Janina.
I was putting up soup cans in aisle 4 when I heard the voice behind me.
“Mr. Milgrom?”
I turned. It was a young woman in a light blue skirt and windbreaker, dark brown hair. She was holding the hand of a little girl. The little girl looked up at me with huge, unblinking eyes.
“Daddy?” said the young woman.
I stared.
“I’m Katherine. Your daughter. I’ve been looking for you forever.” She shifted the little girl to stand in front of her. “This is my daughter, Wendy. Your granddaughter.”
“I’m four,” said the little girl. “What happened to your ear?”
“Wendy,” said her mother.
A distant voice that only I could hear replied: It was shot twice. First by a Jackboot, then by Uri.
“Did you know you’re my grandfather?”
I still could not speak.
“Well, you are,” she said. “Shake.” She held out her hand. I held out mine. She took it and gave it one hard shake. “Please ta meetcha.”
I looked at her mother.
“You didn’t know about me, did you?” she said.
“I wa——” I cleared my throat. “I wasn’t sure.”
Her smile was radiant. “Well, I’m here. I’m twenty-five years old. I know about you from Mother. For four years now, I’ve been saving something for you.”
I hesitated. “Yes?”
“Wendy’s middle name. I left it blank. I knew someday I would find you. She’s been waiting four years for a middle name. I want you to give it to her.”
“Janina,” I said.
My daughter’s laughter rang throughout the market. “I thought you’d at least take a minute to think about it.” She took the little girl’s face in her hand and turned it toward herself. She nodded. “Wendy Janina. So it is.”
The little girl clapped. She twirled about. “Wendy Janina! Wendy Janina!”
“We live in Elkins Park,” said Katherine. “We have a spare room. You can have your own bathroom.”
I dropped my apron in aisle 4. They took me home.
Wendy Janina tries to improve her headstand. She pushes off from her toes a little too hard, which sends her tiny body sailing past a headstand and into a backflop onto the hard floor. I wince at the thump. From the floor her eyes cast about until they find me. Her lower lip sticks out. She is deciding whether or not to cry. Secretly, I almost hope she does. I would like to be the grandfather who stops her tears.
I hold out my arms. She gets up and comes to me. I lift her to my lap. She puts her head on my chest. She doesn’t cry, but it’s enough.
I would like to stay this way for a year, or ten, but she leaps from my lap and pipes, “Outside!” She grabs my finger and pulls me out to the deck.
“I’ll sit here,” I say. I settle into the rocking chair.
“Watch me!” she says, and runs to the swing set.
I watch. She swings back and forth. The maple tree behind her is a brilliant orange. The year is gorgeous in its dying. The milkweed pods are bursting.
The milkweed does not change colors. The milkweed is as green in October as in July.
When I said one day to my daughter, Katherine, “Drive around, out of town,” and I brought along a trowel and a bucket, she did not ask why. When I said, “Stop here,” and dug it up, she said only, “Milkweed, right?”
I nodded.
She did not object when I planted it at the end of the yard, away from the maple. Angel plants must have sun.
My daughter does not pester me with questions. She knows everything that I told her mother, which means everything but Janina. All those years of talking, all those street corners—I kept my sister to myself.
One time Katherine said to me, “Are you ever going to tell me why you named her Janina?”
“Someday,” I said.
At last Wendy Janina tires of the swing. Or maybe she just wants a ride on the rocker, me doing the work. She plops down on my lap. “Rock, Poppynoodle!”
I rock. I smile. I close my eyes. I think of all the voices that have told me who I have been, the names I’ve had. Call me thief. Call me stupid. Call me Gypsy. Call me Jew. Call me one-eared Jack. I don’t care. Empty-handed victims once told me who I was. Then Uri told me. Then an armband. Then an immigration officer. And now this little girl in my lap, this little girl whose call silences the tramping Jackboots. Her voice will be the last. I was. Now I am. I am . . . Poppynoodle.
JERRY SPINELLI won the Newbery Medal in 1991 for his novel Maniac Magee. He has written many other award-winning books for young readers, including Stargirl; Loser; Wringer, winner of a Newbery Honor Award; and Knots in My Yo-yo String: The Autobiography of a Kid, his memoir. A graduate of Gettysburg College, Jerry Spinelli lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, the poet and author Eileen Spinelli.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Text copyright © 2003 by Jerry Spinelli
Frontispiece photograph copyright © 2001 by Mark Baylin
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.
KNOPF, BORZOI BOOKS, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.randomhouse.com/kids
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Spinelli, Jerry.
Milkweed / Jerry Spinelli.
p. cm.
eISBN 0-375-89037-8
[1. Boys—Fiction. 2. Jews—Poland—Fiction. 3. Warsaw (Poland)—Fiction. 4. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Fiction. 5. World War, 1939–1945—Poland—Fiction.]
I. Title.
PS3569.P546M55 2003
813'.54—dc21
2003040109
v1.0
eBook Info
Title:Milkweed
Creator:Jerry Spinelli
Publisher:Alfred A. Knopf
Format:OEB
Date:2003-08-21
Subject:Fiction
Identifier:Spin_0375890378
Language:US English
Rights:Copyright 2003
Jerry Spinelli, Milkweed
(Series: # )
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