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name,” I muttered.
    â€œRidiculous? Why? Peaches are what I miss most from home. Now I’ll have peaches every day.”
    How on earth could my brother get such a treasure? The suspicion in Mother’s face mirrored my own, but we’d learned to simply be grateful for every windfall.
    Indoors was nearly as cold as outside, and Mother could barely grasp the pages of her English grammar book when Dovid came for his lesson. I watched him lean across the table and turn each page for her.
    In frustration she slammed the book shut and said, “Forget nouns and verbs. Today we will work on vocabulary, also comprehension. So, Dovid, please, you must tell us your story. Everyone in Shanghai has a story. Ilse, come to the table. We will have an English conversation.”
    I eagerly leaped off Mother’s bed and slid onto a chair across from Dovid. My hands were warm inside the white furry muff Mother had traded for a loaf of Mr. Schmaltzer’s bread too burned to sell. It was how he’d paid her that day.
    Dovid cleared his throat. “Where to begin? Poland, we are Polish, my family.”
    Though I knew that, I felt the familiar pang of disappointment: better if he’d been Austrian. Mother would approve of a boyfriend from Austria. But, I reminded myself, Europeans are Europeans in this sea of Chinese. And besides, he isn’t my boyfriend.
    â€œYour parents?” Mother asked.
    He shook his head, unsettling a nest of dark curls that he brushed away. “Who knows?” He searched for each word and haltingly told us, “Also my sisters … twins, Shayna and Beyla. German soldiers come. Take them away.”
    Mother asked gently, “How did you find out, Dovid?”
    â€œA neighbor, not Jewish.”
    Mother supplied the word, “A gentile, yes, what did he do?”
    â€œHe put his own family in danger to tell me. Also to let me sleep in his …”
    â€œHouse? Barn? Shop?”
    â€œWhere chazers live.”
    â€œAh, pigsty,” Mother said.
    â€œPigsty, yes. Two nights while I think what to do, where to go. In the end, I alone go out from Poland.”
    â€œWithout your family?” I cried.
    â€œWorse things there are,” he said brusquely.
    Mother nodded. “You expressed yourself very well. That is enough for today.”
    Dovid started to get up, then slid a paper out of the back of his book. “For you, Mrs. Shpann.”
    I studied the black-and-white charcoal drawing upside down—trees, a few houses with smoke swirling out of the chimneys, a gentle hill in the distance with smudges that could have been goats. No people.
    â€œLovely. And where did this come from?” Mother asked.
    â€œI draw myself. My village in Poland, after they take my family.”
    Tears sprang to my eyes.
    Mother propped the drawing up on the bookcase behind her. “Come next Wednesday,” she said. “Ilse, show Dovid to the door.”
    My arm brushed his as I opened the door to a blast of hall air even colder than in our apartment. “Stay warm out there,” I murmured.
    He smiled. Crinkly half circles on his cheeks enchanted me, but I also saw that his lips were badly chapped. “I am used to Polish winters,” he said, tipping his cap to Mother.
    Once he was gone, the apartment felt even colder. Mother lay on her bed cradling her sore hands. Gently, I slid them into my white muff.
    The next morning, December 8, I was jolted out of bed by the sound of explosions. We rushed into the hall.
    â€œThey bombed Pearl Harbor! They bombed Pearl Harbor!” everyone was shouting. “Thousands of Americans dead!”
    Details were hard to pin down, but we learned that the Japanese had launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, which was in the American territory of Hawaii. Now they’d bombed a British gunboat in our harbor.
    Then we joined the rest of the house huddled around Mr. Shulweiss’s shortwave. The static cleared