“Please, Mama? We take food to Mother Matylda every Sunday. Sometimes you go, sometimes Maria goes, but I never get to go.” She inserted an extra dose of complaint into the words and cast an envious glance at me.

“I want to go with Maria and Zofia!” Karol exclaimed. He tugged on Mama’s skirt, as if a trip to the convent were life’s greatest joy.

Not him, too. I turned an accusatory eye on my sister and waved a hand toward Karol. “Now look what you’ve done.”

She faltered over a suitable retort, mouth agape, and called on Mama to demand justice. I sat on the rug by the coffee table and scooped up a white rook from my chessboard. Smooth and sturdy, a tiny turret that held so much power. More power than a pawn, a loud voice in my head jeered, but a little whisper shooed it away. Power wasn’t enough to win a chess game. Strategy was far more important.

“Plotting your famous rook endgame, are you, Akiba Rubinstein?”

At Tata’s query, I smiled and put the rook back. From one of my favorite chess grand masters, I’d learned to take the endgame into account from the opening play. It was an interesting strategy, intense and aggressive, one that tended to serve me well. Rubinstein exercised a mastery of rook endgames, but my variations on his strategy favored the pawn.

While Tata returned his empty cup to the kitchen, I made an opening play with a white knight. Chess required all my attention and sharpened the edges of my mind like a sword against a whetstone. Queens and kings and bishops, knights and rooks and pawns. Each intermingled until the board was an intricate black-and-white web of my own design. Two opponents, black versus white, were united in a common quest for triumph, but were otherwise irreconcilable. One prevailed by overcoming the other. In the case of a stalemate, where neither player emerged victorious, only by playing additional games could the winner be established. Two enemies, one victor, and one ultimate way to determine who that victor would be. The checkmate.

But there would be no checkmate for me and my sister. We remained locked in a stalemate where neither Rubinstein’s rook nor my pawn could affect the outcome.

“You don’t have time to play Monopoly, but you have time for chess?”

I hadn’t noticed Zofia approaching, but the scornful question came from right beside me and ruined my concentration. “I’m only playing for a few minutes before I leave. Be quiet so I can finish.”

“You’re going with Irena, aren’t you?”

She voiced it as if I’d committed the most heinous crime imaginable. I surveyed the board and selected a rook. “No, but even if I were, that’s none of your business. Stop bothering me.”