My Enemy's Cradle (21 page)

I decided to risk a letter. Not to Isaak directly. I needed to route the letter through a safe address. Someone I trusted, who would forward a note without asking questions. The problem was that everyone who might do this for me probably had been told I was dead. Finally I settled on Jet Haughwout, one of Anneke's oldest friends; I would just have to have faith that my aunt kept up the deception and Jet wouldn't be surprised to hear from my cousin in this place. I printed the note, trying for Anneke's round, short letters, and as I formed them I thought,
I am a thief. There is nothing of my cousin's I wouldn't steal.

I kept the note brief; I told Jet I was fine and would write more later, but for now could she do me a favor?
Please see that this note is posted,
I wrote.
It is to my cousin's friend. He is still very grieved over her death, and I wanted to write some things to comfort him.
I didn't explain why I couldn't send the note myself—she would come up with some explanation.

And then I wrote to Isaak.

I wrote three times. The first two letters were filled with my fears and questions, my hurt that he could have abandoned me for so long. I crumpled them up. I went down to the front desk for one of the postcards of the home—they made it look like an exclusive hotel. On the back I wrote a single word:
Hurry.
I sealed the postcard into an envelope, addressed it to the synagogue, and tucked it into Jet's letter. I sealed that one and drew a deep breath.

Then I saw the problem.

Neve kept a lighter in her top drawer. I checked the hall to be sure she wasn't coming, then closed the door and went to her dresser. As I lifted the lighter, I noticed something—the drawer was filled with food: apples and crackers, a few hardened rolls, a piece of cheese, darkening at the edges, wrapped in waxed paper. I shut the drawer.

I held the first two letters with their damning words over the empty washbasin and burned them. I shook the ashes out the window and then took the basin to the bathroom across the hall to rinse it. When I returned, Neve was standing in the center of the room. She held the lighter to me, her eyebrows lifted.

"I borrowed it—I'm sorry. I wanted a cigarette."

Neve smirked—the open window and the smell of burned paper made my lie absurd. But then she sat back on her bed and looked at me as if she found me interesting for the first time. "Why are you here so early?" she asked.

"I had nowhere else. My family kicked me out."

She nodded. "Mine would have, too, if I'd told them. I went to live with a friend when I started to show."

"I can't blame them, I guess. They hate the Germans so much."

"Mine don't. Mine hate
me.
" She shrugged off my expression of sympathy. "I learned a long time ago to take care of myself. Isn't that what we're all doing here?"

"Taking care of ourselves? How?"

"Three or four months before the baby's born, fourteen after. A year and a half with food and heat and no one looking at you like you're dirt."

"You're staying the whole time? You're going to nurse the baby?"

"Of course. Fourteen months of not worrying where you're going to sleep—in return for taking care of a baby? Of course." Neve's face closed and she got up. She lifted my letter from my dresser and studied the address. "Schiedam? Is that where you live?"

I nodded.

"We were practically neighbors." She dropped the letter onto my bed and left.

I picked the envelope up.
Don't write,
Isaak had said.
A letter could give everything away.
One more week, I bargained with myself. If I'm still here on the first of December, I will risk the letter.

The next day, the twenty-fourth of November, a package arrived. It was flat and rectangular, the size and shape of a packet of papers. I thanked the Sister who handed it to me and hoped she didn't notice my hand shake as I took it. The return address was from an L. Koopmans of Amsterdam—a contact person? My new identity?

I hurried to my room with the package, checked the halls to make sure no one was around, then closed the door and slid down to the floor. I tore it open and didn't even care that I ruined the brown paper—that's how sure I was of what was inside, that I wouldn't need to save any more paper.

The package held an empty notebook, the kind used in the upper grades at school. There was no note, only a line inscribed on the inside cover:
For your poems. Save them.

I tossed the notebook across the room, and buried my head in my knees in despair.

And then I realized Leona's true gift.

