River in the Sea

by Tina Boscha

  “Then you prayed,” Leen said.

  “No,” Mem replied, “I didn’t.”

  16.

  Her knee swelled and bloated and the top of it turned a deep black–purple, the edges a bright pink fringed with yellow–green. Renske liked to poke it and Leen let her, even though it sent a ripple of pain into the inner part of her knee that made her suck her breath between her teeth. Inexplicably, the other knee didn’t bruise, even though when Leen touched it, a tenderness far underneath the kneecap radiated down to her ankle. That knee she did not let Renske touch. This one she kept for herself, unable to stop herself from running a fingertip over it, and then suddenly pressing down, the pain always a shock but somehow welcome.

  For two days she stayed home from the Deinum’s, obeying Mrs. Deinum’s order to stay back, but at the end of the two days Leen still couldn’t carry her full weight on her leg. She fretted about going back, not for the work, but because Leen could not abide being home. She shut herself in her room, and to distract her, Tine gave her a ball of scratchy wool and a pile of thin knitting needles, hinting to Leen that she could keep her hands busy by knitting socks, but Leen dropped one needle after a single round and then gave up in favor of tying the yarn around her puffy knee to see how white the skin became underneath the wool. Then she smoked.

  The energy around her and inside her was frenetic. Sitting in the middle of her bed, the infant spring breeze blowing through the open window, she replayed all that had gone badly. She thought of Issac, what she’d said to him that morning.

  It was the first time she’d seen him since she had stumbled across him, Jakob, and Mr. Deinum at Mr. Schaap’s, all four a motley mix of Resistance men. She was in the kitchen eating a plate of toast and cheese Tine had fixed for her, an ice–filled towel on her knee. He blinked once, then twice at Leen, surprised to see her there. He spoke to Mem. “I have to go away for a few days. There’re rumors of a new round of conscription round–ups. Mr. Boonstra knows. He’ll send signals if it comes to that.” His voice was loud, as if he thought Mem had gone deaf.

  “More? More round–ups? Now?” Mem asked.

  Issac nodded. Leen stared at him with no attempt to hide it. Liar. He was sneaking off with his arm band on under his shirt, cavorting with Jakob Hoffman, instead of staying home, following Pater’s order, suffering with all of them the worst part yet of their father’s absence.

  “Ja, it’s just a precaution. No one expects anything to happen. The Germans have nothing left.”

  “Don’t worry, Mem,” Leen said, her voice as loud as her brother’s. He whipped his head around to look at her. “I’m sure Issac will be just fine. There’ll be plenty around to protect him.”

  Issac appeared shocked at her deft response. She watched his mouth drop open and his posture change. She ought to be satisfied, but instead she suddenly felt horribly sad. Issac had been angry with her for so long, finally shouting to her he was meant to protect them. And he was right; they, she, needed him there and he was leaving.

  Leen flicked the ashes of her cigarette out the window, not caring if someone was walking below. She listened for footsteps traveling past, snippets of conversation, sometimes even laughter. Once she thought she heard Jakob’s voice and nearly called out to him. She imagined kissing him again, then slapping him across the face for keeping Issac’s secret from her, then kissing him again. She wondered if he would blow her a kiss if she stuck her head out the window and waved to him.

  All that morning, her third day bed–ridden, she heard the same pieces of conversation: The Allieds were close, the Germans were on the run. Then, after lunch, Leen heard daintier footsteps made by boots, not by klompen, and they approached the house’s front door in a familiar way. When Leen scooted to the edge of the bed and glanced out the window, she saw Minne there. “Hoi there,” Leen called, “what are you doing here?”

  “Skiet, Leen, you startled me,” Minne said, shading her eyes and looking up. “I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d come by to see you. Your mistress tells me you are home for a few days.”

  It was hard to read Minne’s face. She was smiling, but not in the way they smiled when they forgot themselves for a minute and it was only the thing they were doing, complaining about their work or blowing smoke rings, that consumed them. Leen wondered if her smile was nervous because she knew about the massacre. She and Minne purposefully never talked of anything dark, skirting the particulars of the war. She’d never seen Minne cry, not even tear up.

