by Lynn Austin
“That sounds like a splendid idea. You’re going to do it, I hope.”
“I don’t know. . . . I wouldn’t know where or how to begin.”
“Why not start with why you decided to leave the Netherlands?”
“I didn’t decide. My parents did. I was seventeen years old.”
“You know what I mean. You should tell some of their story, too. Why they left their home and the Netherlands church. It’s important for your grandchildren and the generations after them to know what took place and why we’re here.”
I look away, lifting my knitting bag and checking to see how much yarn is left on the ball, stalling for time. When I glance up at Jakob again, his impatience has made a deep crease between his eyebrows. “Are the other settlers who were here from the beginning going to write their stories, too?” he asks.
“The committee wants them to. But you know I can’t write very well in English, Jakob. It would embarrass me if people saw how poorly I spell.”
“I’ll help you. Joanna and I will make certain it’s perfect before you hand it in.”
“I don’t know . . .” I pick up my knitting and wind the yarn around my fingers so I can finish the row. The needles whisper softly as they slide against each other, as if telling secrets. “I’m not sure if they only want to know what happened during those years and all the hardships we faced, or if I should tell them the whole truth.”
Jakob blinks and sits down on the chair across from me. “What do you mean, Moeder?”
I don’t reply. What I’m asking is: Should I tell the truth about all the times I despaired of God’s love? The times when I doubted and my faith was shaken and I turned away from Him in anger? Nay, sometimes it was more than anger—it was rage. Those feelings are part of my story, too, the part I’ve kept hidden all these years. Do they belong in this book they are making about our past?
“Of course, tell the truth, Moeder. It’s for the historical record, isn’t it?” The crease deepens, and he runs his finger between his collar and his neck again. “Please give it serious thought—if only for our family’s sake. I hope you’ll tell them you’ll do it.”
“Ya,” I say with a sigh. “Ya, I suppose I will tell my story.”
“Good.” Jakob stands again. He never stays long. “If you’d like, I’ll bring you a notebook to write in the next time I come. And some ink and a good pen.”
“I would rather use a pencil.” That way I can erase what I decide not to share.
“Some pencils, then. Do you need anything else before I leave?” I shake my head, and he bends to kiss my cheek. His thick hand rests on my shoulder for a moment. His wooly beard tickles my face as I inhale the clean scent of his Castile soap. “I’ll see you on Sunday, Mama, for dinner.” He turns, and I watch him stoop his head as he ducks through my sitting room doorway. When did the flaxen-haired, barefooted boy I once held on my lap turn into this tall middle-aged man?
I begin knitting again. I don’t want to think about the past just now or stir up buried memories. I need to concentrate as I turn the heel of the sock and start knitting the foot. I should have measured Jakob’s foot while he was here. The socks are for him. I hear my kitchen door open and close in the distance. “Did you forget something, Jakob?” I call out.
“It’s me, Tante Geesje.” I look up, surprised to see the boy who lives next door standing in my sitting room doorway. But Derk is no longer a child, either. He’s a man now, as tall as my son.
“Well, Derk! For goodness’ sake!” I stuff the unfinished sock into the bag with the ball of yarn and struggle out of my chair so we can hug each other. “How wonderful to see you! It’s been much too long—since Easter Sunday, I believe.”
“I know! And I’m so sorry that it’s been that long. These past few months have flown by so fast with all of my studies at the seminary and final exams—and then I started my summer job the day after school was out. How are you, Tante Geesje?” He calls me tante—his aunt—but we aren’t related.
“As good as can be expected after all these years. Come, let me fetch you something to eat. I think there are some cookies left in the tin.” I speak as if he is still the motherless child who used to run errands for me, carrying coal up from my cellar on cold winter days and emptying my ash bucket, not the grown man he has become. Derk and I took care of each other for many years. He would show up in my kitchen at just the right time, when I was feeling lonely and needed someone to talk to, as if God Himself would whisper in Derk’s ear and send him to my door. “Tea or coffee?” I ask. “Or maybe a glass of milk?”
