“He’s not a boy, Lettie, he looks like a boy, but he’s not a boy, he’s a soldier, and he’s away from his home and his girl. And he’s British. . . . You cannot trust him.”
She held my face and spoke words between pauses: “He . . . is . . . the . . . enemy.”
“But he told me he would try to help us if he could. Anything. In any way. He has said that often. Any way. And I have proof that he can be trusted.”
We walked without discussion until we neared the tent.
“Go inside,” she said. “And stay there. I have a few more things I need to say to Private Maples.”
I considered following her, sneaking up on them, trying to hear what she was saying, and watching to see whether she would take his rifle and shoot him down and then try to free the camp somehow. Would she finally go mad? Had she already?
IT FLOWED WITHOUT THOUGHT, word after word, another lengthy guilt-fueled confession that was straight from the heart and mostly true. It started with “Moeder, I vow to be better. There are some things I have to tell you . . .”
She responded with the look I’d seen when I was about to pour turpentine on her bloody hands.
I told her about going to the hospital and how I now wanted to become a nurse. I said some idealistic phrases about wanting “to help our people in a time of great need” and “doing God’s work.” And by the way, I would be seeing Tante Hannah there because she was also “doing God’s work.” And I went there in the first place because I had “a health problem that made me think I was dying but I’m not.”
She listened without remark.
“Tante Hannah is not the devil, she’s just married to him, and she is family, and Oupa Gideon taught that nothing is more important than family . . . and . . . I will never again betray your trust.”
“Fine,” she said. One word. I was certain I heard it, but I did not even see her lips move.
“It’s all right?”
“Fine,” she said. “Health problem?”
“Every month.”
“You went to the hospital?”
“Ja, I’m fine . . . just . . . not as fine as I might be.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I opened my mouth to answer but did not. We communicated in silence, just looking into each other’s eyes for a minute. Or maybe it was an hour.
“It’s good they could help you,” she said.
“They just talked to me,” I said. “I met a nurse who was nice and she asked if I wanted to help. Can I help? It would be helping our people . . . helping our little ones.”
“Ja.”
I rushed to her before she could finish, and pressed my cheek to her cheek.
“And if you want to talk to your guard . . . about books . . . that’s fine . . . just not long . . . and only where people can see, but not where too many people can see.”
Was this her first attempt at a joke?
“Wait . . . Ma . . . have you given up on me?”
“No . . . you’re growing up. . . . That happens with or without my permission.”
I WAS PROUD TO defend Tante Hannah to my mother. I could not imagine Tante Hannah’s life with Oom Sarel and the shame she must have felt, all the while knowing that the contempt for him painted her with a stain that might never be washed clean.
If we are who we are through others, as Bina said, who are you when you have no “others”? Who did Tante Hannah have? Oom Sarel? Not really. He had paid her so little attention even before the war. She had no children, no friends. The hospital was a chance to work in the place of greatest need during our most desperate time.
Tante was at the far end of the tent when I entered that afternoon. Nurse Agnes told me she was cleaning the mouths of typhus patients and I should stay away. But I approached and watched from a short distance. She had a pleasant tone with them, as she always did with us. And when they opened their mouths for her to examine, the sight was hideous, lips cracked, gums bleeding, teeth hanging by their nerves.
She saw me and smiled but said nothing until she finished the row and aggressively washed her hands in a basin.
“Hallo, dear.” She hugged me with both arms. “You’re so tall.”
“I just seem that way because I’m thinner,” I said.
“No . . . you’re growing, too.”
She hugged me again and we stepped outside the tent and away from the guards.
“Your note about Cecelia broke my heart,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Your note broke my heart, too,” I said.
Guilt surged again; I no longer had the chance to be close to Cee-Cee. I hugged Tante hard.
“You can talk about it if you want,” she said.
“Not yet.”
She gave me the same look I had perfected in those cases when words were not strong enough to carry the weight of sympathy.
“I didn’t tell you about my working here in a note because of what you might have heard about the hospital tent. We do good here. And I’m glad you’re going to help.”
“I might want to be a nurse.”
“What about being a writer?”
“Maybe . . . still . . .”
“You can do it if you want. . . . You have more to write about now.”
I looked toward the tent.
“Does your mother know you’re here?”
“Ja. She approved it.”
“She did?”
“Said it was fine.”
“That was the word she used? Does she know I’m here?”
“Yes, fine.”
“I’m glad you told her the truth.”
“Of course.”
We nodded in unison. Both of us were afraid of Moeder.
“How is she?”
I tried to think of the perfect description. Grieving silently. Planning. Plotting.
“Unbowed,” I said. That was the word I’d arrived at years ago, and it was only more fitting.
“Always,” Hannah said. “But you’re still worried about her?”
“I shouldn’t talk about it.”
The tent emitted a groan, and we moved farther from the door.
“No, you shouldn’t,” she said. “But I should.”
I considered how important Tante Hannah was to me, and how much had been shared through our brief notes, but I would always defend Moeder.
“I love your mother. . . . We were very close. . . . Did you know that?”
More than a year in the camp had drained from me the capacity to be stunned, but this was a surprise.
“We were. . . . We talked all the time . . . two young wives,” she said. “And every time she had a child, I felt worse for not having one . . .”
“And Oom Sarel blamed you . . .”
“I’ll shoulder it as my fault . . . my failure . . . my resentment.”
I wished I could cry for her. I wanted to show her how sorry I was, but it took so much now.
“Lettie, I didn’t know about what happened with Oom Sarel until I got here. I didn’t know you were all taken from home until I saw the smoke. . . . You were gone when I got there and Bina told me.”
“Bina?”
“She came to our house that night, but the Tommies were there for us the next morning. . . . They ran her off.”
“Did they burn your place?”
“No . . . I should have known something from that. They took everything of value, but they didn’t burn it. When I got here, they led me to a tent, and Oom Sarel was already inside. That was the first I heard of what had happened.”
“Can you tell me?”