Isabel’s War Read Free

Moskin’s is the main haunt around here of bees, wasps, hornets, horse flies, and even bats.
    I nudge the door wide open with my foot, already starting to undo my bathing suit top, when I’m struck by the presence of a tall young woman bending over a suitcase on the twin bed next to mine.
    â€œExcuse me!” I say indignantly. “You’re in the wrong room. This one is mine.”
    The figure across the tiny room turns. She’s not quite old enough to be called a young woman. She’s a girl, taller, skinnier, and older than I by maybe a couple of years. She has honey-brown hair that is long and wavy, a swan-like neck, and luminous gray-green eyes.
    â€œOh,” she says, “you must be Isabel. I am Helga.”
    Her accent is a little strange, and automatically I say, “ Pardonnez-moi? ” French, as you can see, comes to me at the flick of an eye when I’m baffled.
    â€œHelga,” she repeats. “We will be roommates. You speak some French but I am sorry. I speak only German and the English I’ve learned living a few years now in the English countryside. I hope it will be good enough for us to have many conversations.”
    All this time I’m holding my detached bathing suit top up to my chest. Helga may be a girl close to my age, who even speaks my language, but she might as well be a menacing alien from Mars or even a Nazi storm trooper.
    â€œExcuse me,” I say, rapidly reattaching my bathing suit top. “I just remembered something.”
    Two seconds later I’m banging on the door of my parents’ room, a short distance from mine in the annex. My mother, in her cotton pique summer negligee, opens it and peers out suspiciously.
    â€œOh, it’s you. Why are you making such a racket? Your father is napping. How come you’re still in your bathing suit?”
    She is asking me questions. What nerve. I brush them all aside. “ Who is Helga?” I demand. “What is she doing in my room, unpacking a suitcase on the other bed? You told me I was going to have my own room this summer.” I know that I’m screeching out here on the annex porch. But I really don’t care.
    My mother reaches for my shoulder and hustles me across the threshold, while my father grunts irritably from one of the twin beds, where I’ve probably ruined his pre-dinner nap.
    â€œIt all happened while you were at the lake,” my mother explains quietly but none too apologetically. She sits down on the other twin bed and motions for me to do the same. “You see, the Frankfurters arrived late this afternoon with this wonderful surprise, their niece.” Harriette Frankfurter is my mother’s best friend. “She was smuggled out of Germany in 1939 and has beenliving in England. They finally got her over here to live with them. She has no other family, poor thing.”
    â€œOkay,” I say hesitantly. “But what has that got to do with me having to share a room, when I was promised I’d have one all to myself.”
    â€œIsabel, how can you be so selfish? For one thing, the Moskins are short of rooms right now. And Helga is fourteen. So she really shouldn’t have to share with her aunt and uncle.”
    â€œFourteen,” I snap. “She’s too old for me. I don’t think we’d be such good roommates. And her English is kind of...well, stiff.”
    â€œNonsense,” my mother cuts in. “She’s a lovely child. I had quite a conversation with her myself. You and Ruthie and Helga will make a wonderful threesome. And you’ll have a companion when Ruthie is busy with her duties. Don’t you have any feeling at all for somebody who’s been through a terrible time in this war? Go back to your room and be as nice as you can to her. I’ll see you at dinner.”
    I’m still grumbling to myself about the war , the war , and how it’s causing so many problems and annoyances, when