River in the Sea (15 page)

“I don’t know why I’m doing this,” Tine lamented, trying to push a comb through her soap–tangled hair. “I’ll just smell like horse tomorrow.”

“The soldiers have never come back,” Leen whispered. All of them were still
underdoek
, even Renske. Surely now it was unnecessary, except perhaps for Issac. The young men avoided any open roads, sticking close to the village interior. She was on her own again when she traveled to the Deinum’s.

By the way Tine looked at Leen, she understood what Leen was suggesting. All she said was, “Not now.” She stood up, picking up the damp towel and winding it around her head. “After this, let’s go through our closets.” Her expression was hopeful in an effortful way, clinging to the good news. It made Leen’s eyes water. So Tine felt it too, felt the heaviness since Pater left, the need to break up the stagnancy that superseded the blame Leen believed Tine surely still placed on her, even if she had buried it away underneath the morning’s excitement, just for now.

Because they had nothing else, they decided to wear their usual Sunday clothes, except Tine washed them on Friday while Leen was working, and Leen pressed them on Saturday afternoon while Tine took the first bath. When she was finished, they drained out half the water and added freshly drawn and heated water for Leen’s. Tine combed through Leen’s hair while she was still in the tub, working through each snarl that had formed at the base of her neck. They set each other’s hair in strips of washed and bleached cotton, and Leen scrubbed her hands, and when she exited the bath, she noticed that seemingly overnight she had developed a nearly full patch of pubic hair. The sparse, stray hairs had become dense, comprehensive, and Leen felt a private pride in herself. Scrubbed clean, hair formed into curls, hands soft and nails polished, she was almost ready for the social, looking forward to the end of the war.

Later, just after they ate the evening meal, Issac left and quickly returned with a bag of apples. He sat in Pater’s chair with a piece of newspaper at his feet, running a paring knife underneath the skin in long, broken stripes, passing out slices to all of them.

“Are you two ladies ready for tomorrow?” Mem asked. All that week she’d been keeping herself a level above her usual low mood. But the
nobeltje
was still on the counter.

Leen nodded. “I am,” she said, mouth full of sweet apple flesh. Renske hummed while she ate. Tine ate with one hand, the other touching each of the knots dotting her scalp.

Mem nodded in return. “Yes, me too,” she said. 

10.

Leen had seen Minne Bosgra before, just as she had seen every young person in the coastal villages at one time or another. They passed each other regularly as they bicycled on the lanes between the villages and on the way to Dokkum. Yet, if someone asked Leen if she knew the name of the girl standing just outside the church doors rolling a cigarette, drawing sidelong glances from the boys and rolling eyes from the other girls, Leen would’ve said no. Still, she definitely stood out.

Anyone there – boy, girl, deacon, elder, even the Dominie – knew what to do with the cigarette. Everybody smoked; it was just that the women didn’t smoke publicly. That was strictly a man’s privilege. Around age eighteen, when the women married off, their smoking ceased. But not the men. In the summertime, the sounds of coughing and rumbling lungs drifted out the open bedroom windows, coming from one side of the bed. Yet there was Minne, boldly flouting this fact, doing just what Leen had always wished she could do. So when Minne looked at her, meeting her gaze after she had stared other onlookers away, Leen couldn’t help it: she smiled.

Minne was tall, like Leen, but her hair was lighter, and it was clear she was not the type to work in the fields. Like Leen and Tine had the night before, she’d curled her hair, but unlike Leen’s, she somehow managed to make it look effortless, each curl its own winding stream that ended in a shiny ringlet. The ends of Leen’s curls never wanted to lie together but instead divided into something that looked like an old overused wire brush. Minne’s frame was delicate, despite her height, but she had managed some curves too, so she did not hold herself awkwardly as some girls did who had to carry both inches and heavy legs and hips. Leen was neither a “skin flint,” Pater’s name for the bony girls, or a big girl, as the curve of Leen’s hip was slender and her legs strong and muscled but not thick. But it was clear, seeing Minne, that she did not have the same kind of figure, nor the same kind of hands that made rolling the cigarette look languid and elegant instead of the act of tomboy–ish defiance it was so clearly meant to be. And of top of all of this, she was wearing lipstick, and it was red. Immediately Leen wanted red lips, painted just the same, each peak a perfection of points.