“Don’t fuss, Tante Geesje. I just stopped by for a minute to see how you’re doing.”
“But you’ll need something to drink with my almond cookies. They’re your favorites.”
He grins. “In that case, milk, please.” He sits in his usual place at my kitchen table, his long legs sprawling, his smile lighting up the low-ceilinged room. He has grown to be as solid and good-looking as his grandfather was at that age. Should I write about his grandfather when I tell my story? Wouldn’t my son be shocked! But I don’t think Derk would be.
He opens the cookie tin and chooses one while I poke at the fire and add some wood and move the kettle over where it can boil. “Tell me everything you’ve been doing since I saw you last spring,” I say.
“Well, let’s see. My classes at the seminary have ended for the term—it was a very challenging year, but only one more year to go now. Did I tell you I’m working at the Hotel Ottawa for the summer?”
“Doing what, dear?”
“A little bit of everything—carrying guests’ bags to their rooms, taking care of the rowboats and canoes, maybe giving sailing lessons or excursions around Black Lake if anyone signs up for them. You know how I love to sail.” Derk gulps the milk I’ve poured for him.
We talk like the good friends we have always been as I sip my tea and Derk empties my cookie tin. “May I ask your opinion about something, dear?” I say after a while. “I could use your advice.”
“You can ask me anything, Tante Geesje, you know that. Although I’m not sure my opinion is worth much.”
“It is to me. . . . I met with some people from the Semi-Centennial Committee today, and they want me to write the story of how I left the Netherlands to settle here fifty years ago. They want to put all the old-timers’ stories into a book for Holland’s fiftieth anniversary celebration in August. What do you think?”
“You should do it. I would love to read your story. I was always sorry I didn’t pay more attention to my grandparents’ stories when they were alive. They didn’t talk about the past very often.”
“I don’t blame them. I don’t like to recall those hard times, either. . . . My son Jakob thinks I should do it, but I don’t know how much of the truth I should tell.”
Derk sets down his glass. “What do you mean?”
I blink away my sudden tears. “I can describe how the fever struck, and what it was like to hear the church bell tolling as I buried loved ones in the graveyard. But should I tell how hard I had prayed, day and night, begging God to spare them? Or how I raged at Him for letting them die?” I trace the pattern on the tablecloth with my finger as I speak, not looking up. Derk rests his broad, unwrinkled hand on top of mine, stilling it. My tears break free at the warmth of his touch. “If I’m going to relive my story, I think I should tell all of it, the whole truth, ya? But what will people think when they read it? Young people like you imagine that their grandparents and even men like Dominie Van Raalte were filled with faith, never wavering in what they believed. What will happen if I reveal all the cracks in that perfect picture?”
“I think you should tell the truth, doubts and all.” Derk’s deep voice has turned soft. “If only for your own sake. Write down everything that’s on your heart, Tante Geesje. I’ll read it, if you’ll allow me to, and help you decide what should go into the book and what should stay between you and God.”
I nod and pull my hand free to dr
y my tears. I pour more tea into my cup. Derk will be a minister someday, so perhaps he needs to know how far away God feels to a mother when she loses her child. He needs to know how hollow his words of comfort will sound to her. I hope he won’t think less of me or my imperfect faith after all is said and done.
“Ya, Derk. That is what I will do, then,” I say. “Thank you.” I sip my tea while I wait a moment for the sadness to lift. “So is there a special girl in your life these days? A handsome, young dominie like you should be married or else the young ladies in your church will be too distracted to pay heed to your sermons.” I expect him to laugh but he doesn’t.
“There was someone,” he says, looking down at his empty glass. “Caroline is beautiful and funny and full of life. I met her at a gathering of young people from three area churches and fell madly in love with her. I asked her to marry me . . . but she said she didn’t want to be married to a minister, and that’s what God has called me to be. Her father is a minister, and she said they never have time for their wives and families. I suppose she’s right. She broke up with me about a month ago. There’s been no one else since her.”
