Saving Charlotte

by Pia de Jong

  “Please come in, Eline,” I say. “You’re soaking wet.”

  “That’s okay,” she says. “I have to go. I’ll leave you alone with her.” She gives me a quick kiss and spins around to leave. She herself is a fairy, with her blue eyes and bright red hair.

  “Eline, stay for a while, please,” I call after her, but she is already disappearing around the corner.

  She once gave me an amethyst geode as a sign of our friendship. It had glittering crystals and hollows that reflected the sunlight. One day I accidentally dropped it on the marble floor. It shattered into a thousand pieces impossible to glue together. I picked them up and put them in a shoebox. From that day on, if I wanted to catch the sunlight, I had to spread out the crystals on my windowsill. To my relief, the mishap did not destroy our friendship.

  I hold the doll straight up in front of me to see all sides of her. In every fold, every crease, I see Eline’s artistic hand. She always wants to make everything so beautiful. The dress is studded with tiny pearls, and on the doll’s shoulder sits a bird. Not a scary bird of the kind that inhabits my nightmares, but a sweet robin with soft feathers and alert eyes. Eline made the good fairy for me, the one who must lift the earlier curse that hangs over Charlotte. I put her in an alcove under the stairs. I know Eline would think this is the best place. Every day I walk past her dozens of times.

  The dress of the doll is as blue as the dress of the statue of Mother Mary that once stood in the hallway in my girls’ school. Hail Mary, full of grace, we murmured when we walked past her. Rows of girls, giggling, serious, dreamy. Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

  The teacher found him on the side of the road: my older brother, a senior in high school. He was riding his bike home after a school party. It was the middle of a harsh winter, freezing cold. We could only guess at what had happened. A warm classroom, a band, an excited kid, his first drink of alcohol. Then the music stopped, the end of the party. A spell broken. The tedious hunt for his jacket, the long bike ride home in the freezing night. He could not make it the whole way. Halfway home, he fell off his bike.

  The teacher did not take him to the hospital; he carried him into our house. There he stood, with my brother in his arms. I was awake, since my parents had been anxiously looking out the window, already worried. When my mother saw him, she screamed. My father took the motionless child from the teacher and carried him to bed. I was fourteen, and until then it had never occurred to me that my brother might be mortal.

  My mother covered his body with blankets. We blew our warm breath on his ivory skin, but he remained ice-cold. I put my ear to his chest. For the longest period he was quiet, until I heard his breath again. I watched his chest rise and fall again. Every breath a conquest over death, a step closer to life.

  “He’s fighting,” my mother said. “He fights as hard as he can, even though we don’t see it.”

  Restless, she moved around. She wrapped him in warm towels and put her hands on his head and face. In between she wept. She whispered in his ear that he must not die. Her son, her firstborn.

  My father paced through the house. “They put something in his drink, the bastards,” he repeatedly said. He expected so much from his son, who now seemed to be drifting away. Every hour he called the hospital.

  “And?” my mother asked after he put down the phone.

  “They can do nothing for him,” was his reply. “We have to wait it out.”

  Why did they not take him to the hospital? I wondered. Why did they listen to a doctor who did not love their son as they did? Why did they let themselves depend on others for what was most important in their lives?

  So wait we did. Throughout the long night, we held a vigil for my dear brother, who was living on a thread. I believed that it mattered that I held him. I was convinced I could pull him back from death into life.

  My brother woke up the next day, around noon. I was sitting beside him when his blue eyes opened. He was surprised to find himself there. I was just as surprised.

  “Hello, big brother,” I said.

  He licked his chapped lips. “What are you doing here, sis?” he asked.

  “I waited for you to come back,” I said.

  “I came from far away,” he said. “You have no idea how far. And now I’m tired. I want to sleep.”

  He slept that day and all the next night, but now with a pink glow on his cheeks. It was a miracle that he and I had a future together. All because of chance. His teacher who accidentally found him lying in the street.

  That night I had seen the portal to the house of death. The pale, cold, continuous death.

