Mahmoud’s dad looked sheepish. “It doesn’t have to be a snowman.”
“This is serious,” Mom said. “I know we’ve been talking about leaving. But now? Like this? We were going to pack. Plan. Buy tickets. Book hotel rooms. All we have now are two backpacks and our phones. Germany is a long way away. How will we get there?”
“By car first.” Mahmoud’s father shrugged. “Then by boat? By train? By bus? On foot? I don’t know. What choice do we have? Our home is destroyed! Were you able to get the cash we’ve put away?”
Mahmoud’s mother nodded, but she was clearly still worried.
“So we have money! We will buy tickets as we go. More importantly, we have our lives. But if we stay in Aleppo a day longer, we may not even have that.” Mahmoud’s father looked from his wife to Hana to Mahmoud to Waleed. “We’ve spent too much time talking about it and not doing anything. It’s not safe here. It hasn’t been for months. Years. We should have gone long ago. Ready or not, if we want to live, we have to leave Syria.”
Ruthie skipped ahead of Josef along the sunny Promenade deck, happier than he’d ever seen her before. And why not? The MS St. Louis was a paradise. Banned from movie theaters in Germany because she was a Jew, Ruthie had seen her first cartoon on board during movie night and loved it—even if it was followed by a newsreel with Hitler yelling about Jews. Three times a day they ate delicious meals in a dining room laid out with white linen tablecloths, crystal glasses, and shining silverware, and stewards waited on them hand and foot. They had played shuffleboard and badminton, and the crew was putting up a swimming pool, which they promised to fill with seawater once the St. Louis hit the warm Gulf Stream.
Everyone on the crew had treated Josef and his family with kindness and respect, despite his father’s repeated warnings that all Germans were out to get them. (In five days, Papa hadn’t come out of their cabin once, not even for meals, and Josef’s mother had barely left his side.) And the crew wasn’t just being nice because they didn’t know Josef and his family were Jews. No one wore their Jewish armbands on the ship, and there were no Js above any of the passenger compartments, because all the passengers were Jews. All nine hundred and eight of them! They were all going to Cuba to escape the Nazis, and now that they were finally away from the threats and violence that followed them everywhere in Germany, there was singing and dancing and laughter.
Two girls around Ruthie’s age wearing matching flowery dresses were leaning over the railing and giggling. Josef and Ruthie went over to see what they were doing. One of the girls had found a long piece of string and was dangling it over the side, tickling the noses of passengers who were sleeping in chairs down on A-deck. Their current victim kept batting at his nose like there was a fly on it. He bopped his nose hard enough to jerk awake, and Ruthie laughed hysterically. The girls yanked up the string, and they all dropped to the deck behind the rail where the man couldn’t see them laughing.
“I’m Josef,” he told the other girls when they’d all gathered themselves together. “And this is Ruthie.”
“Josef just turned thirteen!” Ruthie told the girls. “He’s going to have his bar mitzvah next Shabbos.”
A bar mitzvah was the ceremony at which a boy officially became a man under Jewish law. It was usually held on the first Shabbos—the Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest—after a boy’s thirteenth birthday. Josef couldn’t wait for his bar mitzvah.
“If there’s enough people,” Josef reminded his sister.
“I’m Renata Aber,” said the older of the two girls, “and this is Evelyne.” They were sisters, and, amazingly, they were traveling alone.
“Our father is waiting for us in Cuba,” Renata told them.
“Where’s your mama?” Ruthie asked.
“She … wanted to stay in Germany,” Evelyne said.
Josef could tell it wasn’t something they were comfortable talking about. “Hey, I know something funny we can do,” he told them. It was a trick he and Klaus had played on Herr Meier once upon a time. Thinking about Klaus made Josef think about other things, but he blinked away the bad memories. The MS St. Louis had left all that behind.
“First,” Josef said, “we need some soap.”
Once they had found a bar, Josef showed them how to soap up a door handle so that it was so slick it was impossible to turn. They used it on the door handles of cabins up and down the passageway on A-deck, then hid around the corner and waited. Soon enough, a steward balancing a large silver tray came down the hall from the other end and knocked on a door. Josef, Ruthie, Renata, and Evelyne had to swallow their snickers as the steward reached down with his free hand and tried and failed to open the door. The steward couldn’t see because of the big platter he held, and as he fumbled with the knob he lost his hold on the tray and the whole thing came crashing down with a great clatter.
All four of them burst out laughing, and Josef and Renata pulled the two younger children away before they could be caught. They collapsed behind one of the lifeboats, panting and giggling. As Josef dried his eyes, he realized he hadn’t played like this, hadn’t laughed like this, for many years.
Josef wished they could stay on board the St. Louis forever.
The boat was heavy in Isabel’s arms, and she was afraid of dropping it, even though there were five other people carrying it with her. She and Iván held the middle of the boat on either side, while Iván’s parents and Isabel’s father and grandfather carried the front and back.
Se?ora Castillo, Iván’s mother, was dark-skinned and curvy, and wore a white kerchief over her dreadlocks. Isabel’s mother, almost nine months pregnant, was the only one not helping to carry the boat. It was big and heavy to begin with, and they had packed it with the gas cans, plastic soda bottles filled with fresh water, condensed milk, cheese and bread, and medicine. Everything else had to be left behind.
Nothing was more important than making it to Florida.
It was night, and a waning moon peeked out from behind scattered clouds. A warm breeze lifted Isabel’s short curly hair and raised goose bumps on her arms. Fidel Castro had said that anyone who wanted to leave was welcome to go, but that was hours ago. What if he had changed his mind? What if there was a line of police waiting to arrest them at the beach? Isabel hefted the boat to get a better grip and tried to pick up her pace.
They left the village’s gravel road and hauled the boat over the dunes to the sea. All Isabel could see was the metal side of the boat in front of her face, but she heard a commotion behind her. There were people on the beach! Lots of them! She panicked, her worst fears come true, and suddenly a blinding light lit her up. Isabel cried out and let go of the boat.