The Lost History of Stars

  He pulled something shiny from his tunic, a tin box, red and gold and blue.

  “Queen sent it to me. . . . Got her likeness right here on top, with her signature.” He held it out for me to see.

  “Igghh . . . she looks like Kruger without the beard.”

  “Speak well of the dead.”

  He was right; that was unchristian.

  “She sent a hundred thousand of these boxes, filled with chocolate.”

  “There are a hundred thousand of you here?” Was he planting information on troop strength?

  “Oh . . . that was just at the start. . . . More now . . . many more . . . five times that now, probably.”

  He opened the container, and a delicate smell overcame me. I’m sure it had been empty for months, but I could still smell the chocolate. It angered me.

  “You kill our men and burn our farms, and the queen sends you chocolates?”

  “Yes, she did. . . . Generous, I thought. Some men sent them right home to their girls or family, but it would have cost five shillings and I decided I could use it more than my mum.”

  The box was beautiful.

  “Here, smell,” he said.

  “Put that away.”

  “Just a smell . . .”

  “No.” I yelled this time. But did not back away.

  He held it closer to my face. My mouth flooded.

  “No.”

  At the edge of the crinkled inner wrapper was the smallest sliver of candy that had broken off, smaller than a flower petal, a smudge. I touched it, and it cleaved to my finger. I brought it to my nose and it was chocolate, the slightest essence, or maybe it was just a memory of chocolate. I touched my finger to my tongue. And there was a taste, or the memory of a taste, and it lasted for days.

  I WAS ACCUSTOMED TO jarring sounds when I slept at home, since nightbirds would call at certain times of the year, and animals’ lives came to noisy ends in the thick darkness. But the shrill, one-note whistles in the camp at night were foreign to nature and impossible to attribute to memory or dream. It sparked fears of phantoms whistling their threats. I twisted in my small nest, blanketed between my sister and the tent wall, Moeder’s cot at my head, Mevrou Huiseveldt’s at my feet.

  The commandant’s intrusion had made us realize nothing in the tent was safe or private, and Moeder made us go through our belongings to be certain we were not in jeopardy if the guards visited again. She took us aside when the commandant was gone to ask whether we had any idea what had caused their suspicions. Had either of us tried to send letters out of camp? No, Ma. Did we have any idea who might have tried to inform on us? No, Ma, do you? She tilted her head side to side a few times and then up and down slowly. As if the motion itself had shaken loose the thought, she whispered, “Oom.”

  Moeder could not even bear to say the given name: Sarel. Her conclusion made sense: if he could turn on his country, he could turn on his family. Moeder might have frightened him so badly when he came to our tent that he was striking back with lies to the commandant. Not that anyone in the camp could be trusted, but it felt a relief to think it was Oom Sarel and not . . . yes . . . I had thought it . . . Maples.

  I thought of him again during my restless sleep. With each body shift, I adjusted my “pillow,” which was the rolled-up pinafore I had never worn in camp. It had seemed too dressy at a time when I decided it was wiser not to call attention to myself. The first night, I had needed something for my head when sleeping on the ground, and the pinafore was soft and could be balled up. Since then, it had faded to the color of the tent floor.

  The pillow added small comfort, since the ground felt harder now, and it seemed to pull harder at me, so that I woke up sore. Sometimes it was easier just to get up and fetch water or stand in line for rations early. Or just lie awake and think about the plans for the day and plot which direction I might walk. My path might lead me past the red-haired guard again. I thought about the guard’s schedule and where he stood at different times on different days. What would I wear today? As if I had options. Well, yes, I did.

  When the others awoke, I asked Moeder if I could start helping with the laundry. She focused on the small black dots in the very middle of my eyes.

  “I could wash my things so you wouldn’t have to,” I said. “Really, Ma, I should help. At least do my own.”

  “What do you want washed?”

  “I just want to help.”

  “Aletta . . .”

  I held up my filthy pinafore.

  “Soap is dear, Lettie,” she said. “Why now?”

  “It would protect my skirts; it’s really just an apron.”

  Sound logic.

