River in the Sea (16 page)

Minne reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a new pouch of paper wrappers and tobacco, still sealed. “Here. For your nights underground.”

Leen squealed. “I’ve never had my very own,” she said, holding it up to her nose. “I always have to get it from someone else.” Even through the familiar German–issue wrapping she could smell the warm, spicy scent of the tobacco, not quite as rich as Pater’s old preferred brand, the Drum he coveted, but good enough. No one was above smoking German tobacco. “Wait, I should give you money,” Leen said, embarrassed at her presumption.

“
Nee
, don’t bother,” Minne said. “I didn’t pay for it myself.”

Leen slipped the package into her skirt pocket, feeling adult, feeling daring, like Minne. “Where did you get it?” 

Minne didn’t answer her. That was a stupid question, Leen told herself, embarrassed again. How did anyone get tobacco? Bags of apples? By trading on the black market. She worried that Minne wouldn’t invite her out again.

“I bet you can’t do this,” Minne said, and blew a wavering smoke ring into the air.

“You must teach me, you must teach me right now,” Leen said, more excited that Minne was still there than at the flimsy ring floating away. They spent the next five minutes giggling over their silly attempts at the rings. A woman’s hand drew back a curtain in the house behind them, her shadowy face frowning. They both ignored her. Minne was far better at forming the smoke rings than Leen, but it didn’t matter. Leen laughed at herself, saying over and over until it was time to go back, “That was a good one. Do it again.”

There were other reasons Leen liked Minne. She rarely spoke of the war, no doubt affected by it just as anyone else, but besides an idle comment here and there, Minne seemed to consciously choose to keep the war in the background. She never mentioned Pater again, never forced Leen to say aloud, “It’s been six weeks since he left.” She didn’t even mention the dog again, despite her initial interest.

This was a welcome break for Leen from all the swirling bits of information and rumors that infused her days at the Deinum’s. “The worse it gets for the Krauts, the better it gets for us,” Mr. Deinum said often, even though people were starving in Amsterdam. He reported that they were eating tulip bulbs, boiling them just as they did potatoes. “I can’t imagine the taste,” Leen had said. “Bitter,” Mrs. Deinum replied.

Still, Mr. Deinum was hopeful. “We’ll be celebrating the end of the war on New Year’s Eve,” he declared. Christmas had already passed, the only marker of the occasion an extra church service and Mem pouring herself a small glass of
nobeltje
  – but that was normalcy now, not celebratory. She’d left the bottle out and Leen took her own swig, only to shudder and spit it out.

Minne didn’t mock Leen for liking farm work over housekeeping. She hated dusting and polishing herself, although her aspirations were different from Leen’s. As far as Leen could tell, Minne wanted to do as little as possible, except have a nice house and maybe one baby, a girl she could sew for and dress up. “The woman I work for? Mrs. De Jong? She has twins and another baby a year apart, and that is enough to kill you,” Minne said during their third break together. 

“No wonder your fingers are always pink. You’re constantly washing diapers,” Leen said. 

Minne held out her hand and studied them. “They’re not
so
pink, are they?”

“No, not like my Mem’s hands,” Leen said, fearing she had offended Minne. “I wish I could make my hair curl like yours. Mine only gets frizzy.”

Minne brightened. “The trick is to wet your hair each night and reset the curls, but use two or three rags instead of one.” She lifted one of her loose blond coils to show Leen what she meant. “Maybe I’ll do that for the next social,” Leen said. “I can’t really do that while I’m still picking hay out of my hair in the mornings.”

“Well, if you can’t set your hair, at least you can wear a little lipstick,” Minne said, smiling even wider. She fished into her coat pocket and pulled out a black tube. She unwound it and cupped Leen’s chin, her hand cold as she held it steady. “Open up,” she commanded, and Leen tried not to flinch as Minne drew the color onto Leen’s lips. She pulled the lipstick expertly along the bottom, then on the upper lip, repeating the motions, then filling in the cupid’s bow at the top, dabbing softly. Minne pulled back and beamed, nodding energetically when she saw the result. She pushed Leen in front of a window so she could see how she looked, and even in the dim reflection, Leen noticed the angles of her smile and a new brightness in her eyes. “It looks
mooi
, doesn’t it? It changes everything on your face,” Minne said.

