Read Online All God's Children by Anna Schmidt - Free Book Online Page A

put a hand on her shoulder, she surely would have tried to make a run for it.
    What was the right thing to do in this situation?
    She longed for the gathering of her Quaker family or at least her aunt and uncle so that they could pray silently until some discernment of the circumstances made God’s will clear for them all.
Waiting
was their way. Certainly when she had decided to hand over her papers to Siggy, she could have done with the counsel of others. “We do not act alone, Elizabeth,” Uncle Franz had gently chided her.
    But this woman was in grave danger, and there was no time to seek the counsel of others—no time for waiting. For the second time she was going to have to make a choice without the traditional regimen of taking the matter to an appointed clearness committee or even her closest family members. Quakers simply did not make such momentous decisions as she was now facing on their own. The gathering of the community to come to consensus on matters of such importance was central to their faith, yet she felt that she was being led to help this woman and her children.
    She squeezed her eyes closed and prayed for guidance.
Show me the way
. She had done no such praying when she’d handed over her visa to Siggy, and look where that had gotten her. She certainly could not afford to make a mistake here—a choice that not only might endanger this woman but could also place Beth and the rest of her family in further jeopardy because of her rash actions.
    Please!
she pleaded silently.
The soldiers are almost here, and I don’t know what to do
.
    The woman gripped Beth’s arm and motioned toward a fence at the back of the park. Apparently she was trying to say that she and the children would scale that enclosure and escape. Beth found herself focused on the woman’s ugly felt star, and in that instant she knew she had been given her answer.
    “Schnell,”
she whispered, urging them to hurry as she herded the woman and her children back toward the corner bench. “Take off your coat and turn it inside out.” She knelt and began helping the oldest child—a boy with wide, dark eyes—to do the same. “Put this around you and the baby,” she instructed, handing the woman her scarf and thanking God that her mother had made it wide enough to serve as more of a shawl. “Hurry. They’re almost here.”
    She could hear the two soldiers talking as they slowly made their way up the block, pausing here and there to peer into a darkened alley or doorway. As soon as the woman and her children were changed, Beth motioned for them to sit on the bench.
    “If they come in,” she instructed in German, “we were here earlier and I dropped my key.” She took the key from her pocket and placed it on the ground under a pile of snow-covered leaves. “We realized it when we reached home and came back to search for it. What is your name?”
    “Anja Steinberg.” The woman pulled the youngest child closer to her breast, covering the child with the shawl as her son huddled against her side.
    “You are German?”
    “Danish. My husband is German.”
    Beth perched on the edge of the bench and waited. Each step that brought the possibility of discovery closer seemed to suck the breath from her until she thought she might faint.
    The soldiers were now at the gate, but they barely paused before walking on without stopping. The baby stirred and whimpered. The leather heels clicking on the wet walkway came to a halt, and then Beth heard them moving back toward the park.
    “Ach
, here it is,” she said in her normal voice as she rummaged through the leaves and produced the key just as the soldiers came through the gate and flashed a light over the scene. “It must have fallen out of my pocket when we were—”
    “Halt!”
    Beth heard the boy swallow a whimper and was surprised that her first thought was,
What kind of world have we made where a child of five or six knows better than to show his fear?
    She positioned herself in