God's Callgirl

by Carla Van Raay

  Sunday was a special day of the week, war or no war. We were not allowed to do any work on a Sunday and the dishes piled up beside the sink. Sunday really was a day of rest and relaxation, and the specialness of that day is with me still—a pleasure for which I thank my Catholic upbringing.

  During the week we worked very hard. I grew up in the days before washing machines and my hands were in hot sudsy water made soft by washing soda from as soon as I was old enough to stand on a chair to reach a washboard. My mama was house-proud, which meant that every week the windows had to be cleaned. That was my job too, and whether it froze or snowed or rained didn’t seem to matter to her. When my hands turned blue and stiff in the winter cold, she would add some hot water to the vinegar bucket.

  It was during wartime, with money still short, that I began to desperately want a rubber ball. I had seen one in a shop window in the square where I walked to deliver my completed crossword puzzles from the weekly newspaper. There was a cake to be won for the first correct entry, but mine was never drawn, worse luck. The ball cost much more than a few weeks’ pocket money and my requests for it met with steady refusals.

  It was then that I asked my papa whether the toys he had made for me were all mine, really mine? ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And can I do what I want with them?’ I didn’t tell him my intention, and he said yes again, almost absent-mindedly. He should have known better, but it wasn’t until almost all of the toys had been sold to the neighbourhood children that he noticed and became very angry, demanding that I get them all back.

  Get them back? Weren’t the toys mine to do with as I pleased? He wasn’t in a mood to reason. I was to go to all the children and tell them that I was not allowed to sell those toys and they had to give them back. The indignity of it! That day, I had the first and worst headache of my life, burning with humiliation and anger at the knowledge that my toys belonged to my papa and not to me at all. The children were unimpressed, but gave me back every one of my toys. Some of them had expressed great surprise at the unbelievably low prices I’d been asking for them anyway. I didn’t know the value of things, and hadn’t wanted to quote a price that might get a rejection.

  I did get that rubber ball all the same. I used my savings from every possible source, including gifts from my beloved Uncle Kees, and the occasional leftover coins that were supposed to be dropped dutifully into my tin on the mantelpiece above the kitchen stove, for important purchases such as books. My mama and papa were not amused when they found out that my tin no longer rattled—they merely looked at each other when they noticed me playing with my ball, as if to say, ‘What have we got here?!’

  I continued to eat charcoal into the seventh year of my life, no matter the threats. Then I overheard a conversation I was meant to hear, which stopped my breath for a while and my coal-eating habit for ever.

  ‘Is she a child of the devil, since she loves that black stuff so much?’ my mama asked my papa peevishly. ‘Tch!’ he responded derisively, ‘she sure looks like she could be.’

  Child of the devil! As it was nearing Christmas, my parents simultaneously hit upon the idea of telling me that Black Pete reported naughty behaviour such as coal-eating to Saint Nicholas. Thankfully, my Uncle Kees came to visit just then, making light of the whole thing, but I was cured of the addiction for ever.

  Our diet improved when an American soldier was billeted with us. We had been warned to expect billeting. My mama and I came home from shopping one day and found that a big man had fallen asleep in my bed. His bootlaced feet stuck out over the low white-painted wooden end of the slatted bed and kapok mattress. I remember it well, because it produced a rare moment of intimacy with my mama. She was as surprised as I was and, as our eyes met briefly, I read curiosity and amusement there too, not to mention her concern that the house was wide open to strangers just walking in. My mama didn’t say a word to wake up the soldier and I marvelled at her self-control. Her breath came in quick shallow spurts, her mouth was sort of twisted out of shape, and she bit her bottom lip as she contemplated this new addition to her busy life. She smiled at me, and the delicious conspiracy of mama and daughter beholding an unsuspecting sleeping soldier was a heartwarming moment for me.

