Chapter 19

Geesje’s Story

Holland, Michigan
49 years earlier

April of 1848 brought more changes than just melting snow and the rebirth of spring. Widow Van den Bosch married a widower from our kolonie, and she and her son moved to his cabin. More and more settlers were arriving from the Netherlands, causing our community to grow. And Maarten had good news for me one night as he sat at our table by lamplight, counting his earnings. “I think we have enough money for our passage back to the Netherlands,” he told me. He had been working as a laborer every day, helping one of our wealthier settlers clear his land, since there was no longer any reason to continue clearing our own. “Once we sell your father’s land and this cabin, we should have enough money to go home.”

Home. I was going home. I rose from my chair to hug him tightly. “That’s wonderful news, Maarten! Thank you, thank you!” I had news of a big change to tell him about, too, but I had been waiting for the right time. I sat down on his lap, the first time I had ever made such an affectionate gesture, and put my arms around his neck. “That means our child will be born in the Netherlands instead of here.”

“Our child? . . . You mean . . . ?”

“Yes.”

The joy on Maarten’s face brought tears to my eyes. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him as happy as he was at that moment. But as he hugged me tightly, I knew I didn’t share the full measure of his joy. God forgive me, but I was still thinking of Hendrik, wishing they were his arms surrounding me, his child growing inside me.

After Maarten left for work the next morning, I decided that the mild, sunny day would be a perfect one to wash some of our clothing. I was bent over the outdoor fire pit, piling on wood to heat the water, when Arie ran up to me and said, “Mama, there’s a man coming.”

A man? Had Maarten forgotten something? I stood and watched a tall figure weave his way through the dusky woods following the narrow path. There was something familiar about the way he walked.

When he saw me, he began to run. His cap blew off his head, and a shaft of spring sunlight shone down through the trees onto his golden hair, his handsome face.

Hendrik.

Was I imagining things? Was he a ghost? A wave of dizziness washed over me, but there was nothing to grab on to. The trees twirled in circles around me, and I felt myself falling. Then everything went black.

When I opened my eyes again, Hendrik was kneeling beside me, holding my head on his lap, calling my name. “Geesje . . . Geesje, are you all right? Say something . . .”

“Are you real?” I whispered. I touched his face and felt his bristly whiskers. There was a vivid scar on the side of his face and neck that hadn’t been there before, as if his skin had melted.

“Yes, Geesje! Yes, I’m real, and I’m finally here!” He pulled me close, holding me so tightly I could barely breathe. “I’ve dreamt of this moment for so long,” he murmured. “Oh, thank God . . . thank God!”

I wept as I held him tightly in return. I never wanted to let go. I was afraid I was dreaming, and I didn’t want to wake up. “I thought you were dead!” I told him. “When we heard that the Phoenix sank, I thought you must have been on that ship. And that I’d lost you!”

“I was on that ship. Didn’t you get my letter?”

“What letter?” I pulled away and sat up to look at him, my insides making a slow, sickening turn.

“I wrote right away to tell you I was alive, but that I would be delayed. My hands were badly burned trying to put out the fire.” He held one of them out for me to see. It looked misshapen, the new skin shiny and pink, stretched tightly over his bones. I lifted it and kissed it, letting my tears fall on his mangled fingers.

“Your letter never came. I thought I’d never see you again.”

“It took time for my burns and frostbite to heal. I couldn’t do any work until they did. After that, I needed to find a job so I’d have money to get here. I needed to start all over again and earn enough to buy land and to support us.”

I struggled to comprehend what he was saying. Hendrik was here! But how could he be? He had drowned when the Phoenix sank. And yet he hadn’t! I still felt so dizzy that I thought I surely must be dreaming. I touched his face again to reassure myself that he was real.

“Geesje, all of my money burned up with the ship. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Watching all those people die . . .”

His voice choked, and he covered his eyes as he began to weep. I held him close, letting him cry. “That must have been so horrifying for you.” And yet he had survived. He was here! I was holding Hendrik in my arms.

