Paper Bride by Nava Semel

Author:Nava Semel [Semel, Nava]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781742981284
Publisher: Hybrid Publishers

Chapter 19

Everything was going according to plan. I slid down the rope. Maybe I could be a movie actor too. Cheetah’s part would be a cinch for me. In fact, I’d be willing to play any part at all.

I didn’t need a light because the night air was filled with hovering fireflies, a sure sign that spring was on its way. I opened the toolshed door but didn’t turn on the kerosene lamp. After all, Johnny Weissmuller does everything in the dark too.

Effortlessly, I pushed aside Grandfather’s clay pots, opened the small door and removed the pistols from the old beehive, working as if I were blind. I didn’t fumble because the picture was clear to me, even in the dark. If my teacher could see me now, maybe he would excuse me from reading and writing forever.

I covered the small door with some chicken coop netting I had hidden behind the castor tree before supper, and with Zionka’s baby carriage that I had dragged over for camouflage. It had been lying around their yard for years because her mother and father hoped they would have another baby, but I didn’t think there was any chance of that now.

I topped the pile of junk with the shoes Johnny had chewed up this week and the old clothes Imri had taken out of my father’s valise before his first trip to Europe. Aunt Miriam refused to give away my mother’s clothes, even though she never wore them, rejecting the rabbi’s appeals to donate them to charity. He said that twelve and a half years had already passed, but Aunt Miriam explained that she couldn’t part with them. My birthday is never a happy day, because it’s the day we visit my mother’s grave.

It was done. Now no one would suspect that guns had been hidden here. Just a run-down old shed packed full of all the things we didn’t need but couldn’t part with.

But I had something else to hide. I remembered it only after I thought I’d finished. I had to move everything and start all over. I opened the small door again and hid the candlestick I had taken from Anna’s trunk in the old beehive, in place of the pistols. If that nosy Englishman should happen to get in here, he’ll think it’s a family heirloom we’ve hidden from thieves. I put the three shillings I’d saved up that year next to the candlestick so that Major Parker would be convinced this was the place we stored our valuables. The way Aunt Miriam puts aside pfuntim, sterling, for my future education in a respectable profession. I don’t know, Aunt Miriam, if they teach how to make movies. I wish I could learn that instead of reading and writing. I felt a twinge of regret about the shillings, because I had planned to spend them on the new Johnny Weissmuller movie coming soon to Tel Aviv, but I consoled myself that something would happen before the sequel to Tarzan arrived.

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