“Oh…” I bring my hand to my mouth and hold back the words I want to say, words of assurance, of love, and of fear.
Having little Irma in our house must bring it all too close for comfort for him. Why were we never told any of this? Why did it have to be a secret?
“Now see what you’ve done, Maggie,” Betty hisses at me.
“Me?” I say indignantly, “The war brought this to our home. The war tore her parents from her, and the war forced out papa’s secret.” I pause and think for a moment. “Is that why we never go visit Aunt Millie and Uncle Harold? Because they are practicing Jews?”
“Well, really, Maggie, you go too far.” My mother brings her fist down on the table, which makes the dishes clatter. “We’ll speak of it no more. The child can stay, but only for a day, two at most. Make sure no one ever sees her. I want no trouble over this.
The verdict has been delivered.
Nothing more will be said, of that I am sure.
I hold the pen up from the paper and watch as a drop of ink, like a tear, slides slowly down the nib and onto the paper, where it spreads into a small, blue stain. Do I really want to find out what happened to Irma?
I keep holding onto the pen, poised over the paper, afraid to cap it but also afraid to let the ink flow again.
Finally after thirty minutes have passed, I gather my courage.
As I had hoped, time has passed in my mother’s story.
It is after midnight and I see the little girl all bundled up and her little case packed. We are waiting by the back door, but for whom?
A soft knock tells me it’s time. This is where I say goodbye to the girl. I stroke her dark curls and put the hood of her coat up. I retie the light blue woolen scarf around her neck. I can recall knitting it for her. I must have only just finished it, as I spot a loose thread I didn’t have time to weave in. An incomplete project, just like Irma’s young life, which I hope she will get to complete.
“Ready?” I whisper.
The girl nods, I can just make out her movement by the faint moonlight.
I open the back door a crack and whisper my friend’s name.
“Yes, it’s me,” Siepie answers.
Reluctantly I take Irma’s hand and lead her outside.
“She will be safe, won’t she?” I ask, pleading softly.
“We’ll do our best, Maggie,” Siepie says in a serious tone. I feel her hand briefly on my arm. “We’ll do our very best.”
The image fades and the pen refuses to tell me more. I touch it to the paper, but nothing happens. I try writing a few simple words “and then…” but the page stays blank, the words don’t show up though I can hear the scratching sound of the nib on the paper. There is still enough
ink in the pen, but it just does not have anything more to say.
Did my mother ever find out what happened to Irma? Was Irma the reason she would sometimes become tearful when she spotted a little girl with dark curls in a crowd, or at a playground? I fear I will never know.
More than two weeks have passed but my curiosity is too strong and I once again find myself unscrewing the cap of the pen and filling it with fresh ink. Its secrets pull me in every time, though I am not at all sure I want to know everything it’s telling me about my mother and her family. But on this day I once more let myself be seduced by what might flow from the ink-stained nib.
The tug into the past is now quite familiar even though it remains unsettling, like diving into an icy swimming pool.
Once I adjust, I notice I am, in fact, shivering. A cold wind is blowing and I am wearing only a thin blouse, the cuffs stained and frayed with age. I know instantly that it has been some time since I’ve had anything new to wear.
I am on the sidewalk in front of my house, looking at the front window. The blackout curtains are already drawn though it’s only early dusk; there’s still enough daylight and curfew won’t be for another few hours.
Why don’t I go inside, I wonder? I am shivering and my teeth are chattering.
I turn to look at Siepie’s house and see her mother in the window, anxiously looking up and down the street.
That’s it, I am waiting for Siepie. She’s late coming home from her job as governess to the doctor’s twins and I must talk to her. I can’t go inside and warm up until I do.
A knot of dread settles in the pit of my stomach. Something’s not right in my house and now I’m worried about Siepie too. I hope she hasn’t been picked up for questioning again. The last time they let her go with a warning about choosing her friends more carefully, but with the new SS officer assigned to our village she might not be so lucky a second time.