“I can’t describe what it was like. . . . A scene from hell! It was only by the grace of God that I lived when all the others didn’t. . . . So many men and women, wonderful people who I had grown to know and love! Little children!”

I could see how deeply the experience had scarred his soul along with his hands. Maybe telling me about it would help release some of his pain. “Tell me, Hendrik. Take me there so I can share the burden of what you went through.”

His story slowly emerged, and with it, his enormous pain and horror as he relived that night. “We encountered two terrible storms along the way, with winds and waves that beat against our ship, tossing us like driftwood. Conditions were so bad that the ship’s captain took a terrible fall on the heaving deck and shattered his knee. There were moments when we all believed we would die. I huddled below deck with the other Netherlanders, praying and begging God for mercy. And He answered our prayers. We found shelter on the leeward side of an island, where we waited until the storm blew itself out. Two days later when it did, we pressed on.

“Geesje, I thought the worst was over. I thought surely God wouldn’t punish us any more than He already had after we’d endured those two storms and such paralyzing fear. The women and children had been so terrified. All of us had been, even the crew. And it seemed, at first, that God had heard our pleas. After crossing the huge Atlantic Ocean and sailing through the Great Lakes, traveling thousands of miles, we were nearly there at last.” He paused, wiping his tears with his fist. I noticed that Hendrik’s hand no longer closed all the way because of his scars.

“Along with our group of immigrants, the ship also carried cargo that needed to be delivered to a port about thirty miles north of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, which was our destination. It took longer than we’d hoped since the lake was still very rough, and we didn’t arrive in that port until close to midnight. The crew unloaded the cargo, but since the waves were still bad, the captain decided to wait until they settled down. He let the crew go ashore.” He paused, drawing a deep breath as if gathering his strength. “Some of the other survivors said the sailors were drunk when they came back to the ship. If it’s true . . . if that’s why they foolishly let the ship’s boilers overheat, they’ll be accountable before God for all those innocent souls.”

He rested his cheek against my hair for a long moment until he could go on. When he did, I felt his entire body tense. “I managed to sleep for an hour or so while we were in port, but when the whistle blew to summon the crew back, I woke up. I went up on deck, and even though it was November and the night was very cold, the lake had miraculously calmed and the skies had cleared, and I could see the stars. Millions and millions of them. Geesje, they were so beautiful that I stayed up on deck, overwhelmed by the glory of that sky.

“We set out again, and after a while, it seemed to me that the sound of the ship’s engines changed. I had been hearing their familiar thumps and hisses ever since leaving Buffalo, but now they sounded different, somehow. But what did I know? Then I noticed an odd glow on the water just below the rail where I was standing, and I realized that it was flames, coming from the windows of the engine room. The ship’s boilers had overheated and caught fire.

“Everything was a blur of frantic activity after that. The engine room was in the center of the ship, and the heat and smoke awakened all the passengers and drove them upstairs. I could hear the little ones crying and screaming, the women praying as the crew got out the fire hoses and started the pumps. I joined a bucket brigade with some of the other passengers but the heat was so intense . . . it was like battling the fires of hell.

“We did our best. We tried . . . I heard someone say that we were only five miles from shore and heading that way. But then the ship’s engines burned out and died, leaving us dead in the water. The pumps stopped, too, and the hoses could no longer put out the fire. It raged out of control.

“The crew finally gave the order to abandon ship, but Geesje, there were only two lifeboats—two, for more than three hundred passengers! Each boat could hold maybe twenty people at the most, even if they were overloaded.” Hendrik paused again, too overcome to continue.

“Until the day I die,” he said in a choked voice, “I’ll never forget the horrible moment when I realized that all of those families . . . men and women I had traveled with from Rotterdam, people I had prayed with and grown to know and love . . . they were all going to die! And so was I.”

I could feel Hendrik’s body shuddering with sobs as I held him tightly. “It wasn’t fair!” he cried. “It wasn’t right!”

I wept with him, remembering that I had felt the same anger and confusion when my parents had died of malaria, and when Arie and Gerrit’s parents had died. And so many, many others. Why had God abandoned us? What possible reason could He give that would explain those senseless deaths? I didn’t know. I doubted if I ever would.

