Mara (15 page)

Auntie Be kneeled down beside me.

‘Did you hurt yourself?’

The absurdness of her question made me laugh out loud, of course I had hurt myself. Life had been ripped out of my body and had been taken away, my heart had been left outside in the freezing cold and had frozen into an icy still life.

She pulled me up, helped me back into bed and carefully pulled the blankets over my cold, shivering body. Then she placed a warm cloth on my forehead and asked if she could do anything for me.

‘Get her back.’

She shook her head in silence.

‘You need to get your strength back. I’ll bring you some food, it is better…’ She stopped, then turned and left the room, leaving me alone, alone with an empty cradle.

I lay in bed and cursed my weakened body, I
had
to get out, I had to get my child back. She was mine. I had held her in my arms, fed her at my breast, given her my love. She could not leave me now, the only good thing in my life could not be taken away from me now. She had entrusted herself to me and I had promised to protect her. Never would I let her down. But already I had broken that promise.

I tried to get up several times, but each time I slung my legs over the side of the bed the world turned black and I had to lower myself onto the bed again. In the end I decided to try it anyway, and I stood up. I fell down and everything turned black. When I saw light again I stubbornly headed for the door, crawling. I must have made quite a lot of noise, for Auntie had heard me and she entered the room just as I had reached my first goal, the door.

‘Let me go, I have to find her,’ I gasped, sweat dripping down my back.

‘Back to bed with you.’ Her voice was full of authority and I dared not disobey. I turned to crawl the whole distance back. Seeing this, Auntie scolded me and helped me up.

‘Were you planning on crawling down the stairs, breaking your neck and then go look for your daughter? Back to bed now, and stay there.’

She tucked me in again, not quite as gently as usual, yet still patiently. She wiped strands of hair out of my face, moist with sweat, and she gave me a drink of water. Then she placed a small pile of linen cloths on the bed.

‘You need to wind these tightly around your chest, to help you dry up your milk supply. She unrolled the cloths and wanted to help me. I shook my head angrily.

‘Please turn around.’ My words sounded curt, but she did as I asked without a fuss.

I sat up straight, pulled my nightgown and undershirt up under my chin and wound the first cloth awkwardly over my breasts. I carefully fastened the cloth with the pin Auntie had given me. I took another cloth and wound that one also around my body. When I was done I lowered my nightgown again. I remained seated straight up in my bed and I looked down my body. It seemed oddly shapeless. I had to dry up my milk supply, I had to put everything behind me and forget everything.

I suddenly remembered Mien’s words, about how my body would soon forget, and I was afraid of the other things she may have said, the words that I simply hadn’t paid any attention to. Was it possible that Mien had told me about all this? That I had been told and never said a word? I shivered, sagged down in my bed and pulled the blanket up.

Auntie noticed my movement and turned around. She tucked me in again and kissed my forehead but she couldn’t take away my pain.

‘Stay in bed, Maria. I’ll see what I can do.’

I nodded listlessly. I was exhausted and closed my eyes, in the darkness I tried to conjure up visions of my child found and returned into my arms. A beautiful dream.

Before Auntie left the room she turned around.

‘I’m sorry, my child,’ she spoke softly. ‘I really thought that this was for the best, that it was what you wanted too. I hope that one day you’ll be able to forgive me. Maybe in the future, when you’re married and will have children within wedlock…’

‘No!’ I opened my eyes and the beautiful vision I had a moment ago disappeared. I screamed at her and beat the mattress. I didn’t want any other children, I didn’t want to get married, never again would I touch a man or would I allow a man to take possession of my body. The only thing I wanted was my own child, my child, who was the result of an intimacy I hated, but whom I had come to love despite everything.

‘Auntie, please help me!’

‘I’ll do my best, Maria, but I can’t give you much hope.’ Auntie shook her head and left, closing the door behind her.

I watched her leave as I lay in bed.

Mara. Mara. In my head I sang a lament for the little girl that I had been allowed to hold in my arms for only a short while. The child that I had carried with me for nine months. I remembered the hatred I had felt from the very first moment, the denial, the revulsion, and I felt the guilt weighing down on me. Had I not deserved this? Every moment of her life I had cursed her. Only much later, at that time when Auntie had made me
really
feel, had I realized that a child was growing within me, my child, my own flesh and blood.