  Ted, the soldier, turned out to be a good guy and stayed our friend for years after the war, until we left Holland in 1950 and lost contact. ‘Here,’ said Ted, ‘try this!’ and so we were introduced to chewing gum. He brought food back from the mess, where he had his meals. We were particularly rich in oats for porridge while he lived with us. I pleaded with him, ‘Ted, can you bring us butter, please?’, but that was always chronically short. When I complained, ‘Pa, these sandwiches are too dry to eat!’, instead of scolding me, my papa made a promise that after the war I’d have butter a whole centimetre thick on my bread. I reminded him after the war, but alas he didn’t keep his promise. He wasn’t to know that for three years I had clung to his word, imagining the slabs of butter as I dipped my bread into my tea or milk.

  ZEELAND, THE PROVINCE to the west of us, had been mercilessly and cruelly bombarded. It was time for our little town to accept the possibility that we too could be in the firing line. The neighbourhood decided to construct an underground shelter, big enough for everyone to huddle in during an air raid.

  Every day after school I made a beeline for the dig, where a fantastic hole was forming under the ground. The entrance was only big enough for people to go down one at a time, or for chairs to be handed down singly. The earth was taken elsewhere so that the shelter’s position would not be given away. You could never be sure of who would bomb you; many a Dutch person died from Allied action.

  I went down into the shelter by myself one day, when all the diggers were huddled outside in an animated discussion. They’d had a gutful of this hard digging work. Most of them were older people, not fit to go to war. Naturally, it was very dark in the shelter, and rather damp. The light fell on a corner and I saw to my horror that a puddle of water had gathered there. I had just learned at school that the planet was composed of a thin layer of earth, and underneath that thin layer was a great depth of water, and under that there was fire and molten rocks.

  My chest heaved in panic. The men had dug down to the water level and it was already seeping through! Suddenly, I felt that the earth had become very insecure under my feet, like the time when I was standing on melting ice in the canal last winter and people on the shore warned me to inch myself back carefully.

  Luckily we never used that shelter. During air raids people fled to their cellars—sturdy structures deep under their houses, usually covered by a staircase, which was also a resistive structure. ‘If there’s a direct hit, the earth shelter would be useless anyway,’ argued a wise old man. The shelter was used as a store for vegetables, and after the war it was filled in again.

  As I grew up, new children kept arriving, as they did in all the Catholic families in the south of Holland. You were talked about if no children arrived for a while: Why is God not blessing that marriage?

  The oldest girl in the family was expected to become a surrogate mother, and this was a role that I accepted without a murmur. It was my job to take the children off my mama’s hands, especially after school and in the holidays. It was my special favour to take them for long walks, particularly to the railway overpass, which was through the town square, past all the houses and little shops in-between, past a farm and the church.

  Churches and chapels held a fascination for me, and on our walks I would urge my little brood to come with me to investigate the places we never visited otherwise. One such place may not have been intended for such small visitors: it was an exquisitely gentle and intimate chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary. At her feet knelt huge statues of angels, with wings wide open, bowing in adoration. Small candles lit up twin blue glass bulbs on either side of the tiny space.

  We knelt at the communion rail right at the front, to be close to the wonder of the beautiful statues and the smell of the madonna lilies in large crysta
l vases. In tiny vases near her feet there were blue forget-me-nots and white wispy flowers, so sweet that they filled our hearts with devotion to the Mother of Jesus, who deserved this beauty around her.

  Right there on the railing was a small angel on a heavy wooden box with a slot for donations. The angel’s head bobbed in thanks when you dropped a coin in. Fascinating! My brothers and sisters all wanted to have my few coins to drop in, and there was a bit of hushed commotion until we suddenly noticed a smiling nun nearby. To our complete surprise, she held out a plate of biscuits and little cakes for us to eat! She didn’t speak, but it wasn’t necessary—we felt welcomed and appreciated, and decided that this chapel was definitely on our permanent list of places to visit!

