Saving Charlotte

by Pia de Jong

  “And with babies?” I ask.

  “It is hard to say anything about babies,” he says. “But five years seems to be a good guideline.”

  Am I in the right place? He has never used words like remission, guideline, certainty. Five years seems an unimaginably long time. So many mornings, so many nights wondering anxiously if everything is fine.

  I do not know if I should be happy, or rather, how much happiness I should allow myself to feel. It seems too good to be true. There must be a catch. A child cannot be cured just like that of such a terrible disease.

  I start to shake, so strongly that I hold on to a chair. The doctor puts his arm around me. Tears roll down his cheeks toward his mustache. “I have been afraid as well,” he says. “There were times when I thought she could not handle it. That the disease would take a wrong turn.” He tugs on his mustache. “I’m so proud of her,” he says. “She really did it her way.”

  He sits down at his desk and makes a note in her file. A little mark, something insignificant.

  “From now on you only have to visit once every two weeks,” he says. “And if she continues to do well, I will see you only once a month.”

  Once a month? That is an eternity without the supervision of this trusted man who has become an essential part of my life. Who worries about her as much as I do, and who knows how to be silent when there is nothing to say.

  “What if something goes wrong?” I ask.

  “You can call me anytime,” he says. “And if necessary we will immediately make an appointment.”

  I realize I have entered a different reality. I now live in an ordinary world, one in which you call the doctor if something is wrong.

  He glances at his watch, gives me a hand, and walks to the waiting room to pick up his next patient.

  Like a prisoner who has just been released, I float down the long corridor toward the exit.

  Outside, I call Robbert. He’s in Germany at a conference on black holes, where he just gave a lecture about his latest article.

  “Charlotte is in remission,” I say. It sounds like a line from a play.

  “Are you sure?” he asks. “Did the doctor really use the word remission?” He too can barely believe it. “I’m coming home,” he says. “We need to be together tonight.”

  I walk out of the hospital. Charlotte is heavier since last year, almost too heavy for the sling. She is bigger as well. It’s about time for a stroller. When I want to pay for the parking, I realize that I have I left my bag at the doctor’s. On my way back, I cast a quick glance into the waiting room. There they are, the worried parents with their tight faces, their scared children. Seeing the other parents makes me feel guilty. I am the lucky one who escaped. They have no idea what is ahead of them. It pains me to leave them behind with their terrifying sorrow.

  In the hot car, my slacks stick to my thighs. I put Charlotte beside me in the car seat. Slowly I drive away. The air above the asphalt shimmers dizzyingly in the heat, and I keep my hands firmly on the wheel. At the traffic light, I look sideways. Charlotte is flushed.

  Everything is different since this visit, but at the same time nothing has changed. I cannot believe that she has healed, that all is well, and that one day she will walk on these delicate little feet of hers.

  I know that I will still spend the next few years bending over her body in search of blue spots. At the same time, though, I’m floating above myself with relief. This is the moment I have been waiting for. My hands start shaking; I am unable to steer. I pull over and park the car on the side of the road. While I try to calm down, I see the hospital in my rearview mirror.

  I take Charlotte out of the car seat and hold her close to me. I blow on the damp hairs on the back of her neck. She smiles at me.

  “Charlotte,” I whisper. I know she understands what happened. I know she too is relieved. She spent a year trying to get better. I rock her in my arms. A year ago, on a hot day like this, I gave birth to a daughter. A girl we gave the most beautiful name in the world. Today she is born again, this time in a healthy body.

  Coming home is different. The walls are whiter; the dull parquet floor shines in the sunlight. The house looks washed and clean.

  Carefully I walk up the creaky staircase and lay Charlotte in bed, where she falls asleep immediately. I’ll leave her alone. She is now a child like any other child. I do not need to watch over her every second. I should let her go. Only I have no idea how.

  In the bathroom I glimpse my reflection. I take a step back and stand still. It must be a year since the last time I looked at myself in this mirror. I have changed. New lines have formed around my eyes, my mouth. For a year I believed that time passed only for her. That my life was on hold. I lean close to the mirror until I lose focus and my face disintegrates into a thousand pores.

