My Enemy's Cradle (20 page)

She read the poem, turning the envelope around and over, squinting to read my tiny notes, my scratched changes. She read it a second time. Then she held it up toward me, raising her eyebrows.

"I was only ... it's nothing."

"It's not nothing." She chided me as though I'd said something that hurt her. "I didn't know you were a poet."

I reached for the envelope, but she lifted it away. Then she held it out again. "Read it to me. Read it the way it's supposed to sound."

I hesitated for a moment, then nodded, and Leona gave me my poem. She sat on her bed with her feet up and leaned back against the headboard, closing her eyes.

Dusk is endless here, and you would love
These indefinite walks inside its long red bottle.
I sing alone
Past black branches and white picket fences
To the corral that says No Trespassing.
The brown horse has heard me singing from down the road
So he brings the lightning on his face
Over and nudges it under my hand.
Sometimes I know why I am not dead yet.
I still haven't brought a human to the edge of the fence.

Leona opened her eyes and looked at me thoughtfully. "Tell me what made you write that."

Maybe I trusted Leona. Maybe poetry felt like a safe subject. Or maybe there was a quota: After a hundred lies, or a thousand, a person simply must tell the truth. Whatever it was, for the first time since I'd come to this place, I told the barest truth.

"I was trying to understand what was missing between us—the father and me. That seemed a good way to explain it—that in the end, I never brought him to the edge of the fence."

"Maybe you shouldn't have to bring a man there. Maybe he should go that far himself."

I shrugged. "Maybe I should have given him more reason to." But Isaak would never go to the edge of the fence for any single human being. Only for an ideal. Ideals can't abandon you, can't hurt. Ideals can't let you down.

"Is that why you write poetry—to understand your life?"

I thought about it and then nodded. "That's part of it. Sometimes, though, I think I'm trying to write myself out of my life. To escape myself."

"You're lucky, then." Leona sounded more serious than I had ever heard her. "I escape myself by sleeping with men." She looked down and stroked her huge belly. "At least no one else has to pay the price for your escape."

The envelope suddenly began to burn in my hand. I slid it inside the book and stood up.

"Wait." Leona shook her head and gave me her funny smile—the one where her lips didn't curve upward, but the dimples at the corner of her mouth deepened. Then she got up and went to her bureau. She opened a drawer and pulled out a box of stationery—large creamy sheets with deckled edges and a bunch of lavender tulips in each corner.

"My mother gave me this before I left. To write to her. I tried once, but I couldn't do it. It was as if I didn't want to make this real for her. When I get home, I just want to pretend none of this happened. So take it. For heaven's sake, at least write the finished ones down on decent paper."

All that next week—the sixth week I was in that place—I wrote every day.

I wrote and Isaak didn't send word and he didn't come.

Every day of that week, I woke up thinking,
This is the day.
As soon as I got up, I searched the horizon for signs of good or bad weather and tried to decide which would be better. Each day, my eyes strayed to the door of whatever room I was in more and more often, until finally one afternoon, Leona asked me what on earth I was always watching for.

"Nothing," I answered with a laugh. But I was shaken and I learned to watch doors from the corners of my eyes.

Leona grew larger that week and her belly seemed to rise higher and tighter. Then one morning she looked down as she was dressing and gave a little cry. "Look, Anneke! I've dropped! I didn't know I'd really be able to see it. But it feels different, heavier. I feel even heavier. Can you tell?"

Our eyes met. She kept a pamphlet by her bedside—
Signs Your Baby Is About to Be Born
—and each evening she read it to me. "Do you think my ankles are bigger?" she'd ask, anxiously. "Do I seem more restless to you, more emotional?" Number four was "As the baby prepares to be born, he will often begin the descent toward the birth canal, and your whole belly may actually drop."

"You
are
lower. Today, do you think?"

"I don't know. Anneke, what if I can't do this?"

"You can do this. You're going to be fine."