  Very early in the morning, the smell of sweat and the sound of a bouncing soccer ball wake me up. My heart opens up. Can it be Sammy? Yes, there he is, sitting at ease on the windowsill, as if he belongs here. Drops of muddy water drip down his cheeks. His T-shirt is smeared with grass stains. His arm with the cast hangs down.

  “Hello, Sammy,” I say.

  “Hi,” he says. Not shyly at all, but rather seriously.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I say. “How’s your arm?”

  He grins and looks down at the cast. “Just annoying,” he says.

  “Does it still hurt?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Not anymore. In the beginning it did, when I fell on the soccer field. I just wanted to finish the game, but I was crying so hard that Coach took me to the hospital.”

  “Be careful,” I say when I see that he is about to hop off the windowsill.

  He laughs at me, then hardly makes a sound when he lands softly on the floor of my bedroom. He goes to Charlotte and kisses her on her mouth with a loud smack.

  “You’re eight, right?” I say.

  He nods. “Yup. Next summer I will be nine. And her?”

  “She will be a year old in July,” I say. He seems to let that sink in.

  “Will you tie my shoelace?” he asks, immediately propping his muddy shoe on my knee. “I can’t do this with one arm.” He looks at Charlotte. “She’s pretty,” he adds, “your little girl. And so very sweet.”

  I tie his shoelace as slowly as possible, to buy time with him.

  “Thank you,” he exclaims when I am done, and he jumps up. “Bye-bye. I’m going.”

  “Already?” I say. “You just got here. Please stay a while. I am so happy you stopped by.”

  “All right,” he says. “Just a little bit. But only if you write your name on my cast.” He pulls a red felt pen out of his pants pocket.

  I start to write in big letters, but no matter how hard I press, my name does not appear, just a few faint scratches. There is just not enough ink in the pen.

  “Thank you,” he says. “Now I will have you with me all the time.”

  Then he darts away and starts kicking the ball. Oh no, he cannot disappear! I jump to my feet. “Wait, Sammy,” I call. “Don’t leave yet.”

  I want to grab him by the collar of his soccer shirt and hold him so tightly that he cannot escape. But he manages to wiggle from my grasp. His ball bounces down the stairs, and Sammy chases it out of sight.

  Over the following days I continue to look on the Internet for his name and the diagnosis, as written on the yellow note the doctor with the laced-up shoes gave me. But I find nothing.

  One night I’m wide awake. Charlotte stretches out next to me, sound asleep. The boys lie in each other’s arms. It’s well after midnight. I wonder where Robbert is. I miss him.

  I get up and sneak out of the room on my toes in the quiet house. The only sound I hear is the scratching of Robbert’s pen on paper. I find him at his desk in the study, leaning over a pile of notes. His face is illuminated by the yellow light above his desk. At lightning speed, he writes one formula after another. A midnight wizard who tries to capture the elusive mystery of things.

  It’s a matter of chance, he often tells me, that time moves forward. It might as well go the other way. He is so focused that he doesn’t notice me. I love seeing h
im like this, doing what he is so good at. He is my hero, my anchor. I do not want to disturb him. As softly as I came, I leave.

  Back in bed, I wish I could manipulate time. Make it leap forward, but also run backward, just as easily as Robbert draws curly lines on his papers full of calculations. I want to freeze time, expand it, split it, and redirect it, all in order to bypass grief.

  “It would be such a pleasure to have tea with you today,” Rutger says as I walk past his house.

  He is sitting outside on his doorstep with a book opened on his lap. He wears a straw hat and shoes with loose laces. Yes, I want some tea with this intriguing man.

  I follow him inside while he leans heavily on his wooden cane. When he finally gets to the living room, he lets himself sink onto the red couch. It hurts to see him so emaciated.

  “There is the kettle,” he says, pointing to the kitchen.

  In an open journal on the table I recognize his careful handwriting.

