The next morning, sitting in the warm sunshine outside of the café Les Deux Magots, I tell Edouard everything. The light is -extraordinary—soft and bright and perfectly golden. I see it, but I don’t feel it; in my mind I’m in Leyde and the weather is dark and ominous, threatening rain.
“The Haanstra School for Girls was where I learned to reinvent myself,” I say quietly. I think of the director, Heer Haanstra. A large sweaty man with fleshy jowls. His long mustache looked like two ivory tusks. I thought of him as the “Walrus.” On my arrival, he studied me, trying to make out the shape of my body beneath my mourning dress. And although my aunt had telegrammed in advance, he gave me the impression that he was unaware that I was meant to join his school. “I was afraid that if I didn’t impress him, he would put me out in a strange city, so I told him I was born in Caminghastate.”
Edouard frowns.
“It was a game my father and I used to play: Papa would pretend that I was born in the castle, to nobility. That we both had power and status.”
“Your father taught you this?”
“My father was full of dreams. I loved them, once.”
I think of how my father used to call me his Scarlet Princess and how, on my sixth birthday, he built me a miniature bokkenwagen. He painted it red and bought two goats and two shiny gold -harnesses to pull it. My whole family stood outside to watch as I flipped the reins and the goats took off, charging out the arched gates of 28 Groote Kerkstraat. “Before he abandoned us, he owned a shop that sold the finest hats in Leeuwarden.” Edouard is nodding and I wonder if he can see it the way I can. The largest shop on the nicest street in town. “But the September when I was thirteen,” I say, “he invested in the stock market. By that November we had nothing.”
“And then your mother passed away.”
“Yes. She died of a broken heart.” And so, I think, did Margaretha Zelle. “I was sent to Leyde and—reluctantly—the school’s director agreed to take me on.”
I’d followed him down a whitewashed hall and my heart beat so loud I could hear it in my ears. There were children crying and little boys chasing after girls with paint on their hands. He took me to a room with fifteen beds. White sheets, white walls, white curtains. As if the school wanted the history of their girls whitewashed right out of them. He told me to put my things away and that I could join the other girls for dinner. “I owned so few things that they fit into an overnight bag. I had the outfit I was wearing, a worn birthday dress, a photo of my family, and a silk scarf my father brought me from the Indies.”
“And you think buying things now will make up for that time of deprivation.”
I stare across my coffee at Edouard.
“It’s not unusual,” he says softly. “You’re not the first and you won’t be the last. But all the spending in the world—it can’t bring your family back.”
“No.” And it can’t change the past, I think. As soon as the Walrus disappeared the other girls came upstairs to change out of one black dress into another.
“What’s your name?” one asked. She had porcelain blue eyes and soft blonde ringlets. A daughter my aunts could have loved.
“Margaretha Zelle. But I am called M’greet.”
“Adda Groot. Nice to make your acquaintance, M’greet. Have you met Mrs. Van Tassel yet?”
“Who is Mrs. Van Tassel?”
“She’s the one who trains us.” She looks me up and down. “She doesn’t like girls who are untidy or idiots.” She leans closer and speaks in my ear, “That’s why she doesn’t like Hendrika Ostrander.” Adda nods slightly, indicating a heavyset girl across the room who is wearing a dirty cap. “They get the worst jobs.”
I don’t want to ask, but I have to know. “What are the worst jobs?”
“Washing down the toilets,” she says, without hesitation. She grimaces. “After twenty-five children have used them.” Then she says, “Most of us have been here for two years, except for her.” She flicks her eyes to a girl at the very far end of the room. “Clara’s only been here for three months. She didn’t like the man her parents wanted her to marry, so she was sent here. As punishment.”
If my aunts had found me a husband, I’d have married him. No matter who he was.
“Did the other girls treat you well?” Edouard asks. “Were they welcoming to you?”
I think back. “They were. I wanted them to like me—I wanted to impress them. I told them I was born in Caminghastate and that my mother had died giving birth to me. That one day my beloved papa and I were out riding when he grabbed his chest and collapsed. The doctors did everything they could, but he was gone. The last part was true, at least.”