River in the Sea (7 page)

The skin around Pater’s eyes folded into pleats as he looked at her. “You a little scared?”

“A little,” Leen admitted. She hated seeing that stain. She hated the memory and she hated even a shadow of a soldier.

“Well,
leafe
, I would be too.” He pulled her close to him, and Leen leaned into his warm shoulder, glad the moment had passed. Everything really was okay, even better now. If Mem came over to her and sat on her other side, where Leen could feel her belly and chest, soft and comfortable as a feather pillow, her perfect scene would be complete. 

“Issac told me that Jakob Hoffman asked him about his sister running over a dog,” Mem announced, her breathing suddenly loud. She bent over and picked up her basket of mending and put it on her lap, but didn’t pull anything out of it. Pater’s own breathing stopped for a moment. Leen curled her hands. She never thought Issac would go to Mem. 

“Oh,” Pater said. “Did he now.” The layer of warmth in his voice cooled.

“He asked me about it.” Leen tried to speak purposefully, but her words only came out rushed and she knew how that made her sound. “But I didn’t tell anyone.”

“You should have told me this earlier.”

“I did not tell a soul! Pater, I promise that I am not lying!” Leen pleaded. She started to stand up to emphasize the truth behind her words, but then Mem said, “Sit down,” and Leen quickly obeyed. She stared straight ahead, feeling the small joy she felt at the café dissolve away. 

“Do you know what this means?” Mem asked, and Leen did not know if she was speaking to her or to Pater.

Leen couldn’t help herself. “But I didn’t say a word!” She’d done as she was asked, even though no one would tell her just why she needed to. After all, the soldiers saw her kill the dog; there was no identity to hide.

“How many days has it been?” Mem asked. 

Pater spoke next. “I told Mr. Deinum. He’s a good man and I thought he should know, if Leen is to spend most of her time there.” He shot Mem a look Leen couldn’t interpret.

“Mr. Deinum?” Mem’s voice was so high it was nearly a squeak. She put the basket back onto the carpet. “
Blix
, Oenze, well it’s over now. Mr. Deinum is a good man but that is no guarantee that his wife won’t blab. You know her mouth.”

“Aafke,” Pater said. Mem shook her head, and Leen’s heart beat faster. She had never seen her parents argue, not with her on the couch right in between them, with her the cause of it. 

“It’ll blow over,” Pater continued. “I was clear with Harold about his wife’s reputation. Things die down, they always do.”

But Mem would have none of it. “Die down? The war hasn’t died down. And to think I thought we might’ve gotten away with it.”

“But hasn’t it blown over?” Leen asked. She starting picking at a hangnail, feeling like she was interrupting even if her parents were talking about her. “They didn’t shoot me. They let me go.” She remembered the weight of the driver’s body leaving her. Mem and Pater were silent. “That’s what I think, anyway,” she added, looking down. She expected one of them to tell her to shut her mouth, they’ve already heard enough.

Pater sighed and Mem glared at the wall. Finally he spoke, his voice low and deliberate.

“They didn’t kill you, yet. And they could have, had the wind been different. Still, if there is any word, any feeling at all, that a brash young Wierum girl is going about talking of slaughtering a soldier’s dog, right under their noses, well. They can find us. There is always someone willing to give some information, some directions to the right house–”

“Enough,” Mem said, shutting her eyes and shaking her head. “She understands.”

It was always Leen’s skin that reacted. Sometimes, there were needle pricks of heat; now, cold tingled her nose, her hands, down her spine. For the worst things, Leen could count on hives, large, itchy stripes crisscrossing her chest and escaping onto her neck.

“I, I–” Leen stammered. The skin on her chest was growing hot. The soldiers could come back. Actions could be labeled as merely unfinished. Had someone’s mood blown another way…

“Maybe we’re exaggerating. I don’t know,” Mem said, picking up the basket once more and this time selecting a single sock from it. Leen hated it when her mother’s mouth grew tight like that, disapproving, grim, resolute. “But I think we have talked about it enough.” She started to rock in her chair. She always did this when she began stitching. “Maybe you’re right, Oenze. Maybe this one will blow over. Maybe it already has.” Her voice betrayed her doubt.

Leen nodded. It had been four days and nothing had happened. Right? Maybe Mem was right.

