Miriam's Secret Read online

  PRAISE FOR MIRIAM’S SECRET

  “In this heart-warming novel about a secret friendship, Debby Waldman tells a story bound up in America’s history of Depression-era hobos. As Miriam grapples with keeping her friend's secret or doing the right thing, Waldman adeptly brings history alive, painting an engaging portrait of minorities in a small town and showing that cultural differences can bring people together.”

  —Leanne Lieberman,

  author of The Most Dangerous Thing

  “A wonderful, tantalizing and tender tale about how, despite our differences, we all long for the same things: friendship, connection and a sense of purpose.”

  —Monique Polak,

  award-winning author of What World Is Left

  “An endearing story about the power of acceptance.”

  —Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch,

  award-winning author of Making Bombs for Hitler

  Text copyright © 2017 Debby Waldman

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Waldman, Debby, author

  Miriam's secret / Debby Waldman.

  Issued also in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-1425-7 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1426-4 (PDF).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1427-1 (epub)

  I. Title.

  PS8645.A457M57 2017 jC813'.6 C2017-900846-3

  C2017-900847-1

  First published in the United States, 2017

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017933017

  Summary: In this middle-grade novel, Miriam discovers a young girl hiding in the barn while she’s spending Passover at her grandparents’ farm.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Edited by Tanya Trafford

  Cover artwork by Scott Plumbe

  Author photo by Curtis Trent

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  www.orcabook.com

  20 19 18 17 • 4 3 2 1

  Orca Book Publishers is proud of the hard work our authors do and of the important stories they create. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it or did not check it out from a library provider, then the author has not received royalties for this book. The ebook you are reading is licensed for single use only and may not be copied, printed, resold or given away. If you are interested in using this book in a classroom setting, we have digital subscriptions that feature multi user, simultaneous access to our books that are easy for your students to read.

  For more information, please contact [email protected].

  To my grandparents, Velvel (William) Chernoff and Dora (Eva) Rollband Chernoff, and Harris Zvi Waldman and Sarah Papkin Waldman—may their memories be for a blessing.

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AN EXCERPT FROM NOT A CHANCE

  ONE

  ONE

  Miriam was startled awake. Her room was shaking, the window next to her bed rattling like chattering teeth. A long, eerie whistle reminded her that she wasn’t in Brooklyn anymore.

  Sitting up, she pushed the curtains apart, expecting to see a giant lifting her grandparents’ farmhouse off the ground. But the moonlight revealed only the lights of a caboose. She watched it disappear down the snow-covered train tracks. The night fell still and silent once again.

  The next time Miriam opened her eyes, sunlight was leaking through the curtains. Her grandmother was standing by the bed, smiling down at her. Bubby had a smudge of flour on her cheek, and her soft gray hair was coming loose from her bun.

  “Rise and shine, Miri,” she said cheerfully. “I’ve got your breakfast all ready.”

  When Bubby went back down the stairs, Miriam knelt on the bed and pushed the curtains apart again. The train tracks cut a path through the snow, stretching from the bridge over the road at one end of the yard all the way to the woods at the other. Letting the curtains fall back together, she turned to the closet where Bubby had stored her clothes. As she pulled on her dress and wool stockings, she kept an eye on the window, wondering when the next train would come.

  Bubby had set a bowl of oatmeal at the kitchen table. Miriam looked around the room. She had never seen such a big kitchen—it was almost as big as her entire apartment back home. She wondered if Bubby and Zayde were lonely eating at that big table every day, all by themselves, surrounded by empty chairs.

  She thought back to her breakfast the day before with Mama, Papa and Bubby at the cozy table in their apartment in New York. Mama had served her favorites—warm, chewy bialys, soft cheese and smoked whitefish.

  “What do you think Mama and Papa are doing right this minute?” Miriam asked her grandmother as she stirred a spoonful of molasses into her oatmeal.

  Bubby looked at the clock over the sink. It was almost eight. “I imagine they’re getting ready to board the ship. They’re setting sail today.”

  “I wish I could go with them,” Miriam said wistfully. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

  Bubby pulled a handkerchief from her apron pocket and passed it to Miriam. “It’s not a journey for a young girl,” she said.

  “Gabriel and Rafael are babies,” Miriam said. “Why do they get to make the journey?”

  “They have to,” Bubby reminded her. “It’s the only way for them to get to America.”

  “Uncle Avram can bring them,” Miriam insisted. “He’s coming to America too. So why do Mama and Papa have to go?”

  She knew why. Mama had told her so many times, she couldn’t count. Bubby gave the same answer. “Your uncle Avram can’t take care of two babies himself. He needs your mama to help him, and she can’t travel that far alone.”

  Miriam still didn’t understand. It wasn’t as if Mama would get lost. All she had to do was board a ship to Germany and from Germany travel by train to the Old Country. Uncle Avram would meet her at the station in Borisov, and together they would bring Gabriel and Rafael back to New York. Papa couldn’t help with the babies, so why did he even need to go?