Leen blushed. “
Dunke
,” she said, before she wiped it off.

“What are you doing? It looks so pretty on you!”

“I can’t wear it back to the Deinum’s,” Leen said. She couldn’t imagine their reaction, besides amusement, even though standing there for those seconds with darker lips made her instantly feel more mature. “They’ll tell my Mem.” She was still worried that her smoking at the social would make it back to Mem; her mother knew nothing of her friendship with Minne.

“Okay. Any time you want to borrow it, just ask me,” Minne said. “It makes the boys want to kiss you.”

“Wouldn’t their mouths get stained?” Leen asked, wiping her lips again. The entire back of her hand was a smear of pink and red.

“What makes you think I’ve been kissed?” 

“You haven’t?” Leen asked, taken aback. Surely the boys followed Minne; she probably had them waiting for her at every corner.

“Of course I have,” she said. “But only twice.” The boys were no one Leen knew, she said. A veil of pink passed over her face and then disappeared just as quickly.

“Why Minne Bosgra, I do believe I just saw you blush,” Leen said. She hadn’t thought Minne capable of embarrassment. Nor had she thought of her as demure.

Minne turned the tables. “What about you, then? How many boys have you been kissing?”

“One,” Leen said, dipping her chin. “But not for very long.” 

“Who was it?”

“Jakob Hoffman. He was at the social.” 

Minne leapt on this fact, pressing Leen to describe him until she smiled in recognition. “He watched you the entire time,” she said.

“Did he?” Leen looked up. She was pleased with this information. She waved her cigarette at Minne. “Maybe I know one of your beaus, then.” But Minne looked away. Suddenly it seemed that the topic was no longer of importance. This charmed Leen; maybe Minne was more like her than she thought; maybe underneath all that bluster and wind was really just a lot of air. It never occurred to Leen to think about Minne’s need for her company. She was too glad to have it to ever question where Minne’s other chums were.

Mr. Deinum was wrong. So was the Dominie. So was everyone. The war was not over by New Year’s. Leen would celebrate it with her family, just not with her father.

In the past, they might have gathered at a neighbor’s house for the Eve celebration, everyone bringing a plate of
koek
or good hard
worst
sliced into fatty, salty chunks next to thin slices of milky edam. The kids would drink cider and eat dishes of sweet custard while the adults sipped beer and
nobeltje
and whiskey. By midnight everyone’s cheeks would be flushed and this year might have been the first Leen would be handed a beer. Renske would have tried to stay up but she would’ve failed, falling asleep in a corner by ten. Maybe she and Tine would’ve set their hair together, using three rags instead of one; maybe they could’ve gone walking down Ternaarderweg to see what other teenagers were out, and maybe Jakob would’ve been out wandering…
Nee.

This New Year’s Eve, Mem sat in her rocking chair as she usually did, knitting a sock from kinked yarn she had unraveled from a blanket. Leen hoped Issac might bring home more apples, but instead he peeled pungent strips of
druggevisk
, passing them out silently while Leen and Tine tried to teach Renske how to play
blokjes
. It was not even nine o’clock when Mem said, “There’s church tomorrow, it’s time to go to bed,” and all of them – even Issac – followed her upstairs without protest. “No
underdoek
tonight,” Mem had said at dinner. That was her only acknowledgement of the holiday. “I want all my children in their own beds.” Upstairs, Issac brushed Leen’s arm, the movement stiff, and said, “You’re still going out, aren’t you?”

Leen opened her mouth to sputter something back, something about how Mem had said they could stay, but she realized how it would sound. She shortened her words to two: “I’m staying,” and Issac stared at her, jaw tightening, and then he went into his room.

Leen shivered under the cool covers. She should’ve realized right away the jailbreak signified nothing. Zero changed for the De Graafs. Leen wondered to herself, if Pater had been arrested, would he have ended up in that Leeuwarden jail? Because then, that would mean that nearly two weeks ago, he would be free. Tonight, the day before 1945, he would be home.