  “You made it,” says Robbert to Charlotte when he comes home late that evening. She sits up and looks around with quizzical eyes. Tenderly he wipes a hair from her face. She plays with a ball of soft fabric that squeaks every time she squeezes it.

  Robbert looks happy but drained. His long hair falls over his eyes. It’s been months since it was last cut. He lifts Charlotte high above his head, dancing and spinning around the room, and then plops on the bed.

  “She is both vulnerable and strong,” he says. “Remember when you said that, minutes after she was born?”

  I nod. I do remember indeed.

  “I drew strength from that,” he says. “I always thought of that sentence. I believed that you knew her best because you were so incredibly close to her. You had held her for nine months inside you.” He looks at me. “What kept you going?”

  “That one sentence Jurriaan said to me,” I say. “‘Listen to me, Mama. Charlotte is not going to die.’ Such a small kid, such big words. I believed he had shared a secret from his magical world. A world we no longer have access to.”

  “We’ve been lucky,” he says. “So incredibly lucky.” He stretches out. A cobweb drifts in the breeze above his head. “We have twice been struck by lightning,” he says. “The first time when she became ill. And now again, with her recovery.”

  I notice that his eyes have become greener in the past year. I put my hands in his.

  “Together we were strong,” he says.

  The boys are playing soccer in the hallway. Their voices echo in the stairwell while the ball bounces against the furniture.

  Charlotte drops her toy ball on the ground. I watch the setting sun turn the sky purple and gold. I hold my breath to capture the moment.

  I realize we are small particles escaped from a black hole.

  Mackie’s door opens, grinding and squeaking. He is wearing khaki shorts and an unbuttoned shirt. He walks briskly to the bank of the canal. There he stands, legs apart, his back toward me. He surveys the landscape, as intent as a raptor seeking prey. A blond boy in a red sweater unsteadily rides a bicycle until he safely disappears. Then Mackie picks up a Coke can on the street, empties it in the gutter, and throws the can in the bin.

  He scrutinizes the passing boats. Mackie is smaller than I ever realized, much smaller. It occurs to me that he never crosses the canal. The other side does not belong to his territory.

  The girl in the alley now opens the door, and a man of about fifty walks out. His belly bulges under his raincoat. He carries a briefcase, an old-fashioned solid brown. I have often seen him here, on the same day of the week, at the same time. His smug look annoys me. He does not deserve her. Do not think she cares one bit for you, I want to tell him. She grants her body to you only for the money.

  Then the curtain opens and the girl takes her chair behind the window. Immediately she starts painting her lips. Her hand goes back and forth, outlining the cupid’s bow of her upper lip—redder, brighter, shinier. Opposite me dwells the goddess of lust. Available to those who are willing to pay.

  I sit on the couch and close my eyes. The doctor’s words echo in my head, spinning like shards of glass in a kaleidoscope. I cann
ot reassemble them into a picture. For a whole year I have hoped for this, and now I cannot just let go of my fears. Anxiety inhabits every pore of my body.

  I smell the sweet grasses and mud of my childhood garden. I’m on my knees rooting with my fingers in the wet earth. My younger brother is playing nearby with a ball. It bounces up and down on the paving stones as he runs after it. Then he disappears.

  “Catch!” someone shouts. I turn around, and to my surprise I see Sammy. Dear, wonderful Sammy. I lose my balance and almost fall over.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he says as he grabs me.

  When I look up I see his bright smile. “You’re in a good mood,” I say.

  “We won the game!” he announces. “And guess who made the winning goal? Me!” He juggles a ball on his outstretched hand. “There’s something else,” he says as he kicks the ball sideways. He stretches, standing on his toes, and makes himself as tall as possible. “Soon I turn nine.”

  “That’s big, Sammy,” I say. “Nine is a very important age.”

  He beams. Then he seems to remember something. “Isn’t Charlotte’s birthday soon too?”

