River in the Sea (17 page)

Eyes and shoulders were cast in Issac’s direction, and a new pall settled over them. Issac shrugged. He opened his mouth, closed it, tried once more. His bluster had weakened, a short–lived storm.

“Watch the smoking, okay? Not after church,” Mem finally said.

Leen had been the brunt of much teasing, her stumbling responses and quick–to–pink face making her an easy target, along with her occasional surprising retorts that zinged more with comedy than malice. She should’ve been used to it. But there was venom underneath Issac’s words that frightened her. The whole of the sadness she’d kept welled up, radiating out from the place high in her chest where it usually resided, tightening the muscles and the bones into aches, seemed to fold over on itself, mixing and churning, incorporating a new emotion into it: fury. It filled her so quickly Leen felt she could fall over with it. 

The rest of the meal was silent save for forks and knives clacking and cups drained. Mem left the table without reading a Bible passage or mumbling a quick prayer.

Tine began clearing the plates and Renske scrambled up the stairs. It was just Issac and Leen at the table. With a sting in his voice he said, “You get away with murder, you know that?”

“Happy New Year,
broer
, you clump of shit,” Leen shot back. “Happy 1945.”

Leen looked; she couldn’t help it. She searched for the signs of wildness, the bad reputation beyond the playful boldness that had drawn Leen to Minne in the first place. 

There was only one thing that gave Leen pause.

It was a Friday afternoon, a week into January, and Minne surprised Leen by showing up at the Deinum’s just as Leen was ready to leave. A light rain fell. 

“I have to go to Ness,” Minne said. “Want to ride together? It’ll make this blasted rain tolerable.”

“We have to go fast past the camp,” Leen said, pulling her hat far down over her ears. The few times they had ridden together Minne had annoyed Leen with her slow pace. Minne often whined, “Slow down, what’s the big rush?” while Leen called her a slow poke and told her to try moving her legs.

Minne groaned. “I’ll go fast, I promise, even if it kills me.” She pushed off clumsily, the front wheel teetering until she had enough speed to steady herself. “Not everyone is a speed demon like you, you know,” she said.

Minne rode ahead of Leen, and, as if to prove her point, she pumped her legs hard as they approached the camp. Still, it seemed she could just not gather any real speed, and Leen alternated between coasting and pedaling as she followed her friend. No matter how tired she was, adrenaline always enervated her at this point on the lane. The darkness egged her on too, the shadows underneath the faint lights in the camp spurring her muscles on. The sides of the wet tents reflected red from the lights of the radio tower. The few soldiers out sat in a cluster on overturned concrete blocks, gazing at the center where someone had rigged up what looked to be a game of dice.

Leen heard something solid hit the lane, followed by hollow sounds as the object bounced and rolled. Minne called out, “
Blix
!” and stopped. “Shit, Leen, I dropped by
klompke
!” Leen swerved to miss Minne and rolled onto the wet grass, muddy water spattering her skirt. There was a soldier just three meters away, silhouetted in the dim light. He held up his lantern. Leen recognized the dark shadows under his eyes. He’d held a lantern too while she buried the dog. Today, he watched Minne.

“Come on!” Leen screeched. “How can you lose your shoe? You never usually wear
klompen
!”

Minne was off her bike now, resting a stocking foot on her remaining wooden shoe. “I can’t find it,” she moaned. She looked at Leen and then at the soldier. “Help me!”

Leen parked her bike. Her heart clanged against her ribs as she walked towards Minne, keeping the soldier in her peripheral vision. It was getting dark fast. “Where did it fall off?”

Minne took a few steps back. “Here, it has to be here,” she said. Her voice was uncharacteristically high. “Shit!” she said as she lost her balance, stepping directly in the mud.

“It has to be here,” Leen said, but every time she nosed at what seemed like a solid object, it turned out to be a shadow or clump of mud. The faint light suddenly grew brighter. Leen bristled. She stood up. The soldier stood a meter away, holding the lantern and in his other hand, the stray shoe. 

“Here,” he said.

Minne stood, frozen. Leen shut her eyes, inhaled, and then, bracing, reached out and snatched the
klompen
. “Let’s go, we need to go now,” Leen said, angling her head to avoid the soldier’s eyes.

Leen mounted her bike and started pedaling again. Her heart was racing. She looked back to check on Minne. She was slow to get going but she followed. She looked back once more, finding Minne also looking behind her, towards the small burst of diffuse light emanating from the soldier’s hand. It was too dark to tell, but Leen thought she saw him nod to Minne.

