River in the Sea

by Tina Boscha

  In the weeks after the funeral Jakob tried several times to talk to her. Leen knew he wanted to apologize for that night, that he’d meant no disrespect to her or Issac, but she did not want to revisit it. She found him guilty of nothing, but at the same time she didn’t want to re–examine what they’d done or the words she’d said, of blame and bones, so she avoided him until finally the matter seemed dropped. And then, much later, he began to wait for her, standing with feigned nonchalance outside the new winkel just after she’d gone in, and they’d gone walking together a few times. The first time his hand dangled at his side, hers crossed over her chest. The next time she let a hand rest at her side, and he took it, and to her surprise she didn’t immediately feel a rush of guilt or shame. She pushed her fingers between his. Jakob was familiar and warm and what they had in common beyond Issac was that they were Wierumers but yet neither of them were perfect fits. But when he bent down to kiss her, her face turned to him, he hesitated. He pecked her on the cheek and left.

  After that he waited fewer times at the winkel. Leen refused to seek him out at the café like other girls would. They didn’t have to talk about the reason. He was Jewish. The war was over and very few had aligned themselves with Hitler’s ideas. But his church was on Saturday, even if he had no “church” to go to, and hers was on Sunday. Leen was hurt but she was also proud. She hoped Jakob would make it to Canada. She meant him well.

  But that was not the country the De Graafs whispered about. Once again, Leen and the De Graafs stood out for their choice.

  At the end of the seventh week of waiting Leen sensed something was coming. She felt it on the way home from a farm in Bolingavier, where she’d spent the day picking the first batch of new potatoes.

  “Did it come?” she asked, bursting through the door.

  Pater was at the kitchen tafel, smoking as always. The letter lay unfolded neatly in front of him, the envelope crumpled in a ball.

  She sat down. “So they said no.” She helped herself to one of the three cigarettes Pater had already rolled for himself. She lit it quickly, expecting to cry, but the tears didn’t come. This disappointment felt different. It dried the tears before they came, enervating her with the sensation of her stomach not sinking but dropping precipitously. “Shit,” she said. “Ver domme.”

  “Don’t swear,” Mem said.

  “Ja, well,” Pater said, nodded. “I feel that way too.”

  Leen flicked the envelope right off the table. It hit the wall and skidded across the floor, right near Mem’s foot. Pater shook his head as he picked up the letter. He scanned it again. The creases were worn already.

  “Too many people are leaving,” Pater said. “I don’t think they realized how many would want to go.” He put his hand on the back of his neck, picking at something as he studied the letter again. “I suppose they have to, otherwise we’d be emptied out. Still, it makes no sense for them to turn down the application for the family but allow only one.”

  “What?” Leen asked. Her stomach rose, a centimeter.

  Pater continued. “What did they think, I would go, and leave the rest of you here?” He pushed the letter away from him. “Ver skrikelik. Who is in the office now, a bunch of Germans?” That had become the new joke when something didn’t work or someone did something stupid: it must be, somehow, German.

  “Well,” Mem suddenly said, “what’s done is done. Let’s make some supper.”

  Leen nearly groaned out loud. Was this Mem’s answer to everything? No use talking, it was time to eat. Didn’t she tire of it? Every night she put hot food on the table. Every night. Every night, on this table, for the rest of her life.

  Leen stood up. “I will go. I want to go.”

  “That is gek,” Mem said. Her voice was loud. She picked up a single crumb from the tablecloth and dropped it to the floor. “You can’t go on your own.”

  “I’m eighteen,” Leen said.

  “Eighteen or not, a young woman should not go such a long way on her own,” Mem said, her voice still loud. “If we are going to make such a big change, well, it’s just not what’s done. Let’s get the glasses and silverware on the table.”

  Leen started to gather forks and handed them to Mem and then sat down. Mem’s reaction was like a splinter, digging in. Renske could finish setting the table, wherever she was hiding.

  “I’m going,” she said. It was so easy to say it. It made sense. It felt true. “I will go on my own.”

