When Brigitte was a little girl, her father sometimes took her with him when he went to the warehouses at the harbor. Later, she would try to remember if, on the day she met Rebecca, he’d mentioned new people to her. All she could remember was stepping into the warehouse with Papa, and Papa talking to the newcomer, Mr. Gold. That was where she met Rebecca Gold. Who was the most beautiful little girl Brigitte had ever seen.

For a moment she wondered if what she was seeing was a life-sized doll, with snowy china skin and black enamelled hair. Brigitte was not normally shy, but this pretty, pretty stranger was an off-islander, and she looked to Brigitte as though she had stepped out of a fairy tale, with skin white as milk and hair black as night.

The two fathers had stopped talking. They were watching Brigitte and Rebecca.

Brigitte stepped a little closer. “Hello,” she said. “My name is Brigitte Duday.” Then she remembered something her mother had told her about starting a conversation with another lady. “That’s a lovely dress. Is the ribbon real silk?”

“I’m Rebecca Gold. And yes, it’s silk.”

“You have beautiful hair. Does it curl like that naturally?”

The fathers returned to their conversation. “We need some nice prints in the second dining room at the club,” Papa was saying. “Something Japanese maybe? Mr. Bonney said he’d like an Oriental theme. But masculine. It must be masculine.”

“Thank you very kindly,” said Brigitte. “It’s curly, but Mama still puts me in papers at night so it’ll curl the way she wants it to. Are you going to live here? Are you going to go to the Island school?”

“We do have a few I could show you,” Mr. Gold was saying, “but before I do that I should tell you I can’t let them go for any less than…”

“Papa says it all depends,” said Rebecca. “Papa says the air would be good for Mama’s lungs. But Papa says we have to wait and see about living here, so we’re just renting a little house. It’s near the school. I start on Monday. Are the children there nice?”

“Vraiment? Ah Monsieur c’est trop cher!” Papa had put on the horrified face he always used at this stage. When he spoke again, he’d upped his Frenchy accent just a bit. “Forgive me monsieur, but I fear you have truly, truly surprised me!”

“If you come to school with me, they will be!” said Brigitte. “I know all the best people. My sister-heart is Shirley Bonney. She’s very nice, and I know she’ll like you, and if she likes you, everybody will.”

“I can tell you, right here, right now, you would not get a better price for them on this Island,” Papa was saying.

“Well, Mr. Duday, let me show you the prints and we can decide. If you’ll come this way…”

Rebecca looked at Brigitte for a moment. Then, for the first time, she smiled.

“Would you like me to show you around here?” Rebecca asked. “I know where all the really good things are. Papa lets me see them before anyone else.”

Brigitte always remembered that afternoon as two little girls exploring a cave of treasure. They wandered among barrels and boxes, sometimes stopping to whisper things to each other. “That barrel there,” Rebecca said, “is full of Amontillado.” “That box is full of Bactrian Cinnamon.” “That tall package is a mirror from Gumps. It has a gold frame with flowers on it!” “That crate over there,” whispered Rebecca, “Is packed with of 1863 Port. Do you know what my Papa will do if it gets bumped even just a little?”

“What my Papa would do!” whispered Brigitte back. “Yell really loud! You’d think it was going to explode!”

Most of the really beautiful stuff was packed safely away, like the wine, but the real treasure was not. Tucked deep in among the barrels and boxes was a dollhouse. Rebecca’s dollhouse. There may not have been something really special about the dollhouse. It may have just been delightful because it was Rebecca’s, or because Mr. Gold had allowed his daughter this bit of space all her own in the warehouse.

Where they sat and played with Rebecca’s little family of dolls, Dr. and Mrs. Hapsburg and their three children.

By the time they heard their fathers calling for them, they had reached an understanding. Without saying so, they knew they were going to be the best of friends. Maybe even sister-hearts.

Back at Mr. Gold’s desk, the fathers had shaken hands, and two small empty glasses indicated they had come to an agreement on good terms.

Brigitte couldn’t wait for the future. When Rebecca came to her house, Brigitte would show her Francesca-Marie, her favorite doll with real golden hair and eyes that opened and shut. At school, Shirley and Rebecca and Brigitte would all sit close together. They would be like the three musketeers!

“Did you have fun with Becky Gold?” asked Papa as they walked out of the warehouse.

“She’s wonderful! I think she’s almost as nice as Shirley.”

Papa smiled. “I’m glad to hear that, cherie. Sam Gold’s a good fellow.”

Later that night, after dinner, she heard Papa telling Mama about the Golds. “Very cultured chap,” he said. “His merchandise is high quality stuff. I think you’ll like them. From what he tells me, his wife is artistic.”

“I hope you didn’t let some mainland sharpie take advantage of you,” Mama said.

“Oh, heavens no. He’s a mainland sharpie, yes, of course, but I am an island sharpie. And the man understands goodwill.”

“He let me jew him down on our first deal.”

On Monday, Miss Skinner introduced Rebecca to the class. Brigitte nudged Shirley and waved and smiled at Becky, hoping she’d be put nearby, but Miss Skinner put Rebecca at a desk closer to the front. She always assigned new students where she could get to know them. “That’s who I told you about.” whispered Brigitte to Shirley. “Rebecca Gold!”

The bell rang for recess at last. As soon as they were outside, Brigitte introduced them. “Shirley Anne Bonney, allow me to introduce you to Rebecca Gold. Rebecca Gold, this is Shirley Anne Bonney.”

