by Sara Young
The day dragged on. Whenever I saw a sister in the hall, I asked if there was any word yet. "I don't think so. I haven't heard of any babies being born today," they said. I spent the hours after dinner standing by the doors that led to the labor ward. Finally Sister Ilse came on duty and took pity on me.
"She's fine," she assured me. "First babies take their time. Go to bed, she's still got hours to go."
So I did. But I didn't sleep well—in my dreams, I heard screaming. I watched the dawn come up and couldn't wait any longer—I went down to the delivery wing. Sister Ilse was coming down the hall.
"Did she have it?"
"She did. Around midnight. A boy."
"How is she? Was everything all right? I know it's early, but may I see her?"
"She's fine. But no. No visitors."
"But I'm her roommate."
"She's fine, really. It's just that ... well, sometimes they get upset at the end. Giving birth is a stressful time. The policy is not to let the pregnant ones talk to the new mothers."
"Please let me see her. If she's upset, I could help."
She looked worried, but I could tell she was considering it. I stood my ground until she sighed and gestured to the door on the right. "One minute," she warned.
They'd given her drugs, more than ether. Her eyes were heavy, swollen, and red.
"Mistake" was all she managed before her face folded in grief. Her eyes, wept dry, pleaded with me as if I could change anything. "My baby." Her words came out slow and thick, as if pulled from tar. "Mine. Mistake."
"I don't think so." I took her hand. "I think you were brave and wise, and you did the right thing."
She shook her head. "Saw him. Mine. I let him go."
"Leona, no," I tried. "You'll see. This is a hard time ... you'll see."
Sister Ilse came to the door and I was relieved. "I'll come back later and we'll talk."
Leona shook her head again.
"I'll look you up when the war is over. Give me your address." Leona rolled over to the wall and closed her eyes.
THIRTY-SIX
"I can't sleep next to a window." Those were her first words.
I had taken Leona's bed when she left because it was warmer away from the window's draft, but I didn't really care which was mine for the short time I had left.
"We'll switch," I said. "That's fine. My name's Anneke."
"Neve."
I pulled the bedding off and we remade the beds. Then I sat on mine to watch her unpack. She'd brought only one small suitcase, but it took a while because she folded and refolded each article until it was crisp and flat and perfect. Neve was interesting looking—different from most Dutch girls—tall and sharp and narrow-boned. Her round belly looked out of place, as if it had been stuck on against all those angles. Her hair was pale blonde—straight and cut short. Her brows and lashes were almost white, her face fragile except for her chin, which was square and defiant, as if daring you to want to protect her.
Besides her few clothes, she'd brought nothing except a brush and nail scissors, which she lined up precisely on top of the bureau, and a lighter and three packets of cigarettes, which she placed in her top drawer. No mementos, no family photos. No ties.
I looked at the jumble on my bureau—Isaak's pencil, my cousin's earrings, and the things my aunt had packed: Anneke's combs and barrette, the photograph of Anneke and me taken when I'd first come to Holland, in matching blue cardigans, a china figurine of a prancing horse I'd won at a fair. They were a fraud—I had no ties, either.
Neve followed my gaze to my bureau. She pointed her chin at the scarf I'd draped over the mirror. "You can't see yourself," she said.
I stood up. "I'll show you around. At dinner you'll want to get downstairs in time for the first sitting—it's when most of the single girls eat, and it's best to stay away from the married Frauen. They can be—"
"Fine," Neve cut me off, her voice as sharp as the collarbones jutting from her ill-fitting shift.
Fine, yourself, I thought. Ask someone else if you want some help. But she didn't ask a single question.
From the bottom of her bag, she withdrew two books and placed them beside her lamp. Basics of Aeronautic Engineering and a slimmer book whose title was so worn I couldn't read it. Neve meant "unknown." I picked up the second book. Amelia Earhart, a Biography. "She crashed," I began.