  “No, you are not,” Pater said quietly. His voice was firm, the voice of a father who would tolerate no more talking back. “There is no way I’m sending you alone. Forget it, Leentje, and don’t ask again.”

  This is what drew the tears from her. Pater blew out a cloud of smoke that blocked his face. But his words came through the smoke. Softly, sounding as if he was talking to himself, he said, “Ja, that’s the best way, to go as a family.”

  Pater was still at the table when Leen stumbled into the kitchen. Most days in this season he was gone by six a.m., sometimes earlier. But he no longer pushed through the night, even when the weather suggested he ought to. He let Hilke and Leen do that. Her cheeks stung as she stirred sûker into her coffee. The fall winds had chapped her skin. Her shirts were tighter across the shoulders than they were in the beginning of the year, the fabric pulling where her muscles had grown. She could drive a tractor and work through the night but still, fathers did not send their daughters to Amerika.

  “Good morning,” Pater said. “Where are off you to today?”

  The Kuiper farm, again, she thought. Time to plant the bulbs. It was going to rain. But instead her answer was, “I want to go.”

  “I told you not to ask again,” Pater said. He told her that every day. He’d repeated himself every day for nearly two months now.

  “I didn’t ask, I just said it,” Leen said. She would say it tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. Persistence had gotten her past his anger, past her own reticence.

  From the rear of his jaw his face hardened. “Leentje,” he began. He picked up a half–eaten piece of bread. “You have to accept that it was not meant to be. God wants to keep us here.”

  “I’ll apply for the papers myself.” Already she had started saving money, had almost $50 guilders. She’d save until she had enough.

  Pater stood up and cleared his own plate and cup, leaving behind his knife for her to use. “You’d defy me like that? What has happened to my Leentje? You never used to push this hard.” He walked away.

  “Well, you’re being a stubborn old ass,” she said. She shoved the knife into the butter, putting far too much on the blade.

  “What did you say?” His voice rang out, but then, he began to laugh. “Old ass, is it?”

  Leen exhaled. Pater came back to the table but he did not sit down. He took out his tobacco.

  “Why do want to leave so badly, girl?” he asked, looking at his busy fingers as if he was talking to them, not her. “Don’t you want to stay here? Start a family? Give me more grandchildren?”

  She looked at him. She would have children. Of course. But she was eighteen. She hadn’t even lived yet. “You sound like you want me to get married tomorrow.”

  He shook his head. “Nee, not for a while,” he admitted.

  “I just don’t think this is for me anymore.” She turned around. He hadn’t lit his cigarette yet.

  “This?”

  “Everything,” Leen said. She did not how to explain it to him. She looked out the window, onto the street, saw the Boonstra’s front yard, the dike behind it. There was beauty to her home, she knew that. Everything neat, orderly; there was never a time when the grass was not green. The rain and sea air never dried anything out. There were those who would never leave, because everything anyone needed was there. Work, family, food, shelter. She thought of the drunken fights that often erupted at the goodbye parties at the café, farewell arguments that came down to this question: After going through everything they had, all of them, all of Fri
esland, how could you leave it behind?

  This was her answer: After all that had passed, beginning with the dog, no, farther back; beginning when Wopke was lost and the war filled his absence, after all that had happened, she didn’t find herself clinging to the scene in front of her. Something had ended, like doors had closed, and she was standing on the other side of them, waiting for the next to open. And she had put herself there. She had stepped over the threshold and let the latch catch behind her. She needed to keep walking. Otherwise, she’d be still, just outside, living on the boundary. That terrified her. Leaving, that she did not fear.

  “You can’t run away,” Pater said. “Would you be running away?”

  “No,” she said. “I can’t explain it, heit. It’s just not for me anymore,” she repeated, but when she looked over her shoulder, all she saw was a trail of blue–tinged smoke.

  “Where’s Pater?” Leen asked.

  “He’s looking at another blasted tractor,” Mem answered crossly, jerkily shaking a sizzling pan.