Normal was not a way to describe a life without Pater, but maybe she, maybe all of them, were used to it. Accustomed. But not adjusted. They would never be adjusted; besides, everything was going so badly for the Germans. How much more could it be? She stopped herself. She had already considered the inevitable many times. She closed her eyes and began to drift. Tonight it did not take long. Somewhere in the fog of approaching sleep, she thought she heard a slow set of footsteps, the kind of steps that were slow, deliberate, meant to cause the least amount of sound. Already the boundaries of the worlds of dream and thought and sleep melted, so that the sound of a door softly opening and clicking shut did not strike her as anything but a strange notion on the way to finally, blissfully, falling asleep.

Midway through their silent eating, Issac put his fork down and coughed once. “I hear Leentje” – he said this while looking straight at her, and it had the effect of sending a thorny scraping up the back of her neck – “has been out smoking all over town with a new friend.”

Mem looked up. Leen pushed back against her chair.

“Especially outside of church,” he added. 

“Oh, Leentje,” Mem said. Her voice lacked any vigor, but when Leen chanced a glance at her, she could see Mem’s exasperation, the strain on her features that said,
I don’t need this, not now
. New Year’s Day was almost over, and they were eating the evening meal, prepared by Tine. She had decided to boil a pot of eggs and slice some toast, telling Renske yet again, “No
panne
, now stop asking me. Today is no different from any other.”

“Who is this friend?” Mem asked.

“Minne Bosgra,” Tine said.

Leen whipped her head to face to her sister. Tine swallowed once but would not look at her. 

“Who?” Mem repeated. She sat up straighter, trying to put on the posture of a parent once more. She cleared her throat, like an amateur actress taking the stage. 

“At the social,” Issac said.

“You danced!” Leen said. “And smoked too!”

“I didn’t dance, did I, Tine?” Issac said. “Tine was right there. She saw Leen do it.”

“Tine, you saw him–” Leen spat. Already she had damned herself, her rebuttal a weak webbing. Tine stared at her plate, her jaw shifting. “I didn’t,” Leen started to say when Mem interrupted her.

“I don’t know who Minne Bosgra is. But I don’t like that Leentje is smoking, and right outside of church. That is not good, not what a lady does.” She frowned, selecting an egg and cracking it, the only sound her fingers peeling away papery eggshells. “I don’t want to have to tell this to your father when he returns. He won’t like it. You know what we are to do. Behave ourselves, be good, stay out of trouble.” Mem stared at the bare egg in her hand as she spoke.

“Don’t draw attention to ourselves,” Issac added.

Leen glared at her sister. This collaboration with Issac felt cruel. Tine pretended to attend to Renske. “Make sure you eat your toast. Eat it all,” she whispered.

Issac was still staring at Leen. “Minne does not have a good reputation. She’s a bit wild.”

Tine whispered something but Leen could not tell to whom.

“What?” both Mem and Issac asked.

“She wears red lipstick,” Tine muttered.

Mem sighed, closing her eyes for an instant before looking, for the first time that day, directly at Leen. Leen hated the heat and color filling her face, hating even more that Issac could see it. “It’s obvious that this, Minne is it? That Minne is a bad influence on you. I don’t like you smoking, and not with her. She’s obviously too wild,” Mem continued, using Issac’s word.

Leen could no longer hold back. What wildness? Playing with makeup, blowing smoke rings? Issac’s smug face made her lean forward, almost off her chair. “But Mem! I smoked before I knew her. My own dancing brother is the one who taught me.”

It was Issac’s turn to push back against his chair, silent. He hadn’t anticipated this.

Mem took another breath. Her eyes grew firm. She placed a hand on either side of her plate, palms down. “You heard what I said.”

“How is she wild?” Leen asked indignantly. “Because of some silly lipstick?” What was this, if not a complete mutiny of her brother and sister? It must have been planned.

Oh
, she nearly said aloud. They were punishing her. They had finally found a way. She hadn’t forgotten that she was to blame for Pater’s absence, and neither had they. The thought of this made Leen swallow, the shame rising up at the fact that she was badgering Mem, pushing at her. Still, she said, “She is a perfectly normal person. She’s not wild at all. She works as a maid, just like me.”

“What’s normal to you?” Issac sneered. 

“Hey,” Tine said, softly, too softly for Issac to hear. Leen almost spat at her, “Too late.”

“Issac, what have you heard?” Mem asked, turning suddenly to him.

Leen did the same. Her face felt hard and the light was too bright despite the dim, smoky edges of the room. She had the sensation she was floating above the table so everyone could regard her from every angle.