I wrote to her, thanking her, promising to come see her when I could get back to Holland, and then asking her to forward my letter to Isaak. She would do this. She wouldn't ask any questions. I ripped open the letter to Jet, pulled out Isaak's note, and sealed it inside Leona's letter. Then I hurried downstairs to the main desk where outgoing mail was collected. It would make the four o'clock pickup.

Over and over I calculated how long it might take. The postal service in Germany was still good, I'd heard. Still efficient. In the Netherlands, it was not so reliable anymore. Three weeks, perhaps four. By the middle of December—by the end, certainly—Isaak would know I was here. Sometime in the month of January, I would be rescued. Each night, I lay in the dark dreaming of the time I could whisper to Isaak:
We conceived a baby.
The weight of those words. The unspeakable wonder that would bind him to me.

Unless—

No. A baby could not be conceived that way.

The sixth of December was Sinterklaas Day—in Holland, gifts were left the night before. Sinterklaas was the patron saint of children, but also of robbers, perfumers, sailors, travelers, and ... unmarried girls. There were now eleven other girls from the Netherlands at the home, so on the night of the fifth I cut eleven little wooden shoes from wrapping paper I'd saved, and on the back of each I wrote a poem wishing good luck, then slipped them under the Dutch girls' doors.

I already had my good luck. He would be coming for me soon.

But on the ninth, my birthday, we awoke to a blizzard with half a meter of snow on the ground already. At breakfast, some of the German girls were talking about winter in Bavaria; as soon as I could, I found my way to Sister Ilse in the newborns' nursery.

"We could be snowed in for a week? Is that true?" I asked.

"Sometimes, yes." A baby began to fuss in his bassinet and she went over to pick him up. "This one. A little piglet already, hungry every hour. But look at those dimples!" She handed him to me. "Try to keep him quiet while I go heat a bottle. I've got to go over to the orphanage for more formula."

I pulled the blanket from the baby's face. He frowned deeper and furrowed his soft new brow. Indignant already. I held him against my neck and smelled the faintly sour scent of formula—the scent of abandonment in here. I pressed him closer and he was comforted. It wasn't milk he was hungry for.

When she came back, Sister Ilse took the baby over to a chair by a bank of windows and sat down. I pulled another chair alongside and smiled at the baby, who began to suck at his bottle urgently. Then I leaned back and looked out the window. The falling flakes were thicker now, and I felt suffocated.

"How long before they clear the roads?"

Sister Ilse looked up at me, puzzled.

"If we get snowed in?"

"Oh. Not too long. This is a large town. Some of the smaller villages higher up can get snowed in for a month at a time. The people there know how to manage."

"But what about here?" I pressed.

"Well, we're not a priority, but we're not last on the list, either. You don't have to worry, Anneke. We have plenty of food and supplies, and there's always heat."

"But what if there's an emergency? What if someone needs to leave?"

She cut her eyes to me sharply. "What are you worried about, Anneke? I've been here through two winters, and it's been fine. There's always a doctor in the home, so it's the safest place to be. And you're not due until May, right?"

"Well, it's just that ... I guess I'm not used to feeling trapped. It doesn't snow like this in the Netherlands."

Sister Ilse eased the bottle from the baby's mouth and held him over her shoulder for a burp. She rubbed little circles into his back before answering.

"Trapped." She looked into my eyes for too long. "Well, I guess you're trapped here anyway, snow or no snow. Where would you go, Anneke?"

One day in the middle of December, we were told of a change to the dining schedule for that night: Our main meal would be served at noon, and from five to six we could come down for a light supper of cold meats and salads. The dining room was needed for a Christmas party for the staff. Perhaps Isaak knew this; perhaps it was the opportunity he had been waiting for.

As usual, I went straight to Ilse.

"No new babies today," she said, looking up from her paperwork.

"Are you going tonight? Will everyone be there?"

Ilse made a face of disgust. "You should stay far away, too."

"Why?"

A student nurse stepped out of the labor ward and walked past. Ilse got up from the desk and went over to a stack of boxes beside the doorway. She handed me a box and took one herself. "Come help me mix some formula," she said, a little louder than she needed to.