All that day, I would often catch her staring at nothing, concentrating as if she were struggling to hear something and then melting into a dreamy smile, as if the thing she had heard was secret music. I felt very lonely then. And worried for her—she no longer seemed like a girl who wanted to be rid of a medical condition.

The day after that, I awoke to find her already up, although not dressed. She was standing by the window, her suitcase beside her, and she turned as soon as I stirred, as if she'd been waiting.

She gave me a little smile—worried but resigned. "It started a few hours ago."

"You should have gotten me up."

"No, it was too soon. It's mild right now, like a squeezing, that's all. And it was nice to be alone with it. It felt sort of ... I don't know ... mysterious, I guess, to be awake with it in the dark. And then we watched the sun rise together." She laughed. "That sounds strange, doesn't it? But that's what it felt like—like my baby and I were watching this new day, his birth day, being born."

I got up and joined her at the window. "Are you changing your mind?"

She waited too long to answer. "No. No. What would I do with a baby, anyway? And can you imagine how my family would treat him? Or my neighbors? It's just that ... well, now I wish things were different and I could keep him. I wish there weren't a war on and I wish I had a father for him and a family that would welcome him. It's just going to be harder to give him up than I thought."

I took her hand and squeezed it.

"You should go down," she said when the bell rang. "I can't eat."

"No, I'll stay with you."

"Oh, don't. This is going to take a while. I'll still be here when you get back."

I was gone only an hour—there were announcements and a number of new regulations were read—and when I got back to the room, it was empty. The silence was deep—different from the quiet Leona left when she was out of the room for a minute. I realized that the girl I knew really was gone—the next time I saw her she would be a different person. If I ever saw her again. I missed her already.

The day dragged on. Whenever I saw a sister in the hall, I asked if there was any word yet. "I don't think so. I haven't heard of any babies being born today," they said. I spent the hours after dinner standing by the doors that led to the labor ward. Finally Sister Ilse came on duty and took pity on me.

"She's fine," she assured me. "First babies take their time. Go to bed, she's still got hours to go."

So I did. But I didn't sleep well—in my dreams, I heard screaming. I watched the dawn come up and couldn't wait any longer—I went down to the delivery wing. Sister Ilse was coming down the hall.

"Did she have it?"

"She did. Around midnight. A boy."

"How is she? Was everything all right? I know it's early, but may I see her?"

"She's fine. But no. No visitors."

"But I'm her roommate."

"She's fine, really. It's just that ... well, sometimes they get upset at the end. Giving birth is a stressful time. The policy is not to let the pregnant ones talk to the new mothers."

"Please let me see her. If she's upset, I could help."

She looked worried, but I could tell she was considering it. I stood my ground until she sighed and gestured to the door on the right. "One minute," she warned.

They'd given her drugs, more than ether. Her eyes were heavy, swollen, and red.

"Mistake" was all she managed before her face folded in grief. Her eyes, wept dry, pleaded with me as if I could change anything. "My baby." Her words came out slow and thick, as if pulled from tar. "Mine. Mistake."

"I don't think so." I took her hand. "I think you were brave and wise, and you did the right thing."

She shook her head. "Saw him. Mine. I let him go."

"Leona, no," I tried. "You'll see. This is a hard time ... you'll see."

Sister Ilse came to the door and I was relieved. "I'll come back later and we'll talk."

Leona shook her head again.

"I'll look you up when the war is over. Give me your address." Leona rolled over to the wall and closed her eyes.

"I can't sleep next to a window." Those were her first words.

I had taken Leona's bed when she left because it was warmer away from the window's draft, but I didn't really care which was mine for the short time I had left.

"We'll switch," I said. "That's fine. My name's Anneke."

"Neve."

I pulled the bedding off and we remade the beds. Then I sat on mine to watch her unpack. She'd brought only one small suitcase, but it took a while because she folded and refolded each article until it was crisp and flat and perfect. Neve was interesting looking—different from most Dutch girls—tall and sharp and narrow-boned. Her round belly looked out of place, as if it had been stuck on against all those angles. Her hair was pale blonde—straight and cut short. Her brows and lashes were almost white, her face fragile except for her chin, which was square and defiant, as if daring you to want to protect her.