"No," my new roommate corrected me, almost fiercely. She snatched the book from me and replaced it, sliding it next to the other volume so the spines were perfectly aligned. "She flew."
When the first bell rang, she snapped her suitcase closed and left without another word. I got up and crossed to my mirror, leaned in. The scar on my lip was still there, although it was now only a thin stitch, neat and white but jagged as lightning. A single S rune, taunting me as usual: Where was its mate? Had the Oberschütze left the rest of his mark deeper inside me? I draped the scarf over the mirror again and went down for the meal.
Neve sat beside me at dinner, but she spoke only to ask me to pass something. I saw her assessing the other girls coolly. I wondered if this were her first time at one of these homes, she seemed so comfortable here. Or maybe she was just that confident. After dinner, she stayed downstairs to watch the evening's film. She came upstairs around nine-thirty; I was in bed, reading, and when I said hello, she only nodded.
In the weeks I had been here I had become an expert in guessing the stages of pregnant girls. Neve looked to be about six months along. I was glad I would be leaving soon—who could put up with three months of this girl?
"I need to sleep," she said when she'd gotten into bed. "So ... the lights."
"All right." I marked my page and turned off the lamp, then rolled up the blinds. There was no point in entering a battle with this girl—I didn't need an enemy in here. Obviously we wouldn't be friends, but I would try at least to be friendly. "Where are you from?"
"And the blinds. I can't sleep with them open."
I closed the rolladen and then rolled over to sleep. But in the middle of the night, I awoke to darkness so deep it seemed to press on my chest. I had been dreaming of being buried alive, of how the earth would feel pressing down on me as I struggled. I sat up, gasping, and lifted the blind beside me, staring out until I could make out the stars, just a few pricking the black night. More stars appeared; they'd been there all along. I wished I knew the names of the constellations—the same ones stood watch over the Netherlands as well. And then I raised the blinds all the way, quietly, and lay down again.
I had entered the battle after all.
November brought worse weather. Each morning, I awoke to find the mountaintops shrouded in dense clouds—as if the ragged teeth were now covered by a cold gray lip, and somehow more ominous than bared. I still went outside as much as I could, but now the decaying leaves clumped together beside the paths in rotting mats made me uneasy, and the smell of them turned my stomach. There was a long stretch with only a few bright days—several times the gray sky furrowed and darkened and began to spit snow, but there was never a storm. It was as if the weather was gathering itself, waiting for something. As I was. Growing more tense. As I was. No letter came, and each day it became harder to convince myself that Isaak was on the way. Or that anyone even knew where I was.
I decided to risk a letter. Not to Isaak directly. I needed to route the letter through a safe address. Someone I trusted, who would forward a note without asking questions. The problem was that everyone who might do this for me probably had been told I was dead. Finally I settled on Jet Haughwout, one of Anneke's oldest friends; I would just have to have faith that my aunt kept up the deception and Jet wouldn't be surprised to hear from my cousin in this place. I printed the note, trying for Anneke's round, short letters, and as I formed them I thought, I am a thief. There is nothing of my cousin's I wouldn't steal.
I kept the note brief; I told Jet I was fine and would write more later, but for now could she do me a favor? Please see that this note is posted, I
wrote. It is to my cousin's friend. He is still very grieved over her death, and I wanted to write some things to comfort him. I didn't explain why I couldn't send the note myself—she would come up with some explanation.
And then I wrote to Isaak.
I wrote three times. The first two letters were filled with my fears and questions, my hurt that he could have abandoned me for so long. I crumpled them up. I went down to the front desk for one of the postcards of the home—they made it look like an exclusive hotel. On the back I wrote a single word: Hurry. I sealed the postcard into an envelope, addressed it to the synagogue, and tucked it into Jet's letter. I sealed that one and drew a deep breath.
Then I saw the problem.