  If there was time we would go on to the railway overpass, little hands dragging along on both my arms until we finally got there. It was a wooden structure spanning four lines of rail, and every few minutes a train would pass underneath. Traffic—mostly horse-drawn except for the odd car, and people on bicycles—was stopped at the wooden gates operated by the keeper of the crossing who spent all day in the box at the side of the rails. We clambered up the two broad sets of wooden steps, keeping pace with bicycle-riders who didn’t want to wait and instead pushed their machines up the narrow track near the railing. Once on top it was a matter of guessing not only which direction the next train would be coming from, but of judging exactly where we needed to be on the bridge so that the steam would hit our faces full on, wetting them with a delicious hot stream of sooty mystery, and threatening to engulf us in its wild confusion and carry us off. We had the solid wooden rails to hang on to and always survived wonderfully. We all returned home hours later with blackened faces. We were never scolded for that, because Saturday was bath day when everyone had a turn in the tub.

  When we told our mama about the nun with biscuits and cakes in the chapel, she said it wasn’t right for us to go there because it was the nuns’ chapel and not meant for anybody else. The nun who gave us cookies must have liked children and was therefore a great enigma to us—not a bit like the nuns who taught us at school. Mama guessed she might have been a contemplative nun. She didn’t want us disturbing her or the other sisters in the order. We were forbidden to go there again, and I am sad to say that we obeyed her command.

  AFTER SEVERAL MONTHS of Allied fighting in the area, the liberators’ tanks rolled in on 5 May 1945. They made the most fearsome rumbling racket over our cobblestones. The crowds waved to the victorious American soldiers, who threw cigarettes from their awesome metal towers. People scrambled to gather the precious booty before they were crushed by many feet. A little boy lost his small fistful when an old man ripped the cigarettes out of his hands without even a thank you. The little chap stood there, looking at his empty fist.

  The whole neighbourhood went for a walk to see what the countryside looked like after the war had ended. A bridge over the canal had been destroyed, temporarily replaced by a span of ropes and planks. I was pushing a pram and brought up the rear. People chatted animatedly as they ambled; no one seemed anxious about crossing the canal on the swaying make-believe bridge, so I set foot on it bravely, but was overcome by a fear so great that I froze with my mouth wide open, unable to call out for help. A woman who had made it to the other side happened to look back, and ran back to guide me and the pram across.

  All sorts of bullets and bombshells were salvaged from the war by our papa. Eventually, my mama put the large polished brass shells of bombs on the mantelpiece, to hold dried flower arrangements. But she was never quite sure of them; they were a constant reminder of the horror that bombs brought to people. On Sunday afternoons, my papa would sometimes make a show for us by burning the acrid powder from the bullets he had brought home. My mama didn’t agree, it was dangerous, she said, and would also put bad ideas into our heads, but he loved to make us wonder at his cleverness.

  A WEED GROWS UP

  IT WAS ADVENT, the four weeks of penance and prayer before our first Christmas after the liberation, and we knelt to pray in front of the nativity crib set up in the living room. It was freezing cold in the room because the fire was lit only on Sundays, but the heavenly smell of the pine tree and the fresh straw near the crib made me feel ecstatic. Even the small candles that lit up the oxen, the donkey and the sheep, the three kings, the adoring Mary and the stunned Joseph released a cosy enticing smell.

  We knelt on the seats of dining chairs and leaned against their backs, each with a rosary in our hands. I was seven, the eldest, and was expected to lead the prayers by reciting the first part of the Hail Mary. The rest of the family would come in with the second half. With each Hail Mary our fingers slipped to the next bead, and this did the counting for us. It should have been easy, but with my papa kneeling behind me, leaning heavily over the back of his chair and breathing impatiently, I just couldn’t get it right. I would rather have been in the stable with the statues, lying in the straw and bathed by the soft light of the candles, than droning out Hail Marys.

  I had intoned far too many Hail Marys, when my papa burst irreverently into my pious fantasy. ‘What do you think you’re doing, Carla?!’

  There was a sudden panic in my heart, in anticipation of being shaken by the hands behind me. Thankfully, my mama took over, heading off a confrontation. We rose from our chairs and my papa scoffed at his somnambulant daughter, hissing disapproval coming from between his teeth: ‘Tch, how can you be so stupid?!’

  I turned down my eyes to ward off the crushing weight of his derision. Tears gathered inside; lately my insides had become a catchment of silent grief. The pain of not being respected by my papa seeped into my stomach and right down into my shoes.