“I’m so sorry, Derk. Forgive me for prying.”
“No, that’s all right. I’m pretty much over it,” he says with a slow, sad smile. “But if you’ve ever had your heart broken when you were my age, promise me you’ll tell me all about it in your book.”
I feel my face grow warm. “We will have to see about that,” I say. “I won’t make any promises.”
After Derk leaves I feel too restless to sit and knit socks again. I’m eager to begin my story and wish I had the new notebook Jakob promised. I rummage through my desk, searching for paper, and find a few sheets of stationery. I also find my daughter Christina’s letter, the last one she ever wrote to me. I don’t need to read it. I know it by heart. She was coming home like the prodigal in Jesus’ parable. But unlike him, she never arrived.
I tap the sheets of stationery into a neat stack and search for a pencil. Then I sit down at my desk and begin to write.
Chapter 3
Geesje’s Story
The City of Leiden, the Netherlands
52 years earlier
On the night of my fifteenth birthday, a huge brick shattered the window of Papa’s printing shop and ended my childhood. The crash awakened me, and when I heard Papa thundering down the steep, narrow stairs to investigate, I jumped from my bed and followed him. The brick lay in crumbled chunks near the printing press. Shards of glass were scattered across the floor like pieces of ice. Nothing remained of the huge window with Papa’s name painted on it except a jagged hole that invited the brisk night air inside. Bricks don’t fall from the sky by themselves. Someone had deliberately thrown it through our window.
“Don’t come in here,” Papa said, shining a lamp all around the shop. “You will cut your feet on the glass.”
“I want to help you sweep up.” I hated the way the broken glass and ugly pieces of brown brick marred Papa’s pristine shop floor. I wanted to put everything right.
“In the morning, Geesje,” he said gently. “Go back to bed. There’s nothing we can do tonight.” I did as he said, but it took me a long time to fall asleep again. I never did hear Papa return to bed. I found out later that he had stood guard downstairs all night.
In the morning, not only was there a mess inside the print shop, but we discovered our attackers had also splashed red paint across our storefront and emblazoned the word heretic on our door. Paint dripped from each letter like blood. “Who did this?” I asked Papa. “Who would do such a thing? And why?”
“It’s because of the Afscheiding,” Papa said. “People don’t like it that our family has seceded from the government church to start a new one.”
“But why would someone do this?” It made no sense to me. Weren’t we all followers of Christ in both congregations, even though our church had to meet in private homes instead of in a building?
“They think they can intimidate us into returning to the state-sponsored religion.”
As soon as Papa’s apprentice, Maarten, arrived, Papa sent him to purchase boards to nail over the shattered window. The broken slivers of glass tinkled like silver coins as I swept them from the print shop floor. I thought of the Scripture verses I had memorized in catechism class: “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another . . . By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” This was not an act of love.
Our lives changed that night, although it took several months for our family to realize it. I felt violated, my sense of safety and security destroyed along with the window. I had rarely known fear until the night of this cowardly act, my childhood in Leiden as lovely and whimsical as the bubbles of light that used to dance on my bedroom wall on sunny days. The narrow brick house where I grew up overlooked de Nieuwe Rijn, and Mama said the bubbles were reflections of sunlight off the river’s surface. If the day was cloudy and there were no dancing bubbles, I knew the river would look as dark and dense as molten steel.
Papa’s print shop occupied the first floor of our home on Nieuwe Rijn Street, a ten-minute walk from Leiden University. Leiden is a beautiful city with centuries-old buildings, brick-paved streets, and canals that weave through the avenues like vines. I loved to watch from my bedroom window as flatboats and houseboats floated past, to hear the hinged wooden drawbridge creak open to let the masts of sailing ships slip through. Sometimes I would stand by the edge of the water with my older sisters, Anneke and Geerde, and feed stale bread to the swans. On market days, we would walk with Mama along the Nieuwe Rijn all the way to the Stadthuis and shop along the way at the colorful booths piled high with cheese and vegetables and flowers—always flowers.