“The first-class passengers were given all the seats in the lifeboats,” Hendrik said when he could continue. I heard the edge of bitterness in his voice. “Some of the gentlemen gallantly offered their seats to our immigrant women and children. Most did not. One of the American gentlemen who stayed behind worked until the very end to help people climb over the side, clinging to anything that would float. Later, I saw him jump overboard, holding two small Dutch children, trying to save them. . . . None of them survived.

“By now, the roar of the flames was like an inferno. But as the two lifeboats were lowered into the water, I could hear mothers pleading with the first-class passengers to take their children aboard, begging them to have mercy so their little ones could be saved. One woman threw her baby down into the lifeboat, but I never found out what happened to him.

“For those of us left behind, we no longer had any place to go to escape the terrible heat and flames. The fire was arching out from the sides of the ship and meeting above in a tower of flames that must have been two hundred feet high. A piece of flaming debris struck my face and set my hair on fire. I burned my hands trying to put it out. People began leaping overboard into the icy water, parents gripping their children, even though few of us knew how to swim. Our choice was to die in the fire or drown in the lake. There was no alternative. So I jumped.

“The shock of that frigid water sucked the breath from me. When I recovered, the horror still hadn’t ended. The surface of the water all around me was crowded with people, coughing and crying and screaming, praying and begging for mercy, all of us searching for a piece of debris to hold on to, trying to stay afloat. The worst were the cries of the children. . . . So many, many children!

“Some people tried to grab the lifeboats as they floated near us, and I’ll never forget . . . I’ll never forget how the people in those boats beat at those poor souls’ hands with the oars to drive them away, refusing to help them stay afloat for fear the lifeboat would capsize. When they couldn’t hang on any longer, their fingers smashed by the blows, they fell away beneath the water. . . . Dear God . . . How could people be so cruel? I’ll never understand it. . . . Never!

“I tried to help as many people as I could, finding pieces of debris to help keep them afloat, telling them that they would make it, that help was surely on the way. But those who survived the flames couldn’t survive the cold. Our clothing was soaked and the icy water chilled all the way to our bones. Little by little the voices and cries and prayers all around me dwindled away into silence.”

Hendrik paused again, and I was aware of the sound of birdsong and cawing crows filling the forest. The wind rustled through the leaves of the trees, high above us like whispers. I wondered if Hendrik heard any of it—or if he was still hearing the screams.

“Somehow, I survived,” he said when he could speak. “I clung to a piece of wreckage I had found and pulled as much of my body as I could onto that scrap of debris, out of the freezing water. Gradually the glow of the flames began to die down as the ship burned to the water line. I drifted away from the ship, and I could see the beautiful night sky again, the millions of stars. The surface of the water was littered with bodies and debris, and in the eerie quiet I did my best to pray and confess Jesus as my Savior as I prepared to die. The flesh had been burned from my hands and the pain was so intense, I didn’t know how much longer I could hold on.

“I looked up at the star-filled heavens and thought of you, Geesje. If I was going to die—and I feared that I would—then I wanted my last thoughts to be of you. I imagined holding you in my arms the way I’m holding you now. I pictured how happy we would be when we could be together at last. My will to survive was gradually failing, and it would have been so easy to close my eyes and fall asleep and wake up in heaven. . . .

“I think I did close my eyes—I don’t know for how long—but I opened them again when I thought I heard a sound like oars dipping in and out of the water. Were the lifeboats finally returning from shore to rescue us? Then, in the distance, I heard the sound that a ship’s boilers make when running under a full head of steam. I thought I was imagining these things, but when I gazed in the direction of the sound, I saw the lights of an approaching ship. Then a second ship. I waited until they drew nearer, then began waving my arm, calling for help. I didn’t know if they would be able to hear my voice or not above the sound of the engines on that vast lake. But they sent out crews in lifeboats, and they found me.

“They told me later that I was one of only forty-three people who had survived—forty in the lifeboats and only three of us among the wreckage. I was treated for severe burns and for frostbite from the cold water. I had inhaled a lot of smoke and lake water, and had lost everything I owned—but I was alive. . . . And now I’m here.”