Neve kept a lighter in her top drawer. I checked the hall to be sure she wasn't coming, then closed the door and went to her dresser. As I lifted the lighter, I noticed something—the drawer was filled with food: apples and crackers, a few hardened rolls, a piece of cheese, darkening at the edges, wrapped in waxed paper. I shut the drawer.
I held the first two letters with their damning words over the empty washbasin and burned them. I shook the ashes out the window and then took the basin to the bathroom across the hall to rinse it. When I returned, Neve was standing in the center of the room. She held the lighter to me, her eyebrows lifted.
"I borrowed it—I'm sorry. I wanted a cigarette."
Neve smirked—the open window and the smell of burned paper made my lie absurd. But then she sat back on her bed and looked at me as if she found me interesting for the first time. "Why are you here so early?" she asked.
"I had nowhere else. My family kicked me out."
She nodded. "Mine would have, too, if I'd told them. I went to live with a friend when I started to show."
"I can't blame them, I guess. They hate the Germans so much."
"Mine don't. Mine hate me." She shrugged off my expression of sympathy. "I learned a long time ago to take care of myself. Isn't that what we're all doing here?"
"Taking care of ourselves? How?"
"Three or four months before the baby's born, fourteen after. A year and a half with food and heat and no one looking at you like you're dirt."
"You're staying the whole time? You're going to nurse the baby?"
"Of course. Fourteen months of not worrying where you're going to sleep—in return for taking care of a baby? Of course." Neve's face closed and she got up. She lifted my letter from my dresser and studied the address. "Schiedam? Is that where you live?"
I nodded.
"We were practically neighbors." She dropped the letter onto my bed and left.
I picked the envelope up. Don't write, Isaak had said. A letter could give everything away. One more week, I bargained with myself. If I'm still here on the first of December, I will risk the letter.
The next day, the twenty-fourth of November, a package arrived. It was flat and rectangular, the size and shape of a packet of papers. I thanked the Sister who handed it to me and hoped she didn't notice my hand shake as I took it. The return address was from an L. Koopmans of Amsterdam—a contact person? My new identity?
I hurried to my room with the package, checked the halls to make sure no one was around, then closed the door and slid down to the floor. I tore it open and didn't even care that I ruined the brown paper—that's how sure I was of what was inside, that I wouldn't need to save any more paper.
The package held an empty notebook, the kind used in the upper grades at school. There was no note, only a line inscribed on the inside cover: For your poems. Save them.
I tossed the notebook across the room, and buried my head in my knees in despair.
And then I realized Leona's true gift.
I wrote to her, thanking her, promising to come see her when I could get back to Holland, and then asking her to forward my letter to Isaak. She would do this. She wouldn't ask any questions. I ripped open the letter to Jet, pulled out Isaak's note, and sealed it inside Leona's letter. Then I hurried downstairs to the main desk where outgoing mail was collected. It would make the four o'clock pickup.
Over and over I calculated how long it might take. The postal service in Germany was still good, I'd heard. Still efficient. In the Netherlands, it was not so reliable anymore. Three weeks, perhaps four. By the middle of December—by the end, certainly—Isaak would know I was here. Sometime in the month of January, I would be rescued. Each night, I lay in the dark dreaming of the time I could whisper to Isaak: We conceived a baby. The weight of those words. The unspeakable wonder that would bind him to me.
Unless—
No. A baby could not be conceived that way.
The sixth of December was Sinterklaas Day—in Holland, gifts were left the night before. Sinterklaas was the patron saint of children, but also of robbers, perfumers, sailors, travelers, and ... unmarried girls. There were now eleven other girls from the Netherlands at the home, so on the night of the fifth I cut eleven little wooden shoes from wrapping paper I'd saved, and on the back of each I wrote a poem wishing good luck, then slipped them under the Dutch girls' doors.
I already had my good luck. He would be coming for me soon.
But on the ninth, my birthday, we awoke to a blizzard with half a meter of snow on the ground already. At breakfast, some of the German girls were talking about winter in Bavaria; as soon as I could, I found my way to Sister Ilse in the newborns' nursery.