  “Your mama has never been to Borisov, Miriam,” Bubby reminded her. “She doesn’t speak Russian.”

  Papa had lived in Borisov until he’d moved to New York fourteen years earlier. A cousin of a cousin of a cousin had found him a job operating a pushcart. Cousin Mendel also had a pushcart—he sold paper and pencils. Papa sold buttons and thread, which is how he had met Mama.

  Your mama needed pewter buttons. Not silver. Not gold. Not tin. They had to be pewter, Papa told Miriam whenever she asked to hear the story, which was often. What did I know from pewter?

  He knew from pewter, Mama would say, laughing. He just pretended.

  Mir
iam liked the idea of Papa being so in love with Mama that he purposely did not try too hard to find the special buttons, to keep her coming back to the pushcart.

  By the time I found those buttons, your mama was as in love with me as I was with her, Papa said proudly.

  Now Papa and Mendel ran a dry-goods store together. Mendel had brought the rest of his family to America. Papa wanted to do the same, but his parents—Miriam’s other grandparents—had died soon after he left Borisov, within a few months of each other. His brother Avram had never really wanted to leave the Old Country. Uncle Avram only changed his mind when his wife, Tante Chaya, died of a fever two months after the babies were born. Miriam said a silent prayer to keep Papa and Mama and Uncle Avram and the twins safe and get them back to America as soon as possible. It was her fifth such prayer of the morning.

  “If only Lindbergh’s flying machine was big enough for an entire family,” Miriam said with a sigh.

  Bubby reached across the table and patted Miriam’s hand. “A ship is much safer than a flying machine, Miri,” she said.

  “But a ship is so much slower,” Miriam said. She remembered when Papa had shown her the newspaper story about Charles Lindbergh flying across the ocean from Long Island to Paris in only thirty-three hours. It was her eighth birthday, and Papa had brought home the newspaper as a keepsake. She still had that newspaper, in a trunk at the foot of her bed with her other treasures.

  “I thought you were excited about coming to stay with us on the farm,” Bubby said. “You can have all kinds of adventures here.”

  Mama had whispered almost the same thing into Miriam’s ear the previous day. The farm is full of surprises. You’ll be so busy, the time will fly. Papa and I will be home with Uncle Avram and your cousins before you know it.

  Bubby was still talking. “…so much you can do here that you can’t in a city full of cars and sidewalks and buildings and noise. How can you sleep with such noise? Here, it’s so peaceful and quiet.”

  Miriam shook her head. “No it’s not,” she said. “I heard a train last night.”

  “Ach, the train,” Bubby said, leaning back in her chair. “You’ll get used to it. By next week you’ll sleep right through it.”

  “Does it come every night?” Miriam asked.

  “Trains go up and down that track every night and every day,” Bubby replied. “They travel from Canada to Florida and everywhere in between.”

  “Like Utica? And New York City?” Miriam asked.

  Bubby nodded.

  Miriam was confused. After breakfast the day before, she and Bubby had climbed aboard a train at Grand Central Station in Manhattan. When they stepped off, in Utica, it was time for dinner.

  Zayde had met them at the station. Then he’d driven them to the farm in his pickup truck. The ride was so long that Miriam had been fast asleep when they arrived.

  “Why didn’t we take that train yesterday?” Miriam asked. “Why did we have to get off in Utica?”

  “Only freight trains travel on that track,” Bubby said with a smile. “Freight trains carry things, not people.”

  “What kinds of things?” Miriam asked.

  “All kinds of things—clothes, food, pots and pans, even stoves and iceboxes.”

  “Why not people?” Miriam asked.

  “The cars don’t have seats,” Bubby said. “Just big empty spaces to hold the freight. Imagine sitting on a hard floor all the way from New York.”

  “I don’t think I would like that,” Miriam said.

  Bubby nodded. “I don’t think so either.”

  TWO

  “Come along,” Bubby said after Miriam finished her breakfast. “You and I have a job to do.”

  Miriam hoped it was something you could do inside, like making a cake. But Mama had warned her that most of the work at the farm was outside—picking vegetables, pulling weeds, letting cows in and out of the barn.

  It was so cold right now that Miriam couldn’t imagine a vegetable growing, or even a weed. And she hadn’t seen any cows. She could barely see beyond the snow outside the windows.

  Until the day before, Miriam hadn’t been to the farm since she was a baby. She’d lived all eleven years of her life in Brooklyn. When Mama wanted vegetables, she and Miriam walked to the greengrocer, next to the bakery at the end of the block. For eggs they went to the market across the street. They didn’t have to go to a store for milk—a milkman delivered it in glass bottles, right to their building.

  Earlier that morning Zayde had come back from the barn with a dented metal pail full of milk, fresh from the cow, he said. It was warm and creamy, topped with a layer of froth.

