Read My Canary Yellow Star for Free Online

not, I hoped, for a long, long time.
    I was surprised when I didn’t get my usual welcoming hug.
    “Where have you been?” she snapped. “I’ve been out of my mind with worry.”
    “I’m sorry, but Madam asked me to stay late. It’s a real nuisance not having a telephone. I don’t like to call Mrs.Marton with messages unless I absolutely have to.” Mrs. Marton lived in the apartment right above ours. She had been a good friend in the past, but of late she had become more and more distant.
    “Never mind that now,” Grandmama said. “Never mind. Thank God you’re home. Your mother hasn’t come back from her sister’s yet, and I don’t know what to do about your brother. He got into some kind of a fight at school and won’t tell me what happened. Try to talk to him.”
    My brother and I had become very close over the past few months. With Papa gone, and Mama and Grandmama more and more nervous as the days passed with no word from him, Ervin and I got into the habit of discussing our problems with each other. We soon learned that if anything went wrong, Mama would begin to cry and Grandmama would get chest pains. It was easier for us to rely on each other than to share our troubles with the adults.
    I entered Ervin’s room without knocking, ready to retreat if he decided to throw something at me. He was hunched over his desk, so absorbed in his writing that he didn’t even look up. Crumpled pieces of paper littered the floor around his desk.
    “Ervin, it’s me! Look at me! What’s the matter with you?”
    “Leave me alone! Get out of my room!” he cried in a muffled voice, his back still to me.
    I took a cautious step toward him. “Come on,” I coaxed in a tone I would have used with a little child. “Comeon! It’s me!” I repeated. “You know I won’t get mad at you.”
    Slowly, Ervin swung his chair around. I gasped when I saw his face. He had received a terrible beating. One of his eyes was swollen shut, his face was black and blue, his lips were twice their normal size, and streaks of dried blood decorated his forehead. I sunk onto his bed.
    “I’m quite a mess, aren’t I?” he exclaimed almost cheerfully. “Believe me, I gave as good as I got!” His battered face was proud.
    “What happened? You promised Mama that you wouldn’t get into any more fights.”
    “Well, you know, it was really unavoidable,” Ervin muttered through swollen lips. “It started in geometry class. Old Nemeth returned our final exam today. I had only one mistake, but he gave me a C. I should have got an A. Sam Stein, who is the only other Jewish boy in the class, sits beside me. He had two mistakes, and Nemeth gave him a D.
    “Pfeiffer was sitting in front of us, and I could see that his paper was marked up all over by Nemeth’s red pencil. You know what an idiot Pfeiffer is. He’s always getting into trouble and making a fool of himself. But the teachers are afraid of him because he wears his Arrow Cross uniform to class and his buddies are the Fascist bullies in the higher grades.” Ervin sighed.
    “Old Nemeth always reads everybody’s mark out loud to the whole class. When he announced that Pfeiffer got anA, I couldn’t believe it! I put my hand up to ask him about my mark. He pretended not to see me. I was finally forced to address him without being called up.”
    “Oh no! You didn’t!” I groaned.
    “I had to, Marta. He just wouldn’t call on me. I swear I was very polite. I said, ‘Sir, could you please explain why Pfeiffer, whose examination is full of mistakes, received an A, while Stein, with two mistakes, was given a D, and I, with a single mistake, got a C?’ Nemeth’s face became so red that I thought he’d have a stroke. But no such luck. He only threw me out of the class.”
    “Oh, Ervin! How could you be so foolish? Mama’s right: you look for trouble!” I wondered what Papa would have thought of Ervin. In my heart, I knew he would have been proud of him, but I also knew I