“I have been thinking, Geesje,” Papa told me at lunch after I’d helped him clean up. “I don’t think you should walk to your sisters’ apartments by yourself anymore.”
“But they need my help with their little ones. It isn’t very far.” Both sisters had married a little more than a year ago, Anneke first and then Geerde. Now they’d each given birth to a baby boy.
“I’m sorry. But until we find out who did this and the vandals are punished, it may not be safe to go out alone. People know that a family of Separatists lives here. They seem to be watching our house. You could be in danger.”
I had never felt in danger before. I loved walking through Leiden’s beautiful streets by myself, following the winding river to where Anneke and Geerde lived. “What if Mama and I went together?” I asked.
Papa wiped his mouth and stood to return to the print shop. “Even if there are two of you, I’m not so sure.”
“Well, I’m not afraid,” Mama said. She was a tiny woman who was sometimes mistaken for a child when she covered her graying blond hair with a bonnet. She was as fearless as a biblical matriarch. “Our heavenly Father will watch over us.”
“That’s very true, my dear. But I still don’t want Geesje to go out alone.”
“I-I’ll go with her, sir.” Papa’s apprentice spoke so rarely that we all turned to him in surprise. Maarten was two years older than me and had worked for Papa since he was twelve. We had all watched him grow from a spindly boy who knew nothing about the printing business into a sturdy adult who was now Papa’s right-hand man. He also was a Separatist, like us. “I’ll be happy to walk with Geesje—if you can spare me for a few minutes, that is.”
Papa wagged his head from side to side, a sign that he was thinking. “That might work. Just don’t go out alone, Geesje.”
I never defied my parents or argued with them because one of God’s Ten Commandments was to honor my father and mother. To disobey them would have been a sin. For as far back as I could recall my family lived a life of devout faith in God, doing our best to follow the Bible’s teachings. My parents had seceded from the official state-sanctioned church before I was born, believing that the stiff, ritual formality of the national church made God seem cold and
distant. They wanted a more vibrant faith, worshiping a God of love, a faith that adhered more closely to the Bible’s teachings rather than manmade traditions. I grew up eager to serve God in any way that He asked me to. I imagined that would mean marrying a devout Christian man and raising a houseful of children, feeding the poor, helping the sick, and spreading the love of Christ. I thought my faith was very strong. I didn’t realize, back then, that faith that is never tested isn’t true faith at all.
The first time that Maarten walked with me to Geerde’s house, we both felt awkward. For one thing, I had never been alone with a young man before, even though Maarten was almost like a brother to me. And for another thing, we made a mismatched pair—Maarten tall and solid and thick-shouldered, while I was so short and small-boned that the top of my head barely reached his chin. He was as dark-haired as one of the Spaniards who had invaded the Netherlands generations ago, while I was blond and fair-skinned. Neither of us spoke a word to each other that first day.
The intimidation at Papa’s shop gradually grew worse. The painted slogans reappeared on our storefront almost as quickly as Papa and Maarten removed them. Many of Papa’s regular customers stopped bringing him their business. Some of the vendors in the marketplace refused to sell to Mama and me or to other members of our Separatist congregation. I didn’t understand why all of this was happening, but I became very grateful for Maarten’s silent, protective presence with me whenever I ventured out.
By the time a year had passed and I turned sixteen, Papa’s declining business and the growing animosity of our neighbors forced him to make a decision. He invited Anneke and Geerde and their husbands to our home one Sunday after church to tell all of us the news. “I have decided to leave Leiden altogether and move my print shop to the town of Arnhem.”
“No . . .” I breathed. This was our home. We couldn’t leave Leiden. I covered my mouth, careful to keep my thoughts to myself. My sisters also seemed shocked by the news.