  When Bubby wanted eggs, she walked to the chicken coop. “Put on your coat and boots,” she said to Miriam. “It’s not far, but we don’t want your feet getting wet.”

  The chicken coop was across the yard, at the edge of the woods that bordered the farm. As Miriam and her grandmother crunched along a well-worn path in the snow, Miriam counted the buildings. Just off to the side of the house was the outhouse, which Miriam had visited before breakfast and vowed not to use again until the weather warmed up. There was a chamber pot in her room. She hadn’t wanted to use it, for fear she might spill the contents on the way downstairs to empty it. But she was now willing to take the risk. Anything would be better than sitting bare-bottomed in a wooden shed when the wind was howling outside.

  Not far from the outhouse were the icehouse and the woodshed. Beyond the chicken coop stood a big red barn, a smaller red barn, a one-story building and a round white tube nearly as tall as the New York skyscrapers Miriam could see from her bedroom window back home. Off in the distance was a large, partly built wooden frame.

  “That’s the new barn,” said Bubby when she noticed Miriam staring. “The hired men will finish it before spring.”

  Miriam wondered why the farm needed a new barn, but she didn’t have time to ask. They had reached the coop. The door wasn’t much taller than she was. To fit through, Bubby had to stoop. Her chin almost bumped her knees.

  It was dark in there. And the stink was worse than anything Miriam had smelled, even on garbage day. She pinched her nose.

  “You’ll need both your hands to gather the eggs,” Bubby said. “Breathe through your mouth. It won’t smell so bad.”

  Miriam tried to focus in the dim light. She could see shelves lined with shallow wooden boxes filled with straw. On top of each box sat a chicken. All of them stared at Miriam but never moved a feather.

  “What eggs?” Miriam asked. “I don’t see any eggs.”

  “They’re under the chickens,” Bubby explained.

  “So how do we get them?”

  “Like this.” Bubby nudged the chicken in front of her. Quickly, and ever so gently, she pushed against its fat, feathered side. The chicken tipped slightly to the left. Bubby reached under.

  Her hand emerged cradling an egg. Or, at least, Miriam thought it was an egg. Its brown shell was speckled with dirt and straw. It looked nothing like a clean, smooth Brooklyn egg.

  Bubby seemed to know exactly what Miriam was thinking. “After we wash it, it will look just like the eggs your mama buys,” she promised. “And it will taste even better!”

  Squatting in front of the lower shelf, she nudged the chicken nearest her. “It’s your turn,” she said.

  Miriam dropped to her knees.

  “That’s your egg,” Bubby said, pointing with her free hand. “Grab it.”

  Miriam reached. The chicken turned its head. Miriam snatched her hand back. “It’s going to bite me!”

  “It’s not,” Bubby assured her.

  “How do you know?”

  “Chickens don’t have teeth,” she said.

  “Then how do they eat?” Miriam asked.

  “Oh, they eat,” Bubby replied. “Don’t you worry about the chickens.”

  Miriam tried again. This time when her grandmother nudged the hen, Miriam was able to scoop up the egg. Then she tried doing it without Bubby�
�s help. Soon the basket was full. As they walked back to the house, Miriam counted. Fourteen eggs!

  “Why do we need so many?” she asked.

  “We have many mouths to feed,” Bubby said. “Sometimes I don’t even know how many.”

  That explained all the chairs around the table in the kitchen. “But I thought it was just you and me and Zayde.”

  “No, we have—” A train thundering down the tracks blew away the rest of Bubby’s words. She continued toward the house, but Miriam stayed, staring.

  Three big black barrels rolled out of one of the cars and landed on the snow. And then, even more amazing, the barrels uncoiled themselves. Then Miriam could see that they weren’t barrels at all. They were men wearing long dark coats and felt hats.

  Miriam ran as fast as she could into the house. “You said the trains carried things, not people!” she said to her grandmother. “But people got off the train! Come and see!”

  She pulled Bubby to the front window. Zayde was out there now, and his dog, Mazel, was standing next to him, his long silky tail wagging in excitement, stirring up the snow.

  Zayde and the men were nodding and talking like old friends. Miriam could tell they were all talking at the same time—their breath floated in front of their faces before it dissolved into the cold morning air.

  “Who are they?” Miriam asked.

  “They’re hobos,” Bubby explained. “Men who travel from place to place looking for work. Sometimes they don’t have money to buy a train ticket. So they hide in empty freight cars and jump off where they think they can find work. And your zayde always hires them. Even if there isn’t any work. He’s got a soft heart.”

  “And you feed them?” Miriam asked. “That’s why we need the eggs?”

  “That’s right,” Bubby said. “I used my last eggs this morning, making breakfast for four hired men and Zayde before you even woke up. That’s why you had oatmeal.”

  “Do the men eat here all the time? With us?”

  Bubby nodded.

  “Do they sleep in the house too?” She wondered where—the house didn’t look that big.