"We could be snowed in for a week? Is that true?" I asked.
"Sometimes, yes." A baby began to fuss in his bassinet and she went over to pick him up. "This one. A little piglet already, hungry every hour. But look at those dimples!" She handed him to me. "Try to keep him quiet while I go heat a bottle. I've got to go over to the orphanage for more formula."
I pulled the blanket from the baby's face. He frowned deeper and furrowed his soft new brow. Indignant already. I held him against my neck and smelled the faintly sour scent of formula—the scent of abandonment in here. I pressed him closer and he was comforted. It wasn't milk he was hungry for.
When she came back, Sister Ilse took the baby over to a chair by a bank of windows and sat down. I pulled another chair alongside and smiled at the baby, who began to suck at his bottle urgently. Then I leaned back and looked out the window. The falling flakes were thicker now, and I felt suffocated.
"How long before they clear the roads?"
Sister Ilse looked up at me, puzzled.
"If we get snowed in?"
"Oh. Not too long. This is a large town. Some of the smaller villages higher up can get snowed in for a month at a time. The people there know how to manage."
"But what about here?" I pressed.
"Well, we're not a priority, but we're not last on the list, either. You don't have to worry, Anneke. We have plenty of food and supplies, and there's always heat."
"But what if there's an emergency? What if someone needs to leave?"
She cut her eyes to me sharply. "What are you worried about, Anneke? I've been here through two winters, and it's been fine. There's always a doctor in the home, so it's the safest place to be. And you're not due until May, right?"
"Well, it's just that ... I guess I'm not used to feeling trapped. It doesn't snow like this in the Netherlands."
Sister Ilse eased the bottle from the baby's mouth and held him over her shoulder for a burp. She rubbed little circles into his back before answering.
"Trapped." She looked into my eyes for too long. "Well, I guess you're trapped here anyway, snow or no snow. Where would you go, Anneke?"
THIRTY-SEVEN
One day in the middle of December, we were told of a change to the dining schedule for that night: Our main meal would be served at noon, and from five to six we could come down for a light supper of cold meats and salads. The dining room was needed for a Christmas party for the staff. Perhaps Isaak knew this; perhaps it was the opportunity he had been waiting for.
As usual, I went straight to Ilse.
"No new babies today," she said, l
ooking up from her paperwork.
"Are you going tonight? Will everyone be there?"
Ilse made a face of disgust. "You should stay far away, too."
"Why?"
A student nurse stepped out of the labor ward and walked past. Ilse got up from the desk and went over to a stack of boxes beside the doorway. She handed me a box and took one herself. "Come help me mix some formula," she said, a little louder than she needed to.
I followed her into a small supply room, but she didn't make any move toward the rows of bottles or the sink—just stacked our boxes of powdered-milk packets on a shelf with others. She went over to the side door and leaned against the window to the nursery and gazed at the tiny bundles, wrapped tightly like loaves of bread. "It's not their fault."
Then she went back to the hall door and pulled it shut firmly. "Do you know what tonight really is?"
"A Christmas party. They delivered beer and schnapps this morning."
"It's a party, yes. They'll bring in a shipment of SS officers and any of the girls working here who aren't pregnant now probably will be by tomorrow morning. So, more babies like this. That's the big plan. I'm going home to see my father. I have the weekend off. My first in a year."
"Well, so ... all the rest of the staff will be there, though, right? All the Sisters and nurses?" I tried to keep my voice from sounding too eager. "All the guards?"
"All the staff except the guards. In fact, they're doubling up the patrols—they don't want any interruptions tonight. No unwelcome guests."
I tried to seem merely curious. "Who are they worried about?"
"This is Bavaria, Anneke. The villagers around here are mostly Catholic. Very conservative. Just the fact that unmarried girls are welcomed here upsets them. Any hint of what's really going on here tonight, and they might stage a demonstration."
"And what is really going on? How will they—"