Girl in the Blue Coat(8)

“When do you need to go back to work?” my mother asks me.

“I have another twenty minutes.”

Officially, I work as a receptionist for an undertaker. It wasn’t my ideal position, but I didn’t have many options. No one wanted to hire a young girl without work experience or typing skills. Mr. Kreuk wouldn’t have, either, but I didn’t give him a choice. I’d already been turned away from seven other shops when I saw the HELP WANTED sign in his window, and I refused to leave until he gave me a job.

Mr. Kreuk is a good man. He pays me fairly. He gave me my other, secret job, which pays even more.

In Holland, and probably everywhere else in Europe, the Germans have issued us monthly ration cards with coupons for food, clothing, kerosene, rubber. The newspapers tell you what you can purchase: five hundred grams of sugar, two liters of milk, two kilograms of potatoes. That’s where Mr. Kreuk comes in. Mr. Kreuk uses the ration allowances of the dead to stock up on supplies, then resells them at higher prices. At least this is how I think it works. I don’t ask questions. All I know for sure is that several months ago, Mr. Kreuk came to me with a stack of cards and asked if I would do some shopping.

It was terrifying the first time, but I was even more scared to lose my job, and after a while, I became good at it, and after a longer while, it began to feel noble, even. Because the Nazis were the ones who made us have rations to begin with, and if I flout their system, then I am also flouting them. High-priced ham: the only revenge I have been able to get on the people who killed Bas, but I’ll cling to even that small satisfaction.

What we’re doing is technically illegal. War-profiteering, it would be called. But Mr. Kreuk isn’t wealthy, and I’m certainly not, either. It seems to me like what we’re really doing is trying to reorganize a system that has come to make no sense in a country that has come to make no sense.

“Hannie.” Mama has obviously been trying to get my attention. “I asked what you said to the Green Police.”

Is she still fixated on that? If only she realized how many soldiers I encounter every week. “I told him to get out of our country and never come back. I suggested he do rude things with tulip bulbs.”

She covers her mouth in horror. “Hannie!”

I sigh. “I did what I always do, Mama. I got away, as quickly as I could.”

But Mama’s attention is no longer on me. “Johan.” Her voice drops to a whisper and she clutches my father’s good arm. “Johan, they’re back. Listen.”

I hear it, too. There’s shouting across the street, and I run to the window to look from behind the curtain. “Hannie,” Mama warns me, but when I don’t come back, she gives up. Three NSB officers in their beetle-black uniforms pound on the Biermans’ door, ordering Mr. Bierman to come out.

His wife answers, her hands shaking so intensely that it’s obvious even from a distance.

“Your husband was supposed to present himself for deportation last week,” the oldest-looking officer says. Our street is narrow, and he’s not being quiet. I can hear almost everything he says.

“He—he’s not here,” Mrs. Bierman says. “I don’t know where he is. I haven’t seen him in days.”

“Mrs. Bierman.”

“I swear. I haven’t seen him. I came home from shopping, and he was gone. I searched the whole house myself.”

“Step aside,” the officer instructs, and when she doesn’t, he shoves past. Mama has come up beside me. She grabs my arm so tightly I can feel her fingernails through my sweater. Please, let Mr. Bierman really be gone, I beg. Please let him have escaped while Mrs. Bierman was shopping.

Mama is moving her lips, praying, I think, although we don’t do that anymore. The soldiers reappear in the doorway, this time dragging another man. It’s Mr. Bierman, bleeding from the nose, his right eye split and swollen.

“Good news, Mrs. Bierman,” the soldier says. “We found your husband after all.”

“Lotte!” Mr. Bierman calls as they force him toward a waiting truck.

“Pieter,” she says.

“I should bring you, too, to keep him company,” the soldier offers. “But I feel bad punishing a good Christian woman who is too stupid to know where her husband was.” His back is mostly to me, so I can’t see his face, but I can hear the taunt in his voice.

“Lotte, it’s all right,” Mr. Bierman calls from the truck. “I’ll be home soon.”

Still she doesn’t cry. She doesn’t do anything but watch and shake her head back and forth as if to say, No. No, you won’t be home soon.

The truck drives away, and Mrs. Bierman still stands in her doorway. It’s an intrusion to watch her, but I can’t avert my eyes. Mrs. Bierman used to give me presents for Sinterklaas Day, too. And when I visited their shop, she would let me taste the strawberries, even if we weren’t buying any.

Mama yanks me away from the window, grabbing my sweater and pulling me to the table. “Finish eating,” she says stiffly. “It’s not our business; there’s nothing we can do.”

I shake her hand loose, ready to protest, to remind her about the Biermans and their strawberries. But she’s right. There is nothing I can do that will repair what just happened.

We finish eating mostly in silence. Mama makes a few attempts at conversation, but they crumble. The food doesn’t taste like food. When I can’t manage any more, I excuse myself, saying I have a few things to do before going back to work.