  “If I get it white, then I can wear it if I go for psalms and hymns, and it will look nicer than these skirts and be more respectful of the service.”

  Moeder unrolled it and held it up to my shoulders.

  “I’ll be grown out of it if I don’t wear it soon.”

  She could see that. “You’re taller now . . . more mature.”

  I helped carry the basket to the reservoir.

  “Ma, did you hear whistles last night?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “Are they birds?”

  “Perhaps . . .”

  “What kind?”

  “Try to sleep through them.”

  We went to the far end of the small dam, keeping a distance from others. Doing laundry was difficult and a constant chore because of the dust and mud and the other filth tracked around camp. When the white clay soap could not be had, some no longer bothered, but many still washed as they could, agitating the items in the shallow water.

  Chatting as they scrubbed and rinsed, women bobbed like animals drinking at the edge of a water hole at sunset. They passed on what news they heard of the war or home, or rumors and camp gossip. The common complaints circled endlessly. How could the commandant consider soap and candles “articles of luxury”? Did you hear they put things in the food to make us sick? At the edge of this muddy pond, the women placed the blame for all the bad things in our lives on the Hands-Uppers and Joiners, even more than on the Tommies. This talk kept their hatred fresh and whipped to a froth.

  Moeder liked to stay away from the knot of women, whom she said came to the reservoir to “wash with their tears.” They dragged one another to greater depths. “Sharing your sorrow does not diminish your own,” Moeder said.

  That morning on the crowded bank, I strained to overhear the women’s gossip, catching only phrases amid the splashing water and the prattle of the mindless.

  “. . . boy in the next tent passed . . .”

  “. . . the coffee was so . . .”

  “. . . measles, I . . .”

  “. . . no soap since . . .”

  “. . . pity the family . . .”

  “. . . one of twins . . .”

  “. . . fourteen . . .”

  “. . . should have . . . commando . . .”

  “. . . safer there . . .”

  “. . . pity . . .”

  It had to be Nicolaas. Janetta’s brother Nicolaas. That beautiful boy.

  “Moeder . . . did you hear?”

  She was focused on the wash.

  “I think I heard that Janetta’s brother died. . . . Can I go?”

  She looked at the basket.

  “Of course. . . . Keep your distance.”

  I had not seen Janetta for several weeks. I hated that I hadn’t been there to help her. It felt wrong not to support my best friend. I had tried her tent almost every day, at least at first. The tent, now, was cinched, their crying muted by canvas. I stood and waited, fingers touching the door flap, waiting for clearance to enter that was never granted.

  The death of a brother would carry such pain, but how much more was the loss of a twin? She had to feel the death of a part of herself. They shared a connection I could never hope to understand. Would she be harnessed to guilt for having been the one to survive?

  I listened harder and waited. I hoped that she had stay
ed healthy and that her sorrows would fade enough that we could be close again. She did not answer when I called. I went back a time or two, to no effect, until one afternoon I could see the tent flap open as I approached. I pulled up my skirts and ran. All is better. Nicolaas had been healed, the talk had been of some other boy, and Janetta was now free to join me again. Praise God.

  “Janetta . . .”

  Three women and an old man sat on blankets in a circle. They startled and the man rose as if to fight me off.

  “Where’s Janetta?”

  “Who?”

  “Janetta, my friend . . .”

  The man stepped closer to me. “No Janetta,” he said.

  She was gone. Her family was gone. No good-bye. No explanation. I wondered whether it had been another product of her mother’s ingenuity. My pulse had gone from racing to a cold stop. Friendships in camp were suddenly not worth the investment. I had told her everything. She felt like my twin, and she was gone. Maybe she had died, too. For a moment I welcomed that explanation; it made her disappearance less of a personal rejection. I knew then that I needed to be closer to Cee-Cee and connect better with Willem. We have only our family, they said, and that had to be enough. We’d been tight as a sheaf, and there was such strength in the collection of us. And when I thought of us pulled tight against whatever might challenge us, it was no longer Oupa Gideon or Vader I pictured at the center of it all. It was Moeder who was the family heartwood and, in her way, the strongest of us all.

