Hunger Journeys (10 page)

Lena smiled as best she could and turned and walked away. She did not really understand the woman’s response, but she felt
better than she had in a long time. Margriet was pacing by the bicycles. As soon as she set eyes on Lena, she mounted hers and pedalled off. “What would Father say?” she called over her shoulder as Lena rushed to catch up.

“Who cares?” Lena shouted back with a rush of fierce joy. Not me, she thought, and pedalled a little faster.

Curfew was approaching by the time they reached the Hembrug once again and faced a new set of German soldiers. The man who stepped forward smiled warmly and took their papers politely, or so it seemed. But then he passed the papers to one of his companions and strolled behind the two girls and their bicycles. Lena turned her head, struggling to hold her position. Casually, he flipped up a canvas flap and pulled out a parcel wrapped in cloth.

“What have we here?” he asked.

Did he want an answer?

Before Lena could decide, words spilled out of Margriet’s mouth in stilted German. “Our mother is sick. This is for her, to help her—”

A raised hand silenced her. “Bicycles were to be turned in, and trips out of the city”—he paused—“for any purpose are forbidden.” He paused again, meeting the other men’s eyes with a slow grin. “Even sick mothers.”

“But, Officer—” Lena started.

Again the raised hand. “You will leave this bicycle with us, its various parcels too.” He put his hands on the handlebars, right up against Lena’s, and she snatched her fingers free. “You may go,” he said. “And you may take the other bicycle. Just be
sure you turn it in once you’re home. We have made a note of it.” At that, the man who held the girls’ papers jotted something in a notebook and handed the papers back.

Teeth gritted, tears barely in check, Lena mounted Mar-griet’s bicycle behind her sister, and they coasted down the remaining stretch of bridge with her on the seat and Margriet standing on the pedals. She reminded herself that they still had the food Margriet carried and they still had one bicycle, but the tears seeped out from under her lids just the same.

Father was angry when they arrived home on one bicycle, and Mother was silent. Bep danced around in the kitchen calling out the items one by one as Mother unpacked the panniers. But Father soon sent her out of the room, and Lena settled down to peeling once again: at least she was peeling potatoes this time, and there would be meat for supper.

At the dinner table, Father insisted on an extra portion for himself from the meal made with the food they had brought. He was the biggest and a man. “I need my strength,” he said. And Mother thinned her lips and slopped an extra spoonful into his bowl.

Father had not even asked about their journey.

Still, they all went to bed that night with full bellies and the comfort of enough leftovers for another good meal, along with knowledge of the small sack of potatoes and carrots in the root cellar and the bag of good flour and jar of fresh butter that would last at least for a few days. Margriet fell asleep instantly, exhausted, but Lena lay awake, best and worst images running over and over again through her mind.

Even with the theft of their bicycle and Father’s greed, the journey had been a success. Father had said that they would not turn in the remaining bicycle, but there would be no more
hunger journeys for two—not unless they were prepared to walk.

If there were to be more journeys, Margriet would just have to go on her own. That was all.

Taking care not to wake her sister, Lena turned over in bed and allowed herself to drift off to sleep.

Lena twirled, her skirt flying out in a circle around her knees, her hair flying out in a circle around her head, the ball flying in a torrent of colour up, up, up to the wall and bouncing back to land in her raised hands just as she came around. Her hands snapped around the shining rubber, drew back and let the ball fly once again. Another spin and another. Dizzy and breathless, eight-year-old Lena caught the ball for a last time and collapsed on the big stone bench. She stroked the ball’s red and orange streaks as she caught her breath.

Tap, tap, tap.
Knuckles sounded on glass.

Lena’s head jerked up. Margriet glared at her through the kitchen window, her arm raised in a familiar gesture. Get in here, that arm said, clear as shouted words.

Lena sighed. She had been shivering in the courtyard, door to the shed open, peering into the dim interior. What was she doing? That ball must be long deflated, caked in grime. And she was not eight but seventeen, long grown, such
childhood games now closed to her. Anyway, it was far too cold to be outside. She closed the shed door, met Margriet’s eyes and nodded.

Minutes later, she was settled at the kitchen table, slicing away at sugar beets, trying to create thin shreds from the dirty, misshapen objects. Three weeks had passed since her journey with her sister: the potatoes were long gone, and so was all the rest of the food.

That day, years ago, when Lena had spun in the back garden bathed in the heady scent from the magnolia tree, she had been free in ways that she could never be now. Nowadays, even when she was out gathering wood with Sofie, she still felt diminished by the misery of war. Her body insisted on lengthening and filling out, despite the hunger that now spread from her belly into her limbs, and her clothes grew shorter, tighter and more threadbare with each week that passed. December bore down on Amsterdam. The city had grown cold.

“Lena! We’re lucky to have food at all, and look what you’re doing to it!”

Lena looked up at her sister. Margriet looked angry, yes. But worse than that, she had lines in her forehead that Lena had not noticed before. Her cheekbones stood out on her face, and brown spots marked one cheek and her chin. Do I look like that too? Lena wondered.

“Yes, Lena. Listen to your sister,” Father said as he passed by the kitchen.

Margriet glanced up at him and turned back to Lena. “Well, if you can’t slice the beets properly,” she said, “at least you could get the water ready. You could cut some kindling. Don’t just sit there staring at me.”