I followed her into a small supply room, but she didn't make any move toward the rows of bottles or the sink—just stacked our boxes of powdered-milk packets on a shelf with others. She went over to the side door and leaned against the window to the nursery and gazed at the tiny bundles, wrapped tightly like loaves of bread. "It's not their fault."

Then she went back to the hall door and pulled it shut firmly. "Do you know what tonight really is?"

"A Christmas party. They delivered beer and schnapps this morning."

"It's a party, yes. They'll bring in a shipment of SS officers and any of the girls working here who aren't pregnant now probably will be by tomorrow morning. So, more babies like this. That's the big plan. I'm going home to see my father. I have the weekend off. My first in a year."

"Well, so ... all the rest of the staff will be there, though, right? All the Sisters and nurses?" I tried to keep my voice from sounding too eager. "All the guards?"

"All the staff
except
the guards. In fact, they're doubling up the patrols—they don't want any interruptions tonight. No unwelcome guests."

I tried to seem merely curious. "Who are they worried about?"

"This is Bavaria, Anneke. The villagers around here are mostly Catholic. Very conservative. Just the fact that unmarried girls are welcomed here upsets them. Any hint of what's really going on here tonight, and they might stage a demonstration."

"And what is really going on? How will they—"

"Oh, nothing blatant. Everyone's been fed the propaganda for years—they know what's expected. This party is just an excuse to get the men here, to give everyone the opportunity to meet. Then they'll go off to the Sisters' rooms."

She turned back to gaze through the window. I joined her.

"It's not their fault," she said, "and it breaks my heart to think about what's in store for all these children as they grow up."

"What do you mean?"

"If I tell you something, you have to promise to tell no one."

"Of course." I had become very good at keeping secrets.

Sister Ilse glanced at the door. Her voice was lower when she spoke. "America has entered the war. The Japanese attacked them last week, and then Hitler declared war on them."

I could only stare at her.

"It's true. You won't hear it in here, of course. There hasn't been a newspaper delivered for days, not even
Der Stürmer,
have you noticed that? We've been ordered not to discuss it inside the home. My father says it proves Hitler's insane—we won't be able to withstand the Americans and the British together; we just don't have the strength left. We're going to lose the war."

"Are you sure about this? When, do you think?"

Ilse shrugged. "Soon, I hope. But my father thinks a year at least. And that things will likely get worse here before that happens. The Nazis will step things up. Anyway, I'm glad of it. I'd much rather take my chances with the Americans than with the Nazis. But I'm worried about all these children, what the world will think of them afterward." She leaned against the glass and gazed at the babies again. "They might as well have swastikas tattooed on their foreheads."

I looked at the babies. Six of them, four girls and two boys. Only one, a little girl-child in the nearest crib, was half-awake. Her eyes fluttered beneath the translucent lids, squinting open now and then to take tiny hesitant peeks at the world. I stroked my belly, taut now, rounding with a life. "No one will hold it against them. Who could do that?"

"You're young, Anneke," she said. We heard a door open and steps in the hall. Ilse looked at her watch. "My replacement. I want to catch the early train. I have the weekend off ... I'll see you in a few days."

"I'll see you in a few days," I answered. There would be no escape tonight.

But I was cheered by Ilse's news. When Neve came into our room after the meal, I wanted to tell her. If it had been anyone but Ilse who'd asked me, I wouldn't have kept the secret.

Neve pulled something wrapped in a napkin from her pocket and put it into her top drawer. Since the time I'd taken her lighter, she hadn't bothered to hide the fact that she kept a cache of food. I'd never asked her about it.

Now I gestured to the drawer. "Neve ... the food?"

She shrugged. "
Carpe diem.
"

"
Carpe diem?
"

"In case this ends. We could be thrown out tomorrow. At least I won't starve for a few days."

"Why would we be thrown out?" I wondered if she'd heard the news about the Americans and knew something I didn't.

She threw her hands in the air. "I don't know. That's the point. I don't count on anything. Do you? When was the last time something worked out the way you planned it?"