Minne registered Leen’s smile. She stopped, tilted her head, and then she walked over and held out the cigarette. A nerve–beat thumped in Leen’s chest. She knew it was more of a dare than a friendly gesture. Minne was asking her,
you brave enough to do it too?

Leen looked everywhere around her, avoiding Tine’s bulging eyes. The social was winding down; they had drunk the weakly flavored punch, had already exhausted the speculation of who was responsible for smuggling in the fruit juice necessary to make it. There was no tea or coffee, and the entire group had gotten restless, moving outside to form tight circles of girls and boys, the young women huddled close to talk so they could point discreetly at someone of interest, and the boys louder and claiming more space, even though they were fewer in number. They pushed and shoved each other now that they were out of the
kerk
.

Minne started to withdraw the cigarette, a look of smug triumph on her face, when Leen held out her hand and took it, glad that at least her nails weren’t dirty. Closing her eyes to keep her hands steady, she dragged on it deeply, wondering if Jakob was watching. He was there but until that moment, Leen had managed to monitor him without ever meeting his eyes, looking past him or away a half–second before he turned to her. She passed the cigarette back.

As Leen expertly blew out the smoke, heads turned. Tine stared, horrified, her eyes darting between both Minne and Leen, and the conversation around them slowed. Then the sentences tried to pick up again like a sputtering engine or a dying candle. 

Minne rolled another cigarette, lit it with her own, then handed it to Leen. The red outline of her lips on the mouth–end reminded Leen of Jakob and she felt the heat creep up her neck. Tine touched her arm, but Leen ignored her. She picked up Tine’s aghast frown and the wide eyes of Maatje, a childhood chum of Tine’s who lived five houses away from them on Ternaarderweg, but Leen looked past them, relying on the same technique she used to watch Jakob. She spotted him amidst a group of boys, one of them inexplicably beginning an old folk dance, his
klompen
and the street’s bricks providing the only music allowed. A crowd gathered around him, blocking her view, deflecting the attention off Leen. She watched Jakob’s smiling profile as he laughed and clapped time for the bold dancer showing off for the crowd, but just as she put the cigarette to her lips he looked at her. Leen flushed deeper when Minne turned to see where Leen’s eyes had gone.

“Dancing on a Sunday, tsk, tsk,” Minne said.

Even though Leen knew better, she glanced back to find Jakob once more, but quickly looked past him at the gap in the crowd. Issac was the dancer. He’d said he couldn’t bother to come, but there he was, face hot under a tweed hat, sheepishly grinning while his feet skipped and his arms swung upwards. His slightly bowed legs were transformed from awkwardly curved to swift and lively and it had been a long time, years, since Leen had seen Issac move like that. Leen brought her hand down so that Issac couldn’t see what she was doing. 

“That’s my
broer
over there,” Leen said. “A dancing fool.”

“He’s not the only fool,” Tine said curtly. She took a half–step away, turning her head to the side, as if that was enough to communicate to everyone she had nothing to do with both Leen and Issac. 

Maatje, an earnest girl with a plain, gullible face, tried to resume the conversation. “My Pater says those poor soldiers are eating rotten sugar beets right out of the ground,” she said. 

“I hate those beets. I hope those awful soldiers eat them all,” Tine said, crossing her arms.

It was silent for a moment. Then Minne said, “They’re probably very hungry,” blowing smoke into Maatje’s face. Maatje did all she could not to cough, but finally she sputtered. Leen couldn’t help it. She laughed.

“They must be,” Leen said. There was a strange twinge in her throat when she spoke. But it was true. Tine gasped. 

Minne nodded once to her. Leen knew that she had passed some kind of test. Maatje put her arm through Tine’s and led her away, but not before Tine’s mouth fell open and then, as she walked away, she gave Leen a sharp look.

“Want another?” Minne asked. She had dropped her initial challenging posture, evident by her sloped shoulders and the way she stood with one leg out, rolling her heel back and forth. She held her own cigarette perched delicately between two pale fingers. 

