“Checking on Cecelia.” She used her full given name.
She had not been noticeably unwell, but her little bird-chirp voice had grown softer, with a catch in it at times. She did not complain, and there were no symptoms to consider. Not really. How do you distinguish daily fatigue and hunger from something more serious? She gradually took to coughing a bit more and playing with her doll quietly in the tent. She was not as interested in my stories or songs. And when she did come close and want to hear them, they did not bring out her usual joyfulness. I was ashamed I hadn’t noticed.
Another match flash. I saw my shadow on the tent wall. Moeder hummed. Sleep was no longer an option.
It had come on fast, in the past few days, with diarrhea leading to fever.
The scrape of another match. Cee-Cee’s head rested on Moeder’s lap.
When the fever took hold, Cee-Cee stopped taking food, only some beef tea, and then she had appetite for nothing. Moeder had not left the tent, and I was gone only for rations and water. This was not the togetherness I had planned. The weight of that guilt added to the cargo I already scarcely shouldered.
“Moeder . . . wait.” From under my blankets, near my journal and books, I withdrew the package. “Here . . . I have a candle now.”
“Where?”
“I found it.”
“You found it wrapped in paper?”
“Found it like that . . . yes.”
“Aletta? They could probably take us in for having this.” Relief in having the candle overcame her worries and curiosity. “Light it . . . now. Let’s try to clean her up a bit.”
Under the steady light, Moeder examined Cee-Cee and then shook Willem awake.
“Willem . . . Willem.”
It took several shakes to rouse him.
“What?”
“Go find the dominee,” she said.
“Where?
“I don’t know. . . . Find his tent.”
“Lettie can go.”
“I need her here,” she said.
“He’ll be asleep.”
“Wake him if you have to.”
He looked at me through half-closed eyes, trying to read how worried he should be. I tilted my head toward the door. Cee-Cee had heard Moeder send for the preacher.
“What now, Ma?” she asked.
“We’re going to get you pretty for a visitor.”
Her eyes closed and the sockets were made ghostly by the shadows of her cheekbones and brow. We had no soap to wash her.
It was the first time I had looked at Moeder in this light, too, and her face was nearly as gaunt as Cee-Cee’s, with smoky gray circles around deepening eyes. Those eyes widened as she opened Cee-Cee’s clothes. Cee-Cee’s skin looked dark even by candlelight. I could count each rib, perhaps every bone. Her feet and knees seemed too large, with so little meat to cover the spindly bones of her legs. I had hugged her tightly during story time only a week before and could not believe her decline in so few days.
Moeder wiped her with a dry cloth, and skin sloughed in dark nuggets.
“Help me roll her over.”
“This won’t hurt, sissy,” I said. “Give me Lollie and I’ll take care of her.”
I put her doll on the side of the cot and helped support her shoulders as she turned. The blades beneath felt thin and sharp, and I feared snapping a bone if we weren’t delicate in her handling. The nodes of her spine could be counted, and we could see her hip bones clearly through the slack skin of her buttocks, which were flared red.
I could not look, and focused directly on her face, and petted her hair. “Would you like the dominee to tell you a story?”
She nodded and smiled with one side of her mouth, her lips dry white.
“Jairus’s daughter,” Moeder said. “The dominee will know that one from memory.”
As Moeder cleaned her, Cee-Cee and I looked into each other’s eyes. I tried to make mine as calm as I could by thinking peaceful thoughts. She squeezed hers tightly whenever Moeder rubbed a tender spot.
Willem returned with the dominee in less than half an hour. The man who had led us in psalms and hymns that night in the big tent draped his wet coat on the cot frame as Moeder covered Cecelia with a sheet.
“Who do we have here?”
“Cecelia,” Moeder said. “Our little lamb.”
“Well, isn’t she just,” he said, touching her hair.
He read a prayer of blessing and looked to Moeder to see whether that had been enough, and whether it had been presented with the proper gravity. I worried that more would frighten her.
“I think she would like to hear the story of Jairus’s daughter,” Moeder said.
The dominee understood.
He sat on the edge of the bed and told her of Jairus, whose daughter was very sick. So sick, in fact, that they sent for Jesus to bless her. Jesus was delayed, and when he arrived, he was told that the little girl had just expired. When the dominee said the word “expired,” it was as if he were talking about some food that had gone bad rather than the end of a human life.
“But fret not,” he added quickly.
As if angry at himself for being delayed, Jesus chased the family from the room and was alone with the girl.
“Jesus took her hand, and he said, ‘Little girl, I say to you, arise.’ And the little girl was not dead; she got up and walked.”
Cecelia had been listening with closed eyes. When she smiled, it pulled her lips tight. She rested.
“Have you taken her to the hospital?” the dominee asked Moeder.
She shook her head forcefully. The idea of Cee-Cee’s going to the hospital broke something in me, and I had to leave.
“Be strong for your sister, and don’t cry in front of her,” the dominee said, holding me by the shoulder near the tent door. “I tended a boy last night who told his mother a thing I’ll never forget. You should both hear this.”
I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. I didn’t care whether he saw me.
“This little one had been sick a long time. . . . He said that he’d decided he was happy to go live with Jesus, because living here with us was too hard.”
“But she’ll . . . get . . . better,” I said, having to suck in air between words.
He put his palm on the crown of my head.
From the door of our tent, we heard a voice. “Ah, true love.”
We turned to see black-hooded faces peering inside the door flap.
“Regrets,” the dominee said. “They seem to follow me, especially at night.”
The vultures.
“Tend your sister,” Moeder said to me, and she stepped through the tent flap. She had thoughts to share with women who believed they had a place with us at this time. I knew she felt they were beneath her scorn, but she was generous with it, anyway. I heard scuffling, and as I moved to the door, she stepped back in.
“The dominee chased them off,” she said, disappointed.
Her face was brilliant red, and she held a torn black kappie in her hand.
WITHIN MINUTES, MOEDER SOMEHOW put a lid on her boiling emotions and assumed control. She positioned her lap beneath Cee-Cee’s head and prepared to blow out the candle.