  15

  December 1899, Venter Farm

  Bina swept the scythe so smoothly the tall oats seemed to lie down willingly, as if bowing to her. Her hips, rounded like the quarters of a draft horse, tilted and then rolled with each sweep. Smooth and tireless, smooth and powerful, her rhythm made work a dance.

  Hard lives had grown harder with the men gone, but I think we wanted it that way. It felt as if we were sharing the sacrifice, working toward a victory ourselves. I came to appreciate the farm as I never had when I did such little outside work. I saw this as proof of Bina’s saying that you can’t know the value of something until you pay for it. And we all were paying with our labors, now. For the first month or so after the men left, Bina had been able to do many of the outside chores herself, but the oat harvest brought Moeder and me to the fields.

  It was left to Moeder to guess at the timing of the harvest. All things were drying now and the clumps of weeping love grass were encroaching on the field. We had to pay attention to such things. Moeder tested the firmness of the grain head and judged the color of the stalk. When the morning winds told her there would be several days of dryness, we began.

  At dawn, dew reflected rainbows off the stalks, and the oats smelled of musk. Moeder followed Bina to rake and stack the sheaves she had reaped and I tied each around the middle with dry stalks that cinched it all like a tight belt.

  Bina sang for us all. Moeder said they were such noisy people, with their drumming and chanting. But Bina’s songs moved the work along, easing it through time, the sweep of the scythe and the rhythm of the song paring the day into tolerable pieces.

  Moeder’s plan was that we reap the few morgen of oats in several days. Oupa Gideon suggested she bring the sjambok into the field in case incentive was required. Vader told us that Oupa had been generous with his stick on his sons when they were young, particularly Oom Sarel. But I hadn’t seen him strike Bina, and Tuma only a few times. He cuffed Schalk on the back of the head or across the cheek a number of times when he was younger and had spoken to the adults with a tone Oupa deemed disrespectful. He cited scripture to justify the discipline in all cases. But Bina needed no reminders; she worked at such a steady pace that she did not even appear to tire. I wondered again at the girth that strained her robes, and at her curious pairing with the reed-thin Tuma, who could not have measured one-third her span.

  Toward midday, the drying stalks took on the smell of dusty silage, and Moeder announced that we needed to be more efficient. She would take up a sickle of her own and start clearing a row at a slight distance, and I would rake and stack sheaves for both her and Bina. I could see from the start that she tried to emulate Bina’s hip sway. She was stiff, though, and the stalks grabbed the blade and turned it in her hands. She looked so slight compared to Bina. Slender and light haired, she more closely resembled the oat stalks than she did her fellow reaper. She stopped, listened to Bina’s song, and began swinging the scythe in time.

  I raced between the two rows. I know I missed some and was not as tidy as Moeder had been, but I tried to keep up with them both. Swipe, step, swipe, step, to the sound of Bina’s song. A dark line of sweat spread down the back of Moeder’s dress. The bending and bunching lit a flame in my lower back. When I returned to Moeder’s row in the late afternoon, I could see she had torn cloth from the hem of her apron and wrapped it around her hands.

  The day passed: Bina sang, curious birds flew near, and the heat pressed in from all directions. My heart fluttered each time I heard the scales of fleeing snakes scrape against nearby oat stalks. By quitting time, blood had soaked through Moeder’s hand wrap and dripped down the scythe handle in spiral patterns. Our sweat was powerful and our bodies smelled of yeast. Chaff and straw cleaved to our clothes and gathered in whatever folds of skin were exposed. When we told Bina it was time to stop and she straightened and lifted her head, the sweat-caked chaff aligned like tribal neck rings. She was the color of field dust except in the streaks where sweat had channeled down the rills of her face.

  “Enough,” Moeder said to Bina. “Start potatoes and onions for supper.” I followed Moeder to see how I could help. She was still unbent but moved so slowly toward the barn that her small steps were unseen inside the radius of her skirts.

  “Ma?”

  “Go in the house.”

  “I can help.”

  “Then look through the cans for turpentine.”

