Moeder and Tante Hannah, at opposite ends of the table, packed for their husbands. Ouma Wilhelmina prepared Gideon’s things, even though their relationship was only a suspicious sharing of time at family gatherings. I took my place at the middle of the long table and readied to pack for my brother.
Bina cinched the tops of the rusk sacks once they were filled and piled them near the door. Then she hefted a large sugar bag to the center of the table.
“Coffee then,” mother said. “Salt, tobacco . . .”
“Biltong?” I asked. I knew they would expect biltong.
“Oupa will handle that,” Mother said. Oupa guarded his secrets for seasoning and curing the biltong, and he would distribute the dried, spicy meat when he was ready, in portions he deemed appropriate.
Across the table, Ouma Wilhelmina pulled her pipe from the pocket of her skirt. “I’ve done this before, you know,” she said. “Packed for war.”
“Moeder,” Tante Hannah tried to interrupt. “We have so much to do . . .”
“I should be packing for my own man, but this is all that’s left,” Wilhelmina said, raising the pipe in front of her and then toward each of us around the table. “Did you know that, Aletta? This is what I got back after my husband went to fight: his pipe.”
She slid it back to the corner of her mouth, into the indentation formed by years of smoking.
“A pipe . . . that’s all,” she said. “I never even learned where they buried him. They wouldn’t tell me where. . . . They were so afraid that I’d go out there and get myself killed. He went with the other men to save us from the thieving devils. We had to fight off the raiders who kept stealing our stock. Had to stop them before they took everything. My Izak killed half a dozen of them himself.”
Wilhelmina held the pipe out for further examination, fingers on the bowl, pointing with the mouthpiece, which had been gnawed ragged. “Made of a bone from an ostrich foot. He carved it himself . . . not another like it.”
We rarely saw her without it, and the teeth on that side of her mouth looked rusted.
“Had it in his mouth when he took wounds from three of the kaffirs’ assegais,” she said. “Three of them. Three. He kept firing when the first spear went through the meat of his side. Another went in his leg . . .”
“Moeder!” Tante Hannah raised her voice, but Ouma Wilhelmina kept looking at me as she pointed with her pipe to parts of her body to illustrate her Izak’s wounds.
“The first two spears didn’t stop him. He didn’t even try to pull them out. Just kept shooting. He killed another one before they threw the spear that went right through the front of his throat.”
She removed the pipe and pointed at the hollow place between the cords rising at the front of her neck.
“They said it drove him back, and the spear stuck into the ground . . . pinned him there . . . pipe still in his mouth.”
“Moeder . . .”
Packing stopped.
“Nothing but his pipe came home. . . . Think about that.”
THE FIRST SOUND WAS the stamping of impatient horses, and Oupa’s drumbeat instructions to Tuma. They were leaving for war, and nobody woke me. They’d already had breakfast and coffee, and no one noticed that I wasn’t there? People moved so quickly in the kitchen that they bounced off one another. Tante Hannah carried Cee-Cee on her hip. Bina cleared breakfast as Tuma backed out the door with supply bags in each hand.
Moeder directed it all from the table, crossing items from her list. Her hair was pinned up and she wore her brooch at the neck of her Sunday dress.
I had barely cleared my head of night fog when everyone emptied onto the stoep.
I heard the call of the piet-my-vrou. Oupa mimicked the bird’s three-note call. “Almost time to plant,” he said to Moeder. “If we’re not home soon, put Bina to the plow.”
The men wore their felt hats and suit coats, ammunition belts across their chests like sashes, the cartridges longer than my fingers, aligned in perfect military order. The four of them were mounted in a line, the stages of man: Oupa with his thick gray beard, Vader’s beard brown and waved, Sarel’s beard lighter, and Schalk’s with its wisps descending only at the jawline and invisible above his mouth. The first burst of sunlight caused them all to stand out in silhouette.
“Every man a hero,” Oom Sarel said.
“No heroes,” Gideon said. “Just proud Boers.”
“I mean . . . his divine favor will guide our steps,” Sarel said.
“Amen,” Vader added.
I thought of Ouma Wilhelmina’s stories and worried over their leaving.
“We have been chosen for his purpose,” Oupa said. “Lord, redeem me from the oppression of men that I may obey your precepts.”
Bina lifted her eyes to Tuma.
“Psalm twenty-five.” Oupa removed his hat and recited the verses from memory.
“To you, oh Lord, I lift up my soul. . . . Oh my God, let me not be put to shame; let not my enemies exult over me.”
The horses mouthed their bits as if trying to recite the psalm. Cecelia cried. Vader opened his eyes at the sound and nodded to Moeder rather than to me. Moeder took her to her hip and bounced her. She stepped between the horses of Vader and Schalk. Vader reached down to run his hand through the little girl’s woolly hair and put his palm on the side of my mother’s head. She leaned into his leg.
“God’s grace,” she said.
She leaned toward Schalk and squeezed his knee.
The men clucked and the horses backed away. I tried to catch Schalk’s eyes, but his hat was pulled low.
My throat swelled shut. Moeder squinted into the sun to follow their path. She was already making plans. I loved that she was strong for us, for me and Willem and Cee-Cee. We watched until the dust from the horses faded.
“Lettie . . . take Cecelia,” she said, turning toward the house. “We have work to do.”
14
March 1901, Concentration Camp
Janetta was so tightly quarantined that I rarely even got responses when I called at the tent door. I used a low voice so as not to disturb Nicolaas in case he was able to rest. I bent near the flap and spoke at intervals with pauses.
“Janetta . . . it’s Lettie.” Nothing.
“Can I do anything to help?” Nothing.
“Can I get you anything?” Nothing.
It was probably for my own good that they did not invite me in. I pictured her inside, tending her brother, hearing my voice but sitting in silence. I considered just walking in, perhaps taking a bucket of water in for them. I thought of writing a note of warm thoughts and well-wishes for Nicolaas. But I had no idea what was the right thing to do. Was there a book somewhere that told you how to act in these times? I looked at others passing in the row; perhaps they knew the family and could tell me how Nicolaas was doing. No one lifted a head to notice me.
“It’s Lettie. . . . Can I be of any help?” I tried again.
“Go away.” It was the voice of a woman, a woman impatient with my questions.