  “Ja, a few days,” Leen said.

  “Want to come down?”

  Leen did. But that would mean navigating the stairs, going past Mem, perhaps inviting Minne in. Leen squinted. Minne was wearing lipstick. Her hands were in her pockets. Leen knew what she had in them.

  “I can’t,” Leen said. “Sorry. But I’m glad you stopped by. Maybe in a few more days I’ll be able to.”

  Leen spent the rest of the day thinking about Minne’s visit. She missed her. She didn’t know what brought her to Wierum, and if it was just to see her, that was the most anyone had done to see Leen in all of her life. Leen wished she could have walked with her, sharing a cigarette, talking about nothing, absolutely nothing. Instead she was on her bed, accepting the laundry Tine dumped on the bed for Leen to fold, listening to the bits and pieces of words that floated to her, all speaking of the angst and the anticipation and the anger and always the waiting, the waiting, the endless waiting.

  Mrs. Deinum had said to stay away a few days but on Thursday night, four days after she’d come home early, Leen knew she’d be expected to return. Yet her knee was still stiff and tender, and when she tried to push away on her bike pain surged from beneath her kneecap. Friday morning Leen asked Tine if she might go in her place.

  “Just one day, to let them know I’ll be back on Monday, and that I’ll catch everything up then.” She had to get back there, to her routine, to Dokkum, to the person who reliably doled out information, anything at all, about what was happening. She needed to get out of her house, where the air was not so much stale but close.

  “Forget it,” Leen said. “I can go.” But when she stood her knee buckled.

  “For heaven’s sake, sit down,” Tine said. She changed her shirt and put on a different pair of hose, the ones with the least repairs.

  In twenty minutes Tine was gone, leaving Leen alone in her room with Mem and Renske downstairs, mouse–quiet. The house felt vacant, like no one was there at all, even though Renske’s voice tumbled and echoed into the air. But she sounded different, like she was trying to dampen her voice. She too had retreated. All these months had trained her.

  Leen limped down the stairs, planting one foot at a time. Entering the kitchen, Leen found her mother standing at the kitchen window. Ever since the radio happened, Mem slept downstairs, and even though she could not count on Mem to be coherent, her constant dressed state gave her the appearance of it, and guiltily Leen liked this. It felt easier to be around her, knowing that she was up and wandering or sitting in a chair with her eyes closed, a slight doze the closest she got to sleep, rather than lying on her bed.

  Leen sat down. She lifted her nightgown to look at her knee. The purple was finally beginning to fade to a strange green tone, the color of overripe apple peels. There was something about Mem’s posture that made Leen limp to the window to join her. Over the dike banks of dark clouds gathered and gray stripes of rain overlapped above the North Sea, and the morning air was growing dim. Leen stared at the looming clouds, drew her head back, then looked again. Along the squall’s borders she thought she saw edges of green, matching her skin.

  The wind pressed against the panes and the walls of the house and the sound reminded Leen of Pater, how his work–worn hips popped with almost every step. Mem looked at her with recognition in her eyes and Leen nearly asked her out loud if that was what she was thinking. Thunder struck, sounding like a beat against a metal sheet, and Mem turned back to the window.

  Mem put her han
ds between her chin and the glass. She squinted at the clouds. “Green,” she said. “Green everywhere. Bûter, brea, en griene tsiis; wa’t dat net sizze kin, is gjin oprjochte Fries,” she added, reciting the familiar saying. Butter, rye–bread, and young cheese: whoever cannot say that is not a true Frisian.

  “Mem, I want to go outside,” Renske said. Leen jumped; Mem didn’t. They both turned to find Renske standing in the entrance to the kitchen. She looked pale in the dull light, a child ghost.

  “It’s going to storm,” Mem finally said. “Look.” Renske skipped over to her and slid in between them. Mem pulled her between her and the window and pointed. “Look.”

  Leen shifted her weight, felt the twinge in her knee, and watched Renske’s eyes dart over the street, the neighbor’s house, the wheels of the Boonstra’s windmill–shaped birdbath whirring in the wind. Mem grabbed her chin and moved her head up. She remembered Mem holding her like that. Never for very long, though; she’d had contending brothers and a sister. “Up, see? At the clouds.”