  “Another job before supper?”

  “Ja,” she said.

  She sat on a bale, turned her hands up, and blew across her bloody palms.

  I remembered the time Oupa nearly severed his thumb with a saw. He poured turpentine on it and bound it tightly with a cloth. But when it festered several days later, he had Vader slaughter a goat, and Oupa sat for hours with his hand in the still-warm stomach cavity. He soon pronounced it healed, and it was never addressed thereafter. I saw the wedge where flesh had been gouged from the base of his thumb almost every time he gestured while telling a story or pointed to the stars on our secret nights together.

  I found the turpentine on a shelf, but the cap was so tight I strained to break the seal. The smell of it cleared my head. Moeder lifted her hands, skin worn raw, the palms seeping blood, red meat showing in angry rows. Only a few months earlier I had seen her rubbing mutton fat on her hands each night to keep them soft and womanly.

  “Pour,” she said.

  “Ma?”

  “Pour.”

  She stretched her fingers wide and opened the palm beyond flat, breaking open anything that had started to heal.

  The turpentine splashed and mixed with the blood and ran between her fingers. Moeder opened her hands wider still. The smell burned so deep it brought tears. I could not imagine the feel of it on blistered, open wounds.

  “Pour,” she said again.

  She had set her jaw and was biting hard enough that muscles flexed on the side of her face. Pale with dust, she sat motionless until she could regain her breath. She inhaled in small gulps and blew on her hands and then waved them in the air to speed the drying.

  “Do you want me to kill a goat now?” I asked.

  She looked up, curious, but did not ask for an explanation.

  “Put the can away. . . . Let’s go.”

  When we reached the house, we heard laughing in the kitchen. Tante Hannah was on the floor on all fours, with Cecelia on her back, riding her like a horse, kicking and giggling. Tante made horse noises, fluttering her lips, tossing her head.


  “What is this?” Moeder surprised me with her tone.

  Tante startled at her question and sat upright, bucking Cecelia to the floor. Cee-Cee laughed again, as if it were part of the game.

  “I was going to get supper started for you all, but I got distracted playing with Cee-Cee instead,” Hannah said.

  “Aletta, watch your sister.” I led Cee-Cee to the table by the hand. My back had stiffened so that I could not bend to pick her up.

  “Willem,” Moeder called. He would pay for having left Cee-Cee with Tante Hannah.

  Moeder washed the field off herself and splashed water on her face. But touching her hands to her face brought the scent of turpentine into her eyes. She straightened again, stretched her neck from side to side and back to front, allowing a small groan to escape.

  “Bina . . . potatoes.”

  “White woman with a black shadow doing the work,” Hannah mumbled.

  Moeder looked at her sister-in-law without expression. “There are more of us,” Moeder said.

  “Ja, I know . . . all your children to tend,” Tante Hannah said. “If you have work to do . . . you and Bina . . . the children could come to our place so you wouldn’t have to worry about them. I would take them. I would . . . they would enjoy it.”

  “Who does your work?”

  “I get it done. We get it done. There’s not that much.”

  “How do I value a gift that most satisfies the giver?” Moeder asked. “We’re fine. Your schooling Aletta is enough.”

  Cecelia chattered at her doll.

  “Set the table, Lettie,” Moeder said.

  “Right away . . . then I’ll make tea,” I said. “Tante Hannah . . . tea?”

  “That would be nice,” she answered, easing into a smile for me.

  The family ate, but Moeder kept her hands to her side until Tante Hannah went home and the little ones had gone into the parlor. Bina knew Moeder was hiding her hands, and held her own palms open as an invitation to see Moeder’s.

  “I’ve got muti for that,” she said.

  “Later,” Moeder answered. “Bible reading now.”

  Cee-Cee asked for her to play “The Eagle Hymn,” the name she had given to a piece that contained the line On eagles’ wings we soar. It always made me imagine floating on the warm winds above the veld. I wanted to hear that, too. Moeder told Cee-Cee it was too late for the organ, but I knew the truth was that she would have been unable to stretch her fingers to the keys.