One mild morning in May, we found Mr Klop waiting for us in the doorway to the classroom with such a black look on his face that his eyes looked like purple jelly beans. A fat vein stood out on his forehead, and he was working his jaws as if he was getting ready for the sermon of a lifetime. Words were to our teacher what cudgels had been to the Batavians.
Our fingers nearly failed us as we nervously unbuttoned our jackets and hung them up. Loops broke off, buttons clattered to the floor. Cowed, we shuffled inside and tried to find our seats in as orderly a manner as possible.
Mr Klop shut the door. He marched to the front of the classroom and gazed at us, legs spread wide, rocking his torso slightly from side to side. Accusingly, he stared at the desk where Lucy was supposed to be sitting. We glanced over our shoulders. The spot next to the craft-supplies cupboard was empty.
You could have heard a pin drop.
After a while, he said, ‘There’s someone on his way here to see you.’ That was all. Then he went and sat down.
We didn’t dare move a muscle.
Mr Klop started cracking his fingers one by one, an ominous frown on his face. Suddenly he leaned forward. ‘If anyone in this class has done anything to cause me shame’—he said it very quietly and very slowly—‘there will be hell to pay. I repeat: hell-to-pay. Is that clear, you little snakes, you viper’s nest?’ He cupped his hand behind his ear.
‘Yes, sir,’ we breathed.
Behind him, on the blackboard, the nine-times table was waiting for us. If he’d been in a good mood, he’d have announced, ‘Nine—a tricky bastard, that one. But are we maths wizards, or aren’t we? Come on, let’s show that wanker a thing or two, shall we?’ Hopefully, we kept our eyes fixed on the numbers, waiting for some sign of a thaw.
The minutes ticked by, on and on. Our clothes started giving off steam. Outside the fogged-up windows, people were strolling up and down the street, on their way to whatever, carefree as only adults could be. For them there was never a cloud on the horizon.
Suddenly, Vanessa burst into tears. ‘We were only trying to help her, sir,’ she snivelled.
Mr Klop said nothing. He glared round.
‘And she was asking for it, too,’ Sara added.
‘It’s true!’ squeaked Safranja.
‘What, exactly,’ he asked icily, ‘was she asking for, then?’
Just then, Duco entered the classroom on squeaky sneakers, clutching a plastic carrier bag. His forehead was slick with sweat. His expression was a bit less good-natured than usual, which made him suddenly look like a different man from the one who used to pick us up when he found us crying halfway up the rectory stairs because they were too steep, and then, with a hand on our bums, helped push us up.
‘Good morning,’ said the teacher. He stood up. He seemed to be debating whether to shake Duco’s hand. Then, with a flourish, he offered him his own chair.
Duco shook his head. ‘Good morning, children,’ he said. His voice quavered a bit.
‘Let’s get right down to business, shall we?’ asked the teacher. ‘Niceties are wasted on this lot. And they’ve been in the hot seat since nine o’clock, so they should be good and ready by now. Blow your nose, Vanessa. It’s too damn late to start crying now.’
‘Was it you?’ asked Duco, startled, staring at Vanessa. ‘Lucy didn’t want to name names, she didn’t want to tell on anyone.’
‘Did you punks hear that?’ The teacher aimed a vicious, random kick at one of the front-row desks. ‘What have you done to deserve that, you sneaky bastards?’
Duco stared at him in dismay, hugging his bag to his chest. He hadn’t been exposed to Mr Klop’s methods on a daily basis, as we were. He was clearly flustered.
‘And those two over there,’ the teacher pointed, ‘were in on it, too.’
Sara and Safranja cowered.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Duco softly. ‘You used to be crazy about her.’ His eyes roved around the classroom. ‘You all were, as a matter of fact.’ Suddenly, his eye fell on Thomas. ‘Did you put the other children up to this?’ He walked up to Thomas, his hand stretched out in front as if trying to befriend a dangerous dog.
We noticed that the hem of his raincoat was coming out.
Thomas had turned white as a sheet. He wasn’t one of the ringleaders, actually. He usually wasn’t even one of the spectators. We often beat him up because he made us do all the dirty work, the crybaby.
‘There’s no point turning your mates against Lucy. Can’t you see that?’ said Duco.
