The Lost History of Stars

  “Maybe when you get home . . . when this is over . . . boys will come to your home,” he said. “I saw the candle sitting in a guard tent and thought about you and that sitting-up tradition you folks have. I took it. . . . Thought you’d need it someday.”

  “Of course . . . someday.”

  29

  September 1901, Concentration Camp

  The sound of the match scrape and the flash of a brave little flame carried ominous meaning.

  “Ma?”

  “Checking on Cecelia.” She used her full given name.

  She had not been noticeably unwell, but her little bird-chirp voice had grown softer, with a catch in it at times. She did not complain, and there were no symptoms to consider. Not really. How do you distinguish daily fatigue and hunger from something more serious? She gradually took to coughing a bit more and playing with her doll quietly in the tent. She was not as interested in my stories or songs. And when she did come close and want to hear them, they did not bring out her usual joyfulness. I was ashamed I hadn’t noticed.

  Another match flash. I saw my shadow on the tent wall. Moeder hummed. Sleep was no longer an option.

  It had come on fast, in the past few days, with diarrhea leading to fever.

  The scrape of another match. Cee-Cee’s head rested on Moeder’s lap.

  When the fever took hold, Cee-Cee stopped taking food, only some beef tea, and then she had appetite for nothing. Moeder had not left the tent, and I was gone only for rations and water. This was not the togetherness I had planned. The weight of that guilt added to the cargo I already scarcely shouldered.

  “Moeder . . . wait.” From under my blankets, near my journal and books, I withdrew the package. “Here . . . I have a candle now.”

  “Where?”

  “I found it.”

  “You found it wrapped in paper?”

  “Found it like that . . . yes.”

  “Aletta? They could probably take us in for having this.” Relief in having the candle overcame her worries and curiosity. “Light it . . . now. Let’s try to clean her up a bit.”

  Under the steady light, Moeder examined Cee-Cee and then shook Willem awake.

  “Willem . . . Willem.”

  It took several shakes to rouse him.

  “What?”

  “Go find the dominee,” she said.

  “Where?

  “I don’t know. . . . Find his tent.”

  “Lettie can go.”

  “I need her here,” she said.

  “He’ll be asleep.”

  “Wake him if you have to.”

  He looked at me through half-closed eyes, trying to read how worried he should be. I tilted my head toward the door. Cee-Cee had heard Moeder send for the preacher.

  “What now, Ma?” she asked.

  “We’re going to get you pretty for a visitor.”

  Her eyes closed and the sockets were made ghostly by the shadows of her cheekbones and brow. We had no soap to wash her.

  It was the first time I had looked at Moeder in this light, too, and her face was nearly as gaunt as Cee-Cee’s, with smoky gray circles around deepening eyes. Those eyes widened as she opened Cee-Cee’s clothes. Cee-Cee’s skin looked dark even by candlelight. I could count each rib, perhaps every bone. Her feet and knees seemed too large, with so little meat to cover the spindly bones of her legs. I had hugged her tightly during story time only a week before and could not believe her decline in so few days.

  Moeder wiped her with a dry cloth, and skin sloughed in dark nuggets.

  “Help me roll her over.”

  “This won’t hurt, sissy,” I said. “Give me Lollie and I’ll take care of her.”

  I put her doll on the side of the cot and helped support her shoulders as she turned. The blades beneath felt thin and sharp, and I feared snapping a bone if we weren’t delicate in her handling. The nodes of her spine could be counted, and we could see her hip bones clearly through the slack skin of her buttocks, which were flared red.

  I could not look, and focused directly on her face, and petted her hair. “Would you like the dominee to tell you a story?”

  She nodded and smiled with one side of her mouth, her lips dry white.

  “Jairus’s daughter,” Moeder said. “The dominee will know that one from memory.”

  As Moeder cleaned her, Cee-Cee and I looked into each other’s eyes. I tried to make mine as calm as I could by thinking peaceful thoughts. She squeezed hers tightly whenever Moeder rubbed a tender spot.

