The Upstairs Room

  “But I’ll look like a boy! What if I see somebody who knows me.” That could happen. I sucked in my breath.

  “Let’s hope they won’t recognize you. That’s the whole idea,” said Rachel.

  “At eight o’clock tomorrow morning, walk to the bus stop near my house,” Miss Kleinhoonte went on. “At eight sixteen the bus will arrive. It will say Winterswijk-Enschede on the front. Get on it and buy a ticket to Enschede.”

  But wasn’t I going to Usselo? I asked. I was, but not right away, Miss Kleinhoonte said. Usselo was such a small town that people would stare at me if I got off the bus. It was safer to get off in Enschede, which was a big town.

  “In Enschede, at the last stop, a young girl will be waiting for you. Her name is Dini Hannink. Get on the back of her bicycle, and she’ll take you to her house in Usselo.”

  So much to remember. And I’d look like a boy. What if I saw Frits?

  It was time for us to go and see Mother, Sini said. I didn’t want to go. Shouldn’t she know that we wouldn’t be coming tomorrow to see her? Or the day after? Or, or … no, no!

  “Why didn’t Father come to see me this morning?” Mother asked.

  Sini bent over her bed. “He had to go into hiding,” she whispered. “But he has it so good. He’s in a fine hotel. The food is supposed to be great.”

  I blushed. How could Sini lie? But Mother smiled.

  When the thirty minutes were over, Sini left the room first.

  “Annie,” Mother said, “remember that candy machine by the station?”

  I nodded.

  “Do you think that’s still working?”

  “Probably.”

  “Here’s a twenty-five-cent piece for you. On the way home you can buy something.”

  I grabbed the money out of her hand and ran. I didn’t want her to see my tears.

  Outside Sini was waiting for me.

  “How long is Mother going to be sick?” I asked.

  “Nobody knows,” she said, “but she’s going to die. And it’s probably going to happen soon.”

  I found I wasn’t surprised.

  At home Rachel was waiting with a bottle of peroxide in her hand. “First wash your hair,” she said to Sini. I sat down on the bed to watch. Sini was pretty. Her hair was long and shiny, but black… the wrong color.

  Rachel poured some peroxide in a glass, then filled the glass up with water. She emptied it on Sini’s hair. We waited speechlessly. And after a little while, something wrong was happening. Right in front of our eyes, Sini’s hair began to turn red, rusty barbed-wire red. Dull, lifeless red. Rachel stopped.

  With a jerk Sini lifted her head, splashing water on us. She pushed the hair out of her eyes and looked. “This won’t do,” she said furiously. “Look, it’s awful.”

  I pointed at her eyebrows. “They are still black.”

  With angry movements Sini pulled most of her eyebrows out. The skin above her eyes was red and swollen. It must have hurt. I shouldn’t have mentioned them.

  My turn came. Rachel put a towel around me, picked up the scissors, and started to cut. Tufts of hair fell down. So many. When they stopped coming, I walked over to the mirror: two frightened green eyes looked at me from a very round face. I hated round faces. It hadn’t been that bad when my hair was long. I tried sucking in my cheeks; it didn’t help.

  I didn’t believe Sini and Rachel when they told me how cute I looked. In bed I pulled the sheet over my head.

  When I woke up, it was still dark. I got out of bed to see whether it was raining. I stuck my hand out the window and waited. Not a drop. I turned around and switched on the light: four o’clock. I sat down on the bed. In the corner by the window had been a table, but we had given it to the Droppers. Frits probably used it for his homework—for school.

  I heard noises coming from the kitchen. Sini and Rachel must be up. I went down to see. Sini was taking the star off her coat with a pair of scissors. She snipped at the six corners until the star fell off. Her face was flushed.

  “Now I have to get dressed,” she said. “Wait till you see me come down.”

  “Rachel,” I asked, “when are you coming to Usselo?”

  “Soon,” she answered.

  “Rachel, you know, that truck.” What if she was home and the truck came for her?

  She told me I shouldn’t worry. She was twenty-five… and that was the reason she knew so much.

  “Will we come back?” I asked. “From Usselo?”

  That she didn’t know, Rachel said.

