June 1901, Concentration Camp
The words floated out in rippling waves, the way old women with trembling voices try to reach difficult notes in hymns. She must have been new to the tent across the row from ours because I’d never heard singing from that space. Since the evening when we had gathered for hymns, I’d tried to sing a bit but had been shouted down each day. Cee-Cee liked it, Moeder just gained distance, but the rest gave off a howling like jackals over a carcass. To hear the neighbor woman singing—poorly, at that—encouraged me. If I sang in her tent, I might be considered gifted.
A little one ran from the tent and almost struck me as I tried to peek inside.
“Marthinus, come.”
I put a hand on the little boy’s shoulder and led him back into the tent.
“Dankie,” the woman said.
“I’m Aletta.” I pointed to our tent.
“Marghretta van Zyl,” she said.
“I heard you singing.”
“Trying to calm things as I can. . . . It doesn’t seem to work.”
The woman, with three children now arranged around her, was too old to be their mother. I guessed ages and tried to decipher their relationship.
“I’m their ouma,” she explained. “My daughter passed when we were taken.”
I nodded with the sad, knowing look I assumed after I realized the futility of saying “I’m so sorry” to every person I met. It was easier now to mirror our frowns and share head nods without the burden of details. The children were all younger than Willem. Three at seven and under, I guessed.
Another child, the middle in size, crawled behind me and ran from the tent.
“Could you?”
I chased the child, again leading the little one back inside the tent with a hand on her shoulder.
“Agile,” I said.
“Especially compared to me.” Her spine curved forward at the midpoint, leaving her eye to eye with me. I imagined the challenge of her duties, getting water and rations, scraping together meals, laundry . . . all the while trying to keep three little ones from tearing across the camp.
While the children were occupied in a game they created with a string and two twigs, the woman pulled me toward the tent door.
“I should explain; she was killed, actually,” the woman said. “My daughter. She didn’t just pass.”
“British?”
She nodded. I nodded. And we each pinched our lips tight.
“We saw smoke from the next farm over and tried to get away,” she said. “We had the wagon packed and were heading out for some caves we knew of. A few of them came after us. . . . My daughter tried to get the wagon down a spruit to hide in the willows and brush.”
The oldest boy pushed down the youngest, and all three tangled on the ground.
“Pfffffffffttttt,” I said, pointing a finger at them. They turned and sat in place, perhaps unaccustomed to correction from a stranger.
The woman looked surprised.
“Powerful,” I said, looking at the tip of my finger. “Their mother?”
“They couldn’t even see who we were,” she said. “They just started shooting. . . . Missed the children, praise God. . . . Got Emma through the stomach.”
I put a hand on the woman’s shoulder.
“Took two days for her to die,” she said. “The British kept giving her water, which was the worst thing, but it didn’t matter. The main Tommy kept saying he was sorry, that he had no way of knowing we weren’t commandos.”
“They didn’t know who it was, so they decided the best thing to do was just shoot into the trees?”
“That’s what he said . . . and then he blamed it on us,” she said.
“On you?”
“He said, ‘You Hollanders are to blame for us being here,’ and, ‘We wouldn’t have to shoot you if you didn’t run.’ As if they would convince us her death was our fault.”
“The children?”
“Well, they had a chance to say good-bye to her . . . but I hope they will lose the memory of those days.”
“At least you were there for them.”
“I wish it had been me.”
She was so sincere, her sigh an apology for having lived instead of her daughter.
I asked Moeder later if she knew the woman across the way.
“I see her doing laundry sometimes . . . trying to keep three little ones from falling in.”
“Did you know what happened to the mother . . . to the children’s mother?”
“Just talk, nothing from her.”
“The British shot her,” I said. “They were trying to get away and the soldiers shot . . . just fired wildly at their wagon.”
“They didn’t see who it was?”
“Didn’t care . . . two women and three children.”
“I’m sure she wished they’d shot her instead,” Moeder said, echoing the instinct expressed by Ouma van Zyl. It made me think: What if it had been we who ran? What if it had been Moeder who had been shot by the British? How different one bullet fired into the brush could have made life for all of us. We would be here by ourselves, just the three children. I would have to be the mother of our little family, for now and forever, every one of us changed by one pull of the trigger. It seemed so real I felt a weight of responsibility.
“That woman needs help, Ma,” I said.
“Ja,” she said. “You should, Lettie.”
“Water . . . rations . . .”
“Ja . . . however you can help . . . poor woman.”
The next afternoon I introduced Willem to the Van Zyl children, and he and Klaas ran with the oldest boy while I took the two younger children for a walk to give the woman a rest. She asked that I call her Ouma. When it was too cold or rainy, I sat with them in the tent and told them the stories I had made up for Cecelia back on the farm, the ones about pirates and travel and adventure and the big sister who was always there to come to the rescue whenever danger lurked. I thought they could use some fairy tales.
I TRIED TO SPOT Maples from a distance, peering up from my book every paragraph. If another guard was nearby, I turned and walked down a different row and worked my way back a while later when he might be alone. It was natural to look aimless.
Sometimes it seemed as if Maples was watching for me, or maybe it was just his job to look in all directions. If Maples had given me the Dickens book so that he could later say that I stole it from him, it had been several weeks and he surely would have sprung his trap before now. It had been a gift, not a trick. Yet I had to be careful if others were watching. I might approach him, but I never spoke first. If watchers took note, it would always be a matter of my speaking only when spoken to by a uniformed representative of the Crown.
His head was down. He was reading a letter. I needed to just walk past this time. He might be luring me into a trap that could put our whole family in danger. I veered away and noticed his rifle propped against the fence as he read. The war would have been over by now if all Tommies were this lax. He probably thought no woman would rush up and take his rifle. I stored that thought in case we ever needed a weapon to break out or protect ourselves.
Walk past without a word, Lettie. If he doesn’t speak first, he’s not even here, just keep reading.