Hendrik was really here! When he finished telling his story, I held him tightly, at a loss for words after hearing the horror he had endured. “We’re together now,” I told him. “We’ll never be separated again.”

“Yes.” The word sounded like a sigh of relief.

I had been completely unaware of Arie and Gerrit standing beside us, watching and listening all this time, until I heard Arie’s voice asking, “Mama, what’s wrong? Don’t cry, Mama.” I released Hendrik and beckoned to them, and as they climbed onto my lap, all of the color seemed to drain from Hendrik’s face.

“Are . . . are these your children, Geesje? You promised you would wait for me.”

“No, my darling, no. They were orphaned and I adopted them. But . . .” I couldn’t tell him the truth. I couldn’t tell him that I had foolishly married Maarten. I felt the panic a trapped animal must feel as it fights to free itself from the snare. I battled to quell that panic, to hide my distress from Hendrik. He and I would run away together. We would leave before Maarten returned and go someplace else to live—and never come back.

But what about Maarten? I knew the devastating grief of losing someone I loved. I remembered how I had suffered when I thought Hendrik was dead. I couldn’t put Maarten through that. Not after everything he’d done for me. But what other choice did I have? I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Hendrik. I thought of the impossible choice Hendrik had faced—dying in the flames or drowning in the frigid water—and like him, I didn’t know which way to leap.

“Geesje, what’s wrong? Please tell me what’s wrong.”

“Let’s go,” I said, scrambling to my feet. I lifted Gerrit in my arms. “I hate it here in this place. Let’s leave together, right now, and never look back.”

Hendrik stood as well, and I saw him gaze all around in confusion as I hurried toward the cabin door. “Leave? You mean, today? I’ll do whatever you want, Geesje, but I have very little money. . . . How would we live? Where would we go?”

I remembered my longing to return to Leiden, but I could never ask Hendrik to make that perilous return voyage. Not after what he’d endured to get to America. And not when it had been Maarten who had earned the money for my passage home. I would stay in Michigan, then. Or maybe go back east somewhere. “I have a little money,” I told Hendrik. I knew where Maarten kept his earnings. I would borrow some from him. We would pay him back when we could.

Hendrik followed me into the dark, damp-smelling cabin. “What about these children?” he asked.

I would leave them with someone . . . maybe Widow Van den Bosch. But how could I abandon Arie and Gerrit and leave them motherless for a second time? Yet it would break Maarten’s heart if I took them with me. He loved the boys as if they were his own. I didn’t know what to do.

I set Gerrit down on the cabin’s dirt floor and blindly rummaged through my things, trying to decide what to pack. My shocked mind was unable to think clearly. My instincts screamed at me to run, to leave everything behind and disappear with Hendrik before Maarten arrived home, so that’s what I decided to do.

“Where are your parents, Geesje?” Hendrik was looking all around the cabin as his eyes adjusted to the dim light.

“They died several months ago. Of malaria.”

“Geesje, I’m so sorry. Your parents were wonderful people and—”

“Should I pack food?” Hendrik had said he had no money. I didn’t wait for his reply, just grabbed an empty sack and blindly stuffed supplies into it. Gerrit crawled across the floor toward me, crying pitifully, upset by my distracted confusion.

“You’ve been living here alone all this time?” Hendrik asked. “With these two children?”

I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t tell him. When I’d married Maarten I had betrayed the only man I would ever love. Yet if I ran away with Hendrik, I would betray my marriage vows—vows I had made to God as well as to Maarten. I had found contentment with Maarten these past months, but I didn’t love him. I probably never would. The simplest thing would be to leave without any explanation at all. Give Arie and Gerrit to Widow Van den Bosch, letting her think I would return shortly, and simply disappear with Hendrik. We could run away, and Maarten would never know what had happened to me. Let him think the woods had devoured me. But it would mean walking away from God. Committing adultery. Living a life of sin. At that moment, I didn’t care. Hendrik was alive! He was here! I continued my hurried packing, desperate to escape with him.