Out of habit I placed my hand on my stomach and I remembered the light kicking that had been annoying at first and later on became reassuringly familiar. Now my stomach was flat and empty, life was no longer in it, the contact we used to have had been severed as abruptly as the umbilical chord that used to bind us together.

I thought of all the times that I had sat with my hand on my stomach, simply savoring in quiet amazement this connection with my baby. Finally I had realized that a light shines brighter in the darkness than during the daytime. I had learned that something beautiful can come from something evil, and I had slowly started to accept the fact that I was going to have a child. Suddenly I saw her eyes before me, focusing solely on me, declaring me a mother.

And now I was childless. A childless mother.

A wail passed my lips and pierced through the silence. I screamed until I had no breath left. A sharp stabbing pain in my breasts warned me of what was going to happen and I wrapped my arms tightly around me. The wrappings around me were meant to slow down the milk flow, suppress its supply. How precious were those few moments that she lay in my arms and eagerly filled her tummy. And now it was all flowing away for nothing.

Then, with sudden fury, I threw back the blankets, pulled up my nightgown and yanked off the cloths. I would let the milk flow freely over my body. I would in no way willingly remove my daughter from my life. I would allow my milk the freedom to flow. And who knows, maybe Auntie would find my child before my milk dried up. Maybe I would be able to hold her at my breast again today, or this week.

I left the blanket where it had fallen, even though I got colder and colder as a draft blew over my damp clothes. What did it matter anyway. I turned my head to the window and could just see the top of the oak tree in the yard as its branches moved gently in the breeze. I thought of its young leaves. It made me think of nests built in trees, of birth. And of loss.

I heard a stumbling on the stairs and I knew Auntie Be was coming up. She was probably coming to bring me a cup of sweet tea, or a bowl of broth, or a small bowl of dried apple pieces sprinkled with sugar. I stubbornly refused to turn my head in her direction. Why would I? What would I see in her face?

‘Maria.’ Her voice was muted behind the door. Auntie knocked again, but I had no strength left to answer her and continued to gaze out the window. Finally I heard a soft creaking sound and imagined how she’d be peeking around the corner carefully, afraid to wake me up.

‘Maria, are you awake?’

I ignored her in silence and I banned her presence from my mind. I looked at the sky, the oak tree, the branches and the wind. Where had they taken my child? Had the wind swept her off to a faraway place, or was she still close by and could I run into her in the streets?

‘Maria, you’ll catch a cold that way.’ She moved quickly, closed the door, and hurried over. I smelled the aroma of chicken soup, and I heard the sound of a bowl being put on down, and then I felt her soft hands.

‘You’ll catch a cold, please my child, look after yourself.’

What good is it to me to be healthy?

She pulled the blanket back over my body and I realized suddenly how cold I had become. My damp undershirt and my nightgown were icy cold and my skin was covered in goosebumps. Auntie was busy fussing already and pulled a clean nightgown from the closet.

‘You put this on now, and I’ll give you some clean sheets, my dear.’

She handed me a clean undershirt and nightgown and hurried toward the door to leave. ‘Will you manage with that on your own?’ she asked quickly before she opened the door.

I nodded morosely, and she was gone.

Listlessly I opened up the buttons of my wet nightgown and laboriously struggled out of it. After that came the undershirt. My nipples were stiff with cold and I knew that no milk would flow now. I felt a pain in my breasts however, that was just about unbearable. All this food for my baby girl, so much, and all of it wasted. I wasn’t there for her to offer it.

I was just working on the last few buttons when Auntie returned.

‘I brought you an extra blanket. You mustn’t catch a cold or end up with pneumonia.’

I nodded, although I really couldn’t care less. Auntie helped me out of the bed and onto the chair beside the closet. She quickly stripped the wet bedding off the mattress and briskly made the bed again.

‘Now, back in bed with you, quickly.’

I realized I was shivering and was grateful that I could lean on her as she helped me back to the bed. My feet were numb and my fingers were stiff with cold.