  “Oh! The wolk.” Renske looked at Leen to make sure she saw them too. Leen tried to smile at her.

  “A big squall is coming,” Mem said. Her voice was as far away as the clouds were near. “I can tell by the color. Just like the ‘grut stoarm’. Renske, have I ever told you that story?”

  “Yes, Memmy.” Renske leaned into where the soft pillow of Mem’s abdomen used to be.

  “It rained so hard the waves of the North Sea came over the dike. There was seafoam at the bottom of my parent’s front door. We had to go inland, to Hantumheizen. It’s higher, built as a terp. I was only seven years old.”

  Her knee prevented her from standing close with them, but still Leen tried to join the conversation. “Look,” she said, pointing and leaning over her side towards Renske. “I can tell it’s raining out there, over the islands.”

  “Ja. But look – see? The outline of the clouds. They’re green, see? Green,” Mem said, and Renske followed her hands. “Soon it’s all going to be green out there. Greeny–black. That’s how it starts.”

  Over the dike lightning brightened a tiny slice of the sky.

  Mem suddenly started to shout. “Away from the window, both of you! Do you want to be hit by lightning? Don’t you know it burns you?” Renske’s eyes turned to globes. She ran upstairs. Mem turned to Leen. “Get!” she said, like she was speaking to a dog. “Get the sheets!”

  Leen was too tired to be scared, to react to Mem’s outburst. She didn’t have the energy to shout to her, I’m not safe outside either! But maybe you want me out there, want me to get hit.

  Wobbling on her bad leg, she stuffed her feet into an old pair of klompen piled by the door. She stubbed her toe against something flat inside one of them. Leen bent down and took out her father’s old copper tobacco box, her fingers rubbing against the initials OF engraved on the top. She didn’t know the last time she’d seen it. It had been hiding in the shoe for months, probably long before he left. She could tell by the weight of the box that it was empty. She quickly jammed the box inside her pocket, stepped into the klompen, and limped outside. The harsh, storm–cold air brought heavy raindrops splashing against her eyelids. The wind slapped her face and cleared her weary eyes. It woke her up, got her blood running. Her knee throbbed. She ripped the sheets off the line, tearing the seam on one. They were still heavy with moisture, never getting a chance to dry in the humid air. “Dammit,” she mumbled. She’d have to fix the tear later, sew it up with tiny, even stitches she was never good at because she rushed it. Today, that would not be a problem.

  Upstairs, mending the tear, she took out the tobacco box, opened it, and inhaled deeply the smell of her father.

  It rained. It rained all morning and into the afternoon. When Tine came home she was soaked. Her hair clung to her face and the edge of her gray skirt was black with water and dripped onto the floor.

  “Let me help you,” Leen said when she saw her sister, trying to push away the memory of how Tine had cared for her when she’d come home from digging the dog’s grave. She gave Tine a towel and took her coat. “Why did you bike all the way in the rain? It’s terrible outside.”

  “I thought it was going to let up,” Tine said breathlessly. “But it started to pour again when I was almost home.” She didn’t say when she passed the camp, which Leen knew was the true reason she looked so flushed.

  “You need to change your skirt,” Leen said. “Take it off so I can hang it to dry.”

  “You sound like me,” Tine said, taking the skirt off and handing it to Leen, standing there only in a long shirt and hose. In the last few days it felt that the years between them had diminished.

  “I know.” Leen put the skirt over her elbow. The water dripped onto her stocking feet. “It makes you go fast, doesn’t it,” she said.

  “What?” Tine asked, rubbing her hands over her arms to keep warm.

  “The camp.”

  Tine rubbed the towel on her hair. “It does. And I also had this.” She turned around and picked up a bag Leen didn’t recognize. She fished another bag out of it. Leen touched it and immediately knew what it was.

  “Tine! Did you take it? It’s too much! They’ll know,” she said, the bag heavy in her hands, feeling the salt fall between her fingers. There had to be at least six cups. “You can’t take it all at once!”