  The fear of making a mistake cowed me at every turn. But even greater than the fear of doing things wrong was the dread of being discovered for the evil girl I was. The terror was made worse by the feeling that everyone could see through me.

  My seven-year-old mind burned. Sex obsessed me relentlessly; it seemed to surround me everywhere. I drew a surreptitious stick figure in the dust of a window pane, furtively adding a thing hanging between his legs (without knowing what it was, just that it was wicked—I had seen other naughty children do it), then hastily wiped it out, looking around to check whether anyone had noticed me. Worse, I felt like abducting little children and doing them terrible harm.

  Walking to my aunt’s house one day, along the familiar cobbled and tree-lined streets, I spotted a naked little girl in her front garden. The gardens were all very small in our area, barely three metres from the street to the front door. I was struck dumb by the sight of her genitals, so clearly visible on her tiny body. The feeling rushed through me that I wanted to shake that girl child, maul her viciously with my hands, throw her to the ground and stab her with a knife, hit her with a stick, a brick—anything. Kill her, but firstly maim her sexual parts. The compelling desire grew and grew in me. I was entranced, a force inside pushing me ever closer to the point of taking action. Suddenly, I became aware of the way my chest was heaving, and that my face was red and distorted, and I hurried off in case anyone saw me. The guilt I felt then was hot, sticky and terrible. Never talk to anyone about it!

  When my papa touched me with his hands, or with his penis, or his mouth, he was telling me I was nice, that he liked me, and also that I was the worst, most sordid girl in the world. He told me this by his furtive actions, his compelling body. No words were ever spoken during our night-time encounters. Understanding all this was beyond me; there was no way I could work it out. My solution was to hide, and pretend that I did not have bad feelings. Become invisible, Carla, hide who you really are. This was difficult, because I felt as if I did not have a private self.

  And so, at the end of term in grade three, when it was time to sing solo in class in front of thirty classmates, I fell into a serious panic. Everyone was going to receive a mark for singing and we all had to come up and sing a song of our own choice. For most of the children this was a bit of a treat: i
t was a rare thing to get out of your seat at any time and the general feeling was that this was an opportunity to show off. I merely felt huge distress at the thought of the eyes of others aimed at me. I heaved and squirmed, blushed and turned pale, hot and cold, and felt sick to my heart and stomach.

  At last I was the only one left and there was no escape. The teacher motioned for me to come to the front. Inexorably, I found myself leaving my desk to face the silent group of expectant children. I opened my mouth and out came what I thought sounded like a suppressed scream, but it was the first bar of the banal song I’d chosen: ‘Daar bij die molen’ (‘Over by the windmill’). My performance held a total lack of finesse; I wasn’t trying to be entertaining, just trying to get through the ordeal. Most of my vocal cords were out of action and a raw, scraping sound filled the attentive room. The teacher was kind. ‘You have a voice like a bell,’ she said, and gave me a 6 out of 10.

  THE SOLDIERS WERE returning home after the war. They filled the trains that criss-crossed the countryside, including the carriage that brought me, my sister and aunt home from a stay in Amsterdam. While we were gone, our mama had been brought another baby by the stork. It was a boy, her fifth gift from God. We could see the storks up on the rooftops, standing on large untidy legs, looking out over the neighbourhood. Plenty of room for babies in their nests. Storks delivered babies hanging in nappies from their beaks.

  The soldiers looked tired, but were filled with the excitement of going home. They were surely dreaming of the welcome that awaited them. The carriage was crammed full and the smell of woollen khaki uniforms was not unpleasant. I was enjoying sitting in the middle of this welter of male energy. It was when one of the soldiers caught my eye that I began to falter. He gave me an affectionate look, no doubt thinking that here was a Dutch child for whom he had fought the war; in seeing me he found a reason to justify the awfulness he had been through. I could feel his friendliness and good intentions, but I couldn’t stop the blush, as livid as the shame that lived in my innermost being, from spreading across my cheeks and face. I was wretched. I couldn’t bear to look around and longed to get off the train.