Nine Open Arms

by Benny Lindelauf

  She slammed the door.

  ‘I’m glad she’s back in her own room,’ was Muulke’s heartfelt response.

  There was a silence. We stared at the Crocodile, which Oma Mei had left in our room, probably because she was afraid her room would leak again.

  ‘That permit will be here within a week,’ I whispered. ‘Mark my words.’

  ‘Bet it won’t.’

  ‘Bet it will.’

  But Muulke was right.

  ‘It’s the post office’s fault,’ said the town hall.

  ‘It’s the town hall’s fault,’ said the post office. ‘Try again next week.’

  ‘Things had better not get any worse,’ said Oma Mei. But they did.

  the curse of the

  wandering disc

  It happened one morning at playtime.

  Jess wanted to do up a loose shoelace. She bent forward and froze. I heard her gasp.

  Nobody was allowed to touch her, not even me. The nuns gathered around her, not knowing what to do.

  But we did.

  So we told them.

  The nuns produced a bench from the gym, pushed it between her legs, carefully lifted her up and slowly, a small step at a time, walked into the building. She was like a statue being carried in a procession, but twisted – a Virgin Mary with a rigid, crooked back and shoulders pulled up high.

  A wreckbone won’t kill you, the doctors had said. (Well, not in those words exactly. Of course they didn’t call it a wreckbone, but rather one of those medical names nobody could or would remember.) But she did look as if she was dying. I’d never get used to it. It was horrible.

  A circle formed around me and Muulke.

  ‘What’s the matter with her?’ one of the girls asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Muulke said casually. ‘She’s just twisted her back.’

  There were whispers, and I felt my face turn red.

  ‘Come on, girls,’ said Sister Angelica. ‘Let’s not turn this into a circus.’ And to me she said, ‘You’d better stay with her. The doctor will be here soon.’

  The nuns had pushed a desk up against the wall in the staffroom. Jess was leaning against it. That way she didn’t have to sit down, but still had support.

  ‘I’m-fee-ling-bet-ter-now,’ said Jess. The pain cut her sentences into small slices. Her eyes were closed. Sweat stood out on her forehead. I had to hold her hand. It felt damp and cold.

  ‘I-think-it’s-get-ting-bet-ter.’

  I was silent. She opened her eyes.

  ‘Now-the-whole-school-knows-a-bout-it.’

  ‘We’ve told them you just twisted your back.’

  ‘I-am-ug-ly,’ she said.

  I could have slapped her. I wanted to push her mouth shut. At the same time, I wanted to wrap myself around her, never let her go.

  ‘Shush,’ I said.

  She was crying. Not carrying on loudly, not howling. Tears simply streamed down her face. I suddenly saw that she was crying the way Oma Mei sometimes did after telling stories about the Mam with her rag-doll heart.

  When the doctor arrived, she changed back into the usual Jess. She moaned, she begged, she threatened, but there was nothing for it.

  ‘It has to be done,’ I said, fighting back my own tears.

  ‘It’ll be over in no time,’ the doctor said. ‘Come, come, kendj.’ Child. ‘It isn’t as bad as all that.’

  She had to lie on her stomach. I held her head.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ Jess cried. ‘Not fair.’

  The doctor pushed hard to get the bone back into the right place. I didn’t know which was worse, her scream or the soft whimpering that followed.

  ‘And that makes five,’ said Muulke grimly when we heard Jess had to lie flat for a month. ‘Do you still believe we’re just having a bit of bad luck?’

  Later, at home, Oma Mei was busy with pillows, hot water bottles, extra blankets, tea in bed. She talked to Jess. So softly that Muulke, on the other side of the door, could hardly understand what she said.

  ‘Muulke,’ our grandmother called out suddenly. ‘Seeing as you’re there anyway, you could bring the Crocodile in here.’ And when Muulke had brought the case, Oma Mei thanked her and asked her to kindly get lost.

  Muulke and I went down to the garden. Our bedroom window stood open and we could hear Oma Mei’s voice. Soft and lilting. Her crocodile voice.

  ‘Tea in bed, a hot water bottle,’ Muulke said crossly. ‘And a crocodile story as well. It’s not fair.’ She kicked a stone.