  “I didn’t take it, they gave it to me,” Tine said. She took the salt back and looked at it as if it was a rare jewel.

  “Were the soldiers out?” The skirt soaked through her sleeve. A line of water traveled down her forearm and onto her wrist. What did they look like, she wondered. How thin were the men now, how drawn would their hungry faces be if they saw the salt? Tine shook her head. “I think they know,” she said.

  “You think the soldiers know? Know what? About the salt?” This was why, she wanted to tell Tine. This was why she’d hit the gas.

  “Nee, the Deinums, I think they knew you were stealing it. Mr. Deinum handed it to me and said, ‘I know you need it.’ He said he was worried about you.” Tine took the bag from Leen and set it on the counter. “He said that you didn’t have to come back, that the next time he’d see you was after the war.”

  Leen took the wet skirt off her arm and bundled it up and set it on the table, directly on the lace tablecloth. Tine didn’t say anything, didn’t even seem distracted by this gaff. It melted Leen, what they had given Tine, what they had given her. Perhaps they had another sack, perhaps they had several, stashed somewhere Leen didn’t know. Maybe they hid it in the floorboards, as Mem had hidden the radio.

  Then Tine said, “The news of the war is good. The Allieds are going to drop food from planes, maybe even up here. The Germans are out of Leeuwarden! That’s 30 kilometers away!”

  “They’re still here, though,” Leen said. “They’re practically right across the street.”

  “Not for long,” Issac said.

  “Issac!” Tine said. Leen grabbed the salt but it was too late to hide it behind her back. “You always sneak in like that! Mem, Issac is here!”

  He stood in the doorway, feet planted two feet apart, hands at his hips. How did he appear so silently? He never moved like he used to, loud and lumbering, banging sounds standing in for words. A pelt of rain hit the window and his presence and the thought of marching soldiers and even the salt on the table, accompanied by Mr. Deinum’s sly acknowledgement of her theft, all of these things suddenly made Leen feel like she was surrounded.

  “They’ll be out soon. The Resistance has plans. We’re going into Meppel. We’re going everywhere.”

  “‘We’?” Tine asked softly.

  Issac nodded. But he was looking at Leen.

  “I thought–” Tine started to say. She sat down. She took her wet skirt off the tablecloth and draped it over her legs.

  “What are you talking about?” Leen asked.

  There was a creak and several quick steps. “Mei soan!” Mem said, putting a hand on Issac’s shoulder, anot
her on her chest. “Oh, I was so worried about you. My boy is home.”

  “Hi, broer,” Renske said, tugging on his pant leg. Issac patted her head, nodded at Mem. But he never broke his gaze at Leen. He saw the salt. She saw the challenge.

  She stood up, careful not to put too much weight on her knee. She didn’t want him to know how shaky she was. “What,” she said slowly, “are you talking about?”

  “You know,” Issac said.

  Tine stood and hurriedly stepped back into the skirt. “Leafe, you are soaked,” Mem said. “We should hang it.”

  “Nee!” Tine said, trying to step away.

  “Tine, what is wrong with you–”

  “I’m part of the Resistance, you know that,” Issac said, cutting everyone off. “Just like I know all about your little bags of salt, you know that I’m fighting.”

  “My little bags of salt have come in handy,” Leen replied, holding up the heavy sack. It was heavy enough to mask her shaking hand. It was unsettling and yet good to finally look at her brother square in the face, even though that face was unyielding, a face of concrete and wire. His eyes were a fence, keeping her out. Leen sensed she was crossing a line, a border, one she had always stayed behind, until now. “You’ve hardly been here to notice. We should’ve been able to ask you for help but hell, you were too busy going off in the L.O!”

  “Resistance? The L.O, the real Landelijke Organisatie? Issac, you aren’t serious,” Tine said. Her cold face was white.

  “You’re joking, aren’t you, my son?” Mem said. “You’re the last person who should be part of the Resistance, after what Pater said. Komme, Issac, this is a silly joke.”

  “I’m not joking,” Issac said.

  “Blixen, you’ll bring the soldiers right back to the door!” Leen cried. She knew her voice had risen and she knew she sounded like Mem. But it was not enough to back down.