  Not everybody who hid came back. A group of Jews who had been hiding for weeks in a Winterswijk swamp had been caught. It wasn’t nice to hide, the Germans said. The group was sent to Poland. Maybe they’d come back after the war. Could be. Rachel didn’t know. Anyway, those people had hid themselves. Those Jews had not had a Gentile family to take care of them… like we did.

  Sini came down the stairs dressed as a farm girl. A scarf covered almost all her hair. She put a bundle of clothes on the back of the bike. “I can’t bear to stay in all day,” she said in a funny voice. “Why do I have to? I don’t even look Jewish. Without the star how can anyone tell!”

  Rachel walked away.

  “Goodbye, Sini. See you later today,” I said.

  Sini wheeled the bike out on the road and got on it. The church clock struck five.

  Three hours later I left. I looked good, Rachel said. Gingerly I felt the hair underneath my cap. I turned around to wave once more, but Rachel had gone back into the house.

  So nice! Rachel had let me take the new suitcase. I swung it back and forth. It was scary to look down on my clothes and not see the star. I walked faster. Have to be careful, can’t very well run.

  I started to whistle… songs I hadn’t thought about since first grade.… First grade … ages ago … for babies. I stuck one hand in my pants’ pocket and whistled louder. I had reached the outskirts of town.

  It was crowded in the street, with people going to work, on bikes, on foot. As I turned left, I noticed straight ahead, coming toward me, somebody I knew… a neighbor from our old house in Winterswijk. He was on a bike. The distance between him and me became smaller, until he was next to me, looking at me, going slower, passing me, saying nothing, only turning his head to get another look.

  Legs, go. Go. Up, stretch, down. And up and stretch and down. What if he’s going to report me? If anyone asked, I was to say I was Jan de Wit. It was a good Gentile name. Ha, who would believe me?

  I shivered.

  I looked back to see whether he was following me. No, but wasn’t that Rachel, walking a block behind me? Yes. I stopped to wait for her, but she shook her head. She didn’t want me to wait.

  I got to the bus stop. Nobody else was there. I put the suitcase down and waited. A few minutes later a yellow bus appeared. What if it drove past?

  I waved wildly. The bus slowed down, stopped. The door opened, and I walked up the steps, pushing the suitcase ahead of me. The door closed behind me.

  “One way to Enschede, please.”

  When I looked out the window, I saw Rachel’s back. She was on her way home.

  4

  I SAT down in the back of the bus, suitcase in front of me. Next to me was an elderly woman. I moved as far away from her as I could. Had I ever been on a bus before? Maybe Sini would remember. I certainly had never bought my own ticket before. Carefully I took the ticket out of my pocket and studied it. So many little holes.

  About half an hour outside of Winterswijk, the bus came to a sudden halt. Everyone stretched his neck to see why. The driver opened the door, and several Dutch soldiers came in. “Stay in your seats. Routine control. Open your bags.”

  What if they open my suitcase! What will I say? That those clothes are mine? They can’t be; they’re girls’ clothes. Why didn’t Rachel tell me what to say! I squirmed in my seat.

  One of the soldiers came to the back of the bus. “That yours, little boy?”

  Innocently I looked up at him. ?
??Oh—the suitcase? It’s full of girls’ clothes I’m taking to my aunt.”

  He nodded and went on. I wiped my wet hands on my knee socks. A few minutes later they left, carrying a killed chicken. The man they had taken it from looked mad. “That’s what they meant by routine control?” he complained.

  The bus started up again.

  The scenery outside was the same as that around Winterswijk—flat, meadows, cows. I wanted to ask my neighbor whether she knew where Usselo was, but I didn’t. What if she questioned me? I kept looking for the town. About twenty minutes later we reached Enschede. We had gone through Usselo, and I had missed it.

  I stayed on the bus until the driver announced the last stop. I climbed down.

  Somebody tapped me on the shoulder. Frightened, I turned around.

  “I’m Dini Hannink. What’s your name?”

  “Annie de Leeuw.”

  “Get on the back of the bike. Okay? Let’s go.”

  With one hand I held the suitcase; with the other, I hung on to Dini’s back.

  So this was Usselo. It seemed to be nothing but a road. Here and there were a few farms, a bakery.

