jenne49

Three Stars

© Ayr/Gray

The Unicorn Challenge.

A magical new weekly writing opportunity from him – C. E. Ayr – and me.
The rules are
Maximum of 250 words.
Based on photo prompt.
That’s it.

Click here to read other stories from the prompt: 15/03/24

Stars

When you’re little, there are lots of things you don’t even know you don’t understand.
You just get on with living – and playing.
There were three of us: Ruthie, Lizzie and me.
Their parents were away on business and the girls came to live with us in Paris.
I was five – like Ruthie – and Lizzie a year younger.
Being an only child, I had been looking forward to being old enough to go to school, but this was better.
After our chores, we were free all day.
We made trains from kitchen chairs and travelled on them to castles on hilltops where we had great adventures.
Sometimes we helped Mum bake and one day she gave us some dough to play with.
Ruthie decided we should make stars and paint them.
Mum baked them in the oven and then we stood them on the shelf above our bed.
One day, when we were drawing in the kitchen, there was a knock at the door.
It was our two local policemen.
Mum took them through to the living room.
When she came back, she told us that Ruthie and Lizzie’s parents had sent for them.
Ruthie and Lizzie were so happy, but I was losing my sisters.
We all cried and hugged and promised to send letters.
Then they put on their coats.
Each of them had a yellow star on the front.

We never heard from them again and it was years before I understood.
I still have the stars.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vel%27_d%27Hiv_Roundup will give you the historical background for this story.)

24 comments

  3. I don’t remember when I was first aware of what had happened. Happen-ED? It is still happening to some group or other. It’s always about the other. I do remember as a child being conscious about the Catholics, the Jews, the colored. Nothing mean etc.

    Then at university I met someone from a southern state who was adamant about the integration of her high school. I liked her. We were good friends, but I could never understand her attitude. She was an A+ student and had learned the lesson very well.

    While your story is fiction it makes clear what happened better than all the books/web sites etc one could read. It is about real people.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    • That ‘happen-ED’ is very telling, Ladysighs, only one phrase in a comment that says so much.
      I appreciate the thought you’ve given to it.
      Yes, it’s all still going on – so sad to say.

      That story, I think, came out of the facrt that I passed through Paris on my way home from my recent trip.
      I came across a holocaust museum – a new addition to the area I lived near back in my student days.
      The museum is built opposite a school which lost many of its pupils in that raid and which has a statement to that fact on its wall.
      There’s also a wall where the names of French people who helped Jewish people during that war are inscribed, and the street is called ‘Alley of the Righteous among the Nations’.

      I reckon it’s hard to get rid of the ideas that were inculcated into us when we’re children.
      I was lucky because my univesity course fired me into living in other cultures at an impressionable age.
      I remember a favourite phrase of my mother’s: ‘I don’t know whare you got that idea, it certainly wasn’t in this house.’
      I wonder what your friend thinks now, how the years perhaps broadened her outlook?

      And thank you particularly for your very kind final sentence.
      (Don’t ever say again that you don’t make good comments! 😏)

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  6. gross!*

    For my learn-by-reading-others hemisphere:
    “I was five – like Ruthie – and Lizzie a year younger.”
    How simple (and un-intrusive way) to further describe three characters.

    * a compliment, of course.
    So sure, I relaxed my guard. The kids were charming in a modern sense (part of your nefarious plot to get us off guard)… then the pre-tertial** sentence,
    damn!

    ** not a ‘real’ word. However if you get it, my congratulations (or condolences)

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Clark, I always look forward to your comments and feel better about my writing afterwrds.
      The fact that you pick out stylistic things – which I didn’t notice myself, and which were not deliberate – is very helpful.
      Thank you.
      As for ‘pre-tertial, you’ve got me there.
      I was looking at the fourth last sentence, relating ‘tertia’ to three and then adding ‘pre…’.
      But then i discovered it was: ‘of, relating to, or constituting the flight feathers borne on the basal joint of a bird’s wing’ and I have to confess that put my feathers in a spin! 😉

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    • Thank you so much for reading and commdenting, Rochelle.
      That raid was uppermost in my mind because on my way home a couple of weeks agao, I passed through Paris.
      There’s now a Holocaust museum near the area in which I lived for a couple of years as a student.
      It’s opposite a school which lost many of its pupils in the raid and which has a statement on the wall, reminding people of what happened.
      There’s a long wall inscribed with the names of French people who helped Jewish people during that war, and the street is called ‘Allee des Justes parmi les Nations’.
      It had a profound effect on me.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  10. I just love how you’ve approached this. The introductory sentence, that has much more resonance when the whole story is read; the adult voice that captures so authentically the viewpoint of her younger self; and the impact of that ending. What a tragic story. Brilliant.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • I’m glad the story worked for you, Margaret
      I had hoped that the ending would ‘uncover’ the rest of the story, so thank you for reassuring me.
      Yes, it’s tragic and, sadly, real.
      Thanks as always for commenting so thoughtfully.

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