Girl in the Blue Coat(53)

It’s Sunday, not a day I normally work, so I don’t have any excuse to leave the house. Mama is watching me like a hawk anyway. Instead of escaping, I help with the chores that didn’t get finished yesterday. We wash the windows, sweep the floors, and finish polishing the silver. When we run out of polish, I hopefully suggest that I could go borrow some from a neighbor, but Mama triumphantly produces another jar. When I suggest that I could go buy a newspaper for us all to read, Papa is the one who stops me, saying he has an idea of something he’d much rather listen to than news stories.

“Why don’t you play something, Gerda,” my father encourages my mother.

“Oh, a neighbor could be napping, and I need to peel the beets for lunch,” she protests.

“No, play something, Mama. I’ll peel the beets.”

At first I suggest it because I think music will put her in a good mood. But when she sits down at the piano, I’m longing to hear her play, too, like she used to. Before the war, I’d be able to hear the music from halfway down the block, first a melody played by my mother and then a student’s plodding, clunky version a few seconds later.

She doesn’t play at once, just lets her hands rest on the keys. When she finally starts, it’s a beginner’s tune, one she even managed to teach me before admitting I had no musical skill. It’s basic and simple, not the kind of music you would play to show off. The paring knife hangs in my hand. This song reminds me of being young and carefree. She plays it again and again, each time adding a new variation that makes the tune more complex, until the original simple melody is barely audible beneath the trills and chords on top of it. It’s still there, though, when I listen closely.

After an hour, Mama is lost in the music and Papa dozes in his chair. I think my transgression is mostly forgiven. In another hour, I’ll try to leave. I’ll tell them I’ve made plans with Ollie. They like him. Just when I’ve settled on that plan, I hear a noise, under the sounds of Mama’s playing. Mama hears it, too, and stops, her fingers poised a few centimeters off the keys.

“Hanneke!” The call comes from downstairs, and since the voice is half whispering, it’s hard to make out who it belongs to.

I throw the window open with beet-stained fingers, leaning my chest out to see who’s standing on our stoop. “Ollie? Are you there?”

“No, it’s me.” A tall figure standing next to a bicycle steps back and removes his hat.

“Willem? What are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry,” he shout-whispers, trying not to disturb the neighbors. “Ollie gave me your address but not your apartment number. I didn’t know which buzzer to ring.”

“I’ll be right down.”

As soon as I close the window, Mama stands, the piano bench scraping across the floor. “Who is that?”

“A friend. He didn’t know our apartment number.” I start to pull on my coat. “I told him I’d be right down.”

“No, you won’t be right down. Not with a boy I’ve never met.”

“It’s Willem—he’s Ollie’s roommate.” The bowl of beets still sits on the floor where I finished peeling them. “Do you want me to put these on the stove?”

“No.” Mama slams the lid down on the piano, creating a sickening wooden crack. “I forbid it. You were out all last night.”

“I’m not going to be out all night this time,” I explain patiently. “I just want to go talk to Willem for a while.”

Her chin quivers and her eyes have a wild look to them. “I forbid you to leave this house again. You are still my child, Hannie.”

“Oh, Mama, I’m not your child.” It’s the sort of thing that I would usually scream in anger, only now when I say it, I just feel tired and sad. “I bring the money into the house. I buy the groceries, run all the errands. Mama, I’m the one who takes care of you.”

Mama’s face crumples, and all the goodwill we amassed during the breakfast and the piano playing disappears. “The daughter I know never would have spoken to me this way.”

It’s nothing she hasn’t said to me a dozen times, but this time it stings. I’m exhausted by these comparisons to the girl I was before the war. By replaying all the ways I was better and the things I will never get back.

“That daughter doesn’t exist anymore,” I say to Mama, and my voice is resigned. “She is gone, and she’s never coming back.”





TWENTY-THREE




Are you all right?”

Willem takes my arm as soon as I get outside. I wonder if he heard the fighting coming through the open window, or if he’s just reading my face.

“I’m fine.”

“This is how you look when you’re fine?” he asks lightly.

“No, this is how I look when I don’t want to talk about it.”

If I said that to Bas, he would have put his hands out in fake kitty claws, hissing and pretending to paw at the air until I laughed. If I said that to Ollie, he would say something equally sarcastic back to me, giving as good as he got. When I say it to Willem, he just nods, looking concerned.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I don’t want to think about the stricken look on Mama’s face when I walked out the door. “Did Ollie send you?”