River in the Sea

by Tina Boscha

  “Dancing on a Sunday, tsk, tsk,” Minne said.

  Even though Leen knew better, she glanced back to find Jakob once more, but quickly looked past him at the gap in the crowd. Issac was the dancer. He’d said he couldn’t bother to come, but there he was, face hot under a tweed hat, sheepishly grinning while his feet skipped and his arms swung upwards. His slightly bowed legs were transformed from awkwardly curved to swift and lively and it had been a long time, years, since Leen had seen Issac move like that. Leen brought her hand down so that Issac couldn’t see what she was doing.

  “That’s my broer over there,” Leen said. “A dancing fool.”

  “He’s not the only fool,” Tine said curtly. She took a half–step away, turning her head to the side, as if that was enough to communicate to everyone she had nothing to do with both Leen and Issac.

  Maatje, an earnest girl with a plain, gullible face, tried to resume the conversation. “My Pater says those poor soldiers are eating rotten sugar beets right out of the ground,” she said.

  “I hate those beets. I hope those awful soldiers eat them all,” Tine said, crossing her arms.

  It was silent for a moment. Then Minne said, “They’re probably very hungry,” blowing smoke into Maatje’s face. Maatje did all she could not to cough, but finally she sputtered. Leen couldn’t help it. She laughed.

  “They must be,” Leen said. There was a strange twinge in her throat when she spoke. But it was true. Tine gasped.

  Minne nodded once to her. Leen knew that she had passed some kind of test. Maatje put her arm through Tine’s and led her away, but not before Tine’s mouth fell open and then, as she walked away, she gave Leen a sharp look.

  “Want another?” Minne asked. She had dropped her initial challenging posture, evident by her sloped shoulders and the way she stood with one leg out, rolling her heel back and forth. She held her own cigarette perched delicately between two pale fingers.

  Before, insulated amid the large group, Leen had felt more daring. Now, the familiar timidity returned. She feared that her wit and words would fail her. She was standing close to the church wall. Leen could reach out and press her hand to the bricks, 800 years old. How much smoke had they absorbed? Out of the corner of her eye she saw Tine’s bent head and hunched shoulders as she walked home. “I probably shouldn’t,” Leen said. “But thank you.” She felt like Renske, like a little girl who didn’t quite know what to say to a grown–up.

  “You don’t have to smoke it now,” Minne said. “Maybe tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  Minne laughed. “Don’t you work in Dokkum? I’ve seen you on your way there a few times. You bike faster than any other girl I know.”

  “Really?” Leen meant, really, you noticed me?

  “All the time. You’re the one who hit the dog.” Minne didn’t moderate her voice at all and Leen looked around her again. Hitting the dog was old news but something about the direct way Minne said it – and the fact that this strange girl was giving her cigarettes and talking about the accident as if it was regular as milk – sent the color and temperature immediately rising on the back of her neck.

  “I thought that was you,” Minne said. She gingerly tapped her cigarette, sending snowy ashes falling from its tip. “I work in Dokkum too, three days a week. We could meet sometime, take a break. Might be nice, you know?”

  Leen looked to her right again. Tine was farther away. Leen didn’t want her getting home before she did. But she felt the same about Minne. “Tomorrow?”

  Minne nodded and smiled. She held out her hand and Leen took the cigarette. Minne retrieved her bicycle. She pushed off, wobbly at first, one hand steering the handlebars to and fro until she steadied herself. She waved, the cigarette still nestled between her fingers. Leen would’ve been jealous had she not been holding her own cigarette.

  She caught up with Tine, who said only, “You smell like Pater.”

  Leen fingered Minne’s gift already stowed in her pocket. “Don’t tell Mem,” she whispered.

  Tine didn’t answer.

  There were not many places for two girls to stand together and take a break from working, since breaks were usually reserved for a cup of tea taken at the kitchen table, and served just as much to mark the time as to give everyone a reprieve from it. Still, Leen managed to meet Minne halfway between the bakery and Minne’s employer, the De Jong’s, who lived four blocks away. The De Jong’s had a jewelry and watch shop that also sold fine Delftware and, according to Minne, had managed to stay in business mainly through bribes.

  As they smoked, Leen was relieved to see that Minne’s fingers were pink and that her nails were clipped into plain crescent moons. Leen glanced at her hands to make sure they were still clean from Saturday’s scrubbing. That was the only thing Leen could claim on Minne. In every other way, Minne Bosgra was far prettier. She might have let Minne’s good looks spark a deeper envy, but she was so far past Leen in all matters related to beauty that Leen couldn’t muster any real sorrow about it.

  “I can drive a truck without a license, but I can’t smoke a cigarette!” Leen exclaimed, drawing her knit cap down her forehead. The sun weakly poked through a few breaks in the clouds, and the air was frigid. That morning the canal was completely frozen over, a solid sheet of frosted brown ice. “Can you smoke at home?”

  Minne flicked her head in a way that said, I do what I want.

  “My moeder doesn’t find it proper.”

  “Your Mem is strict,” Minne said, raising her eyebrows. “But she lets you drive?”

  “Only because my Pater needed me to, and I begged,” Leen said. She’d wanted to drive ever since her father bought the truck and tractor, when she was just eight. But Issac was first in line, then Wopke. She changed the subject. “I smoke when I’m underdoek.”

  “Underdoek?” Minne tilted her head. She took a step closer. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t sleep at home,” Leen said. She knew right away that Minne had never done it, and that she viewed it romantically, just the same as Leen had, before she’d felt the bone–deep cold and carried the smells of livestock in every pore. But she didn’t correct Minne’s notion.

  “Why? Is it every night?”

  Leen paused. Could she tell Minne? As Jakob said, in Wierum it was easy to notice her father’s absence. But Minne was not a Wierumer. Still, who would she tell? Leen herself knew nothing about Pater’s whereabouts. She had no idea how to even try to find out.

  “My father is in hiding, so I, all of us kids, have to sleep underdoek. This way we’re safe if any soldiers come, and Renske – she’s just six – can’t blab anything.” The cigarette gave her an excuse to look away. “It’s safer, right now anyway. I don’t think we’ll have to do it much longer.”

  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 float
ing 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.