No One Must Know

“M
ove over!” I cried. “You’re blocking my sun.”

“Lazybones!” Molly said as she plopped herself down on a towel spread out next to mine on the sand. “You should go for a swim. The water is perfect, and you’re getting burned.”

“My mother says that too much sun will give you freckles,” Jean said from my other side.

“I’m not going to worry about
that!
I just want a tan for the first day of school.”

My eyes swept across the beach full of sun worshippers, prone bodies of every shape and size baking on the golden sand. A few steps away the surface of the lake
gleamed azure, and in the distance the white sails of sailboats fluttered in the gentle breeze.

“Can you rub oil on my back?” Jean asked.

“Sure. Pull down your straps.” As usual, she was wearing a one-piece bathing suit. I applied gobs of lotion to her shoulder blades.

“It’s so nice here,” she said. “I can hardly believe school is only two weeks away.”

“Don’t even mention it,” Molly said. “I want this summer to go on forever.” She stretched her skinny arms wide. “I’m so hot! I don’t know how you can stand lying in the sun for so long.” She stood up. “Can either of you lend me a dime? I want to buy an ice-cream cone.”

“I don’t have a penny,” Jean mumbled. “I spent all of my baby-sitting money on nylons.”

“I’m broke too,” I said, “but let me talk to Mom and Dad. Maybe they’ll give me an advance on my allowance. If we’re lucky, they might even treat us.”

I held out my hand and Molly pulled me up. After I’d smoothed down the pink gingham skirt of my new two-piece bathing suit, I was ready to go. “You coming with us, Jean?”

“No,” she said with her eyes closed. She patted her stomach. “Do I look like I need ice cream? I’ll stay here and work on my freckles.”

My parents were just a few feet away, sitting on a
bench under a tree at the edge of the sand. Dad wore a striped bathing suit, but Mom was buttoned up in a long-sleeved summer dress even though it was a hot day. She had her bad leg, in its ugly orthopedic shoe, stuck out in front of her, her cane by her side. As soon as she saw us, she straightened up.

“What’s up?” Dad asked. He moved closer to Mom to make room for us on the bench.

“You look a little burnt, darling,” Mom said to me. “You too, Molly. Stay out of the sun. I promised your mother we’d take good care of you.”

“Thank you for inviting me to come to the beach with you, Mrs. Gal,” Molly said.

“Our pleasure.” Mom smiled. “It’s so lovely here. It reminds me of Lake Balaton, in the old country. We used to spend our summers there before the war,” she said in a wistful tone. Then she shook her head, as if to chase away the memories. “Are you two having fun?” she asked.

“We want to buy ice-cream cones, but we don’t –”

“Have enough money!” Mom completed my sentence. “What else is new?”

Dad reached into his pocket and pulled out a dollar bill. “This should cover it. Alexndra, could you bring me back a vanilla cone, one scoop only?”

“I sure will! Thanks, Dad. What about you, Mom?”

“Nothing for me, dear. Go and enjoy yourselves.”

“Your parents are such nice people,” Molly said as we clomped through the sand.

“I can lend them to you if you’d like! Sometimes they make me feel like a prisoner.”

She laughed. “I know what you mean. My parents treat me like a four-year-old.”

We joined a long line in front of the snack bar. The customers were in a festive mood. A couple in front of us were necking, oblivious to the world. Three young boys behind us were throwing a football around wildly. Behind them stood a tall blond boy about our age.

“He is
so
cute!” I whispered to Molly. “Do you know who he is?”

“He
is
adorable,” she said. “But I haven’t seen him before. He must be new at the beach.”

Finally, it was our turn. Molly bought a strawberry milkshake while I got my favorite – a sugar cone with two scoops of chocolate ice cream – and Dad’s single scoop of vanilla. I was balancing Dad’s ice cream in my left hand and licking the chocolate cone in my right when I heard Molly cry out.

“Alex! Look out!”