  Willem returned with the dominee in less than half an hour. The man who had led us in psalms and hymns that night in the big tent draped his wet coat on the cot frame as Moeder covered Cecelia with a sheet.

  “Who do we have here?”

  “Cecelia,” Moeder said. “Our little lamb.”

  “Well, isn’t she just,” he said, touching her hair.

  He read a prayer of blessing and looked to Moeder to see whether that had been enough, and whether it had been presented with the proper gravity. I worried that more would frighten her.

  “I think she would like to hear the story of Jairus’s daughter,” Moeder said.

  The dominee understood.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and told her of Jairus, whose daughter was very sick. So sick, in fact, that they sent for Jesus to bless her. Jesus was delayed, and when he arrived, he was told that the little girl had just expired. When the dominee said the word “expired,” it was as if he were talking about some food that had gone bad rather than the end of a human life.

  “But fret not,” he added quickly.

  As if angry at himself for being delayed, Jesus chased the family from the room and was alone with the girl.

  “Jesus took her hand, and he said, ‘Little girl, I say to you, arise.’ And the little girl was not dead; she got up and walked.”

  Cecelia had been listening with closed eyes. When she smiled, it pulled her lips tight. She rested.

  “Have you taken her to the hospital?” the dominee asked Moeder.

  She shook her head forcefully. The idea of Cee-Cee’s going to the hospital broke something in me, and I had to leave.

  “Be strong for your sister, and don’t cry in front of her,” the dominee said, holding me by the shoulder near the tent door. “I tended a boy last night who told his mother a thing I’ll never forget. You should both hear this.”

  I wiped my eyes on my sleeve. I didn’t care whether he saw me.

  “This little one had been sick a long time. . . . He said that he’d decided he was happy to go live with Jesus, because living here with us was too hard.”

  “But she’ll . . . get . . . better,” I said, having to suck in air between words.

  He put his palm on the crown of my head.

  From the door of our tent, we heard a voice. “Ah, true love.”

  We turned to see black-hooded faces peering inside the door flap.

  “Regrets,” the dominee said. “They seem to follow me, especially at night.”

  The vultures.

  “Tend your sister,” Moeder said to me, and she stepped through the tent flap. She had thoughts to share with women who believed they had a place with us at this time. I knew she felt they were beneath her scorn, but she was generous with it, anyway. I heard scuffling, and as I moved to the door, she stepped back in.

  “The dominee chased them off,” she said, disappointed.

  Her face was brilliant red, and she held a torn black kappie in her hand.

  WITHIN MINUTES, MOEDER SOMEHOW put a lid on her boiling emotions and assumed control. She positioned her lap beneath Cee-Cee’s head and prepared to blow out the candle.

  “Put yourself in order,” she said to us. “And try to get some sleep.”

  Sleep? Not likely. Put myself in order? Yes. Just as Moeder had. Prepare for tomorrow. Quiet the voices. Focus. Tante Hannah knew how: create a wall of concentration against the invasion of thoughts.

  Put myself in order: Yes. Freeze the images
worth saving, like photographs fixed on paper, so that the good ones might be unchanged by time. But there was so little worth saving. The time inside the tent, time pacing the fence line, days that felt like the endless rows of tents themselves. We were restricted by the fences but imprisoned more by the infinite sameness. Discard that image.

  Try, too, to forget Moeder’s eyes. The look of them as she tended Cee-Cee would otherwise haunt. Had her eyes retreated, backing away from the things they’d seen? And the vessels that burst that day at the fence line were now a jagged web. But she remained unbending as the tent pole. That was the image to preserve.

  Mevrou Huiseveldt wore her discontent like a coat she never removed. If I saved her image at all, it would be this: as sour as she continued to be, she had never once complained of an ailment since Klaas’s death.

  Willem was simple: I kept seeing him standing in front of the line of Tommies, viewed in profile, so thin, but with his jaw clenched so hard I could watch the muscles holding it tight. He was the image of defiance, even if foolishly so.