  ‘You don’t have a wreckbone.’

  ‘Sometimes I wish I did,’ Muulke grumbled.

  ‘How can she tell a crocodile story?’ I wondered. ‘The photos aren’t in the case, are they?’

  ‘She must have hidden them under her apron.’

  ‘There are at least a hundred of them. They’d never fit.’

  ‘Well, then I’ve no idea where she put them,’ said Muulke.

  The Dad came round the corner. ‘Well?’

  ‘She’s getting better. The doctor pushed the wreckbone back into place.’

  Above us, Oma Mei talked on, not loud enough for us to understand anything. The three of us looked up.

  ‘It’s the story of the goat and the Monday wash,’ said Muulke.

  ‘How do you know?’ asked the Dad.

  She shrugged.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We have potatoes to peel.’

  The Dad stayed where he was. He leaned against the wall and listened.

  When we went into our bedroom that evening, the Crocodile had gone.

  We looked under the bed and in the wardrobe. Then we sneaked into Oma Mei’s room and searched. And finally the Dad’s and our brothers’ rooms. But we found no trace. The suitcase seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

  hibernation

  Our grandmother no longer said, ‘Things had better not get any worse.’ The Dad no longer mentioned ‘fresh air, as much as you want’ or ‘living in a Christmas card’.

  They carefully avoided each other.

  Winter arrived. Every morning, Muulke and I shuffled to school in the dark, pulling Jess behind us in the sled. (‘No running, and stay together!’) On a bad day, the snow blew in great gusts over Sjlammbams Sahara and crept inside our clothes, no matter how carefully we wrapped ourselves up. Apart from the stretch where it went through the cutting, the road to school had become invisible. The hedge along the cemetery guided us well, but still I was relieved every time we saw Putse Gate.

  On the way home, when I saw the snow-covered roof of Nine Open Arms looming up through the bare trees each afternoon, I would feel very confused: on the one hand, the house was very unwelcoming, with its back turned towards us; on the other hand, it was where we lived, and where Oma Mei would be waiting for us, with tea prepared, bread and butter with sugar sprinkled on it as a treat, and the potbelly stove crackling.

  ‘Faster! Faster!’ Jess would shout when we reached the cutting.

  ‘Mind her b—’ I would try to warn, but Muulke would already be racing ahead, pulling the sled behind her in wild jolts.

  The permit was still missing.

  ‘Sent two months ago,’ said the town hall.

  ‘They’re just fobbing you off,’ said the post office.

  ‘Back again?’ said the town hall. ‘We’re closed now.’

  ‘I’ll put in a new application,’ said the Dad.

  ‘Your file will become all confused,’ said the town hall.

  Near the end of December, a thaw set in unexpectedly. On Christmas Day, we paraded around in our new dresses. They weren’t really new. That was nothing unusual – most children wore hand-me-down clothes. But Oma Mei didn’t think that was right for her granddaughters, so at least once a year, she got out our dresses and unstitched them. For three weeks, the table became a battlefield of sleeves, bodices, buttons, collars, ribbons and trims. She kept sorting these and putting them together until yet another new dress appeared.

  Our Sunday dresses were, to pu
t it mildly, rather special. Oma Mei wasn’t a skilled seamstress, and sometimes she went a bit overboard in her efforts to make each dress look different. This year there was, for instance, a dress with a lace collar and three brass buttons; another one with short, acid-green puffed sleeves, from which emerged long, checked sleeves; and a tartan dress with a sailor collar. But we didn’t comment – we knew better than that.

  Later that day, the whole family walked to church, carrying our Sunday shoes in paper bags. We slipped and slithered in our summer shoes, which became soaking wet from the half-thawed mud. When we were changing our shoes at Putse Gate, a car passed us, moving at walking pace. I saw a man inside smoking a gigantic cigar. A woman in a fur coat was sitting stiff and straight next to him. Piet, Eet, Sjeer and Krit whistled softly. The Dad raised his hand. The people in the car nodded.

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Muulke once the car had passed.

  ‘The cigar emperor,’ said Sjeer.