Then Pater said, “Well, no one is going to miss that dog.” 

Leen went upstairs without saying goodnight. No one said another word.

By the end of that week eight different people mentioned the dog to Leen. One morning, Mr. Boonstra leaned over as if they were the only ones in on the secret, and said, “I heard about you and that German shepherd. Goodness gracious,
famke
!”

Mr. Iedema bought her two more chocolate milks. Jakob began pinching her on the shoulder and laughing when she jumped, then running a finger across his throat and making a strange grimace that Leen guessed was supposed to look like a dying dog. Mrs. Cuperus, a woman rumored to be mildly crazy after having seven babies in eight years, all boys, had pressed two nickels into her hand while Leen was in Wierum’s only general store and patted her directly on top of her head and said simply, “That’s for getting rid of that
hoendtje
!” Leen tried to give the money back, but Mrs. Cuperus wouldn’t allow it. “I hate those awful dogs,” she’d said. And Leen replied in partial truth, “I can’t think of a time I ever liked them,” and everyone in the store started laughing, but for the first time, Leen could tell they were laughing with her, not at her. She had always stood out before, but was never appreciated for her unconventional driving, smoking, rolling tobacco, working the fields until her fingernails accrued so much muck that Mem forced Leen to stand at the table while she scrubbed them clean with a coarse brush.

Leen did not forget what Pater said: they could come back. The soldiers could find her and finish their inclinations. But it was hard not to grow accustomed to this new feeling. Pride crept into Leen with each wink, clap, shout, and nod. Leen felt as if she was someone, a Resistance member, maybe; someone who had done something bold enough that she might have lost her life, but survived. And thanks to her, there was one less barking dog to antagonize the innocent villagers. Now, when someone winked at her, she winked right back, always careful that Pater or Mem was not around.

5.

Leen slid her damp palm down the front of her skirt, took a clipped breath, opened the bin, and plunged her hand in. Salt spilled out of the sides of her fist as she drew it out and dropped the salt onto the ragged piece of white wax paper she’d hurriedly tore moments before, and the tumbling crystals sounded like the sand she poured out of her
klompen
after walking on the hard seafloor when the tide was out.

She twisted the paper at the top and dropped the package in her pocket, pressing against it to flatten the bulge protruding away from her narrow hips. She licked her palm and her mouth puckered with the bright rush on her tongue. The taste was so delicious, and she ran her tongue over her lips, wondering if she ought to take some more. She brushed her hands against each other and put them in her pockets, one hand around the plump bundle.

That would be greedy. Leen let out a grunt of a half–guilty laugh. This
was
greedy. Neither Mem nor Pater asked her to get any salt, and although they’d welcome whatever she brought home of her own volition, they weren’t expecting any today. Nor did she intend to offer it to them. This was hers.

She’d never done anything like this before. Not this audacious. She wasn’t clear on what possessed her to act on the urge, except perhaps feeling confident, truly assured of herself, for the first time. It was peculiar that it took something so awful to feel this way, yet Leen felt somehow she earned it. The catcalls were sure to die down; things would settle. But until then she was determined to enjoy her newfound celebrity, this change that allowed her to show herself to be worthy; an individual, not an oddity; brave, not impetuous. Besides, she hadn’t seen a soldier outside the camp in weeks.

So, when Leen found herself in the bakery’s small supply room, sweeping the trivial pile of gray dust that used to be white when there was enough flour to bake with, she saw the salt bin and knew. The thought didn’t have enough time to fully form before she decided. The
zout
would be a treat, a rare something just for herself, a little secret that wouldn’t endanger anyone. At worst it’d give her a sore in her mouth.

“Leen? What are you doing in here?”

Leen twisted around and was horrified to hear the paper crinkle from inside the layers of her skirt. She coughed to cover the sound, and felt the nerves in the back of her neck ripple down between her shoulder blades.

From the doorway, Mrs. Deinum regarded her carefully. “Are you feeling well?” She walked right up to Leen and touched Leen’s forehead. Leen kept as still as she could. “You’re warm. Your face is burning up.” She reached for Leen’s hands and Leen yanked them out of her pockets, and as Mrs. Deinum felt them, remarking how sweaty they were, they began to shake. She was caught. There was no way she’d get away with it again.