It’s all because she’s such good friends with Hendrik that they questioned her that first time. I wonder who might have told them about her friendship with the butcher’s son? Nobody knows where Hendrik is now. He was picked up some months ago and nobody’s seen him since. I miss him.
I notice my sister standing in front of the window. She looks right at me with a smirk on her face. She’s always been jealous of my friendship with Siepie, but it’s not my fault she can’t seem to make friends of her own.
She wouldn’t really wish ill on Siepie though. Or would she?
I shrug off the thought and the worse one that follows it. I cannot imagine my sister would report Siepie to the Germans; she would not stoop that low.
Finally I spy the tiny figure of my friend coming up the road. As she comes nearer I see how very tired she looks. The doctor’s twins are known to be a handful and Siepie works long hours caring for them. Ever since the twins’ mother had pneumonia last winter she’s been too weak to look after her own children, though rumor around the village has it she just can’t handle the twins. Siepie is their third caregiver in less than a year.
“Maggie,” Siepie greets me. “You’ll catch your death of cold standing out here.”
“I never get sick, you know that,” I say, grinning. Siepie nods, a look of envy on her face. “I have something to tell you,” I continue. “It’s important.”
“Why don’t we go inside? You can tell me there.” Siepie searches for her key in her coat pocket.
“No, better not.”
“Maggie, dinner! Now!” Betty opens our door and calls out as if she’s ordering a little child.
“I’ll be right there!” I call back, and turn my attention back to my friend. “You’ll need to be more careful from now on, we have soldiers in our house.”
“When did this happen?” Siepie looks at me with horror. She’s used our house as a hideout for a Jewish girl once already and I know she will ask again in the future.
“Today,” I say. “I wasn’t home to try and prevent it. My father answered the door when they came and well…you know how it is.”
“Yes, I do. I suppose we’ll be next.” She looks worried.
“It’s possible, but I hope not.” Before I turn to go inside I add, “Be safe, Siepie.”
She nods, smiles and pulls her key out of her pocket, spilling a small assortment of pebbles.
“Treasures the twins gave me on our walk this afternoon.”
I nod, then hurry inside to my meager dinner and what little warmth the small coal fire gives.
As I go in two German soldiers are on their way out. Fortunately we don’t have to feed them as well.
“
Guten Tag, Fräulein
,” they say as they let me pass.
I scowl at them in response, looking them straight in the eyes; I won’t cower in front of them, they have no business in our house. Just because they don’t have enough barracks for their soldiers doesn’t mean they can just commandeer a bedroom in people’s houses.
My father sits with bowed head, his hands clasped around his bowl of thin soup. He does not even look up to greet me and instead bows almost imperceptibly lower over his bowl. He’s looked beaten ever since those soldiers moved into Theo’s room this morning, forcing me to once again share the cold attic room and bed with Betty.
There’s so much I want to say, but instead I sit down quietly and dip my spoon into the turnip broth recognizable by the aroma and the few finely chopped white bits floating in my bowl.
My mother, I suppose, does try her best to provide some decent food for us. Rationing has become so severe I don’t know how we’ll make it through the winter. The shelves in the shops are quite bare.
Now that we have these soldiers in the house my uncle won’t be able to drop off extra food from his farm; he would be arrested if caught. But even before the soldiers were billeted on us, Uncle Adema was bringing less and less. More than half of his crops are taken by the Germans to feed their army. They don’t even pay him a fair price—they practically steal it.
Don’t our people matter at all?
“I walked home from the train station with Maaike,” I say, trying to lighten the mood at the table. “She said her cousins down south, in Brabant, expect they’ll have to dig up the tulip bulbs and eat them this winter. Food is so scarce there.”
One look from my mother tells me that I have failed miserably in my attempt.
“If this keeps up you may be eating bulbs too, or brown paper with beeswax furniture polish. There’s no bread at the bakery for us and no flour to bake with either, it all goes to
them
.” She looks at me as if it’s somehow my fault. I am used to that look so I don’t let it bother me too much.
