Saving Charlotte

by Pia de Jong

  Charlotte clenches her fists, kicks her legs, and turns red, but the woman does not let that distract her. She just starts to mutter louder.

  “Away, you,” Matthijs says, poking at her stomach with his finger. My two-year-old boy has more courage than I have. He dares to speak out. For a moment I cherish the hope that maybe she will listen to him. But she does not even grant him a look.

  Angrily, he pushes his shoulder against her thigh, then his two hands around her leg. Matthijs, who always is so gentle!

  “Mama, when will that woman leave?” asks Jurriaan, who has been sitting in a corner all the while. He picks up his soccer ball and kicks it against the wall, just behind her back.

  “Stop it,” I call. But he continues, even more wildly. I must intervene, take charge. I cannot let this happen to my family.

  “You’d better go,” I tell the woman. “Enough is enough. The boys are hungry, Charlotte is tired. I have to take care of them now.”

  “It’s almost done,” she says, in a tone adults use when speaking to toddlers. “If you are patient now, Charlotte will be rescued. If I do not finish my work, all that I have done this afternoon is useless.”

  “Why must it take so very long?” I ask.

  “This is a difficult case,” she says. “Everything in this house works against me. And also him.” She points outside, where Mackie is running back and forth in nothing but shorts, raging against the world. “And then the red-light window,” she continues. “I do not understand why you let your children grow up near these filthy whores.”

  That does it. I grab Charlotte and hurry upstairs with the boys. I leave the woman behind in the room. Halfway up the stairs, I can still hear her muttering. We retreat to the bedroom, where we sit between the dinosaurs. But the boys don’t play with them.

  “Did she leave?” Jurriaan asks after a while.

  “I heard the door slam,” I say.

  “I did not hear the door slam at all,” he says angrily. “She’s still there.”

  Matthijs kicks at his favorite stuffed dinosaur.

  After a while I take both my sons to the living room to show them that no one is there. Or perhaps to convince myself that she’s really gone. The room is empty, but her incantations still hang in the air.

  At 2 a.m. that night, Jurriaan is sitting up in bed with his back against the wall. “Mama, look at all those dinosaurs walking around us,” he whispers in a shaky voice. “You see them? Over there! And here too.”

  His pajamas are soaked. He feels hot. I try to reassure him, but he is frightened that the animals will attack him. I cool his fevered body with a wet towel and wait until he calms down. But he cannot sleep anymore. After a while I carry him to the living room, where we watch his favorite cartoon.

  “Are dinosaurs still alive, Mama?” he asks when the movie is over. His hair is glued to his forehead.

  “No,” I say. “You know that, right? They have long been extinct.”

  He nods. “Are they really all dead?” he then asks.

  “Each and every one of them,” I say. His glowing hot eyes scare me.

  He picks up two of his toy dinosaurs and taps them against each other as if they were flints. “When you’re dead, a skeleton remains,” he whispers. “The meat disappears, but the bones remain.”

  His brow is clammy from sweat. Outside it is dark. The TV flickers. I shudder.

  One important item on my to-do list is to buy a grave. I gather that it’s best to arrange this in advance, at a time when we are not paralyzed by grief. We take the boys to a babysitter, place Charlotte in her sling, and leave.

  The cemetery is beautifully laid out under the late-afternoon sun. It is completely windless. Almost September; the heat is finally abating.

  Here and there a bird hops on the gravel. It is wonderfully calm, even peaceful. One could go for a long stroll and afterward rest on the grass. Picnic, read a book, even take a short nap.

  But this is no ordinary park. This is a graveyard. Robbert and I stroll past the graves. Some are fresh, their newly turned soil covered with flowers. Other graves are so old that they have blended into the landscape. Rain has left black streaks on the washed-out stones.

  This site is solely for the dead. Living, I feel like an intruder. I kneel down to touch a purple plant in a ceramic pot, the first living thing that I see. But the branches feel rough and scratch my fingers. They have no scent at all.

