Lightning struck a hundred times, so near that it sizzled, the children gasping with each bolt. I pictured it striking the tent pole and frying me in place.
I thought of Moeder and the turpentine, and Oupa dealing with his thumb hanging loose without ever a word. I leaned in harder as the wind pushed the pole against me. I thought of little David, in the Dickens book, toiling in a warehouse at only ten. My feet slipped by bits through the night, stopping my heart every time, once awakening me from a quick sleep when I was nearly to my knees before I recovered.
I thought of Bina’s working chants, making it all go easier, time passing in the lines of a song rather than in minutes. I started humming, trying to harmonize with the wind. I could not look back at the children or the old woman but knew they were looking at me, all of them, willing me to be strong.
And then it stopped, near dawn. I could not feel my feet or my hands, but everything else throbbed, so that I could hear my pulse in my neck. And above that pounding, the rhythmic wheezing of the children’s struggling breaths.
AN UNNATURAL CALM FOLLOWED the torment of the night. I finally unclenched and tried to rub the knots from the muscles I had strained for so many hours. I restaked and tightened the ropes on the Van Zyl tent so that it would stand and then did the same with ours, pushing through air that still crackled with so much electricity that my hair sprouts stood out. Because we had loosened the ropes, the water had sluiced away from our tent and the inside was moist but not too thick with mud. I rolled into my blanket and shivered myself to sleep for a few hours.
When I woke, I was blind. Struck blind by God for my sins. Had I not paid a just penance through this awful night? I rubbed my face with still-throbbing hands, and dim light returned to my world. Mud had dried to my face and crusted over my lids while I slept. Relishing sight, I rose to fetch water. Queues would be long at the pump station, and it was barely above freezing.
I looked for my shoe outside the tent, but there was no sign of it. Walking with one shoe kept me off balance, and I considered taking the other off, too. But the mud that seeped between my toes was so cold that my foot went numb again. At some points I sank halfway to my knees.
The deluge had made the pump water a thick brown. The weight of the mud on my skirt threatened to pull it off. The families were awake when I returned, buckets half-empty from water spilling over the edges when I lost my footing.
Moeder sorted through the family’s bedding, stretching blankets out with Willem holding one end, flapping them to dry them quicker. Cee-Cee was still asleep in a tight bundle.
“Moeder?” I tilted my head toward the Van Zyl tent.
“Of course.”
The children quaked under sodden blankets, probably colder than if they had been naked. Ouma van Zyl stood but looked to be asleep with open eyes. Children gasped and then shivered, repeating the cycles. But they smiled at me.
“Can’t get these things dry,” she said.
The rain had stopped, but there was no sun, and nowhere to dry the bedding. Ouma van Zyl was helpless, and the children in piteous condition—no, perilous condition.
“Here. . . .” I scooped up armfuls of heavy blankets, leaving just one for the children. Within minutes I had shaken them and spread them on the closest fence, exposing them to the soft wind. It would take hours, but better than leaving them inside.
Women stared at me as I walked back to the Van Zyls.
“Where are they?” Ouma van Zyl asked.
“Drying on the fence.”
“Will the guards punish me?”
“No . . . you had nothing to do with it. I can say they’re mine.”
I gestured to the children. “How will they make it through without dry blankets? Maybe you should get them to the hospital.”
“The Death Tent?” she whispered.
“At least it might be dry there,” I said, but I could not force her, and the children were sick enough that I knew it would be unfair to ask Moeder and the Huiseveldts to pull in tighter and allow them to stay with us.
“I’ll go keep watch over your things in case a guard sees them. At least we can leave them out there until then. . . . It will be something.”
“You should be wearing shoes, child,” she yelled.
“The mud stole the one,” I replied on my way out.
“You’ll freeze.”
“Too late.”
It took an hour for a guard walking rounds to see the blankets and demand answers. If somebody had to discover them, I had hoped that it would be Maples. I could have reasoned with him. Perhaps he could have done something, overlooked it for a while. But it was a guard I had not seen. I could only hope it was not one alerted to our status with the commandant.
“I put them there,” I volunteered when he approached. “Sick children need dry blankets.”
“You know the rules—get them down.”
“It’s against the rules to dry wet blankets?”
“On the fence, it is—you know it is. The rules are posted everywhere.”
“I can’t read.”
“You were told when you got here.”
“I was sick with fever and could not hear when we got here.”
“Get them down. . . . Can you hear that?”
“They’re wet. . . . Where else can we get them out of the mud?”
“Your problem.”
Ignorance didn’t work; defiance was next.
“And if I don’t?”
“You’ll go into confinement. We have that here, too, you know. Or is that another of the things you don’t know?”
“I’m already confined.”
“I said ‘confinement’ . . . something for special offenders.”
“Can’t be much worse,” I said.
“You’ll be able to judge for yourself. Let us know what you think after a few days.”
“Are you trying to frighten me?”
“Just warning you.”
“I would welcome isolation. Isolation would be a holiday from the woman in our tent.”
“Oh, without access to the latrine?”
I laughed. “This whole camp is a latrine.”
“We can arrange punishments beyond that,” he said, deepening his tone. “Afraid now?”
“I fear God.” I stood as tall as possible until I realized that it made my bare foot visible. I had been numb long enough that they had stopped throbbing.
“You fear more than that.”
“Well, yes, I do; I fear my oupa at times . . . but not the British. Not you, not your soldiers.”
“Do you want to tell that to the commandant?”
That was an option I did not want to hear. But it made it clear the guard did not know of our “relationship” with the commandant.
“Do you want to tell him that you’re putting a child in confinement because you can’t scare her well enough?”
“He doesn’t care. Trust me, he does not care.”
“Good, then take me to the commandant’s tent,” I said, risking a bluff. “And I’ll tell him that three sick children are about to die because they were not allowed to dry their blankets . . . and you were to blame.”
“Fine.”
“I want to see him . . . to look in his eyes. I want him to personally decide to put me in jail for the offense of drying wet blankets for sick children. I want to look at his desk, to see how big it is, to make sure I’ll have room to lay out three dead children on it.”