Number the Stars by Lois Lowry Ch 5-2
Trembling, the two girls rose from the bed and followed him, brushing past the two remaining officers in the doorway, to the living room.
Annemarie looked around. These three uniformed men were different from the ones on the street corners. The street soldiers were often young, sometimes ill at ease, and Annemarie remembered how the Giraffe had, for a moment, let his harsh pose slip and had smiled at Kirsti.
But these men were older and their faces were set with anger.
Her parents were standing beside each other, their faces tense, but Kirsti was nowhere in sight. Thank goodness that Kirsti slept through almost everything. If they had wakened her, she would be wailing—or worse, she would be angry, and her fists would fly.
“Your names?” the officer barked.
“Annemarie Johansen. And this is my sister—” “Quiet! Let her speak for herself. Your name?” He was glaring at Ellen.
Ellen swallowed. “Lise,” she said, and cleared her throat. “Lise Johansen.” The officer stared at them grimly. “Now,” Mama said in a strong voice, “you have seen that we are not hiding anything. May my children go back to bed?” The officer ignored her. Suddenly he grabbed a handful of Ellen's hair. Ellen winced.
He laughed scornfully. “You have a blond child sleeping in the other room. And you have this blond daughter—” He gestured toward Annemarie with his head. “Where did you get the dark-haired one?” He twisted the lock of Ellen's hair. “From a different father? From the milkman?
Papa stepped forward. “Don't speak to my wife in such a way. Let go of my daughter or I will report you for such treatment.” “Or maybe you got her someplace else?” the officer continued with a sneer. “From the Rosens?” For a moment no one spoke. Then Annemarie, watching in panic, saw her father move swiftly to the small bookcase and take out a book. She saw that he was holding the family photograph album. Very quickly he searched through its pages, found what he was looking for, and tore out three pictures from three separate pages.
He handed them to the German officer, who released Ellen's hair. “You will see each of my daughters, each with her name written on the photograph,” Papa said.
Annemarie knew instantly which photographs he had chosen. The album had many snapshots—all the poorly focused pictures of school events and birthday parties. But it also contained a portrait, taken by a photographer, of each girl as a tiny infant. Mama had written, in her delicate handwriting, the name of each baby daughter across the bottom of those photographs.
She realized too, with an icy feeling, why Papa had torn them from the book. At the bottom of each page, below the photograph itself, was written the date. And the real Lise Johansen had been born twenty-one years earlier.
“Kirsten Elisabeth,” the officer read, looking at Kirsti's baby picture. He let the photograph fall to the floor.
“Annemarie,” he read next, glanced at her, and dropped the second photograph.
“Lise Margrete,” he read finally, and stared at Ellen for a long, unwavering moment. In her mind, Annemarie pictured the photograph that he held: the baby, wide-eyed, propped against a pillow, her tiny hand holding a silver teething ring, her bare feet visible below the hem of an embroidered dress. The wispy curls. Dark.
The officer tore the photograph in half and dropped the pieces on the floor. Then he turned, the heels of his shiny boots grinding into the pictures, and left the apartment. Without a word, the other two officers followed. Papa stepped forward and closed the door behind him.
Annemarie relaxed the clenched fingers of her right hand, which still clutched Ellen's necklace. She looked down, and saw that she had imprinted the Star of David into her palm.