  When we approach the children’s area, I instinctively draw in my breath. I try not to read what is carved into the stones, avoid the carefully chosen names, the flowers, the half-deflated balloons, and the note in a plastic folder attached to a rain-soaked toy bunny. These desperate attempts to make something beautiful are painful. It’s as if the parents want to pretend that their darling child is still playing here, along with the other dead children in this beautiful meadow. Sun- light coloring their cheeks pink, dew wetting their bare feet.

  Oh, to believe that everything that was once so sweet, so gentle, so promising is still with us.

  “If I had known how much I would love my son,” my friend once said to me, “I never would have had him.”

  Blades of a plastic windmill spin lightly in the breeze. The red, yellow, and blue colors stand out against the sky.

  We have agreed to meet with a cemetery administrator. But he is not yet here. Uncomfortable, we look at our watches and rearrange Charlotte’s blue bonnet for the third time. Then a man of about forty briskly approaches us. He has the ruddy face of someone who spends most of his days in the sun.

  ”It’s so crowded here. I do not see any empty spots,” I blurt out when he shakes our hands. Somehow I hope the quota for dead children has been reached. That death has claimed enough of them.

  “That depends on how soon you need a grave,” he replies.

  “I do not know that yet,” I say.

  “Who is it for?” he asks.

  I point to my child sleeping quietly against my chest. He let his eyes rest on her, asking no further questions.

  But I’m still full of questions. When someone dies, there are always so many questions to be answered. I’ve been there before. Sat at a table staring at a glossy brochure full of pictures of coffins. Would you like oak or oak veneer? Embarrassed, I asked to be informed about the price difference. As if I wanted to cut corners on a loved one.

  The man points out a few empty spots. Then he looks at his watch. It’s almost six. He probably wants to go home now to his own child, who may be waiting for him to arrive for dinner.

  It’s getting cooler now. Charlotte’s skin feels chilled. I rub her back with my numb fingers, but it does not make her warm.

  I’m not finished yet. No, no, since I am here now, this is my chance to find out all I can.

  “Can I see the auditorium?” I ask.

  The man nods. “Come with me,” he says.

  I already know my way around. My friend’s husband’s funeral was here. Their young daughters walked in front of the casket in their white summer dresses, the oldest upset on behalf of her grieving mother, the youngest amazed that so many people had gathered because of her father. It was so crowded that I could not sit down. Together with others we waited outside on the gravel walkway.

  It suddenly seems very important to know how many chairs will be available. The quality of the acoustics. The caterers. Nothing should go wrong, nothing should be left to chance. When the man opens the auditorium, I walk to the piano and strike a chord. It needs to be tuned.

  “How many people can this place hold?” I ask.

  “How many people do you expect?” he replies.

  His question startles me. Of course I must know the number. I must have an precise answer, since invitations must be sent. If I don’t draw up the list in time, I may forget people and then have to apologize later.

  I ask about access for the disabled. About the air conditioning. I go on and on, holding the man hostage until I have no more questions. Until I’m completely empty. Only
then do I let him go.

  On the way home I tell Robbert that when the time comes, we’ll take care of this without anyone else involved. We will bury our child privately. Wrapped in her sling, so she will be forever cherished by the yellow fabric. No one with us, only our boys. I do not want to write invitations. I do not want to listen to speeches. And certainly not listen to piano music.

  “We will tell the world later,” I say. “Afterward, when everything is over.”

  Dying, I realize, is intimate, something for the smallest circle. Grief is a private matter.

  W hen I get home one bright fall day, a man I have never seen before is waiting on my doorstep. Before I can say anything, he puts his finger to his lips.

  “Shhh,” he says. “Don’t be afraid—I won’t bother you. I just want to give you something.”

  His face is unremarkable but friendly. In his hands he holds a box wrapped in shiny gold paper.

  “Please do come in,” I say.