Before, insulated amid the large group, Leen had felt more daring. Now, the familiar timidity returned. She feared that her wit and words would fail her. She was standing close to the church wall. Leen could reach out and press her hand to the bricks, 800 years old. How much smoke had they absorbed? Out of the corner of her eye she saw Tine’s bent head and hunched shoulders as she walked home. “I probably shouldn’t,” Leen said. “But thank you.” She felt like Renske, like a little girl who didn’t quite know what to say to a grown–up.

“You don’t have to smoke it now,” Minne said. “Maybe tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?”

Minne laughed. “Don’t you work in Dokkum? I’ve seen you on your way there a few times. You bike faster than any other girl I know.”

“Really?” Leen meant, really, you noticed me?

“All the time. You’re the one who hit the dog.” Minne didn’t moderate her voice at all and Leen looked around her again. Hitting the dog was old news but something about the direct way Minne said it – and the fact that this strange girl was giving her cigarettes and talking about the accident as if it was regular as milk – sent the color and temperature immediately rising on the back of her neck. 

“I thought that was you,” Minne said. She gingerly tapped her cigarette, sending snowy ashes falling from its tip. “I work in Dokkum too, three days a week. We could meet sometime, take a break. Might be nice, you know?”

Leen looked to her right again. Tine was farther away. Leen didn’t want her getting home before she did. But she felt the same about Minne. “Tomorrow?”

Minne nodded and smiled. She held out her hand and Leen took the cigarette. Minne retrieved her bicycle. She pushed off, wobbly at first, one hand steering the handlebars to and fro until she steadied herself. She waved, the cigarette still nestled between her fingers. Leen would’ve been jealous had she not been holding her own cigarette. 

She caught up with Tine, who said only, “You smell like Pater.”

Leen fingered Minne’s gift already stowed in her pocket. “Don’t tell Mem,” she whispered.

Tine didn’t answer.

There were not many places for two girls to stand together and take a break from working, since breaks were usually reserved for a cup of tea taken at the kitchen table, and served just as much to mark the time as to give everyone a reprieve from it. Still, Leen managed to meet Minne halfway between the bakery and Minne’s employer, the De Jong’s, who lived four blocks away. The De Jong’s had a jewelry and watch shop that also sold fine Delftware and, according to Minne, had managed to stay in business mainly through bribes.

As they smoked, Leen was relieved to see that Minne’s fingers were pink and that her nails were clipped into plain crescent moons. Leen glanced at her hands to make sure they were still clean from Saturday’s scrubbing. That was the only thing Leen could claim on Minne. In every other way, Minne Bosgra was far prettier. She might have let Minne’s good looks spark a deeper envy, but she was so far past Leen in all matters related to beauty that Leen couldn’t muster any real sorrow about it.

“I can drive a truck without a license, but I can’t smoke a cigarette!” Leen exclaimed, drawing her knit cap down her forehead. The sun weakly poked through a few breaks in the clouds, and the air was frigid. That morning the canal was completely frozen over, a solid sheet of frosted brown ice. “Can you smoke at home?”

Minne flicked her head in a way that said,
I do what I want
.

“My
moeder
doesn’t find it proper.”

“Your Mem is strict,” Minne said, raising her eyebrows. “But she lets you drive?”

“Only because my Pater needed me to, and I begged,” Leen said. She’d wanted to drive ever since her father bought the truck and tractor, when she was just eight. But Issac was first in line, then Wopke. She changed the subject. “I smoke when I’m
underdoek
.”

“
Underdoek
?” Minne tilted her head. She took a step closer. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t sleep at home,” Leen said. She knew right away that Minne had never done it, and that she viewed it romantically, just the same as Leen had, before she’d felt the bone–deep cold and carried the smells of livestock in every pore. But she didn’t correct Minne’s notion.

“Why? Is it every night?”

Leen paused. Could she tell Minne? As Jakob said, in Wierum it was easy to notice her father’s absence. But Minne was not a Wierumer. Still, who would she tell? Leen herself knew nothing about Pater’s whereabouts. She had no idea how to even try to find out.

“My father is in hiding, so I, all of us kids, have to sleep
underdoek
. This way we’re safe if any soldiers come, and Renske – she’s just six – can’t blab anything.” The cigarette gave her an excuse to look away. “It’s safer, right now anyway. I don’t think we’ll have to do it much longer.”