  Leen quietly made herself a cup of coffee. Mem was not happy using their saved money for another farm machine, big and heavy and costly, and had hardly lightened when Pater promised that along with it he would buy a machine – an actual machine, not a kettle, not a brush – that washed clothes. The first in all of Wierum. Already he’d purchased an old army jeep once used by Canadian troops. Leen liked driving it, even though it was a windy endeavor, as the roof of the jeep – a Dodge – had a hole in it the soldiers had used for their machine guns.

  Mem set down a plate of hot eggs in front of Leen, banging it against the edge of the table. Leen shoved in a spoonful. The pan had been too hot; the whites brown on the edge and tough, not tender the way she liked them. Leen spooned the eggs over the bread, rolled it, and took a large bite. She was running late.

  “Swallow first. You don’t need to be in such a hurry to go,” Mem said, sighing. She sat heavily down across from Leen. She rubbed her eyes. She looked tired but the day had barely begun. “It would’ve been nice, all of us together, ja?” Mem said, voice breaking.

  Pater was home when Leen arrived back from work. Before she had a chance to take off her shoes, Pater called to her. Inside, her parents sat next to each other at the table, neither of them in their usual spots, Mem with a cup of tea, Pater with a cup of coffee, and a bottle of nobeltje open between them. Both were smoking. There was an envelope on the table.

  “Mail?” Leen asked. She pulled off her kerchief. “From who?”

  Pater handed her the envelope. It was from Den Hague, from the immigration office. The space for the addressee was blank. There was no postmark.

  She opened it, finding an official letter written to her and several other folded sheets. Her name occupied a single line. It began, “Dear Leentje De Graaf.” There was a word: approved.

  “Pater,” she said. She held the letter out and she stared at it. She touched the envelope. These were papers. She was holding her papers.

  “I went to Den Hague today, drove all the way there and back.” He put his hand over Mem’s and his voice was soft. “We talked about it last night, stayed up later than we should’ve–”

  “Someone from this family should go,” Mem interrupted. Her voice was loud with effort and decision. She made a fist and bumped the tabletop lightly to emphasize her words.

  Leen sat down. She spread each page out and looked them over, making sure the words hadn’t rearranged themselves, hadn’t done a little dance and tricked her eyes into reading only part of it. Something else must be there that said no. Leen turned the envelope over, pressing it between her fingers. It had traveled with Pater, all in one day, in the windy Dodge. She looked at her mother, her father. Their faces were the same, wan smiles, happiness coming through but also hertsyk. Heartsick.

  “Ja, ja, you should go,” Pater said, five quick staccato syllables. He nodded, patting the table just as Mem had. “Amerika,” he said, and when Leen lifted her eyes away from the crisp paper that had been typed and folded hours before, she watched Pater take out a yellowed handkerchief and wipe his eyes.

  “I’m not as stubborn as you think,” he said.

  26.

  “There’s ús Leen. Are you ready?”

  Looking at the full breakfast table, it was hard to tell who had spoken to her. Everyone was there; Pater next to Renske, Mem cradling Woppie with one arm while she poured tea with her other. On the opposite side of the table Hilke sat close to Tine, hunched over both of their plates.

  The beats of her heart seemed to echo with her excitement, yet her breath hurt when she thought about the day. Her head was clear, thankfully; she’d refused a party at the café, wanting to spare herself and her family the embarrassment of a sparse attendance. Still, everyone knew she was going and constantly commented to her about her plans. It reminded her of the winks and shouts she’d gotten after she killed the dog, except this time the remarks carried less delight over her actions. “That’s a long way for a girl to go on her own,” Mrs. Boonstra said, and even though she slipped Leen a few guilders so she might send her something back from America, she heard the inflection in her voice that echoed what she knew everyone was saying about her: That Leentje De Graaf, you know she was driving when she was barely big enough to see over the steering wheel? Ja, I know. I suppose she might have driven herself if there was a road on the water. You do know she’s going alone, don’t you? A girl, she is, leaving her family behind. Ja, I did. I can’t imagine what she will do all by herself in Amerika.