  He follows me into the living room, where I sit down on the couch, Charlotte on my lap. He takes a seat across from me. “For you,” he says as he softly places the package into my hands.

  I look at the box. How unusual, for someone to bring a gift wrapped in bright gold paper on a Wednesday afternoon at four o’clock. Someone I’ve never met before.

  He sits quietly, a man who will not let himself get sidetracked. Somehow I feel calm around him. Inside the box I find a shining crystal lying in a purple velvet pouch. When I hold it up to the light, it reflects all the colors of the rainbow on the wall.

  “It’s so beautiful,” I say, watching the orange change to red as the crystal slowly turns. “Thank you.”

  He smiles, standing up.

  “Why do you give me this?” I ask.

  “To help remind you that your daughter is more than her illness,” he says with a smile. “Do not forget to celebrate her life. Every day, again and again.”

  Then he disappears, as unexpectedly as he came. I did not even ask his name.

  The other important thing on my to-do list is to prepare the boys for the loss of their sister. Friends suggested a psychiatrist, a renowned expert on grief. Robbert, Charlotte, and I go to the quiet suburb of Amsterdam where he practices. We are welcomed by a woman with tight gray curls, who takes us to an empty waiting room. There is little to see in this monochromatic room, all grays and whites and beiges. On a table against the wall is an abstract sculpture made of soapstone. I search for meaning in the round shape, a starting point for a story, an invitation to touch it, but I find nothing.

  Then the psychiatrist arrives, an old man with closely cropped white hair. He greets us with a nod. Bolt upright, his arms tight against his body, he leads us to his office. Behind a closed door a kettle hisses. This must be his home, and the woman who opened the door must be his wife, who stays out of sight when he sees his patients.

  I notice more abstract figurines in his office, all made of the same lemon-green soapstone. I imagine that if our boys were here, right in this room, they would play soccer out of boredom. They would kick the ball against the wall, knocking the soapstone images off their pedestals. Stop! I would cry. I would run after them, but they would not listen to me. They would continue until all the pieces were broken, each image shattered, and the ball would fly through the broken window.

  Charlotte begins to cry. I suspect that she feels as uncomfortable as I do. I sit down to nurse her, but she only hiccups and splutters.

  The psychiatrist looks annoyed. “Why did you bring the baby?” he asks.

  “Why would I not bring her?” I say. “She is a newborn, she belongs with me.”

  “I thought you were here for a conversation,” he says.

  “We are,” says Robbert.

  “Well, I cannot talk like this,” the psychiatrist says crossly. He does not understand us. Even worse, he does not want to understand us. Behind him, in a bookcase, I see academic books on grief counseling, some of them written by him. Articles and magazines, some still in plastic, are stacked high on a glass table.

  “Why exactly are you here?” he asks.

  “Our two sons,” I begin. “We discussed this over the phone, remember? I want to know how to tell them that the sister they waited for for so long will not stay. How should I prepare our young children for dealing with loss?” My voice sounds shrill, but I do not give up. I’m here for a reason. “We want our children to be happy,” I continue. “We want to see them grow up to be people who are not consumed by grief. You have the knowledge. You are the expert in the field of mourning.”

  He looks over at Robbert, then back at me. He gives us the impression that we are two children with the stupidest question in the world.

  “You cannot prepare for mourning,” he says. “Grief cannot be planned. Sure, there are distinct phases, such as denial, anger, and resignation, but almost no one adheres to them. That’s only theory.”

  “I do not want theory,” I say. “I want to hear something that helps us, something we can do.”

  The floor beneath my chair starts to move. I feel motion sickness, just as I used to as a child in the car on our yearly trips to the Ardennes.

  “What you must keep in mind,” he says, “is that few marriages remain the same after the death of a child. They continue, or they break.” His face is without expression; only his mouth moves.

  “Can we do something to make sure we stay together?” I ask. “Do we have any influence on that?”

  He shakes his head. “It is unpredictable. So many factors play a role. It happens or it does not. Time will tell.”