Shirley’s reaction surprised her.

She said “hello,” but she didn’t smile, and she looked at Becky as if Becky had done something that puzzled her.

“Rebecca’s father is Mr. Samuel Gold,” said Brigitte. “He has a warehouse full of beautiful things. And you should see her dollhouse! She has a whole family of dolls named…”

“Can she sing?” asked Shirley, pointing at Rebecca.

Brigitte was a little baffled. “I guess so. Everybody can sing, can’t they?”

“I can sing,” said Rebecca. “I know lots of songs.”

Several other children had gathered around, Aggie, Natalia, Sasha…

“Do you know this?” Shirley said, and she drew in her breath and began…

“Katie Casey was Baseball mad

Had the fever and had it bad…”

Everybody, including Rebecca, joined in. “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” had been a favorite on the playground for a long time. Rebecca had a good voice, and she seemed to like the song, roaring out, “One, two, THREE STRIKES YOU’RE OUT!” along with everyone.

As soon as that one was done, Shirley began another.

“A sweet tuxedo girl you see

a queen of swell society…”

Everyone loved singing that song, and to Brigitte’s relief, Rebecca knew it, and had just as much fun yelling “Ta-ra-ra-BOOM-de-ay!” And then, glancing quickly over her shoulder towards the school building, Shirley began the Midway song, the one they were always careful not to sing around Miss Skinner because it was a Hoochie Coochie song:

“There’s a place in France,

Where the ladies do a dance…”

Brigitte giggled, and joined in.

“And the dance that they do

Is enough to kill a Jew,

And the Jews they kill

Are enough to take a pill,

And the pills they take

Cost a dollar eighty-eight

PLUS TAX!”

Rebecca had stopped singing. She was standing very still. Maybe she didn’t know the song, Brigitte stepped towards her, and Rebecca looked at her and stepped back as if she were angry or afraid. Rebecca said something very quietly that Brigitte couldn’t understand and began to walk away.

“Wait, Rebecca, where are you going? What’s wrong?”

Shirley had begun the song again, smiling and looking at Rebecca, and everbody had once again joined in.

“There’s a place in France,

Where the ladies do a dance…”

“I am a Jew.”

For a moment Brigitte couldn’t believe she’d heard Rebecca correctly. Jews were from Bible Stories and in Brigitte’s mind, akin to characters in fairy tales. If Rebecca had announced, “My uncle is Moses,” or “My aunt is Queen Esther,” Brigitte would not have been much more surprised.

“And the dance they do

Is enough to kill a Jew...”

Shirley sang even more loudly, looking hard at Rebecca, and because Shirley was doing it, the other children were.

“And the Jews they kill

Are enough to take a pill…”

“And the pills they take,

cost a dollar eighty-eight

PLUS TAX!”

The other children clapped their hands hard at Rebecca.

“Stop it!” Brigitte shouted.

Shirley smiled and began the song again.

“There’s a place in France,

Where the ladies do a dance…”

“Stop it, stop it, STOP IT!” Brigitte shouted.

Rebecca turned her back and walked slowly towards the school building.

“You’re all being horrible!” shouted Brigitte.

They all just looked at her as though she wasn’t making sense.

The bell was ringing. It was time to go back into class.

***

Rebecca sat very still at her desk for the next hour and a half, never looking back at Brigitte, who longed to catch her eye, just once. Brigitte was going to tell her she was sorry and explain that she hadn’t known, that she thought Jews were just people from Bible stories. But when the bell rang for lunch Becky practically ran out. By the time Brigitte got out into the hall, Becky was nowhere to be seen.

She wasn’t on the playground either, and when Brigitte turned around to go back into the school building, Shirley, Natalia and Abby were blocking her path.

“You’re not my sister-heart any more,” said Shirley.

The whole world was turning sideways. She and Shirley had been sister-hearts since they were in kindergarten.

“You’re not my sister-heart unless you say ‘Rebecca Gold is ugly as sin.'”

“But that’s not true!”

“Yes it is. She’s ugly.”

“No she isn’t. She looks nice.”

“She’s ugly, ugly, ugly!“

“I think she’s ugly too!” said Natalia, and Abby nodded.

“”If you don’t think she’s ugly, you’re stupid and you can’t be my friend any more.”

“But she’s not…”

“You can’t be anyone’s friend if you’re that stupid!”

The three of them turned their backs on Brigitte and walked away.

“She’s crazy,” Brigitte heard Abby say. “That new girl is hideous.”

Rebecca was not at the outside or inside lunch tables. She wasn’t in the classroom, though her schoolbooks were still set neatly on her desk. Holding her breath because she wasn’t used to breaking rules, Brigitte ran out the front door of the school and looked up and down the road.

No Rebecca.

Brigitte went back in. She ate her lunch by herself, under a tree near the edge of the playground.

When everybody went back to class. Rebecca’s books were gone. Miss Skinner didn’t say anything about it.

After school, Brigitte usually walked home with Shirley Bonney, but that day she walked by herself and took a different route home. That was when she saw Rebecca for the last time.

In front of one of Mr. Reckoner’s rental cottages, she saw a figure in a dark dress, no bigger than a black splinter in the distance. Brigitte stopped for a moment. It seemed to her Becky was looking back at her, her face a tiny white dot.

Brigitte began to run, her book bag bumping against her legs. “Becky!” she shouted. “Becky Gold!”

Then the little figure turned black again.

It walked up the steps to the house, and disappeared.