Fortunately the local Dutch community, frugal yet fair, tended to look out for their own, enabling Mr. Jansen to keep his job and without a wage cut. His extensive machinery skills supported his worth, as did his concerted efforts to improve his English. After supper, he would sit in his rocking chair with a pencil and the Amesboro Observer, reading, rereading, and circling unfamiliar words.

Although I actually preferred his fractured English, reminiscent of Papa’s, one night I offered a correction for a phrase he was struggling to pronounce. Immediately I worried it wasn’t my place, but his bifocals bobbed with his head as he scribbled a phonetic note in the margin. With Arie on the porch for broom duty and his mother out back pulling laundry, I ventured to kneel by Mr. Jansen to clarify more phrases. Curious in turn, I thought to ask for their translation in Gronings, his native Dutch dialect. Therein our trade began.

We continued nearly every evening, so long as he wasn’t exhausted from the factory and I wasn’t loaded up with schoolwork, a strict priority in the house. For me, learning his language seemed a practical matter, as Mrs. Jansen preferred it for family conversation. Plus, the way he chuckled when I’d eviscerate his dialect gave me welcomed reason to smile.

Not until weeks later did our interactions give me pause.

On the porch one sunny afternoon, I was babbling away while handing Mr. Jansen tools for the steps in disrepair when I caught my reflection in the window. There I was, going on as cheerfully as I had at the cobbler shop, the role of the father merely replaced.

Understand, of course, since leaving the orphanage, to sustain my memory of Papa, I often ran through a sensory checklist while lying in bed at night: the smell of pipe tobacco on his shirt, his prickly beard grazing my face, the satisfaction in his eyes when he’d savor a juicy bite of pork, the gravelly snore I hadn’t foreseen I would miss.

Still in that moment, guilt struck like a sucker punch. As I struggled to conceal its impact, an assurance came to me: It is okay, schatje. It is okay.

Papa’s words from the assembly hall applied once again. I told myself he’d understand, as my helpfulness to the Jansens was crucial. I had to earn my keep so as not to be banished—like Thea. Their own daughter was seen in nary a photo in the home.

And yes, I admit, part of me savored the semblance of having two parents.