  “See that house off the road, to your right?” Dini asked. “That’s where I live.” She rode into the garage.

  I slid off the bike. I waited, holding my suitcase. While Dini was putting her bicycle away, a long-haired white dog ran in. I laughed. Great. I followed the dog out of the garage, but Dini ran after me.

  “Get back, Annie, there’s the road. Somebody might see you.”

  See me? I bit my lips. Ashamed, I stepped back. When Dini had made sure that nobody was watching us, we walked to the house where Mr. and Mrs. Hannink were waiting downstairs. They took me to a room upstairs—where Sini was sitting on the edge of the bed.

  Silently we looked out of the window. It faced the backyard. We looked at the bedspread. It was crocheted. We looked around some more. At the door—it was closed—and at each other.

  Sini began studying her watch. She frowned, shook it, put it to her ear, and sighed.

  Did we have to stay in the room all day and all night? Sini had been right. This was no life.

  Unpacking didn’t take long, but it made us quarrel. Sini wasn’t fair. I needed space for my clothes, too. That drawer wasn’t only hers. Glumly I stared out the window all afternoon, thinking about it. When Sini said goodnight, I didn’t answer her. Why should I? But much later, when I looked at her through my eyelashes and saw that her eyes were open, I stuck out my hand.

  Maybe she was right. Her clothes were bigger; they’d need more space than mine.

  When would we have to get up? Sini said it didn’t matter, but we couldn’t stay in bed all day, could we? I opened the curtains. I hadn’t realized yesterday how many fruit trees were in the back of the house. I tried counting them. I got to eleven, but there were more. I noticed branches that didn’t belong to the tree trunks I could see. I walked all the way over to the right side of the window and pushed my cheek against it. I closed one eye so that I could concentrate better on what was on the left. I still couldn’t see. Irritatedly I went back to bed.

  “I wonder when the Hanninks get up,” I said.

  “We should offer to clean the upstairs,” Sini answered.

  “They’ll have to get up soon. Dini has to go to school early.”

  “You’ll have to help me dust.”

  “Doesn’t Mr. Hannink go to work? What time is it?”

  “Annie, stop asking me that question! Here.” Sini jumped out of bed, took her watch off, and put it on the commode. “Now you can see for yourself.”

  Somebody walked across the hall. The lock of the bathroom clicked. I ran over to the watch and announced: “Seven o’clock. Now we know when they get up.”

  Sure, they had to get up. They had places to go. I used to have places to go, too. Before the tree said all those things, we used to go to a hotel by the ocean. Maybe we’d go back there next summer. On hot days Father used to roll up his pants and walk to the edge of the water. “C’mon, Sophie,” he’d call, “it’s not too cold. Can’t be—not with all those people in the water.”

  But Mother always stayed in her chair, smiling. Father would move a little closer to the water, closer, closer … until his foot touched it. He’d withdraw it right away. But he went again, bravely. When a wave approached, he’d go back rapidly. Like what-do-you-call-them? Sandpipers.

  A few minutes later he’d join Mother again. “C’mon, Sophie, let me pull you in.”

  Mother would laugh, but not go.

  “You’re missing something, Sophie,” he’d say, “the water’s just right.”

  That would make Mother laugh even louder. Father would pull up his chair next to hers, and they’d talk. Not yell. Not shout. Nice.

  Would Rachel tell Mother we were in a good hotel, too? “Sini, d’you think she has?”

  “Maybe so.”

  “But would Mother believe her, Sini?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Sini answered. “Mother never understood that Hitler is after the Jews. If she had, we would’ve gone to America when Father wanted to.”

  I remembered: “Sophie … let’s … America”; screaming voices.

  “Did you know that Father was scared, Annie?”

  Father scared? “No, Sini.” I was almost yelling.

  “Sure, or he’d be in Winterswijk now risking his life, not Rachel. Haven’t you ever seen him scared before?”

  How could Sini say those things? “No.”

  “I have. Whenever a farmer didn’t want to pay, I had to go to collect the money. Now I shouldn’t have had to do that. But Father was too scared to ask for it himself. Then he’d get mad at me if I lost some of it on the way home,” Sini said angrily.