Besides her few clothes, she'd brought nothing except a brush and nail scissors, which she lined up precisely on top of the bureau, and a lighter and three packets of cigarettes, which she placed in her top drawer. No mementos, no family photos. No ties.

I looked at the jumble on my bureau—Isaak's pencil, my cousin's earrings, and the things my aunt had packed: Anneke's combs and barrette, the photograph of Anneke and me taken when I'd first come to Holland, in matching blue cardigans, a china figurine of a prancing horse I'd won at a fair. They were a fraud—I had no ties, either.

Neve followed my gaze to my bureau. She pointed her chin at the scarf I'd draped over the mirror. "You can't see yourself," she said.

I stood up. "I'll show you around. At dinner you'll want to get downstairs in time for the first sitting—it's when most of the single girls eat, and it's best to stay away from the married
Frauen.
They can be—"

"Fine," Neve cut me off, her voice as sharp as the collarbones jutting from her ill-fitting shift.

Fine, yourself, I thought. Ask someone else if you want some help. But she didn't ask a single question.

From the bottom of her bag, she withdrew two books and placed them beside her lamp.
Basics of Aeronautic Engineering
and a slimmer book whose title was so worn I couldn't read it. Neve meant "unknown." I picked up the second book.
Amelia Earhart, a Biography.
"She crashed," I began.

"No," my new roommate corrected me, almost fiercely. She snatched the book from me and replaced it, sliding it next to the other volume so the spines were perfectly aligned. "She
flew.
"

When the first bell rang, she snapped her suitcase closed and left without another word. I got up and crossed to my mirror, leaned in. The scar on my lip was still there, although it was now only a thin stitch, neat and white but jagged as lightning. A single S rune, taunting me as usual: Where was its mate? Had the
Oberschütze
left the rest of his mark deeper inside me? I draped the scarf over the mirror again and went down for the meal.

Neve sat beside me at dinner, but she spoke only to ask me to pass something. I saw her assessing the other girls coolly. I wondered if this were her first time at one of these homes, she seemed so comfortable here. Or maybe she was just that confident. After dinner, she stayed downstairs to watch the evening's film. She came upstairs around nine-thirty; I was in bed, reading, and when I said hello, she only nodded.

In the weeks I had been here I had become an expert in guessing the stages of pregnant girls. Neve looked to be about six months along. I was glad I would be leaving soon—who could put up with three months of this girl?

"I need to sleep," she said when she'd gotten into bed. "So ... the lights."

"All right." I marked my page and turned off the lamp, then rolled up the blinds. There was no point in entering a battle with this girl—I didn't need an enemy in here. Obviously we wouldn't be friends, but I would try at least to be friendly. "Where are you from?"

"And the blinds. I can't sleep with them open."

I closed the
rolladen
and then rolled over to sleep. But in the middle of the night, I awoke to darkness so deep it seemed to press on my chest. I had been dreaming of being buried alive, of how the earth would feel pressing down on me as I struggled. I sat up, gasping, and lifted the blind beside me, staring out until I could make out the stars, just a few pricking the black night. More stars appeared; they'd been there all along. I wished I knew the names of the constellations—the same ones stood watch over the Netherlands as well. And then I raised the blinds all the way, quietly, and lay down again.

I had entered the battle after all.

November brought worse weather. Each morning, I awoke to find the mountaintops shrouded in dense clouds—as if the ragged teeth were now covered by a cold gray lip, and somehow more ominous than bared. I still went outside as much as I could, but now the decaying leaves clumped together beside the paths in rotting mats made me uneasy, and the smell of them turned my stomach. There was a long stretch with only a few bright days—several times the gray sky furrowed and darkened and began to spit snow, but there was never a storm. It was as if the weather was gathering itself, waiting for something. As
I
was. Growing more tense. As
I
was. No letter came, and each day it became harder to convince myself that Isaak was on the way. Or that anyone even knew where I was.