“Put yourself in order,” she said to us. “And try to get some sleep.”
Sleep? Not likely. Put myself in order? Yes. Just as Moeder had. Prepare for tomorrow. Quiet the voices. Focus. Tante Hannah knew how: create a wall of concentration against the invasion of thoughts.
Put myself in order: Yes. Freeze the images worth saving, like photographs fixed on paper, so that the good ones might be unchanged by time. But there was so little worth saving. The time inside the tent, time pacing the fence line, days that felt like the endless rows of tents themselves. We were restricted by the fences but imprisoned more by the infinite sameness. Discard that image.
Try, too, to forget Moeder’s eyes. The look of them as she tended Cee-Cee would otherwise haunt. Had her eyes retreated, backing away from the things they’d seen? And the vessels that burst that day at the fence line were now a jagged web. But she remained unbending as the tent pole. That was the image to preserve.
Mevrou Huiseveldt wore her discontent like a coat she never removed. If I saved her image at all, it would be this: as sour as she continued to be, she had never once complained of an ailment since Klaas’s death.
Willem was simple: I kept seeing him standing in front of the line of Tommies, viewed in profile, so thin, but with his jaw clenched so hard I could watch the muscles holding it tight. He was the image of defiance, even if foolishly so.
Janetta had been gone for months, yet I thought of her every day, thought of our walks, thought about her light breath on my cheek. And because it was her boldness that had introduced us to Maples, thinking of her made me think of him . . . his eyes . . . his red hair, which no longer offended me. I thought of him when I smelled the Dickens book. I thought of his way of speaking. . . . I heard him talking to me. . . . I heard him sigh. . . .
No . . . that was Cee-Cee.
“Moeder?”
“Go back to sleep,” she said in the tone she used when praying. I would not bother them, perhaps she could rest. Moeder’s voice calmed me. She hummed then and sang in whispers, the wind against the canvas muting most of it. I leaned closer to hear. It was “The Eagle Hymn,” the one that Cee-Cee loved most. . . . On eagles’ wings we soar. . . . Moeder had remembered. I smiled. There was an image to save: the depth of a mother’s love that the vulture women would never understand.
Inspired by her, I prayed for the little one. I vowed to devote my days to her when she was better. I would finish Dickens with her. She had been good with her letters and would be writing soon. I would get more sheets of rules for her to start drawing on. We would walk and hug, and I would share my food with her because she was so thin. . . . No, discard that image.
But how to purge the image of her bones? How had I not noticed earlier? I felt my wrist. I did not imagine I had much meat there, anyway, even before, but my fingers easily went all the way around. We were all wasting. My soreness in the mornings might have been because there was so little now between my bones and the ground. I thought of my body’s being ground down, day by day, and sifted into the soil at night.
Even this taking-stock process was exhausting, as thoughts refused to be marshaled, running loose, beyond control, grinding against one another, the friction and pressure creating heat. Breathing was like sucking syrupy air into my lungs, and every exhalation was steamy, and the tent swelled because of it. The top of the tent lost its point and grew round, and we all panted, sucking in thick air and exhaling steam. The canvas expanded and lifted up. . . . The tent ropes hummed . . . higher, more a whistle now, and the lines snapped like slingshots. . . . We rose, slowly at first, just inches above the ground, and then we were free . . . floating above the camp . . . the tent now round and white in the night sky. And below, the other tents pointed like shark teeth. I looked to Moeder and Willem, and they were swelling, too, and panting hot air, and we needed to keep exhaling or we’d be sucked back to earth, back to camp. Panting . . . panting . . . rising . . . never daring to look down. . . . We rose into the cooler air, and even as we did, I knew I was hallucinating, but it helped me finally float toward sleep.
MOEDER WHISPERED LOUDLY ENOUGH to stir me but no one else in the tent.
“Lettie, light the candle.”
Not again, poor Cee-Cee.
Moeder held her on her lap.
“Oh no, Mama, no.”
Moeder touched the tight curls.
“Ceec.”
She opened her eyes when I said her name. They closed slowly and she released a raspy sigh.
I leaned over her and breathed in the tiny puff of air she had exhaled. I sucked in as much as I could, taking it deeply and holding it there, willing it into my blood. Hold it, hold it, hold it. I thought of Cee-Cee when she was a new baby, and when I held her hands and helped her walk toward Vader, and how we played and sang. Her breath was in my blood.
Hold it, hold it. I thought of the look of excitement in her eyes when I told her stories.
Hold it. Hold. . . . I wilted against the cot and had to exhale. The next breath carried only the scent of moldy canvas, fouled bedding, and the rest of us living in this small, miserable place.
Moeder lifted Cee-Cee’s little arms from her sides to rest across her chest, the bones like brittle twigs in a loose paper bundle. The tent shuddered from a gust. Mevrou Huiseveldt snored without concern.
I shivered, and that awakened my morning hunger. But the smells soured it into nausea. Moeder pulled Cee-Cee up against her chest and rocked her, whispering something I could not hear against the fluttering canvas. Maybe it was a prayer or a song. I waited until she finished.
“What do we do, Moeder?”
“Maak ’n plan,” she said. She sniffed at the air. “The wind should dry things and I can get to the reservoir to wash her dress,” she said.
I thought of Cee-Cee’s good dress and the times she’d worn it. I cried and did not care whom it woke.
“Lettie . . . calm . . . God’s will,” Moeder said. “God’s will. . . . Never doubt. . . . Not a sparrow falls without his blessing.”
“Not a sparrow falls,” I repeated. Cee-Cee seemed exactly like a frail bird. But how did we let her fall? I bent to hug her and kiss her forehead.
“Pray for her soul,” she said.
I mouthed words toward Cee-Cee but could not say them aloud without sobbing.
“Aletta, you have to get to the coffin maker. . . . If you’re early, he might have wood today,” she said. “If not, try to find some.”
I stood, touched her shoulder and then her cheek. I heard that the Pienaars had buried their little boy in a cloth shroud because there was no wood.
“Yes, Ma.”
“Go.”