  “That’s my favorite-sentences journal,” he says when he notices me looking at it. “All my life I have collected phrases that touch me. I have seven notebooks full. One for each decade.” He drinks his tea in large gulps. “This will be my last journal. I work on it rather slowly. Lately I do not read much anymore. My thoughts tend to drift off. Now that I’m sick, my world has become smaller.”

  I finish my tea while he nibbles at a piece of dry apple cake.

  “I’m afraid,” he suddenly says as he sweeps crumbs off his lap.

  “What are you afraid of?” I ask.

  “Death,” he says. “I’m afraid that my death will be horrific. Slow and exhausting.” He puts his hand on mine: a warm hand rich with brown spots and grooves. “My time is up,” he says. “I have not much longer to live.”

  He picks up his teacup, then puts it down again without taking a sip. “I’m afraid that death does not take my feelings into account,” he continues softly. “That it will kick me around. But mostly I’m afraid of the loneliness of dying.”

  The late-afternoon sun shines into the room, low, with long shadows. His face lights up. The orange glow gives him a boyish look. “But today, my beloved neighbor,” he says with a sparkle in his eye, “life is perfect. Today we have our tea together.”

  What Rutger has said about death disturbs my night. I have a painfully vivid dream in which I am shipwrecked. I can barely keep my head above water, and the waves throw me against the shore again and again.

  I wake up shaking. Charlotte lies on a blanket with me, her hands peacefully curved on her soft stomach. Her skin is grayish, her hair dull. She reminds me of a sick sparrow.

  The boys are already up, playing on the floor. They have arranged their toy dinosaurs in a long line that curves down the stairs. They are whispering, walking on their tiptoes. They are used to the atmosphere of silence that surrounds their sister.

  This day, which has just begun, already seems to recede. Time is turning in the wrong direction, topsy-turvy, not going toward the sunlight but spinning backward toward the darkness, with its horrendous nightmare and ghastly images. Fatigue pinches like a band around my head.

  I need to talk to my boys. The time has arrived to tell them about death. I must no longer postpone it. I look for the book with the story about the frog and the bird, but I can’t find it. I will have to make up my own fable, with their favorite animals.

  “I’ll tell you a story,” I say to the boys after breakfast. Immediately they come sit with me on the couch. “It’s about a dinosaur,” I begin. “A little dino who is different from all others. She is sick, so she cannot run as fast as her friends. Her two brothers are very nice to her. They help her with everything. But one day their little sister cannot get up anymore. She is too tired even to play.”

  “Oh no, poor dino,” says Matthijs, snuggling closer to me.

  “What’s her name?” asks Jurriaan.

  “Lorelei,” I say.

  “Lorelei? What kind of weird name is that?” he says indignantly. “No dinosaur is ever called that. Her name is Strongback.”

  “Well, Strongback it is,” I say. “A much better name. One day, Strongback—”

  “What kind of dinosaur is she?” he interrupts.

  “A longneck,” I say.

  “Longnecks are very strong,” he says. “They never get tired.”

  “But this one is,” I say. “And now you have to listen, otherwise I cannot tell my story. Strongback lies in a corner in her room. Her brothers sit with her. They sing her favorite songs and give her the most delicious berries.”

  My breath catches. Charlotte makes soft snoring sounds. The blue-white clouds high in the sky behind my window drift apart.

  “More, more,” says Matthijs.

  I take a deep breath while I try to find the right words as well as the right pace. Not too fast, but not so slowly that the boys lose interest. They are still so very young.

  “One day Strongback lay still on her bed . . .” I say. I suddenly find it too difficult to carry on. I take a sip of water. Then another one. Just when I want to continue, Jurriaan grabs my chin and turns my face toward him. His brown-green eyes are unusually clear.

  “Listen to me, Mama,” he says. “Charlotte is not going to die.”

  As the months go by, I continue to sing for Charlotte. Talking is still too hard; the words just won’t flow. While singing I map my world for her. I sing about the months she lived inside me, her birth, her first moments, and all my dreams for her. Following a path back in time, I sing about the births of her brothers. The years before that, when Robbert and I were still just the two of us. The places we worked, the directions we headed. Our deep desire for children and the sweet lovemaking on languid afternoons without end.