  “Yes, Sammy. Very soon.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “Well, she’s sleeping. We’d best not disturb her.”

  “I bet she’s not sleeping at all,” he says. “I’m pretty sure she is waiting for me.”

  He takes my hand and pulls me upstairs. All thirty steps up, until we stand in the doorway. Charlotte lies in bed with open eyes.

  “See,” says Sammy triumphantly, “told you so.” He walks up to her and gives her a tender kiss.

  It’s a beautiful day on the playground. Sunny, with a light breeze. The West India House is hosting a wedding. People arrive in elegant clothes, chatting and laughing, their eyes glowing with the hopes of a shared future.

  I push the boys on the swing. Their exuberance makes me beside myself with happiness.

  Charlotte lies on her stomach on a blanket. She pushes herself up with her arms and legs.

  “Look, Mama,” says Jurriaan. “She pretends to be a helicopter. Soon she will fly.”

  A boy and a girl cycle after one another. A toddler is sitting in the middle of the sandbox, making a statue of sand. A little farther away people toast each other with champagne.

  The city preens and basks. But I am afraid that Charlotte will be sucked back into a black hole. Relief is a feeling that I need to get used to.

  “She will soon be a year old,” I tell Louis.

  “Who would have believed that?” he says. “Definitely not me.”

  We are silent for a while.

  “You often were so sad when you sat here, holding Charlotte in her sling,” he says after a while. “I wanted to make everything better for you. But I could not.”

  “You were there for me,” I say. “That was a lot. A whole lot.”

  He sighs. “And now?” he asks. “How do you go on from here?”

  “It’s not over yet,” I say. “It’s like one of those nightmares that stay with you throughout the next day and the day after.”

  “It’s like a bad childhood,” Louis says. “You never escape from it.”

  There is something unfathomably melancholic about him, and at the same time his familiar presence is so comforting. He now paces around the sandpit, his hands behind his back. Here and there he picks up a forgotten toy, brushing off the mud and sand. This is his way of praying. These small chores are his daily sacrament.

  Languid and hungry, we walk home at three in the afternoon. Almost there, the boys kick stones into the canal, pebbles they find under a tree near our house. Suddenly Jurriaan pulls on my arm. “Mama,” he says. “The old man who always waves at you. Why are they carrying him out of the house?”

  I peer across the canal. Children run out of the school, bags bouncing on their backs, drawings fluttering in their tiny hands. In between them, in front of Rutger’s house, three older women huddle together, their faces grave. Next to them, two emergency workers are carrying a stretcher. I glimpse a wispy strand of hair above Rutger’s pale forehead. His body is now so small, it is no trouble for the men to lift him. When they put him in front of the ambulance, the women bend over him. They rearrange the sheet and lay their hands on his body. Then the men lift him inside.

  “Are they going to make him better in the hospital?” asks Jurriaan, peering at the scene.

  “I do not know,” I say. “I really do not know. But let’s wish only good things for him.”

  We look after the ambulance as it slowly drives along the canal. Together we wave goodbye to Rutger, until the car is out of sight.

  My earliest memories are sharp as etchings. They’re like photos cut out of a magazine and placed in a thick folder. When I pull one out, a whole world returns, in all its vividness.

  It’s the day after my fourth birthday. Paper streamers still hang from the ceiling. It’s early in the morning, and I sit in my pajamas at the kitchen table. My mother stands in front of the stove in her pink robe. She stirs oatmeal in a pan and sprinkles it with cinnamon and raisins. A sweet smell spreads through the kitchen. I’ve been awake and hungry for a while. Next to me on the table lies the morning paper, waiting for my father. Large pages full of words I cannot read.

  After a little while my father, his freshly washed hair glistening, comes down the stairs wearing his gray suit and a tie. The aroma of aftershave follows him. He does not say a word but sits down and unfolds the newspaper. It is quiet around us, only the sound of the pages being turned. Before my eyes my father fades into a world I can’t access. A world of written words. Sometimes he reads a few sentences aloud to my mother and laughs, or becomes angry. Then she nods, or laughs with him. All about things going on in the world.

