“Did you name me after your friend, Mama?”
“Yes. I did. I hope you’ll grow up to have her fine qualities.”
Hildemara imagined Rosie Gilgan had been fearless like Mama and popular like Elizabeth Kenney, with no worries about how others might treat her. Hildemara cried herself to sleep. She wished she could get sick like she had on the train. Maybe then Mama would let her stay home from school. Maybe then she would never have to go back and face Mrs. Ransom.
No amount of crying and begging changed Mama’s mind, even on Saturday, when Mama found out she couldn’t borrow books until the family had a permanent address.
Papa leaned close to the lamp and translated a story from his German Bible every evening. One evening he would pick from the Old Testament, the next from the New. Bernie liked to hear about warriors like Gideon and David and Goliath or the prophet Elijah calling down fire on the altar and then killing all the priests of Baal. Clotilde didn’t care what Papa read. She crawled into his lap and fell asleep within minutes.
Hildemara liked the stories of Ruth and Esther, but tonight she didn’t want to get into a squabble with her brother and sister after being picked on all day by Mrs. Ransom. She had heard Mama and Papa arguing earlier, and she didn’t want to add fuel to Mama’s temper by complaining about anything.
“No warriors or war stories tonight, Bernhard.” Papa tweaked Clotilde’s nose. “And no love stories. You’re going to hear Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.”
Papa read for a long time. Bernie usually sat cross-legged, eager to hear. Tonight, he flopped on his cot, his hands behind his head, half-dozing. When Clotilde fell asleep, Mama tucked her into her blanket sack. Hildemara poked the needle through the sampler Mama gave her. No matter how hard she tried, she made a mess of the stitches. Mama took it and plucked at the knotted thread. She handed it back. “Do it again.” Hildie hung her head, wanting to cry. Even Mama didn’t approve of her efforts to do things right.
Papa kept reading.
Hildemara didn’t understand most of it. What did it mean to be salt and light? Why would someone hide a lantern under a basket? Did they want to start a fire? What did adultery mean? When he started reading about enemies, Hildemara took slower, more careful stitches. “Love your enemies,” Jesus said. Did that mean she had to love Mrs. Ransom? Mrs. Ransom hated her. Surely that made her an enemy. “Pray for those who persecute you,” Jesus said. “What does persecute mean?”
Mama stabbed a needle through one of Papa’s work shirts. “It’s when someone treats you cruelly, when they spitefully use you.”
Papa left the Bible open in his lap. “Jesus was treated cruelly, Hildemara. When He was nailed to the cross, He prayed for the people who put Him there. He asked God to forgive them because they didn’t know what they were doing.”
“Are we supposed to do that?”
Mama gave Papa an angry glance. “No one can be as perfect as Jesus.”
Papa didn’t look at her, but spoke to Hildemara instead. “God says if you love only those who love you, then you’re no better than those who are cruel to you. If you are kind only to friends, you are no different than your enemy.”
Mama tied a knot and snipped it. “That doesn’t mean you let people step all over you. You have to stand up-”
“Marta.” Papa’s quiet voice held a note of warning that made Mama press her lips together. Papa put his hand on Hildemara’s head. “It takes someone very special to love an enemy and pray for someone who is unkind.”
“She’s not Jesus, Niclas.” Mama tossed Papa’s shirt onto his bed. “And if she was, she’d end up like Him, too. Nailed to a cross!” She went outside the tent, arms crossed against the cold night air.
Papa closed the Bible. “Time for bed.”
Lying on her cot, Hildemara heard Mama and Papa talking in low voices outside the tent wall.
“One of us should go and tell that-”
“It’d only make things worse, and you know it.”
“She’s having a hard enough time without you telling her she has to put up with people walking all over her. She has to learn to stand up for herself.”
“There are different ways of standing.” Papa’s voice lowered even more.
Hildemara muffled her crying in her blanket. She didn’t want Mama and Papa arguing about her. She prayed Mrs. Ransom would stop persecuting her. She prayed Mrs. Ransom would be nice tomorrow. She thought about what Elizabeth Kenney had told her about Mrs. Ransom’s brother. Hildemara knew how sad she would be if anything bad happened to Bernie. Just thinking about Bernie dying made Hildemara feel even worse. Hildemara hadn’t done anything to deserve Mrs. Ransom’s hatred. Maybe Mrs. Ransom was just like those people who killed Jesus. Maybe Mrs. Ransom didn’t know what she was doing, either.
All the way to school the next morning, Hildemara prayed quietly. Bernie told her to stop mumbling. “If you start whispering to yourself, people are gonna think you’re crazy!”
The rest of the way to school, Hildemara thought her prayers instead of saying them aloud. When Mrs. Ransom led the children into the classroom, Hildie thought a prayer for her. Jesus, forgive Mrs. Ransom for being so mean to me. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.
The prayer didn’t change anything. In fact, everything got a whole lot worse. When the hygienic inspection was over, Mrs. Ransom grabbed Hildemara by the ear and dragged her from her seat. “Come up here, Hildemara Waltert, and let the other children have a good look at you!”
Heart thumping, Hildemara tried not to cry. Mrs. Ransom let go of her ear long enough to grab her shoulders and spin her around to face the class. “Hold up your hands, Hildemara. Show these children what I have to look at every morning.” Hildemara closed her eyes tightly, wishing she could become invisible. Mrs. Ransom slapped the back of her head. “Do what I tell you!” Trembling, face on fire, Hildemara held up her hands. “Look, children! Have you ever seen such disgusting fingernails? She’s chewed them down to the quick.”
For once, no one laughed or even twittered.
“Go to your seat, Hildemara Waltert.”
When Papa finished reading the Bible that evening, Hildemara asked if he had fought in the war. He frowned. “Why do you ask such a question?”
“Mrs. Ransom’s brother died in the war.”
“I was in Canada when it started.”
Mama interrupted before he could go on reading the Bible. “Had your papa been in Germany, he might have been killed, too, Hildemara. Hundreds of thousands died: Frenchmen, Englishmen, Canadians, Americans, and Germans.”
Bernie asked who started it.
Papa closed the Bible. “It’s too complicated to explain, Sohn. One angry man shot a royal and two countries went to war. Then friends of those countries took sides, and soon the whole world was fighting.”
“Except Switzerland.” Mama went on sewing. “They were smart enough to stay out of it.”
Papa opened his Bible again. “Yes, but they made plenty of money on it.”
Hildemara couldn’t make sense of it. “Did anybody you know die, Papa?”
“My father. My brothers.”
Mama’s eyes went wide. “This is the first I’ve heard of them.”
Papa gave her a sad smile. “I wasn’t hatched, Marta. I had a mother and father and brothers and sisters. My mother died when I was Hildemara’s age. My sisters were much older and married. I don’t know what happened to any of them. I’ve written letters.” He shook his head, his eyes moist. “Only God knows what became of them.”