“You were doing it for my benefit?” she said. “Nonsense.”
“Since I don’t have a school to go to, I have talked a few times with a British guard about educational things . . . books . . . geography . . . that sort of thing.”
Silence. I knew what she was thinking.
“No, that’s not it, Ma, he’s not handsome . . . not at all . . . a boy, really, not much older than Schalk. And short. I’ve been learning about British culture . . . and Dickens. . . . That’s where I got the Dickens book.”
She looked at me with a strained focus I hadn’t seen directed my way before, and when I finished my explanation she said the most punishing words I could have heard.
“I trusted you.”
Not stones, these words, but daggers. I did not change my expression or breathing, but my eyes filled immediately. I would not look away from her. I deserved this. She had trusted me and I had failed. She expected more of me. She thought I could be as strong as she was, but I knew I never could. And she could probably never understand that.
“I wanted to let you get out . . . meet girls your age . . . walk . . . read. . . . I felt you earned that . . . but this?”
“I did walk and read, and I met Janetta.”
“The British are the enemy. . . . Have you forgotten? Think about what they’ve done . . . what they’re doing.”
“Moeder, he hates his army and this war as much as we do,” I said. “He says so all the time. He sympathizes with us.”
“We don’t want his sympathy. We want him gone. He has a rifle, doesn’t he? He’s a camp guard, isn’t he?”
She stopped, inhaled so deeply her chest rose, and turned in a slow circle around me, like an animal studying my weakness.
“I want you to answer this: What would your father say? What would your brother say?”
“I know . . . and Oupa.”
“The British are trying their best to kill your father and brother,” she said. “This man, this boy, this guard . . . he would shoot at them . . . and probably at us.”
I looked into her eyes, my own as wide as I could make them, trying without words to communicate how sorry I was. But getting to know Maples had been the only good thing about this camp.
“He gave me the potato,” I said. “He gave us the potato.”
I thought it would calm her, but she looked stricken.
“Ma, the potato . . . remember the potato? . . . He didn’t have to do that. . . . He took a risk . . . to help us. . . . He could be an . . . an . . . ally.”
“He’s the enemy,” she shouted. “We don’t take anything from enemies.”
“He might help get a message to the men if we needed . . . get more food for us.”
“Or he could report us.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“If it was to his benefit, he would.”
“The potato . . . he could have eaten it.”
“But you said you visit with him for the culture . . . books. . . . Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Ja . . . Moeder . . . ja.” She knew. What point lying, now? “Mostly.”
“How long?”
“Not long.”
“If you know so much about his character, you’ve already spent too much time with him,” she said. “If you’ll lie about this, how can I trust you anymore?”
“I’m being smart, Moeder. Maybe he could help us get out, or help us get transferred to a better camp . . . or a better tent. . . . They can do those things. . . . It happens,” I said, slanting my eyes toward Mevrou Huiseveldt. “It’s smart to use him. It’s what the men are doing . . . outfoxing the British at every turn. We should, too. We have to be smarter than them. Use them for our good. It’s their weakness, not ours.”
I had not even rehearsed these points; they were born of pressure. I could tell Moeder listened when I mentioned using them, outsmarting them.
“I have to think,” she announced, and she went back to her sewing. She looked up a time or two and shook her head at me. I should have told her sooner. It would have been different if I could have worked into it. She would have respected my honesty. Maybe.
“And did you visit with him when you were fetching water?” She broke the silence with an accusing tone.
“I was getting water. . . . I was . . . always . . . but I sometimes walked past him. . . . We started talking about books and things.”
She didn’t speak for hours. I stewed in bubbling guilt, thinking about all she had done, all she had been through. She had believed in me; she had trusted me. Can a person ever regain that?
“Where is he?” she said. It had been so long since she had spoken that it took me a few moments to understand.
“Who?”
“Show me.”
“What?”
“Him . . . the guard.”
“I don’t know. . . . How would I know?”
She glared.
“Fine.”
I prayed he would not be at his usual station as I led her in that direction.
He saw us coming.
“Peace,” he said.
“You teach him that?” she asked me.
“Private Maples . . . this is my mother.”
“Mrs. Venter? Hello, I’m Thomas Maples,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”
“I see no reason for you to talk to my daughter.”
“I only—”
“I don’t want to hear your explanations. Stay away from her.”
“We only—”
“I don’t want you talking to her.”
“Ma, I thought—”
“Did Aletta tell you that your men threatened to shoot her younger brother? Did she tell you about her little sister?”
“I know. . . . I’m so sorry.”
“Did she tell you about the commandant threatening us for no reason? Stay away from my daughter. You see her coming, you walk away.”
“But I have places I have to be,” Maples said. “Or I’ll get brought up.”
“Fine, stay here then. It means I will have no trouble finding you if I need to come after you. You should be ashamed.”
“I am,” he said. “I am ashamed. I hate it. I hate being here. I hate guarding women. I hate everything about it. Nothing you could say could make it worse than it is.”
He brought both hands to his chest.
“If I could go back and not join . . . yes . . . I would do that,” he continued. “I would never come here. I would work in a mill and never pick up a rifle my whole life.”
He took the rifle off his shoulder and held it out to her as if to make it a present: “Take it.”
Moeder was speechless, disarmed. I knew he had shot at our men and he had burned farms, but he was just a boy. I felt sorry for him. God may grant forgiveness, but I doubted Moeder was of that mind. I was surprised when she did not take the rifle and shoot him dead.
“I don’t want you talking to her,” she said. “Do you understand?”
She took my arm and turned us back toward the tent.
“Moeder, he said I remind him of his little sister.”
“You’re Schalk’s little sister, and you’re only fourteen.”
“Moeder, I’m not thinking about—”
“You’re lying again, but it doesn’t matter what you’re thinking. It matters what he’s thinking.”
“Moeder, he has a girlfriend back home . . . Betty. . . . He loves her, he told me. . . . He tells me that all the time.”