“It’s a balaclava . . . because I’ll need it in the cold. She still doesn’t understand the Southern Hemisphere.”
There was so much I had prepared to tell him, about Cee-Cee and her final days, but he gave me no room to start. I handed him my note to Tante Hannah. I no longer scanned the area for suspicious guards or women or the commandant’s spies. I didn’t care anymore. Take me, isolate me. . . . It would make the day different from the last.
“You should be happy she sent it.”
“I am . . . but I won’t need it for months. She thinks it’s about to turn cold here.”
“You’ll be happy you have it . . .” I was going to say “next July,” but I did not want to think of the British still being here next winter. It had been almost two years.
“I still have a hard time thinking about the heat of Christmas and the snow in July,” he said. “That doesn’t seem right.”
“You have your right, we have ours.”
“I suppose,” he said. “You’d have the same troubles if you visited England. Do you think you’ll ever visit? . . . We could take you around.”
Visit England? Of course . . . I’ll attend school there . . . Oxford . . . Cambridge. . . . Wait . . . he said “we” could take you around. We? Betty would be with him? No, I did not need this Betty to show me the sights of Great Britain. He’s going to have to learn to get over Betty.
“I want to go to England to see the stars. It’s a different sky there, did you know?”
“Uh . . . hadn’t thought about that,” he said. “I suppose that’s true.”
“I want to someday see the Great Bear, the constellation that points to the north . . . a ship captain’s best friend, my oupa . . . my grandfather . . . told me.”
“Does he know sailing?”
“Learned of it . . . stars and such . . . from his grandfather, who used to sail around the world.”
“Dutch?”
“Yes . . . Dutch . . . great sailors.”
“We had wars with the Dutch . . . at some point,” he said. “I was never that sharp with history.”
“You’ve had wars with everyone.”
“Well . . . not everyone.”
“You have a history of taking over other people’s countries,” I said. “You could point at a map with your eyes closed and hit one of them.”
“That’s why they call it an empire,” he said, thrusting his shoulders back.
“And you’re doing it for their good. . . . They’re all so happy to be part of your empire,” I said.
“They’re better for it, most of them,” he said.
“Yes, you can see how much happier we’ve been since you came here. It’s such a privilege to have you, and it will be nice of you to take all that gold out of our way. It has been so bothersome.”
“Right . . . and your people . . . your history?”
“We keep moving to get away from people like the British, people who think it’s their business to tell us what to do . . . how to live,” I said. “We don’t invade every chance we get.”
“So there was nobody here when your people came this way?”
“No, it was wide open.”
“Nobody?” He thrust out his jaw as a challenge.
“Just the natives.”
“Exactly.”
“Wait . . .”
“And your people had rifles and they had, what, spears?”
“I don’t know what they had . . . but that was different.”
“Oh? Did you take their land?”
He pressed in.
“They weren’t . . . like us,” I said. “They weren’t really farmers.”
“Did you take their land . . . maybe kill some of them?”
“There were wars . . . and they attacked . . .”
“Where were you when they attacked . . . on land that had been theirs?”
“We were trying to . . .”
“Oh . . . were they happy you showed up? Did they welcome you? I doubt it. See, we’re not so different.”
“You think you can talk . . . with the things the Tommies . . . the things you . . .” I stopped. The war wasn’t his fault. What difference did it make now?
“I know . . . I know,” he said. He put his hands out; he did not want to argue, either. “It’s just all bad . . . and getting worse.”
“Worse?”
He leaned in, lowering his voice. After having been called a spy several times, I finally felt like one. As he bent close, I noticed I was almost as tall as he was now.
“They’re building blockhouses, connected by barbed wire, and driving the Boers into the fences.”
I pictured the men and thought of them as sheep, helpless.
“Burning the farms wasn’t enough?”
“They decided your boys could keep this going forever if they wanted,” he said. “Hiding, attacking, hiding . . . being a nuisance. They might never win the war, but they win in some ways just by keeping it going. There’s some that won’t ever quit. And that would mean we’d be here forever.”
“The Bitter-Enders.”
“Right.”
“Won’t give up for anything.”
I knew Vader would be the last man standing if it came to it. He would take on the entire army. Half a million Tommies could surround him. Vader, Oupa, and Schalk would stand with their backs together and their rifles readied.
But to be driven into fences and gunned down? Would the only men left alive be those who had surrendered? What kind of country would that be? Nothing but quitters . . . Hands-Uppers? A whole country of them?
I had to go. I was fearful for the men but also sick at myself for not having stopped all this war talk and told him about Cee-Cee. I wanted to tell somebody about her. I wanted Maples to know about her. I wanted his comfort, his sympathy. But I decided I should get to the hospital as quickly as possible. I was dying.
Dearest Lettie,
I’m so deeply sorry. I’m sure there was nothing you could have done. She needed medical attention, and even that might not have been enough. Cee-Cee loved you more than anything.
I will tell you how I dealt with emotional losses. I embroidered. It caused me to focus on something that wasn’t my grief. Perhaps your writing or your notes or your books would help you.
Because you will be wondering what I know about loss, I will tell you something no one else in the world knows . . . not even Oom. I’ve known the loss of a child. Four children. Four who were never born. One who died before he could breathe air; three others who never got that far. I don’t know why. God’s plan for me. I gave them each names and I pray for them every day. Oom knew about the first one, but it broke his heart so much I didn’t tell him about the others. It is not the same as having had Cee-Cee to love for five years, but it is something I feel each day.
Let’s pray for each other, sweet Lettie.
Your loving Tante Hannah