  Janetta had been gone for months, yet I thought of her every day, thought of our walks, thought about her light breath on my cheek. And because it was her boldness that had introduced us to Maples, thinking of her made me think of him . . . his eyes . . . his red hair, which no longer offended me. I thought of him when I smelled the Dickens book. I thought of his way of speaking. . . . I heard him talking to me. . . . I heard him sigh. . . .

  No . . . that was Cee-Cee.

  “Moeder?”

  “Go back to sleep,” she said in the tone she used when praying. I would not bother them, perhaps she could rest. Moeder’s voice calmed me. She hummed then and sang in whispers, the wind against the canvas muting most of it. I leaned closer to hear. It was “The Eagle Hymn,” the one that Cee-Cee loved most. . . . On eagles’ wings we soar. . . . Moeder had remembered. I smiled. There was an image to save: the depth of a mother’s love that the vulture women would never understand.

  Inspired by her, I prayed for the little one. I vowed to devote my days to her when she was better. I would finish Dickens with her. She had been good with her letters and would be writing soon. I would get more sheets of rules for her to start drawing on. We would walk and hug, and I would share my food with her because she was so thin. . . . No, discard that image.

  But how to purge the image of her bones? How had I not noticed earlier? I felt my wrist. I did not imagine I had much meat there, anyway, even before, but my fingers easily went all the way around. We were all wasting. My soreness in the mornings might have been because there was so little now between my bones and the ground. I thought of my body’s being ground down, day by day, and sifted into the soil at night.

  Even this taking-stock process was exhausting, as thoughts refused to be marshaled, running loose, beyond control, grinding against one another, the friction and pressure creating heat. Breathing was like sucking syrupy air into my lungs, and every exhalation was steamy, and the tent swelled because of it. The top of the tent lost its point and grew round, and we all panted, sucking in thick air and exhaling steam. The canvas expanded and lifted up. . . . The tent ropes hummed . . . higher, more a whistle now, and the lines snapped like slingshots. . . . We rose, slowly at first, just inches above the ground, and then we were free . . . floating above the camp . . . the tent now round and white in the night sky. And below, the other tents pointed like shark teeth. I looked to Moeder and Willem, and they were swelling, too, and panting hot air, and we needed to keep exhaling or we’d be sucked back to earth, back to camp. Panting . . . panting . . . rising . . . never daring to look down. . . . We rose into the cooler air, and even as we did, I knew I was hallucinating, but it helped me finally float toward sleep.

  MOEDER WHISPERED LOUDLY ENOUGH to stir me but no one else in the tent.

  “Lettie, light the candle.”

  Not again, poor Cee-Cee.

  Moeder held her on her lap.

  “Oh no, Mama, no.”

  Moeder touched the tight curls.

  “Ceec.”

  She opened her eyes when I said her name. They closed slowly and she released a raspy sigh.

  I leaned over her and breathed in the tiny puff of air she had exhaled. I sucked in as much as I could, taking it deeply and holding it there, willing it into my blood. Hold it, hold it, hold it. I thought of Cee-Cee when she was a new baby, and when I held her hands and helped her walk toward Vader, and how we played and sang. Her breath was in my blood.

  Hold it, hold it. I thought of the look of excitement in her eyes when I told her stories.

  Hold it. Hold. . . . I wilted against the cot and had to exhale. The next breath carried only the scent of moldy canvas, fouled bedding, and the rest of us living in this small, miserable place.

  Moeder lifted Cee-Cee’s little arms from her sides to rest across her chest, the bones like brittle twigs in a loose paper bundle. The tent shuddered from a gust. Mevrou Huiseveldt snored without concern.

  I shivered, and that awakened my morning hunger. But the smells soured it into nausea. Moeder pulled Cee-Cee up against her chest and rocked her, whispering something I could not hear against the fluttering canvas. Maybe it was a prayer or a song. I waited until she finished.

  “What do we do, Moeder?”

  “Maak ’n plan,” she said. She sniffed at the air. “The wind should dry things and I can get to the reservoir to wash her dress,” she said.

  I thought of Cee-Cee’s good dress and the times she’d worn it. I cried and did not care whom it woke.

