Page 11 of Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Book
Mr. Stempel opened the book. “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.Isn’t this on the banned book list?”
“Have you read it?”
“Oh yes,” he said.
“Lula Dean called it smut at her press conference. But all girls think the kind of stuff that Anne did. I don’t know why we pretend that they don’t.”
“I was never a girl, so I’ll have to take your word for it,” Mr. Stempel said. “You said you have a question?”
“Yes.” Dawn cleared her throat. “Do you know what happened to her? The book just ended without saying.”
Mr. Stempel’s forehead furrowed as though he thought he might be thebutt of a very bad joke. Then, slowly, his eyebrows lifted high in surprise. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“No.”
“Anne died. They murdered her.”
Dawn shook her head. That couldn’t be right. Why would they do that? “But she was the hero.”
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Stempel told her. “I thought everyone knew.”
“But she didn’t do anything!” Dawn argued passionately, as though reason could save a girl who’d been dead for decades.
“None of them did,” Mr. Stempel said. “My uncles and aunts didn’t do anything, either.”
“The Nazis killed them?”
“Their children, too. The youngest was an infant. They were murdered at Bergen-Belsen. The same place Anne died.” He paused. “You’ve really never heard of it?” He seemed horrified.
“I didn’t finish school. But I’ll look it up,” she said, but that didn’t feel like enough. “I promise.”
Mr. Stempel stepped back into the house, but Dawn couldn’t let it end there. She needed him to know that she was on his side, not theirs.
“The Nazis were monsters to kill little girls.”
“I know that’s what people say,” Mr. Stempel told her. “But most of them weren’t. They were just ordinary people. That’s what makes them so terrifying. Monsters you can fight. But when the people who come for you in the night are your neighbors and coworkers and classmates... When you never know who’s sick and who’s not...” He shrugged.
“Sick?”
“Hate is a disease, Dawn.”
Dawn felt her stomach heave. She put a hand to her mouth for fear she might vomit. “I think my son has it,” she whispered when she could.
Mr. Stempel nodded. “For how long?”
“A few months. Since his birthday.”
“Then there may still be time to help him.”
“There’s a cure?”
“Yes, and you have it,” Mr. Stempel said. “It’s the truth. It won’t work on everyone. But maybe your son isn’t too far gone.”
Dawn got home just after noon. It took less than a minute to kick open the door of the room in the basement. Now that she wanted in, a flimsy lock couldn’t keep her out. Item by item, she dragged her husband’s “memorabilia” up the stairs. Then she re-created Nathan’s museum best she could on the front yard of their house.
“What are you doing?” a passerby asked. Then the wind caught a flag and unfurled it.
“Sharing the truth about my husband,” Dawn called out as the woman hurried away. “I want everyone in Troy to see just who he is.”
