Shores Beyond Shores

by Irene Butter

  She waited for a pause, said she didn’t know, but it was cause to celebrate with pudding. She said to have patience, as no one knew what the order of things would be, but that no matter what, she felt certain I would be reunited with them, together again. She handed me the pot so I could scrape the thick layer of chocolate off the bottom. As I cradled the familiar brown pot, I remembered licking off and savoring drops of cold turnip broth in Bergen-Belsen. Now it was full of warm chocolate. I ate every last bit off the bottom.

  Thanks to Mieke, I would never again kill a spider, but that didn’t mean I liked bugs. Grasshoppers swarmed in response to the thickening heat. They were everywhere, flying through the camp, bumping into buildings and trucks, and tangling in my sweaty hair. I tried not to crunch them on the ground.

  Then Mrs. Roseboom, Lex’s mom, decided it was time for swim lessons.

  “There are fewer locusts near the water,” she said, wiping her brow. “Besides, it’s dangerous to live so close to the ocean and not know how to swim.”

  “We’ve been living near the ocean for months,” I whispered to Lex. “Isn’t she a little late?”

  “Yeah, but it’ll be fun,” he said.

  “Promise?” I asked, looking up, into his brown eyes.

  My past experience with water consisted of skating on ice, paddling in the shallows, and drinking it, but I’d never been in over my head. How would I float? Step by step I waded in, pausing to let the waves rise over my ankles, knees, and waist. None of us had swimming suits. I discovered that shirts and cutoff pants were like an anchor.

  Mieke stayed behind, skeptically watching my progress. “I’ve always been told to keep my clothes dry and now I am supposed to get them wet!” she said, laughing.

  “C’mon. Let’s go,” I urged.

  “I’m going to sink!”

  The water was cool as I submerged up to my stomach and felt the push-pull of the waves. I squelched the panic that rose up, and concentrated on Mrs. Roseboom’s lessons.

  “The salt water will keep you afloat,” she said.

  I lowered myself, leaning back, hoping the water would hold me high like a new mattress. Water splashed into my face. I stumbled to standing and wiped my wide eyes.

  “Wow, you’re really good,” Mieke laughed.

  “Try it again, on your back. Just float,” Mrs. Roseboom encouraged.

  I took a deep breath, tilted my head back and relaxed, feeling the pulse of the waves and learning when it was safe to catch some air and when to hold. It worked. The water rushed into my ears, and I could hear my breath. I slowed it down. Then I opened my eyes. A bleached white gull floated overhead against a sky as blue as my eyes. I lowered my gaze to see green hills dotted with pink-blossom bushes like blotches of spilled paint. I was suspended between earth and sky.

  Walking back to the beach to dry off, I marveled, feeling clean and new in a way I didn’t know was possible.

  “I can’t wait to go again,” I said.

  I swam every day. I couldn’t stay away. I never got my chance to sled and ski in Switzerland, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t imagine it could be better than this.

  “You’re a natural,” said Mrs. Roseboom.

  “You’re a torpedo!” said Lex.

  I moved through the swells, back and forth, back and forth along the shore, the backstroke and the breaststroke being my favorite. My mind focused on my movement in rhythm with the sea, and nothing else. The trains, Westerbork, Bergen-Belsen sank below me like stones. Despite the heat, my swimming clothes were constantly wet.

  “We can’t buy bathing suits?” asked Mieke.

  “I don’t think they have any here,” Lex said.

  Mrs. Roseboom was now on a mission. She tracked down an old sweater from a friend. We unraveled the yellow and brown knitting and she helped me re-knit a bathing suit out of it. She took me to the nurse’s station where there was a full-length mirror. I tried it on.

  “Lean forward.”

  I did. And I felt exposed.

  Mrs. Roseboom pursed her lips, muttering, “We will definitely have to fix that.”

  “How’s it going?” Lex asked from the other room.

  “Fine, honey. Stay there,” his mother said.

  Then she had me move this way and that, while pulling at the edges.

  “It looks like I am wearing a blanket,” I said without thinking.

  “You don’t like it?”