  I glared at her. Well, she should have been more careful. He had been right. And why did talking about money remind her of my math textbook?

  “Not this early, Sini.” We hadn’t even had breakfast yet!

  Places to go. Mrs. Hannink had told us that Mr. Hannink was building an underground hiding place in the backyard. “For you girls to stay in if it’s too dangerous in the house.”

  Maybe I’d get to go there some time, and stay for a while.

  Smilingly I looked at Sini. She’d probably like that too. But maybe she hadn’t heard. She was pacing back and forth, shaking her fists at the window. “Annie, how much longer? I have to get out—out!”

  But we had only been in the room a day and a night.

  “I think I can take it if it’s just for the winter. But in the spring, Annie, if we’re still here in May, I’ll go crazy. You hear me?”

  I heard. That’s when I wanted to get out, too. I’d climb trees with Frits again.

  “I have to have a tan in the summer. I look terrible without one. Annie, answer me.” What was I supposed to say? “Tell me honestly. Am I ugly with this red hair and no eyebrows?”

  I studied her critically. Sini stood in front of me, waiting for my answer. “You’re pretty. Really. I wish I looked like you.”

  “Come here, silly. We’ll manage, you and I.”

  It would be nice when Rachel came. I stealthily passed the commode and glanced at the watch. Maybe Mrs. Hannink would let the dog come upstairs. That would be nice. When she and Dini came in to talk to us, I asked her. “Sure,” she said, and Kees came. He wagged his tail at us, licked us, jumped on us … then ran over to the door. Out. Bobbie wouldn’t have done that. He would’ve stayed with me.

  Unhappily I looked out the window. “You’re lucky you can stay in today,” Dini said. “It’s awful out. I wish I could stay up here with you.” But right after she said that she left—to go to school. I’d even go to school and like it, if I could get out.

  Dini was right about the weather today. The wind was howling. Once in a while an abandoned apple was swept off a tree. Plop. It didn’t fall straight down. It was first thrown against nearby branches or the tree trunk. Plop. The apple would be bruised by the time it got
to the ground. It would have cracks in it. Juice would ooze out. If nobody picked it up for a day or so, it would turn brown where it was bruised. Ants would walk back and forth in the cracks. If you left it any longer, the whole apple would turn a dull brown. Rot. Smell. Even the bugs would lose interest. Leaves would cover it. Somebody would step on it. Squash it. End it.

  I picked up a book and turned some of the pages. What a boring story.

  Mother died. Miss Kleinhoonte called Mr. Hannink to tell him. We had known Mother would die soon. But when he told us, it hurt just the same. After Mr. Hannink left, Sini and I sat on the bed, close together. We cried.

  I wondered whether Grandmother knew. She probably did, unless she had already gotten on that train with Uncle Phil, Aunt Billa, and Hannie.

  Now Rachel would come. She’d have to. She was probably getting ready right now.

  But she didn’t come, and she wasn’t going to, either. She had gone to somebody else’s house instead, Mr. Hannink said, and we didn’t even know why. Reverend Zwaal hadn’t wanted to talk about it over the telephone. To think that Sini and I had even put our clothes together so Rachel could have her own drawer.

  “My God, why does it have to be me who’s stuck with you?” Sini cried.

  “I wish it weren’t you either,” I said furiously. “I’d rather be with Rachel any day.” But after a minute I walked over to Sini and sat on her lap. I buried my head in her neck and sobbed. “Don’t,” she said, “I’ll take care of my little sister.”

  Sini picked up the calendar Mrs. Hannink had given us and hung it over our bed. Today was the twelfth of November. How long had we been here? I tried to remember, but I couldn’t, and didn’t dare ask Sini. Could she be right that we might be here forever? A long time ago there had been a war between Holland and Spain, she had told me, which lasted for eighty years. Eighty. Let’s see. I’d be ninety. And Sini would be one hundred. There she was, standing by the bed with a pencil in her hand. With hard angry movements she crossed off the first eleven days of November. Eleven deep black crosses. Would she mark off the twelfth, too? She shouldn’t. Today wasn’t over yet. Wasn’t it easy? All you had to do was to cross them off. Every day of the month. You could even do it ahead. Why not?