  I remember all the firsts of my girlhood. First writing with a fountain pen, first night out, first kiss. First time I see my body through the eyes of someone who desires me. My life becomes as tangible as the stones on a forest path. I pick them up and hold them to the light, one by one.

  Time disappears through my voice. The differences between her and me, then and now, past and present, all dissolve.

  Today I am four years old, playing with my younger brother in the garden in a zinc washtub filled with water. We use our hands to scoop out cupfuls of cool water and splash it against our bare shoulders. Our laughter carries far through the air. My older brother rides his tricycle along the garden path. He is far too big for it—his knees touch the steering wheel—but that does not bother him. The gravel spatters up when he makes a sharp turn without letting his feet touch the ground. Back and forth he goes, turning, skidding, over and over, while the wind blows his hair. Behind him on the compost heap a purple flower blooms on a long stem. I find it a miracle that such an elegant flower grows in the place where my mother dumps the muddy potato peels.

  When the sun shines brightly, my mother opens an umbrella over my brother and me. Her toenails in her open sandals look like pink candies. She wears her hair tied up, wrapped in a polka-dot scarf, and she brings us lemonade with colored straws. No one has a mother as beautiful as mine.

  On the other side of the fence, our next-door neighbor swings his leg onto his bike. As he rides off, he raises his hand and waves. My mother stares at him while rearranging a tuft of loose hair. I realize that there is a world I know nothing about. A world bigger than my girl’s bedroom, bigger than the garden. Maybe larger than my hometown, the name of which I can now print with chalk on the blackboard.

  “Charlotte is different from other babies, huh, Mama,” Jurriaan says as he lifts her onto his lap. Charlotte is propped up sideways, off-balance. He uses his hand to support her head, proud to be her big brother. I sit down next to him.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “She cannot do as much as other babies,” he says. He blows his breath into her fluffy hair and strokes some stray hairs flat. “She never cries,” he continues.

  Outside, in front of the hooker’s window, two men curse at each other. Th
en it is quiet again. A mosquito buzzes behind the curtains.

  “She’s too tired for crying,” he decides after a while, cradling her in his awkward way. She lets him do it, as she allows everything he does with her. “She’s very sick, right, Mama?” he says.

  I nod. Poor Jurriaan. Charlotte is too heavy, too big for him. He pushes her into my arms and jumps up.

  “I’m going to make her better,” he says firmly. He reaches into the toy basket and fishes out the red cap the hooker knitted for Matthijs. I did not know it was in there; he must have found it somewhere. It is still too wide. He puts it sideways on his head and starts singing in a funny high voice. Meanwhile he dances, jumping around, then falling down and rolling across the floor. More and more wildly he jumps and rolls. “Lotje, Lotje, look!” he shouts.

  Charlotte stares at him with wide eyes. Her lower lip trembles, and I wait for her to cry. Then instead she begins to laugh uncontrollably.

  My visits to the hospital are starting to blur together. The waiting room looks, as always, disturbingly cheerful. When it is my turn, I undress Charlotte as nervously as I did on her very first visit.

  The oncologist examines her in his predetermined routine, which I now know by heart. I scrupulously watch him while he listens to her heart and her lungs, looks in her throat and her ears. He carefully studies her skin as if he is trying to decipher a mysterious hieroglyphic.

  “Listen,” I say, “I must tell you something important.” I stumble over my words but press on. “About a boy in America. His name is Sammy.”

  The doctor glances up and then bends over Charlotte’s skin.

  “He has the same illness,” I continue. “But he survived. At least he survived until he was eight.” I hear myself talking to the doctor about an unknown child, far away. “There is a blog,” I say, “but the blog is lost in cyberspace. We need to find out more about him.”

  The doctor smiles while examining Charlotte’s delicate feet. A boy lost somewhere on the Internet does not command his attention. He has eyes only for Charlotte. “She does it her way,” he says when I dress her afterward.