After our soup we each get one small potato, a tiny piece of meat I would rather not identify and some overcooked greens that look suspiciously like grass. Is that why my father stopped trimming the grass in the backyard? Surely there must still be something edible in our vegetable patch?
“Are you going to eat that, or can I have it?” Betty interrupts my thoughts and her fork already hovers over my plate. I slap it away and make a great show of enjoying my food.
“What I wouldn’t give for a nice cup of coffee after dinner,” my father sighs wistfully.
It is the first time I have heard him complain about the rationing and scarcity of staples.
“Mmmm, with some hot milk in it,” I say. “And a heaping scoop of sugar.”
“That would be heavenly,” my father agrees, with a dreamy look in his eyes.
“Since that’s not about to happen,” my mother says, “there’s no point in talking about it. Wishes never filled anyone’s belly.” With that pronouncement both my father and I are silenced more effectively than if she’d emptied a bucket of cold water over us.
My father retreats into himself, an empty pipe clenched between his teeth, waiting for the day he can once again fill it with tobacco.
It’s Betty’s turn to help mother with the washing-up so I stay at the table and pull out my homework. It’s not much. Most of my teachers don’t seem to have much interest in teaching anymore. Simply surviving this war has become a priority. There is even talk of closing the small teachers’ college until the war is over, whenever that might be.
“Papa,” I say. “Do you think I should quit school until after the war? I might be more useful around the house, or growing things in the garden.”
He looks up at me and slowly shakes his head. I wait a long time for him to say something.
Finally he takes his pipe from his mouth and, after a few deep breaths, answers me. “You’ll be safer at school learning useful skills. You’ll be kept too busy to get up to trouble.”
I want to ask him what he means by that, but I’m sure I already know. He’s no fool and knows me better than I am willing to admit. The lure of joining the resistance is quite strong; the longer this war drags on, the more I want to do something about it.
I open my geography book and slowly run my finger over all the countries Germany has taken by force. They should have left us alone, especially since we declared our neutrality. The Queen even got assurances from that odious little man that he would not attack or invade the Netherlands.
I turn the page to the map of America and slowly recite the names of the states. At least the Americans have finally joined England to help fight the Nazis. Sometimes I see the American bomber planes fly over our little village on the way to Germany.
Maybe once the Americans land on our shores and drive off the Germans I will get to meet an American. Or a Yank, as Mr. Churchill calls them on the wireless whenever we are able to pick up a broadcast from London.
We can’t even listen to the wireless now that we have Germans in the house—we could be arrested. As if to underscore that sad thought I hear the front door opening and the voices of our
guests
returning from their camp. No doubt they ate better food than we did.
One of them sticks his head around the door from the hallway. He looks happy, no doubt because his belly is full. I give him a scowl, which seems to amuse him. My father tries to sink deeper into his chair as this enemy soldier tries to flirt with me.
I wish Theo were here to beat him up, but I know he couldn’t, it wouldn’t be safe. I miss my brother who always defended me.
The soldier is still grinning as if he expects something from me.
“
Fräulein
,” he says, and then tells me he has great news, as if that will lure me into the hallway to be alone with him.
Instead I cross my arms and try to deepen my scowl, wishing him away.
Unfortunately, my mother calls to me from the kitchen. She wants me to help with something. Now I must pass the soldier.
He remains standing in the doorway so I have to squeeze past very carefully and far too close for my comfort.
I notice his blue eyes—they really are a lovely blue. The soldier is almost a head taller than I am. He does have a nice smile too. It reminds me of Hendrik’s smile. A little roguish and all charm.
Hendrik! I suddenly remember that he’s still being held somewhere, if he’s even still alive, and I stop any further contemplation about this soldier. A soldier who’s part of an occupying force in my country, eating my food and stomping his booted feet through my home.
He must have seen the change come over my face because he flinches and steps back a pace.
“You wish to hear news?” he says in halting Dutch. He’s one of the few actually learning our language; all the others expect us to learn German and to be thankful that they are bringing their
glorious
way of life to us.