‘You’re not going to get your father back that way,’ Mr Klop clarified.
Thomas promptly pushed his fists into his eyes. We all knew what he was thinking, because we liked to refresh his memory often enough: if Thomas had never planted the idea of the pencil in Lucy’s mother’s head, his father would still be alive today. If the grown-ups only knew! If you even so much as hinted at bringing it up, he’d tear a page out of his father’s big animal book for you to make you shut up.
Maybe it was time to up the ante on the bribe he had to pay. He had already given us nearly all the invertebrates; soon we’d get to the mice, and then you were almost through the entire animal kingdom.
Duco turned to Mr Klop with an anguished expression. ‘Ludo and I thought it was on account of the extra help Lucy is getting after school that the children never come over to play anymore. That’s what Lucy told us, too. But we shouldn’t have bought her story, should we? Because it’s clear there’s something else going on.’
‘Tutoring does take up quite a bit of time, naturally.’ Our teacher pursed his lips. ‘And it can, indeed, cause a child to become somewhat isolated. Which does sometimes lead to disruptive behaviour.’ He looked as if he finally understood why he so often had the urge to grab Lucy by the plaits and yank her to her feet. The realization seemed to come as a relief. ‘They start demanding attention in a negative manner, and one thing leads to another. They are children, after all—it isn’t anything rational.’ He glared at us spitefully.
He didn’t realize that we saw right through him. Grown-ups never did. Sure, they had the power to scare the living daylights out of you, to send you to bed without any supper, or to slap you with detention; but they had no idea we could tell, from the faintest inflection in their voice, if they were being sincere or not. After all, from the time we were in the cradle, we’d had to listen to their lies and fabrications, their evasions and excuses, their attempts at self-justification, their getting away with all sorts of stuff and showing themselves in the best possible light.
Duco put down his carrier bag on Mr Klop’s desk. He wiped his sweaty forehead with his sleeve. ‘Children,’ he said, and it was painful to hear how sincere he was in what he was about to say, ‘the reason I’m here is that Ludo and I feel this just can’t go on.’ He opened the bag, looking close to tears. Then he pulled out Lucy’s two plaits, with the coloured elastic bands still in place. They looked very scrawny in his big grown-up’s hands.
We gasped.
‘Her lovely hair,’ he said in a smothered voice.
Vanessa started crying again.
Trying to control his voice, our teacher said, ‘Come up here, the three of you.’
The girls slunk up to the front, cowering.
‘Explain yourselves, please,’ said the teacher, roughly lining them up in front of the blackboard.
Vanessa stammered that yesterday, after school, the three of them had just had been shooting the breeze with Lucy—girls’ stuff, you know—after she got out, having finally finished The Safe Way: Book II.
We were so on edge we nearly burst out laughing. Yeah, we could just see Lucy talking about girly things! She knew more about the tusks of a mammoth than about patent-leather Mary Janes.
Exactly, said Sara. That was exactly what they’d talked about! They’d been explaining to her that she looked a like a dork, the way she was dressed. She looked silly. Didn’t she?
Safranja nodded vehemently.
And then they had given her some friendly advice, and suggested that she do something about those plaits, for a start, because her hair was just hopeless. They’d offered to cut them off for her right then and there.
‘But she’s always had plaits,’ said Duco. ‘Always.’
‘They aren’t in anymore,’ whispered Vanessa. ‘They made her look like a nerd.’
Duco bit his lip. He looked from the guilty threesome to the rest of the girls in the class, as if trying to commit every hairdo to memory. Then he said, humbly, ‘Of course Ludo and I don’t know much about what’s in and what’s out. And it isn’t easy for a girl, having to grow up without a mother.’
We couldn’t help thinking of Bijlmer Jail. We used to drive past it on our way to Amsterdam to visit our grandmas; we would see the prison’s tall white towers with our own two eyes. So that’s where Lucy’s mum was now, behind one of those window slits. Did she remember us, playing in the sandbox in her garden, or scarfing down pancakes with syrup in her kitchen? Was she counting on one of us to bake her a cake with a file hidden inside? Or had she forgotten us, the way you forget the words to a song you once learned long ago?