  “I mean, it’s wonderful. Thank you.”

  Mrs. Roseboom cocked her head. “Well, you know what I think?”

  I shook my head expecting to be told she thought that I was spoiled.

  “I think it’s going to look like a really nice blanket,” she said.

  I looked past the “blanket,” marveling at my new shape. Just three months ago the suit would have hung off me like a flag on a windless day. Now, I had curves. Was this really me?

  Mutti had recently written asking if I had menstruated. She told me that menstruation would involve bleeding in my private place for a few days at the same time every month. It was normal, she wrote, and had to do with getting older and my body changing. Normal or not, it sounded horrible. Still, I pondered as I turned in front of the mirror, if I looked like this, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

  “Can we take it in a little more at the waist. Make it tighter?” I asked.

  “It’s tight enough dear,” Mrs. Roseboom said. She stretched the suit out across my belly and tucked the excess fabric into the folds around my hips. With a final pinch in the back and tightening at the waist, she announced that she was done for now.

  “Swimming will be easier,” she proclaimed, and it was. I felt fast and strong. I imagined swimming all the way across the ocean to America or Italy or wherever. Maybe the same water that washed over me had touched the shores of my future home.

  After several laps back and forth near the outer rope marker, I stopped and treaded water. Ha, I thought, Werner would never believe that I could do this. He didn’t know how to swim! I glared at the open ocean, feeling gloriously dwarfed. It never ended, never culminated in a pinpoint like single-minded trains on tracks. It went off in every direction—any direction that it wanted. Any direction that I wanted. I suddenly felt a snag on my leg. Lex’s face shot up on my right side.

  “Ha, ha, got you!” he gurgled.

  “How did you…?” I blurted.

  “‘The shark has its way, especially when you are looking away.”

  “I’m gonna get you back,” I yelled and tried to dunk his face back in the water, but all I did was tap his shoulder and plunk my own face down.

  “Just cuz you’re getting good at swimming doesn’t mean you can catch me,’” he taunted, darting out of reach. “You may be a torpedo, but I’m a natural! I’m ‘the shark!’”

  I grabbed at him, but he slipped under the waves again. I spun around to make sure he didn’t sneak up on me when he surfaced right in front of me, and after a fast shake of his head we found ourselves looking into each other’s eyes.

  “So you came to get me?” I asked.

  “I think I got you.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  He moved closer and then we were kissing, our weight pulling us under. My ears popped. All I could think of was the feeling of holding him until I finally had to breathe. We surfaced, laughing.

  “Wow,” he said. “Just, wow.”

  “So you came to get me?” I repeated, adding, “Now, I think I’m going to get you.”

  I expected him to move towards me again, but instead his serious eyebrows shot up. Lex spun around and dove, swimming, hands going over his head toward the shore. I took a deep breath and ducked. Like a frog, I pulled myself through the water, following his cloud of bubbles. The dark blue below me lightened to green as the sand rose from the depths. Lex’s long legs kicked above me while I continued to glide like a fin underneath, my lungs beginning to tighten. His feet flashed in the foam, and I grabbed his right foot with my right hand, swinging side
ways to avoid being kicked by his left. As I pulled him to a stop I rose, gasping for breath. I was a little light-headed, and thrilled.

  “Wow, you are fast,” he gasped and tried to splash me away. “Of course, I let you catch me.”

  “Oh, so ‘the shark’ is nice?”

  “‘The shark’ is weak in the face of beauty.”

  The sand found our feet and we pulled up and out of the water. My legs were shaking. I had not swum that long before. He wrapped his towel around himself and then his arm around my waist. We walked like that arm in arm, sandy and warm, to join our friends.

  “We saw that!” Ellen yelled.

  44

  Camp Jeanne d’Arc, Philippeville, Algeria

  June 1945

  The camp was heavy with impatience. There was talk about countries I’d never heard of, like Uruguay. Mme. Benatar still had not received any affidavits from my family in America, which were sent months ago. No affidavits meant no visa, and no visa meant no leaving. In her letters, Mutti worried how long it would be before we saw each other. I wrote to Mutti, suggesting we consider some other country if the United States didn’t work out. Maybe we could return to Holland first and get some of our belongings. Who knew?