  ‘Next year, we’ll ride in a car like that,’ said the Dad.

  ‘A bicycle would be nice,’ Oma Mei said grimly.

  It being Christmas wasn’t the only reason we were dressed in our Sunday best. December twenty-fifth was also the anniversary of Opa Pei’s death. He had died a long time ago – even the Dad had never known him, as he’d passed away before the Dad had even met the Mam. We only knew him from the photos in the Crocodile, but when his name was read out in the commemoration of the dead during mass, Muulke, Jess and I felt excited and solemn at the same time.

  ‘Yes, yes, Pei, he was a character,’ the old women and men said every year after mass, and they would look as if they could tell a good few stories, but Oma Mei never gave them a chance to keep talking – she would sweep us out of the church, waving to the left, greeting folk to the right, but never stopping. Even the parish priest had to be content with a wave that looked more like a slap than a greeting.

  After mass that Christmas Day, we laid a wreath made with branches from the hedge along the new cemetery, on our grandfather’s grave. It was an ordinary grave: a grey upright stone with a rounded top and a grey stone slab with plain letters and numbers.

  Petrus Johannes Marie Trui Klein

  6 April 1861 – 25 December 1918

  It always made us a bit nervous being there – not so much because we were at our grandfather’s grave, but more because his name was not the only one on that gravestone. Next to it was carved:

  Maria Hubertina Carola Victorina Klein-Walraven

  9 December 1875 –

  Even though the Dad had explained at least a hundred times that this was quite normal, that many married couples selected a grave together, we became pretty nervous seeing our grandmother’s names there. Particularly because of that tiny dash between life and death.

  When we were back home – when we could get out of our Sunday dresses and our brothers made hot chocolate; when the Dad played ‘Silent Night, Holy Night’ on his mouth organ – then, for a little while, everything was good. And it got better.

  ‘Ask,’ said Oma Mei, who was sitting by the potbelly stove, her cheeks bright-red as apples. ‘Ask who, as a young girl, was chosen to sing the solo at midnight mass. Ask who practised so long and so hard that on the night, her voice was as hoarse as a crow’s.’

  From under the sofa, the Crocodile appeared. ‘Is that where it was?’ said Muulke, sounding utterly surprised.

  From outside, the suitcase looked more discoloured and cracked than ever. The locks were so rusty that the Crocodile no longer closed properly. The inner lining with all its zippers and buttons had been taken out. But the photos were back. They now lay on the hard dented cardboard.

  ‘Poor dear Crocodile,’ said Jess, full of pity.

  ‘Is anybody going to ask the next question?’ said Oma Mei, picking up the serving tray and very carefully bringing out a small, battered photograph of a very young Mam, in a smart dress and with a very large shawl round her neck.

  At the end of February, everything froze over, and after that there were terrible storms. At carnival time, the two apple trees at the back of our garden were blown over, making a noise like a china cabinet crashing. Eet and Krit, dressed up as pantomime Pierrots in costumes they’d borrowed from the butcher, were going to inspect the damage but didn’t get very far – the wind was so strong they were literally blown back into the house.

  But from March on, the weather improved. There was a lot of rain, but because we knew now where the worst holes in the roof were, the damage wasn’t too bad. At the first sign of rain, we’d run up the stairs (‘Don’t run! Don’t run!’) and spread the buckets, pots and cups over the attic floor, until the day Nol brought a load of roof tiles he ‘happened to have lying around’.The tiles were orange, the ones on our roof black. From a distance, the roof now looked like the wings of a moulting bird. The paint on the windowsills had flaked off some more; the wood underneath it was split and crumbling. The cellar windows had been nailed shut to prevent the cellars flooding again.

  But then, finally, finally, when we had almost forgotten it was possible, spring arrived.

  And with spring came the mysteries.

  the opposite of

  worrying [2]

  I was pumping. The pump-handle gave a heartrending screech and the water poured into the tubs and glittered like magic dust.

  I’d been feeling more and more comfortable in the graveyard. Even though Nine Open Arms was bigger than any other house we had lived in, and our brothers were away more and more often, it still seemed to be bursting with voices and quarrels, with footsteps, squeaking doors and creaking windows, with feet stomping up and down the stairs. And even though we’d never had a room to ourselves before, sometimes, when Muulke and Jess were bickering again, for the millionth time, I had the feeling that I was stuck in that room – in the whole house, really.