‘So, what are you going to do to make it up to her?’ asked Mr Klop. ‘Have you given it any thought?’
The girls were silent, heads drooping.
‘Well, I’ll leave that part up to you,’ said Duco. He started putting the plaits back in the bag. Maybe he was going to preserve them in a box when he got home, nestled in soft tissue paper. Then he could take them out with his clumsy, pudgy fingers from time to time, and ask himself guiltily why he hadn’t kept up with what was in and what was out.
Mr Klop walked him to the door. He said, ‘I hope you understand that I have no way of controlling what they get up to after school.’
‘Of course I do,’ said Duco. And he meant it.
The mothers of Sara, Vanessa, and Safranja went to the rectory with an offering of buttery shortbread. They spent the evening in the Luducos’ parlour, strewn with a year’s worth of old newspapers. In bright, energetic voices, they deplored what had happened, their eyes darting from the dusty windows to the open can of tomato soup that, for some reason, had been left on the mantelpiece. They took turns excusing themselves in order to inspect the state of the lavatory. There was no soap by the sink. In the hall they ran their fingertips along the wall tiles.
When Lucy came in to announce she was going to bed, they pulled her onto their laps without so much as a by-your-leave. ‘To be honest,’ they said, as they discreetly sniffed at her pyjamas and took mental note of her dirty feet, ‘it looks much better on you, that cropped little head. You do like it, don’t you? Well, then!’ They smiled, saying one really shouldn’t make a mountain out of a molehill. ‘And you will remember, from now on, won’t you, love, that all you have to do is say no when something’s about to happen that you don’t like? A big girl like you? Come, Lucy, surely you can do that! And by the same token, we have always found it a little hard to believe, that last year you were, you know … Anyway, we’ll let bygones be bygones, and so now tell us, how are you doing now with the reading?’
They were too quick for the Luducos, who had to pour the coffee, ask if anyone wanted milk or sugar, and offer the shortbread. They were always just a fraction late in trying to intervene, those two big lugs, huffing and puffing from the effort of being such good hosts.
‘I’ve read Clara 13 four times already,’ Lucy answered, curtly, with triumph in her voice.
‘Five times, if you count the time you read it to us aloud,’ said Ludo.
‘But isn’t that book mostly pictures? She really ought to be starting on Jip and Janneke by now,’ Vanessa’s mother said, concerned.
But Lucy had no intention of slogging her way through the morass of difficult words just to read boring stories about ordinary children with ordinary parents. She hadn’t the slightest inclination to get banished to the tidy ecosystem of a normal family life, which all mothers seemed to want for their offspring, with nothing more dramatic in it than a runaway dog. She said, ‘At least Clara 13 is real.’
‘Of course it isn’t real, child. Your mother made the whole thing up.’
There was a painful silence.
‘Lucy meant,’ Ludo rushed to her rescue, ‘that Clara keeps having all this bad luck, and there’s nothing that can be done about it. Which is just the way it sometimes happens in real life.’
‘But it’s a cow!’ said Sara’s mother, as if she’d never heard of such a thing.
‘We happen to be extremely fond of cows, here,’ said Duco.
The mothers made a mental note of this cryptic assertion, to add to their dossier.
‘And then, at the end, when she learns how to fly …’ Lucy spread her arms wide, her face suddenly beaming. Her armpit was visible through a rip in her pyjama top. ‘That’s real,’ she repeated. Then she sat back, and yawned.
‘Does she always go to bed this late?’ Safranja’s mother asked Duco.
‘Well, actually, you’re the ones keeping her up. She was on her way to bed half an hour ago …’
‘All right, do your best tomorrow, Lucy, won’t you, now?’ the mothers called in chorus.
She gave the Luducos an ardent kiss, raising the mothers’ antennae again. Two middle-aged men living with a little girl who pranced about in her tattered pyjamas virtually half-naked! Whatever next! After all, during the Big Letter Show, they’d all been able to see for themselves how very precocious Lucy was.
Then they said yes, please, to a glass of white wine.
‘If it hadn’t been for Clara 13,’ said Ludo, doing his best to salvage something, ‘she’d probably never have persevered so bravely with her reading. She sleeps with that book under her pillow. Sometimes, we say to each other, it’s as if her mother knew Lucy would need that book someday. As if she had read it in the cards.’