“Keep going,” Leen shouted. Her mouth was filled with spit. “You okay?”

“
Ja
, I’m fine,” Minne called out.

They were quiet the rest of the ride. At the point where Leen went straight and Minne turned, she was glad when Minne said to her quietly, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Because even though she could not be sure, she could swear she saw Minne nod back.

11.

“Coming to a real boil now,” Mr. Deinum said. Leen gingerly leaned over him to pour more coffee, hoping he wouldn’t notice that she’d simply reheated the leftovers from the morning pot and thinned it with a little water. 

His friends and colleagues nodded. They were meeting, for the second time that week, to eagerly discuss the latest developments. In between sips they passed worried looks tempered by fits of hope, manifested in pumping fists or whoops or even cackles of laughter, and Leen’s job was to refill the coffee and serve the slivers of
koek
Mr. Deinum held back for these occasions. 

“I hope you’ve all been keeping fit now,” Mr. Deinum said, raising his arm to squeeze his bicep. His wrists and forearms were a tangle of veins and thin stripes of muscle, the elaborate construction built from years of kneading and shaping dough. The guests at the table snickered. Mr. Schaap, a butcher with a shop two blocks away, began a strange set of calisthenics that involved bending his arms in a V and flapping them, like an overexcited bird. Mr. Deinum threw back his head and laughed, clapping in appreciation. The way his red cheeks pushed up against his eyes, the white hair at his temples, the sparse sprouts of hair on his forehead, together it was a flash of Pater, and Leen had to catch herself. Even the way the men managed to laugh despite discussing the most recent war atrocity made her think of Pater shit–talking at church. There were times when, after the men had left and she had rinsed out the last cup and wiped off every single crumb off the table, her chest ached so badly that she ran to the outhouse, emitting a quick, hot cry before returning to the kitchen with red–rimmed eyes and mottled cheeks.

Mr. Deinum continued the calisthenics with the other men, and Leen nearly hit his elbow as she reached over to refresh the coffee. “Okay, there, we’ve got enough,” he said. Leen stepped back, embarrassed. Last time, Mr. Deinum had invited her to sit a few minutes, to listen in between fetching them more coffee or hot water. 

Another of Mr. Deinum’s cronies joked, “Tell you what, I feel pretty good. Look,” he added, nudging his neighbor. He flexed his own limp bicep. “Not too shabby for an old man, eh?”

Leen gathered a few empty plates. Not one of the men met her eyes or said thank you. They didn’t speak to her at all, not even to ask about her father after Mr. Deinum had solemnly explained the De Graaf “predicament.” Earlier in the week Mr. Schaap, a man she had barely spoken to before, had patted her arm and said, “Now don’t you worry, Leentje. Oenze De Graaf is okay. I’m sure of it.” He winked at her then. His eyes were slightly green, although the color seemed faded, like they had bleached in the sun over the years. Even though he couldn’t possibly know, his words had comforted her.

“Leen, can you come here please?” Mrs. Deinum motioned from the hallway. Her face was anxious. Leen placed the plates carefully in the sink and followed Mrs. Deinum, the men’s voices booming behind her.

“Girl,” Mrs. Deinum said once they were out of earshot, “don’t you know you’ve started your monthly? You’ve got quite a stain already.”

Leen twisted to look, pulling her skirt to the side. She gasped. The splotch of red was shocking against the gray wool. Her first thought was, did she cut herself? She dropped the skirt but then grabbed it again to see once more, perplexed. “I, I didn’t know,” she stammered. Finally, the realization hit. “I don’t have anything,” she whispered.

“Oh dear,” Mrs. Deinum whispered. “I never had girls, and mine are over.” Mrs. Deinum slipped an arm around Leen’s waist. She was shorter than Leen by at least three inches but it felt like she could sweep her up if she wanted. The temptation to lean against her was strong. She gave Leen a squeeze, then hurried off into one of the bedrooms and returned with a dustrag torn from an old man’s undershirt. “It’ll do for now. Why don’t you take care of it in the toilet, run home and see about it with your Mem,
ja
? Get that skirt taken care of and then come back.”

Her skirt still bunched in her hand, Leen glanced towards the kitchen. “How, how can I hide it? They must’ve seen.”