  We made excursions into Phillippeville, wandering the market to pass the time. Ellen held hands with her boyfriend, one of the Yugoslavian guards; they were only brave enough to show their affection outside the camp. Mieke and I looked at bracelets.

  “Can I have one of those?” Lex asked, coming up between us, draping his long arms over our shoulders.

  “No. These are for girls only,” I teased.

  He smiled his perfect smile and gave me a wink.

  We were excited about going to see a movie after hearing the town had a cinema. None of us had seen a movie in years. Misunderstood was showing. It was based on a book I had actually read before the camps.

  “In we go,” said Lex.

  As we walked up the steps and Lex gave his few coins to the turbaned man behind the glass counter, memories flooded in. It all felt so normal, but new in a way I couldn’t take for granted. A theater could be for movies, or it could be for rounding up people to kill.

  “Are you alright?” he asked.

  “Yeah, just remembering, you know?”

  We all settled in. The newsreel blinked on, and talked about how Japan was still fighting, and suddenly I was back in Bergen-Belsen. The pictures were blurred in black and white, but I knew every building. The voice talked about the atrocities at Bergen-Belsen. Every close-up of a face could have been somebody I knew. Every dead face. Then the commentator explained how the British decided it was best to burn the buildings. Tractors moved in front of our barracks, belching and throwing flame over all that we had known. The next clips showed smoke billowing over the camp.

  Lex gripped my hand harder, and I wept into his warm shoulder. I didn’t remember the movie starting, but at some point I dried out.

  “Sorry, I think I made a mess of your shirt,” I whispered.

  “It’s okay,” he replied. “Now you can get on with the rest of the movie.”

  After the credits we walked back out into the warm evening and to the truck waiting to take us back to Jeanne d’Arc.

  “We’ve got to start thinking about the future, Reni,” he said. “Holland is liberated! Life is going to get back to normal in, I don’t know, probably a few months.”

  “I want Mutti and Werner to come here,” I said. “To Jeanne d’Arc. That is what I want more than anything. Then we can go from there.”

  “Think bigger, Reni. I mean the real future—years from now—far away from this place, and far from Bergen-Belsen.” He flung his right arm out with a punch. “I’m going to return to Amsterdam, find our house, and if it’s been destroyed, rebuild it. I’ll find out what happened to my father’s business—he made burlap sacks, you know—and get it going again.”

  I looked up at him, admiring his determination. I wanted that clarity, but I couldn’t think beyond reuniting with Mutti and Werner.

  Over the next few days, I felt out of sorts. My skin, limbs, and changing body felt ready to burst. My stomach hurt, so I stayed back at the Joskis. I awoke from a nap, something damp between my legs. It didn’t feel hot enough to sweat, I thought, as I made my way to the bathroom. It was blood. I changed my clothes and put the dirty ones in a small pile under my bed. I decided to find Mrs. Joski. I went into the kitchen, into her room, and called, but no one came. I went outside and into the front yard and called again. I began to walk back toward the cafeteria.

  “Hey, Reni,” said Dr. Joski. “Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”

  “Umm, yes,” I said. “I was just looking for Mrs. Joski.”

  “She’s at the nursing station visiting a friend,” he said, and looked me up and down. “Are you alright?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, holding back tears.

  “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

  “I don’t know,” I said pulling my arm away.

  “Does something hurt?” he said.

  “Yes, my whole belly hurts and, well,” I said, “and there is blood…I mean, I think I may have….” I looked up at him, at a loss for words.

  He searched my eyes.

  “Oh, my dear child,” he said and put his hands up to his mouth in a prayer, and putting his hand on my shoulder. “Come. It’s a sign that you’re healthy, not that you’re sick.”

  At the nursing station, Dr. Joski whispered in his wife’s ear; she rose up and hugged me. She told her friend she needed to tend to me, and the friend said her good-byes.