  “Lettie . . . calm . . . God’s will,” Moeder said. “God’s will. . . . Never doubt. . . . Not a sparrow falls without his blessing.”

  “Not a sparrow falls,” I repeated. Cee-Cee seemed exactly like a frail bird. But how did we let her fall? I bent to hug her and kiss her forehead.

  “Pray for her soul,” she said.

  I mouthed words toward Cee-Cee but could not say them aloud without sobbing.

  “Aletta, you have to get to the coffin maker. . . . If you’re early, he might have wood today,” she said. “If not, try to find some.”

  I stood, touched her shoulder and then her cheek. I heard that the Pienaars had buried their little boy in a cloth shroud because there was no wood.

  “Yes, Ma.”

  “Go.”

  I shook my blanket and wrapped it tight as I could stand. The tent ropes moaned in the predawn. Through a rift in the fast clouds I saw a few stars, but the wind pulled a veil across them. I listened for activity in neighbors’ tents. I knew Ouma van Zyl had nothing. Other than shaking canvas, there was silence from the Van Tonders’. If they were able to sleep, I would not disturb.

  I looked toward the reservoir but hadn’t seen anything that way. I walked to the east; Maples would not be on duty yet, I didn’t think, but if I saw him he might have ideas.

  The sounds of an uneventful morning seeped from the next tent. I cleared my throat, seeking permission to enter. A group was circled, holding hands. They stopped their prayer, opened their eyes, and welcomed my entry.

  My words were thick.

  “. . . lost my sister . . . coffin . . . wood.”

  “Go to the coffin maker.” The oldest woman pointed farther to the east. “God be praised, child.”

  The wind folded back the brim of my kappie and carried the stench from the latrine pits. My gut tightened again and I pulled my blanket over my nose and cursed into it.

  It was still short of full dawn, but a dozen stood in single file outside the coffin maker’s tent, as they might have at a shop in town, waiting to buy goods.

  The last in the row turned. “Only cloths,” she said.

  The line moved quickly, some heading to the morgue tent, others just back to their families to prepare for services.

  “My baby sister died,” I told the man. “My mother sent me.”

  “No wood . . . no coffins,” he said. “If you can find wood, I’ll build one, but there’s none in camp. None
for miles.”

  “My mother sent me,” I repeated.

  He held up a square piece of canvas, part of a tattered tent.

  “If she’s small, this will do,” he said.

  I remembered how Cee-Cee would hide under her quilt at home, giving herself away with her giggling. The canvas piece was half the size of her quilt. She would fit.

  I stood taller and focused on the man’s eyes, stressing my situation. He seemed familiar with the look.

  “I am a carpenter,” he said. “A carpenter with no wood. What can I do?”We both squinted against the wind. He folded the canvas piece and handed it to me.

  When I reached the tent, Willem sat at the far side with Rachel, who mouthed her porridge next to Cecelia’s body. They prayed and sang weary hymns through the morning until Willem moved away and pulled himself inside his blanket.

  Moeder returned from the reservoir with Cee-Cee’s still-moist dress. I helped change her.

  We gathered for the walk to the cemetery, a group from a nearby tent falling in behind, eyes down, carrying a young boy on a blanket. He was dressed in a black suit, a white scarf tied under his jaw to keep his mouth from falling open as they walked.

  By the time our silent convoy reached the table-flat rise of land at the edge of the camp, several other groups were gathered around mounds and shallow clefts in the earth.

  Two of the older men approached Moeder and offered to dig, their heads lowered, holding shovels across their chests like rifles. One apologized that the site was not ready; they never knew how many would be needed each day.

  We stood like a windbreak of trees along one side. When a small trench was rent in the rocky ground, the dominee finishing up at a nearby grave was called to oversee the service for us. He recognized Moeder but could not remember Cecelia’s name.

  He opened his book and thumbed through the readings.

  Out of the depths of misery,

  I cry with heart and mouth

  To thee who can send salvation

  Oh Lord, look upon my pain.

  We could scarcely hear him above the wind but recognized the verse. We repeated the final line of the stanza. Lord, look upon my pain, we said. Amen.