It must be the wine, the mothers thought dizzily. Really, as a rule they practically never thought back to those mornings in the dusky room on the first floor anymore, where they’d had their lives spread out before them in pictures and symbols. But that was then, when their hearts would start to beat a little faster when The Magician turned up (‘Take charge of your own destiny!’) or the volatile Wheel of Fortune (‘Soon you will see a big change’). And this was now. And now they knew what could come of it if you took these things too seriously. It could lead to your daughter getting her hair shorn off at school.
Why the social workers had only once come to check up on the Luducos—on a Friday afternoon, when the sky was streaked with wispy clouds that made you think of playing with matches—became a source of endless speculation. It was hard to imagine those two putting on a particularly clever or convincing show. There must have been something else, something our mothers couldn’t quite put their finger on. Christ, what right did the poor bastards have to be Lucy’s guardians? The mothers would have given anything for a peek at the social workers’ report. They would just have to accept the fact that they weren’t about to see the last of Lucy, that thorn in their sides. Just the thought of her made their cheeks flush an angry crimson. Getting such nice little girls as Vanessa, Sara, and Safranja in trouble—how could she!
The mothers kept insisting the three friends had acted with the best of intentions. After all, aren’t girls always messing with one another’s hair? The Luducos should never have made it into such a big deal. And it was just too silly for words that Mr Klop, normally far from a pushover, had allowed himself to be strung along. God Almighty, shouldn’t girls of Lucy’s ilk expect to get their hair shorn off sooner or later, anyway? Given that history tends to repeat itself?
We listened to them glumly. We had expected quite a different outcome. We’d thought everything would be out in the open, once and for all, now that Lucy was walking around with a disfigurement for everyone to see. But even now, it seemed, she’d kept her mouth shut about the other stuff—hadn’t spilled the beans, not even to the Luducos. Maybe she was ashamed of being tormented on a daily basis for the entire school year. Or maybe she was simply determined never to tell on anyone she’d been on a school trip with to Utrecht Cathedral or the Liberty Monument, or sung sea shanties with for as long as she could remember. In the Mafia, people had a similar set of principles.
Thinking about it at night in bed, the hopelessness of the situation made us feel sick. We pulled the pillow over our heads, waiting for sleep to release us into oblivion.
If you weren’t asleep by the time the clock struck twelve, said Mr Klop, you’d turn into a werewolf. You’d burst out of your pyjamas, and with drooling fangs and a hairy hide you’d go on a rampage; you couldn’t stop yourself. You might even wind up dragging your own baby sis from her crib and tearing her to pieces: the urge was simply stronger than you.
We jumped out of bed to turn the key in the lock, just in case, and shut the window tight. Before drawing the curtains again, we stared out at the street with its tidy front yards and shiny parked cars. Everything looked so peaceful, so normal and ordinary, that we just couldn’t understand how we could possibly belong here, since we could already hear our pyjama seams popping and feel the pitch-black bristles growing out of our chest. Maybe we’d been switched at birth! Perhaps our real self was somewhere else entirely, biting its nails in despair, wondering if we’d ever find it again.
Vanessa, indignant, said that it was all Mrs Iedema’s fault. Didn’t she teach us that we had to show forgiveness? Well, what could be more forgiving than helping your own boyfriend’s ex make herself look a little more presentable? ‘If even that’s not the right thing to do, then I don’t know what is,’ she said.
She was right. You had to forgive, and keep forgiving.
And then it was almost inevitable. We didn’t need the clock to strike twelve; just the sight of that pale, freckled nose and close-cropped head was enough to set us off. It was stronger than we were.
In Mr Klop’s class it could be touch-and-go sometimes, because he was now grimly watching our every move. But he couldn’t keep an eye on us forever. Just a few more weeks, and then we’d no longer have to worry about those suspicious eagle eyes of his. Then the days would just keep on coming, one after another, as usual. Days so hot that the cobblestones smelled of gunpowder; wet days, grey days, blah days, days as cold as a razor blade; gazillions of days without hope or anything to get excited about. Lucy and us, we still had years and years to go.