“Ah yes,” Mrs. Deinum said. “I’ll get your coat.” As she walked out of the hallway Leen heard her laugh and say to herself, “Well it was a surprise to me too.”

After she returned with her coat, Leen tucked her chin and walked quickly into the kitchen where the rest of her things were. She wound her scarf around her neck, ignoring the men as they ignored her. But just as she was about to slip out the door Mr. Schaap said, “Tell your
broer–”
but Mr. Deinum cut him off, talking right over him about the Hunger Winter again.

Leen figured she’d find the familiar scene at home, Mem or Tine at the sink, the other at the table, stacking laundry on the freshly wiped wood, all traces of breakfast and tea time long ago removed and tidied up. Despite it being only eleven o’clock, they would already be discussing what to make for dinner and ticking off the chores they needed to do before they put the beans on to boil. They would be surprised to see Leen home so early.

It was Leen who was surprised. The chairs around the
tafel
were vacant. The rooms were empty; the kitchen was dark; the tarpaper had never been pulled up to permit entry to the meager winter sun. There was one small drying puddle on the counter where Tine had missed. Normally, between Tine’s and Mem’s busy hands, Leen could never find dust or drops of water, not even the smallest collection of lint and stray hairs.

Leen peeked inside the living room. No one. The air felt thick, as if it hadn’t been circulated, breathed in or out.

A muffled noise from upstairs interrupted the ticking of the clock.

“Mem?” Leen called out. She stood at the bottom of the stairs. Perhaps Mem was resting in her room. Tine was probably out with Renske, taking a walk maybe to the
winkel
, trying to disperse Renske’s childish energy. She had been restless lately, even belligerent. There was no school to send her to and Tine confessed she didn’t know how to occupy her.

“Mem?” Leen called out again, a little louder this time, and she started climbing the stairs. Each step grew in darkness. “Tine? Renske?” She purposely stepped on the creaky step, the one they all knew how to avoid when they were trying to be stealthy. It sent out a long wooden whine and was answered with another creak, smaller and sharper. Maybe Mem was putting away laundry or straightening, returning brush and comb to the designated spot, and didn’t hear Leen come in downstairs. Mem could be that way, lost, occupied elsewhere by an overtaxed mind. There were still times when Mem could be found at the kitchen table in the morning, fitfully asleep. But whenever Mem was rustled from her dozing – it seemed rare she actually fell deeply asleep, with twitchy dreams and an open mouth to let out the jarring rhythms of her snores – she was always apologetic. “Oh dear, here I am again,” she’d say.

Leen pushed at her parents’ bedroom door. It swung open silently, the knob unlatched.

Mem was there. In bed, under the covers, the windows papered, the room nearly completely dark except for the outside light seeping in at the corners. She was facing Leen. Her face was relaxed, even dreamy. Her eyes were open, but not in the way of the wakeful. Her mouth was slack. For one frightening second Leen thought Mem was dead, that she had just slipped away. 

“Mem? Mem, are you awake?”

Her mother’s eyes widened slowly and when she took in a breath she choked on the intake and coughed. She raised her head and squinted at Leen. There was an unlit candle on the bed stand and Leen took out her matches and quickly lit it. “It’s
ús
Leen,” Mem said, her voice raspy. “I was having a dream, I was dreaming.” She eased herself up, pushing the covers away in a messy pile. She squinted at the candle. “What time is it?”

“A little past eleven,” Leen answered. “In the morning.”

“Oh dear, I came up here just for twenty minutes. I must have fallen asleep. Where’s Tine?” Leen was relieved to hear that Mem was merely napping. She wiped at her eyes quickly. Mem reached behind her to pull up a pillow and patted the space next to her. “Come sit by me,” Mem said.

“I don’t know,” Leen said, still standing. She felt like she was already soiling the rag Mrs. Deinum had given her. 

“Come sit,” Mem repeated. “I need to tell you about my dream.” 

Leen’s stomach tightened. All that morning she’d felt off, she realized, her back tight when she bent over to sweep, like the muscles were too short for her body and were stretching to meet each other. “I started my monthly.” She reached back to pull the back of her skirt to show Mem the stain. “I don’t want to stain the bedspread.” Mem was acting so strangely. Maybe she was sleepwalking. They never talked about their dreams, except for Renske, who always rattled on about the silly things she’d dreamt of, of furry snakes with the head of a cat who slithered into her lap and purred. Leen often wondered if Renske made these images up.