  “I want to learn to write,” I say to my mother after my father leaves for work. Without any ado, she finds a blackboard to prop up in the kitchen and teaches me that same morning how to write my name.

  On a clear night in May I find myself wide awake. I sneak out of bed and softly walk through the house. I wonder how I ended up in exactly this place on earth, in this time in history. Me, Robbert, and our three children. The coincidence of it all, and the arbitrariness. Yet all my happiness depends on this. I look out of the window, into the universe. The infiniteness is hard to fathom, yet somehow it seems I have been given a glimpse far into it.

  Across the alley in Mackie’s house, lights are burning in every room. He never sleeps at night, because in the evening he is never done with the day’s schedule. Mackie permanently lags behind. Often he eats breakfast at ten o’clock in the evening, only to have supper at seven in the morning, when he is ready to go to bed.

  The red light above the window is not on. On the windowsill lies a tube of lipstick, lit by the streetlamp. I wonder where the blond girl is now. What bed does she sleep in, in whose arms? I imagine that she lies under a quilt with a cover of pretty wildflowers. For breakfast she will eat peaches, whose juices will dribble from her chin. By now she must be approaching thirty. What kind of life does she lead when she is not working? What are her dreams, what does she hope for?

  The curtains of Rutger’s house have not been closed for a while. He is now in the hospital, where he is probably unable to sleep in a strange bed, in a place where he’d rather not be. He must be so wistful, knowing that he will never return to this house. Never again navigate with his cane between the piles of books. Never write down in his journal a pithy sentence in his elegant handwriting.

  My parents now sleep side by side in their queen-sized bed, and my brothers next to their wives. It’s been so long since I’ve seen them. I wonder whether I am ready to leave my cocoon, to become part of my old world again.

  The living room is cool, or maybe it’s me shivering because of lack of sleep. Yesterday’s paper is still folded on the coffee table. For a year I have only glanced at the front page. On my desk are books waiting to be read and a pile of unopened mail. I push the books aside and sit
down. My chair is not comfortable at all, but I am attached to it. Here I wrote all my office reports, project proposals, and letters.

  I try my fountain pen, which I find in the drawer. After some dry scratches on the back of an envelope, the ink flows again. It makes me happy to see that midnight blue, my favorite color on the white paper. I write one word, in big, curly letters: Charlotte. I put the envelope down and look at it. Her name finally fits her. Fragile and strong, just like she is.

  Below hers I write the three letters of my name. I have always found it a strange name, never said it with conviction. There seemed to be no fit between me and that brisk, bold name. But now, finally, my name owns me, and I own my name.

  I’m not tired at all, I’m even energetic, and so I keep on writing. Some thoughts, a few ideas, until the envelope is covered. I continue on a notepad, and write until the morning breaks. The next night I continue where I left off. I don’t stop writing anymore; it completely absorbs me. From now on, alone on quiet nights, I begin to weave a new cocoon. This one is made of words.

  “Mama, come, quick!”

  It’s Jurriaan calling, waking me from a deep dream. I grope around the bed, feeling for Charlotte. To my shock, I don’t find her. Why is she not sleeping next to me, as always? I sit straight up. How could I not have noticed that she disappeared? What happened?

  I fly down the stairs, gripping the rope on the wall. In the hallway I slide to a full stop.

  Jurriaan sits in the room in only his T.-rex pajama pants. His flaxen hair, full of tangles, sticks out in all directions. Opposite him stands Charlotte in her violet dress. Her bare feet are planted firmly on the wooden floor.

  Jurriaan looks at me and puts his finger to his lips. “Hush, Mama,” he orders. “Sit down and look.”

  I lower myself to the couch. The rising sun bathes the room in a pink glow.

  “Lotje, come here,” orders Jurriaan, and stretches out both arms. She is standing there completely on her own. Between them is a seemingly insurmountable distance. I hold my breath.