“Heh,
leafe
, you’re feverish up and down, aren’t you?”

Fragments of words tumbled out of her mouth. Leen tried to say something about feeling sick in her stomach, which, in that moment, became truth, and Mrs. Deinum said, “You don’t look very good, I’ll tell you that.” She sighed and glanced around the spare shelves. “This is hardly the place to take a break, now is it? Let me make you some tea and then you can get home a little early.”

Leen followed Mrs. Deinum to the kitchen. Already she was getting out of a half hour of work; this benevolence could not be genuine.

“Sit,” Mrs. Deinum said. Leen obeyed.
Blix
. Had she closed the lid of the bin? She didn’t know what to do with her hands. Mrs. Deinum put the water on, her skirt and hose sliding and hissing against each other as she moved around the sink set into a narrow counter top covered with painted tiles, tiles Leen had wiped dry after she had washed and put away the lunch dishes. It was just after lunch when she had begun sweeping the kitchen floor free of crumbs, and then the hallway, and then the supply room, her broom suddenly still as she saw the bin, her grip already loosening on the handle.

Mrs. Deinum noisily opened the cupboards to gather the cups and teaspoons. Now it was past the moment of confession, when she should have handed over the salt, crying over how terrible she felt, and after listening to the rebuke, accepted the amnesty. Leen’s distress turned to a fretful annoyance.
Hurry up
, she mouthed to Mrs. Deinum’s back, making sure her voice did not escape. She ran her tongue throughout her mouth to rid herself of any last hidden bits of salt, as if it was more illicit than the evidence poking her hip through the worn fabric of her pocket.

Mrs. Deinum set the tea on the table and settled herself into her chair. Leen could hear her undergarments slide against each other as she arranged her legs. 

“Go on,
famke
, drink up! It’ll warm you before you head home. No use getting sicker in that wind,” Mrs. Deinum said, pushing the tea closer to Leen. For a moment she was glad to have something her hands could latch onto so they wouldn’t shake, but when she brought the cup to her lips, her whole head quivered with nerves. She waited until Mrs. Deinum took a sip herself to steady the cup with her other hand and swallow a drop before she set the cup down again, still using both hands.

Mrs. Deinum shifted her weight in her chair. She was forever rearranging herself, patting her hair, fingering a broach or a button. “Goodness knows I don’t want to fall ill either, and those fevers are catching. But maybe for a few minutes we can chat. So, tell me, how is your
moeder
?”

“
Goet
.”

“And your sister? Does she have a young man?”

Leen shook her head. For a second she was distracted by the thought of Tine with a beau. But that lasted just a moment before she was back to panic. She contemplated spilling the tea, just to empty the cup and get out of there. But then she’d have to clean it. Mrs. Deinum wouldn’t think she was
that
sick to clean it herself.

The kitchen’s rear door opened and Mr. Deinum came in, his back bent to them as he reached out to catch the door before it blew in the wind. “
Ver domme
! Damn wind.”

“Leen is here,” Mrs. Deinum said, feigning a smile.

“Sorry, I didn’t see you,” he said to Leen, ignoring his wife’s covert reminder to watch the swearing. Even from the door Leen could see his eyes were bloodshot. When Leen arrived at the house at 7:30 he’d been awake for hours already to knead ropy knobs of dough, keeping up the same pace even though the
bakkerij
’s ordered shelves carried half of what they used to. He put his coat on the back of a chair, the muscles of his forearms wrinkling under his skin. Mrs. Deinum immediately got up and put his coat on the hook next to the door. Leen wasn’t sure if she should be relieved to see him; normally she quite liked his company, but that would make watching his disappointment at learning of her crime that much worse.

“They bombed Huesden,” Mr. Deinum said. He sat down heavily and rubbed his hands together.

“Oh,” Mrs. Deinum said. “Well. Huesden. So they did.” She poured him a cup of tea, and Leen drank hers, still shaking. She’d never been to Huesden, never been anywhere, but she’d seen maps. The Netherlands was so small, nothing was truly far away.

“Tante Gaatske, she lives in Huesden. She is 78. My only living aunt. How long has it been since we’ve seen her?” Mr. Deinum stared at the floor as he asked this.