  Leen stood in the doorway. She knew she must look awkward and nervous. “I think so,” she finally answered.

  “Come on famke, you need to eat!” Hilke said. He nudged Tine to take another slice of gouda on her toast. He was always pushing food, believing that pregnancy and breastfeeding merited far extra amounts of cheese and milk and butter, and it was becoming evident in the new pouches pushing up against the back of Tine’s waistband. It made Leen smile, thinking of how much her brother–in–law ate just by himself during workday lunches. Tine must constantly be cooking, she thought. But in a way that excess of spirit was why she liked him. He filled up another space at the table, and little Woppie would grow and she would take up another.

  The only seat available was where Pater usually sat, at the end with his back to the counter. Sitting there, she could see everyone before her, spread out, eating their toast and soft–boiled eggs and slices of cheese and ham. Mem had made a nice breakfast. She was hungry and she tried to eat but it was hard to keep her head from shaking when the food approached her mouth.

  It was early and no one had slept well. Tine and Hilke had slept at the house for Leen’s last night. They were meant to sleep in Renske’s bed, with Renske joining Leen in Issac’s old room, but as Leen and Renske had settled in, Tine’s soft footsteps had approached the door and when she pushed the door open she immediately began to giggle. “Let me in,” she said, and Leen and Renske made room for her and the bed frame grated and gasped with their weight. Then the giggles stifled into stillness. Tine reached out and held Leen’s hand.

  Pater gobbled his toast, leaving the table minutes after Leen sat down, and through the thin walls of the kitchen she heard him fumbling in the barn. Metal clanked against more metal. Tine cleared plates even though she hadn’t finished her own. Only Renske acted as she normally did, her face still red from washing, her shirt stiff and crooked around her arms, eating half of everything on her plate, then leaving in a rush for school. She stopped to give Leen a kiss.

  “Nee, nee, not right now,” Leen protested. “I’ll come by skoale in a little bit to say goodbye.”

  Renske ran out, her bag swinging behind her. It would not be long before she would be in school as long as Leen had when she had stopped going. She had grown so much in the last year, knobs of her wrists and ankles jutting past sleeves and hems, but her big eyes and the natural waves of her brown hair convinced Leen that Renske was the same little girl, despite knowing the next
time she saw Renske she’d probably be a teenager.

  “She didn’t even say goodbye to me!” Hilke said, throwing his hands up in mock exasperation. Leen was grateful for the opportunity to laugh.

  Mem barely looked up from Woppie, a bundle of sleep and gauzy sighs. Leen leaned over to look at her little niece and as she reached to touch her soft forehead a drop splashed on the baby’s cheek. Woppie lay tranquil. It was Leen who flinched.

  “Oops,” Mem said. She wiped the baby’s face with her thumb. Leen stared at Woppie, blinking furiously. It was starting. She had been afraid of the goodbyes for days now. She started to clear her plate but Tine clucked her tongue and took it from her. “Go finish getting ready.”

  In her room Leen put on her traveling clothes, a blue shirt tucked into a brown skirt, and her new brown leather shoes. The rest of her belongings she’d packed away two days ago. She washed her face and took a towel and dried it, running it quickly over her teeth. One of them, a molar on her left side, had been aching for weeks and she hoped it would not bother her on the ship. It would be cold on the sea, everyone liked to tell her. You be sure to pack a warm coat.

  She put on her lipstick and blotted it against her handkerchief, then folded the handkerchief slowly into neat quarters and carefully put it in her pocket. It was fashionable now to wear bright shades of lipstick. She studied her lips; they looked nice. But one side of her hair was flatter than the other, and she took a comb and pulled it through, grimacing as the comb caught on the tangles at the dry ends of her hair. She attached a pretty clip Tine had given her, pulling back one side, always reminded of Minne when she did this. She and Hans, her soldier beau, were married and living in Oosternijkerk. She was not given an apology for her public humiliation, however, and Hans was given no help, just a pardon from being sent to the re–education camps. Leen had always wanted to stop by and say hello, offer her private congratulations. But she never did.