ellen flipped a coin and said that if it was heads she would name her baby Annemarie and if it was tails she would name it Lise. She told Ellen that she and Erik had talked about it and that Erik liked both names.
"Call it," said Ellen with a smile.
"I can't. I can't," she said. But she called it and it was tails and she felt she'd won and that the most she'd ever lost in her life was Lise and now she was happy to remember her through Ellen's daughter's namesake.
Annemarie smiled and hugged Ellen and they wept and the nurse brought Ellen's baby to her and she felt that the only thing she wanted to be now more than anything in the world was a mother.
"She's beautiful," said Annemarie.
"I'd have ten if I could," said Ellen.
"Me too." Then she remembered what she kept in her pocket always. She took out Ellen's Star of David necklace and placed it in around the baby and said that she'd thought of Ellen everyday. It was too big of course but someday it would look lovely on little Lise.
She brushed one of Ellen's thick dark curls from her eyes. Ellen looked so tired.
Ellen said that after the war she had thought of her most when the stars came out and her mother was so happy that she was crying. "Right then it seemed like the whole world was crying. There were too many tears to count because everyone around me was crying, and in the sky there were too many stars to count."