  It is as if this man with his close-cropped hair has turned into one of his soapstone sculptures. He does not know what to make of us, of our situation. When everything has spun out of control, we can call him, begging for help. If the boys keep asking where their sister is. If our marriage is broken.

  My colleague lost his infant son after an illness. We all overheard the tense phone calls he made to his wife from the office, for hours on end. They were filled with blame, guilt, good intentions, misunderstandings, sudden crying spells interspersed with tantrums. Once, after he hung up, he threw a paperweight against the wall. The wall was repainted, but the dent remained visible.

  “My wife and I speak different languages,” he told me once. “We don’t understand the meaning of each other’s words anymore. Sentences have lost their coherence. We are desperate, not knowing what to hold on to any longer.”

  I once found him lying on his office couch in the morning, disheveled. He quickly freshened up behind a closed door. I suspected that he had spent the night at the office.

  The strange thing was, the more things at home went wrong, the more he excelled at work. At that time he got extra assignments. Everything he touched turned to gold. He became the star of the department.

  But he and his wife avoided each other whenever they could. They simply could not handle seeing each other grieve. Mourning is lonely, he told me after his divorce. Terribly lonely.

  When we leave the psychiatrist’s office, the woman hands us an envelope. Typed on it is a single word: invoice.

  Much earlier than expected, we are on the street again. Out of words. Our hands find each other. It is a confirmation of the tacit understanding between us. We will be forgiving, understanding, and, above all, love each other.

  At home we pack up the boys and head for the playground. They throw themselves down the slide again and again. Then they run barefoot through the sandbox until they collapse. Robbert and I take off our own shoes and join them in the sand till we collapse as well. At the end of the afternoon we go out for dinner and eat lots and lots of ice cream afterward. Whatever is to come, these memories will stay with us.

  As time passes I become even more sensitive to what people say. Just a single wrongly chosen word can throw me off balance. It keeps me awake and triggers dreams that haunt me throughout the next day. Words these days are like sniper’s bullets: they hit me before I can d
uck.

  Robbert and I, thank God, speak the same language. We hold to our own unwritten rules. Only the two of us are allowed to say the word death when talking about Charlotte, and only when we absolutely cannot avoid it. Another rule is that Charlotte’s name is sacred. It may not be used loosely. I’m constantly on guard. I would rather not let someone enter my life if I constantly have to fear that he or she will say the wrong thing.

  Our oncologist is one of the few people around whom I always feel safe. That’s because he chooses his words with the utmost care. He knows what should remain unsaid. Not once have I shuddered as he talks. Every day, as my world gets smaller, he becomes increasingly important for me.

  As I am leaving the playground, Peter, the father of a toddler in Jurriaan’s playgroup, puts his hand on my shoulder. “I know how helpless you feel,” he says. “Cancer is a horrible disease. I know all about it.”

  His breath, smelling of garlic and white wine, hits me hard. Instinctively I take a step backward.

  “I need to tell you about something extremely important,” he continues, bringing his face closer to mine. “Listen carefully. In Germany there’s a doctor who heals people with cancer. He measures the acidity of the body and then knows how to balance it. He is good, very good. If I had heard of him earlier, my first wife would still be alive.”

  Jurriaan impatiently pulls on my sleeve. “Mama,” he begs, “I want to go.”

  But Peter insists on finishing his story. “You have to see this doctor,” he says. “I know for sure he can help Charlotte.”

  Jurriaan starts jumping up and down, while Peter’s small son leans, bored, against the wall.

  Peter pulls a card from the inside pocket of his jacket and hands it to me. “Here,” he says. “This is the number to call. And I’d say, do it today. He has a waiting list, and you don’t want to lose valuable time.”

  “Well . . .” I say, my voice trailing off.

  “You do not sound enthusiastic,” says Peter.

  “Sorry,” I reply, “but I do not believe in doctors with such alternative ideas, and especially not when dealing with cancer.”