  But the graveyard was my own. There were visitors, of course, but they usually stayed near the grave they were visiting, as if it was a fire that would keep them warm. Funerals were always between nine and four. In the hours before and after that, the cemetery was my own. When I stood behind the hedge, it was, for a moment, as if Nine Open Arms and my family no longer existed.

  When the two tubs were full, I noticed to my surprise that someone had cleaned the old grave – the grave that had only a flat slab. The ivy had been removed. Now I could see that the grave was made of weathered black marble. A large, deep crack ran clean across the stone. I could smell a vague scent of soft soap.

  There was no name on the grave, and no date.

  ‘Fing! Fing!’

  The hedge shook and Muulke shot out of the gap. She didn’t have her shoes on. Her socks were covered in mud. And she didn’t have a coat on, either.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

  But she only signalled for me to come, turned around and disappeared through the shaking hedge.

  As I ran after Muulke, my head was full of the most horrible images.The Dad hit on the head by a falling roof tile. Oma Mei slipping on the stairs. It wouldn’t be Jess again, would it?

  They were standing around the kitchen table, muttering. I quickly looked from one to the other. They were all there. My knees nearly gave way, I was so relieved.

  ‘What?’ I asked. ‘What?’

  Muulke and Jess made room for me. I couldn’t see anything, just the table, until Muulke pointed.

  On the table lay something that at first seemed insignificant: small and creased, it was an envelope, covered with stamps and postmarks, faded and illegible.

  I held my breath when I realised what I was looking at.

  ‘Is that . . . ?’ I asked.

  The Dad nodded. Nobody said anything. As if a single word could make the letter disappear again.

  ‘Like it couldn’t find us!’ Muulke exclaimed. ‘Like it has wandered all over the world before it could find us.’

  The day after the permit had finally found us, the opposite of worrying arrived for a second time.

&
nbsp; ‘It is third picking, so it’s not the finest quality tobacco,’ said Nol. ‘No, I don’t want anything for it. And no ifs or buts, Antoon. I am doing it for those kids and their mother. God rest her soul.’

  Oma Mei cried. They were not tears of sorrow, nor tears of joy, more something in between. The men, including our brothers, carried on as if they were busy with something that needed lots of noise and cursing. Especially Nol.

  ‘Now listen,’ said Oma Mei to us later, ‘there is a very busy time ahead. That workshop has to be finished. So don’t get under the Dad’s and your brothers’ feet.’

  ‘No, Oma Mei.’

  ‘I am going to help Nol’s wife, Nettie. She is having another baby. It’s the least I can do.’

  ‘Yes, Oma Mei.’

  ‘And wipe that grin off your face, Muulke. If you think you are going to be in the promised land here, you are mistaken.’

  She gave each of us a list.

  ‘My list is much longer than Jess’s,’ Muulke complained.

  ‘Swap?’ Jess said instantly.

  ‘No swapping,’ said Oma Mei.

  I looked at their lists. They weren’t half as long as mine.

  ‘If I leave it to those two, it’s going to be a mess,’ said Oma Mei. ‘You know that.’

  I didn’t say a word.

  It was a real upheaval. In the morning, our grandmother set the table, but she left for Nol and Nettie’s house before we’d even had breakfast.

  I helped Jess into her straightener. I tightened the straps. The slats on either side of her spine pressed into her flesh. I immediately heard her breathing become shallower.

  ‘Oma Mei never makes them so tight,’ Jess complained.

  I bit my lip and thought of my list.

  ‘Straightener – Jess,’ it said. ‘Third hole.’ And below that, the proof that our grandmother knew us better than anyone else: ‘Fing, don’t believe her if she says it should be less tight.’

  Downstairs, our brothers were loudly listing all the things that had to be done. The door between the living room and the workshop had to be sealed.Then two new work tables and four chairs had to be built, the presses oiled, the moulds waxed, walls painted, a heater installed. No ulezeik, that was for sure.