As I glanced up, my breath caught in my throat – a football was flying in my direction at full speed! Everything happened so fast that I didn’t have time to dodge
the ball or even to drop the ice-cream cones and put my hands in front of my face. I froze in my tracks, waiting for the ball to smash into me. Suddenly the blond boy dived forward, stretched his arms high, and struck the ball with his fists, pushing it off its collision course with me.

I stared at him with my mouth half open and my hands gripping the wobbly ice-cream cones, too stunned even to thank him. The boys, meanwhile, grabbed their football and ran away without a word.

“Stupid kids,” the blond boy said with a shy smile. “You could have been badly hurt.”

“Next,” said the soda jerk in a bored voice. The blond boy stepped up to the window and placed his order.

“Ask his name,” Molly whispered.

“I can’t!”

“Then tell him your name. Introduce yourself.”

“I don’t have the nerve.”

While I waited in an agony of indecision, the soda jerk gave the blond boy a bag of chips and a bottle of Coke. He paid for his purchases and, with a smile over his shoulder, left before I said a single word.

“We have to follow him,” Molly cried, pulling me after her, “or we’ll never see him again!”

We spotted him a few feet ahead of us, picking his way through the carpet of bodies. Just as we were gaining on him, he turned on his heel and crossed the imaginary
line that divided the beach into two equal halves. To the left of this line was the Jewish section, to the right our section. We never crossed this line to sit on the Jewish side, and the Jews never crossed over to our side.

“He’s from Jew beach!” Molly said, coming to such a sudden stop that I bumped into her. We just stood there, staring after him until he disappeared into the throng of bodies on the sand. We couldn’t think what else to do but turn back and take Dad’s melting ice cream to him.

For the last two weekends of the summer, I searched and searched for the boy with the blond hair each time we drove out to the lake. I didn’t see him again. Whenever I arrived at the imaginary line that separated the Jews’ beach from ours, I always stopped

T
he blue uniform fitted me to perfection. I tightened the wide leather belt around my waist, straightened the light blue tie around my neck, and yanked down my beret until it rested at a raffish angle above my right eye. Then I pulled the thin gold cross I always wore around my neck from the folds of the blue kerchief. One of my knee-highs was sagging, so I crouched down and yanked it up. As I was straightening up, I caught a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror hanging on the wall by my bed. A stranger with my features was staring back at me. With her crisp uniform, the girl in the mirror seemed out of place in my crowded bedroom
with its white-and-gold furniture and canopied bed. A ruffled pink bedspread covered the bed and a pink carpet lay on the hardwood floor. On the wall above the dresser hung a poster of Elvis, cute as ever in his army uniform. The poster, which I’d bought with my baby-sitting money, was surrounded by vines laden with pink rosebuds, the design on the wallpaper. I pirouetted in front of the mirror with a satisfied sigh – the uniformed girl it reflected seemed so much older and more sophisticated than my usual self.

“Alexandra, breakfast is ready. Hurry up!” Mom called from downstairs.

I tore myself away from the mirror and slid down the banister. With Dad busy with his patients at his Saturday morning clinic in his office down the street and Mom occupied in the kitchen, I knew there was nobody around to warn me that I would break my neck.

As I entered the kitchen, my eyes fell on a thick book lying open on the table beside a cup of coffee and an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. Mom was at the stove with her back to me. As always, she was fashionably dressed, with not a strand of her curly hair out of place. The long sleeves of her dress were pushed up to her elbows, revealing a white scar on the underside of one arm, above her wrist. She was humming a bright Hungarian tune. She leaned heavily on her cane as she
flipped an egg in the frying pan. The aromas wafting from the pan made my mouth water.

I stopped in the doorway and struck a pose like a fashion model – arms akimbo and hips thrusting forward. “Good morning!” I said.

“Eggs for breakfast,” she replied without turning around. She reached up with her right hand, took a plate from the cupboard above the stove, and put it on the counter. She ladled a generous helping of eggs onto the plate before picking it up again and swiveling around to face me. “I hope you’ll eat…” Her voice died out as she caught sight of me in the doorway, and she dropped the plate onto the countertop with a clank, almost spilling its contents. She didn’t say a word, just stared at me white-faced, her mouth a wide O.

“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Don’t you like my uniform?”