“I’m not sure I really know. . . . He was hurt. . . . They brought him in . . . and he signed the paper so he could get treatment.”
“He put his hands up and left Vader and Schalk and Oupa out there to fight.”
“Yes . . . but he . . .”
Again, we nodded at each other. I hated that it sounded as if I thought Tante Hannah was responsible.
“Lettie . . . if I had known, I would have run . . . gone with Bina to live in the caves, or somewhere on the veld. I would not have come here. I would have left earlier with my mother. I should have listened to her . . .”
I wanted her to blame Oom Sarel; I would have felt better if she had laid it all at his feet. But she did not.
“Or I should have come here . . . but with you.”
I wondered how Moeder would have reacted to that and how that might have changed things. The currents pulled at me again. Was I betraying Moeder by even talking to Tante Hannah? By being sympathetic? By even considering Oom Sarel’s reasons?
Enough.
“Do you like working here?”
“I do . . . very much. I keep telling the doctors that if they need anybody to do any fancy stitchwork to close wounds, I’m the one for the job.”
We both laughed.
“What about the British . . . working with the British?”
“One doctor is good and one is horrible; most of the nurses are wonderful. You met Agnes; she’s the best . . . very compassionate, and so strong. They’re good to me because they know I’ll work around the clock.”
“Doesn’t it wear?”
“There is so much need.”
I knew that was true.
“I wasn’t able to find anything about who might be watching you or informing,” she said.
“Oom?” I said it in a whisper.
“No . . . no . . . I’m certain. He loves you.”
“I don’t care who it is anymore,” I said.
A nurse called her: “Sister Hannah?” She smiled at the sound. She held up one finger.
“Are you sure you want to help here?” she asked.
“I think so.”
“Lettie . . . I think you should know what happens in here.”
“I know. . . . Some die.”
“Lettie . . . you have to know before you decide. . . . Eighteen passed in one night.”
I could not imagine. Eighteen souls. Eighteen burials. I closed my eyes and everything felt heavy, as if the moon had suddenly stopped pulling at me, only the earth. Tante Hannah lifted her stained apron to her face. How could a person say such a thing in a normal voice and another absorb the fact with an accepting mind? What kind of place was this that such things could be said without needing to be screamed? Where was the rage this would trigger in any other part of the world? What had happened to us, to our weary, weary souls, that eighteen deaths in one night caused no hysteria, no wild ravings? I remembered being sickened to the core when the Tommies killed a dozen of our chickens. But now I could hear of eighteen children dying in one night and just nod my head.
“One night we lost only two and we felt as if we should have a celebration,” Tante Hannah said. “A young lady should not see that. Some of the nurses, grown women, have to leave. Doctors, too. We’ve gone through several. . . . The work is too much, or they feel helpless.”
“I’m a woman . . .”
She looked at me.
“So you are. . . . Nurse Agnes said you are welcome to help anytime you can. And I know I will love to see you whenever you do.”
I had one question, but it would not have been fair to ask, and I would have been afraid of the answer: Would Cee-Cee have lived if we’d brought her in?
I FETCHED WATER AND changed bedding and fought tears. I tried to smile when I brought water or tea to children, and I concentrated on their eyes when I changed bedding so that I would not stare at the way their skin clung to their bones, because it reminded me of Cee-Cee. But when I started seeing her in each one of them, my spine went soft.
Tante Hannah was there the whole time, but we talked only later, and she brought Nurse Agnes to me. She had been right: the hospital might have been too much. At least for this first day.
“That’s enough for now,” Agnes said.
“Do I not look well or something?” I asked. “You’re both staring at me.”
“You should sit,” Tante said.
“I can do this.”
Agnes led me to a chair.
“You look wobbly,” she said. “It takes time, and it’s hard work, and the first day is the hardest.”
“I can do this,” I said, and I tried to stand. Tante Hannah held me in place.
“You might be able to do something else more important outside the tent that I can’t do, and your tante can’t do,” Agnes said. It took seconds for her to expel the short word “do,” and it came in waves, and I felt I could ride it, float on it . . . and I slumped forward.
“Put your head down, Lettie,” Hannah said.
As I lowered my head toward my knees, Agnes spoke near my ear. I answered toward my boots.
“Would you like to be my assistant?”
“I would. . . . Doing what?”
“Would you talk to girls in the camp for me?”
“I would. . . . Talk about what?”
“Would you ask them how they are doing, whether they’re having troubles, whether they might be having the same kind of troubles that you were having, and tell them they don’t have to worry?”
“I could do that. . . . wait . . . say those things to strangers?” I shook my head slightly but that made the ground shift beneath me.
“I know . . . it might be hard at first . . . but it is important. You don’t want others to be as worried about their health as you were, do you?”
“No, I don’t.” Deep breaths brought some clarity. “Would they talk to me?”
“Would you have talked to another girl about your problems? More likely than talking to your mother, am I right? You’d do it sooner than you would come in here and talk to us.”
I smiled at the ground.
“We’ll talk about it more in a day or two. . . . I’ll tell you everything that you would have to tell them. . . . It will be very important. The more they’ll talk to you, the more likely they’ll be to trust us if they come down with something more serious.”
Tante Hannah leaned down. “You could help save lives, Lettie.”
I told Moeder that I was to be an important nurse’s assistant, and she asked a number of questions with genuine interest and no judgment. For all the disappointment and times I had been unworthy of her trust, she still had the strength to say these words to me: “I’m proud of you.”
I felt like singing. But I spared them.
33
November 1901, Concentration Camp
Maples charged at me at a gallop, rifle slung and clattering behind his back. Women walking past stopped to be certain I was not in danger. My memory flashed to the soldiers who charged into our house . . . how long ago?
“Look.” He held out a letter; the writing wasn’t Tante Hannah’s.
“From Betty?”
I reached to take it, but he pulled it back and started reading.
“My dear Tommy.”
He closed it in thirds as if he could no longer look at it. He bent his head, composing himself.
“Yes?” I said.
Head down so his helmet bill covered his eyes, he opened the letter again.