Auntie fluffed up the pillows behind my back and had me sit down in the bed. Then she pulled the blankets up to my chin.

‘And now you’re going to enjoy a bit of soup, it’ll perk you up, you’ll see.’

Auntie fed me chicken soup and I ate obediently while I listlessly sat in bed. Only my face showed above the blankets and I slowly felt the soup warming me from the inside. The thick blankets did the rest.

‘Reijer came again today to ask how you are doing.’

I swallowed a spoonful of soup and waited for the next spoonful. ‘Why didn’t he come sooner, and why didn’t he stop them from taken her? Or did he know about it too?’

‘I think he knew about it.’

Another spoonful. I burnt my tongue, but suppressed the pain.

‘So he just came to gloat over me?’

‘Maria.’ Auntie spoke no further, but patiently fed me the remainder of the soup. I was left to my own reflections and they swung back and forth between the present and the past, between love and hate, between holding in my arms and yearning for.

Mien came again and she examined me. I meekly let her. I no longer cared that she touched my body with her hands. It wasn’t important. The only important thing was for me to find my child back, so I hung onto Mien’s arm and begged her for information.

‘You’re sixteen, Maria. You can’t expect anyone to allow you to raise the child yourself. No one would ask that of you, and besides, you don’t have a husband to support you. The shame of it. Think of the child!’

‘What about the child? She belongs with me. I am her mother, I’m all she needs.’

‘What would a child do without a father? Be glad that she now is part of a family where she’ll have a mother and a father. She won’t grow up with the shame of a fatherless family. Think of your child.’

I was silent. What could I say in response to this? I tried to follow Mien’s reasoning and understand why she was being so harsh, but I couldn’t. Didn’t she realize that every father was a possible monster to a child that wasn’t his? Didn’t she know that it was better to be the child of a fallen mother than of a stepfather?

‘I want her back. I can offer her a safe and loving home.’

‘No, you can’t.’ Mien’s voice was determined and she had placed her hands firmly on her hips.

‘Believe me when I tell you that she’s found a good home. Your own father has been involved and don’t you think he’d know? She’s now with a family in one of his former congregations.’

Her words provoked a thundering roar in my ears. At first all I could hear was a thumping noise on the inside of my head and it seemed to roar upwards and became louder and louder. I wanted to slap my ears to banish the noise, but I knew it would make no difference. Mien’s movements seemed to slow down and blurred out of focus and I closed my eyes in an attempt to banish her words, but they only hit home harder. The Reverend. The Reverend. First he had planted her life in me against my will, and now he had taken her from me, against my will.

Slowly my hearing returned and I stared at Mien with shocked, wide open eyes.

‘Who better to ask than your father, after all?’ Mien smiled, her rosy cheeks round as apples beneath her eyes.

‘I wrote him immediately and of course he was willing to find a family. I have no doubt whatsoever that your little girl has found a good home. Doesn’t that make you feel better?’

NO!

Mien gave me an encouraging nod, took my hand and squeezed it softly. Then she rose and placed her things back in her basket.

‘You’ll get over it, you’ll see. She won’t be a bastard, Maria, and you won’t be a disgraced woman.’ I closed my eyes and licked my lips.

‘Helène is a fallen woman, Maria.’
The words were always spoken in a whisper and Mother would look nervously over her shoulder, afraid someone may have overheard.

‘Did you ever see her little boy?’ She waited a moment and continued when I nodded.

‘He is a bastard.’

I didn’t know what a bastard was, but judging the tone of Mother’s voice, I could hear that it must be something horrible. I didn’t understand why though, for the little boy holding Helène’s hand looked very cute, with his round cheeks and blonde hair.

‘Never become like her, child. Women like her…’ Mother spat on the ground, something she never did. Slowly we continued down the road. Helène was on the same road, headed our way and Mother steered us to the middle of the road, so we could take a wide birth around the woman and her boy. I didn’t know where to look. My eyes darted round until they rested on Helène. I looked at her intently and decided she looked cheerful. She was always dressed in colorful clothes and her cheeks were rosy. Today was no different. With a shock I noticed that she smiled and winked at me. She smiled at me!
I quickly looked away, afraid I’d be contaminated and would turn into a bastard.