The quaking girl of their hunger journey was gone, and the
tyrant who was happy to take up giving orders where Mother and Father left off had returned.

Lena was slicing a small piece of cabbage for the soup pot when Mother came into the kitchen, one hand on her waist. Her dress hung off her bones, with no hint of flesh beneath it except where her hand held the fabric against her body, and where her belly, grotesque to Lena, pushed the fabric out into a mound. Her thin fingers sank into the deep hollow at the top of that belly. Lena stared. Her mother seemed to be getting thinner faster than her belly was getting rounder. Could there really be a baby in there?

Her whole family was changing. Well, except for Father, Lena thought. She felt her lip curl and bent her attention firmly to the cabbage. Father was strong—tall and muscular—and he did not let food shortages threaten his physique. A wave of anger washed over her. Sometimes it had seemed as if the food they brought back from their journey was his own personal supply, as if he drew his strength straight from the flesh of his family.

“We have no meat or fat for the soup,” Mother said.

“We will make do,” Father said, his large body filling the doorway. “And tomorrow Margriet will go to the country again for food.”

Margriet looked up fast, her whole body rigid.

Mother swung around. “It’s too dangerous. The Germans are searching people.”

“Margriet knows the risks,” Father said, “but she’s a brave girl. Aren’t you, Margriet? Your mother needs to eat. Look at her!”

Lena gritted her teeth and chopped.

Margriet left before dawn the next morning, and curfew fell that night with no sign of her. Lena rolled over and over in bed all night, watching and waiting instead of sleeping. The next morning, even Father’s eyes looked bloodshot. The second day—rain drumming on the windows, the apartment dank and dim and very cold—was longer than Lena had thought a day could be. Sofie knocked on the door in mid-afternoon, soaking wet in her threadbare coat but still there, smiling at the door. Lena looked at her and shook her head. She couldn’t imagine going out, and she knew that Sofie would not be welcome in the midst of their waiting.

In the early evening, they ate a bit of leftover soup and set themselves to wait some more, but at ten o’clock Mother sent all the children to bed, her voice permitting no argument. The second night passed, as silent as the first.

At first light, Lena stood in the frigid kitchen preparing the tiny kindling that would allow her to heat water in the makeshift tin-can stove they now used to save on fuel. Rain poured down in the courtyard, battering the magnolia’s bare branches and turning the heaps of fallen leaves to mush. She was trying not to think about how much colder her sister must be without shelter in the winter rain that refused to let up. She could hear Mother and Father and Bep in the next room. Soon all four were gathered in the kitchen, and Piet joined them moments later, everyone accepting mugs of warm, bland liquid.

An hour passed. And another. It seemed impossible that Margriet could be gone for so long and still be safe.

Then, “She’s coming! She’s coming!” Bep flung open the door and ran down the street into her sister’s arms.

Lena made it outside in time to see Margriet, still astride her bicycle in the pouring rain, trying to hug Bep back without
falling over. Piet was there too in a moment, and Lena stood with her parents and watched as Bep pushed the heavy bicycle toward them while Margriet walked, leaning on her brother.

Margriet was soaked to the skin. She was shivering uncontrollably. She was shaking with fear as well as cold. She was weeping, and her teeth were chattering so hard that she could not speak.

Mother took her from Piet when they reached the door, put one arm around the sodden body and led her inside. In the kitchen, Mother took her eldest daughter’s shoulders in her hands and looked into her face. Then she let go with one hand and used it to push a thick strand of wet hair off Margriet’s forehead. She let the back of her hand rest there for a long moment. Checking for fever.

Off to the side, Lena stared. Was Mother’s chin wobbling? No.

Mother dropped her arms to her sides.

“Lena,” she said, her voice brisk as always, “get your sister into some dry clothes. Wrap her in her blanket and bring her to the kitchen. I’ll go see if she has brought anything that we can use to nourish her back to her senses.”

Margriet stood in their bedroom, offering no assistance as Lena peeled her out of her clothes. Lena looked at her sister’s skinny, goosebumpy body. Had she been hurt in some way? Lena could see no sign. She wrapped a blanket around her sister and rubbed and rubbed. She towelled her hair as dry as she could. Then she dressed her in dry clothes, which was difficult because the clothes were too small and so threadbare that they tore under pressure. When Lena shoved Margriet’s hand right through the elbow of a long-sleeved blouse, Margriet found enough of herself to assist with the rest of the dressing.

“What happened?” Lena asked.

“It was horrible, every second of it,” Margriet said. “The soldiers were cruel, going and coming. One grabbed me. He—” and she gave a sob.

“He what? Did he …?”

“No. No. It was just so awful, so humiliating. He laughed and he … said things. And he wouldn’t let go, and the others laughed too. And then they let me go and sang a song in German as I was riding away. A filthy song. I felt like the skin would crawl right off my back. I wanted to find the farm with the nice woman who gave us all the food, but I couldn’t. I don’t know why. There were so many people out on the roads, and I got farther and farther away.” She leaned down and pulled on a sock and stayed bent over for a few moments, her head on her knee, before she continued. “A farmer did feed me and let me stay with his family that first night, after I asked at six houses. One woman yelled at me. A man gave me scraps. Another man let me do an hour’s work and then gave me a slice of bread. The rest just said they had nothing to give.”