  “Oh, Reni,” she said in warm tones, “normally, a mother talks with her daughter….”

  I explained Mutti’s letter asking if I had menstruated.

  “Well, she’s not here, but I am. So,” she said, with a swat of her hand across each cheek, “Mazel Tov! You’re a woman!”

  I must have looked surprised.

  “It’s a tradition, slapping the cheek of a girl with her first period—that’s what most women call it. It’s a way to shock you out of childhood, but you’ve already been forced into adulthood, yes? So, just a good tap for you.”

  She got the nurse who brought supplies and showed me how to use them. They both hugged me again and smiled.

  “Your Mutti will be proud of you,” Mrs. Joski added.

  I walked outside to go back to our hut. Did I look different? I tried to hold my head high and walk straight, even though my belly hurt so much. A woman? I felt the same. I didn’t feel ready, but Mrs. Joski was right, I had seen a lot and I had done a lot of grown-up things. Despite taking lessons, I couldn’t speak English or French very well, and I didn’t truly know if I’d be off to America or elsewhere, or when. I still wanted to curl up and be taken care of by Mutti. To feel her next to me, putting my hair behind my ear, or feeling my forehead, or making a favorite dish to cheer me up. I still wanted Pappi for protection and safety. Why did becoming a woman mean so much loss and unknown?

  45

  Camp Jeanne d’Arc, Philippeville, Algeria

  June–July 1945

  A few days later I was eager to swim again. A few of us even ventured beyond the ropes. We giggled nervously, vigilant for the slightest tug of current that would warn us to head back. There was none. Afterward, we lay on the beach, tanning. Mutti and Werner would never recognize me now—I was curvy and brown.

  “I love swimming,” I said while lying on my back, my arm thrown over my eyes. “I love it.”

  “You’re really good at it,” Mieke said. “Probably the best of us, and you just started!”

  “Yeah. You know, this is the first time I’ve ever been good at something. I’ve never been better than the rest of my family at anything. Everybody is older than me, and just better at everything.” I felt guilty. I hoped it was okay to feel so good.

  “You are the baby of the family, just like me,” said Mieke. “But we’re not babies anymore.”

  The
news from Bergen-Belsen, in the papers and in the newsreels, was more and more terrible. The photos in the papers that now arrived in camp were familiar and gruesome. Bodies tumbling over bodies as British bulldozers plowed the dead into great pits. There was very little hope for our friends. We hadn’t heard from any of them. I thanked God that he had taken Pappi out of that horrible place, even if I didn’t know where he was. At the same time I was sad that Pappi was not allowed to experience where I was—the blazing beach and soothing sea he so loved.

  As much as I shuddered at the images of the mass graves at Bergen-Belsen and was forever thankful for my escape, the camp continued to haunt, no, to beckon, me. I stared at the gritty newspaper photos for a familiar angle, building, or face, trying to eke out what I could from the empty spaces between the tiny printed dots on newsprint. I longed to be back because I ached to be with my family. I would forever be pulled to that place if only to see again where my father had last had a life: the unforgiving wood pallets, floors, walls, and tables; the clothing riddled with lice and holes; the mud, wind, and dirt; and standing side by side for hours on end with the people I loved the most. Let’s go, Hasenbergs, Pappi’s voice called. And we always did. It seemed we went everywhere together until the journey became mine alone.

  Letters flew back and forth almost daily. Affidavits and paperwork were in motion, and it was looking more and more like Mutti, Werner, and I would end up in America, though probably at different times. I got letters from Vera, my dear old friend Vera, and others from Amsterdam who suggested we not return there. The war was over, but who knew how long it would take to heal. Food was rationed, and jobs were impossible to find. If there was ever a time to start over, it was now. At the same time, the first camp group received permission to leave. They were to return to the Netherlands, and it included Lex’s family.

  “Come with us,” Lex said. We sat watching the sun set over the hills after dinner. The dry grass felt scratchy and little flies buzzed around the flowers.

  “Come back to Holland. It’s your home. Your Mutti and Werner can join you there. It’s so much closer than America. No need for sailing across a big, bad ocean….”