Then I remembered that I was expecting Maarten’s child.

I remembered the look of joy on Maarten’s face last night when I’d told him the news. How he’d held me and tenderly kissed me this morning before he left. How he’d gone off to work with a smile on his face. I wished I had never told him. He would be inconsolable. And I would suffer from guilt for the rest of my life every time I looked at Maarten’s child.

I felt so nauseated I thought I would be sick. Yet Hendrik was alive! Alive! I hadn’t lost him after all. He loved me and I loved him, and now we could be together for the rest of our lives.

I was so lost in my tangled thoughts that I no longer heard Gerrit crying, or noticed that Arie had begun to cry, too. I didn’t hear Hendrik calling my name until he gripped my shoulders and turned me around and said, “Geesje! What’s wrong? Please tell me what’s wrong!”

“Nothing . . . I-I need to get ready to go. We need to go!”

“Go where? Isn’t this kolonie the place where we planned to live? Can’t we get married and live in this cabin? I’ll have to work for someone else until I can earn enough money to buy land of our own, but at least we’ll finally be together.”

I shook my head, trying to erase the future he was drawing. We couldn’t live here. I could never divorce Maarten. The people in our community lived their lives according to the Bible, and they would never condone a divorce. Neither would God. Our only hope was to run away together. To simply disappear. Hendrik was everything to me, my whole world, and now that I had him back, I had everything I would ever need.

“What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

The words came to mind, unbidden. I couldn’t breathe.

“Geesje, please answer me. Tell me what’s wrong. Don’t you love me anymore?”

His question shattered my heart, like a rock thrown through a glass window. I flung myself into his arms, nearly knocking him off his feet as I held on to him with all my strength. “Yes, Hendrik, yes! I love you, I love you! I could never love anyone but you! Please take me away from here! Please! Let’s leave right now.”

“But . . . what’s the hurry? I don’t understand. I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on, why you want to leave.”

And so I told him. I told him what I had done, the mistake I had made out of grief, anger at God, and a selfish desire to return home to the Netherlands. As the truth spilled out along with my tears, I clung to Hendrik and explained that my parents had died and I was all alone. That his last letter had never arrived. That I believed he was dead. Marrying Maarten had been my only choice once I made up my mind to go home to the Netherlands.

Hendrik freed himself from my grip and held me at arms’ length. I watched as he absorbed the truth, and something inside him seemed to die before my eyes. He may have survived the fiery shipwreck and icy water, but the truth of what I’d done destroyed something in his heart that day. “Now do you understand why we have to run?” I asked. “Please, Hendrik. Let’s just go. We can disappear.”

It took an eternity for him to reply. “I’m not a thief,” he said, slowly shaking his head. “I won’t steal something that doesn’t belong to me. And I can’t rob Maarten, of all people.”

“But I don’t love him. I love you, don’t you see? And Maarten knows the truth. He knows I never would have married him if I’d known you were still alive. He won’t force me to stay.”

“That may be true, but we owe it to him to wait and give him an explanation. You can’t just vanish, Geesje. He’ll never give up searching for you. I know I wouldn’t.”

“No,” I begged. “No, please! Let’s run away!”

I was unable to convince him. Hendrik proved more honorable than me. He waited alone outside our cabin all afternoon until Maarten returned. I stayed inside with the children, unwilling to see Maarten’s face when he found Hendrik sitting on a log in the little clearing in front of our house. I could easily imagine his shock and dismay. I stayed inside, sick with dread, listening to the mumble of their voices as they talked. Neither of them argued or shouted. They never even raised their voices. How could the happiest day of my life—the day I learned that Hendrik was alive—also be one of the worst days of my life?

In the end, neither Maarten nor Hendrik would choose to hurt the other man by claiming me. Nor would either one offer to surrender me to the other. “The decision is yours alone to make, Geesje,” Maarten told me. “You have to decide what you want to do, who you want to be with.” They didn’t try to pressure or persuade me. And so I was forced to choose between the two of them.

If I ran away with Hendrik, carrying Maarten’s child, I would live with the sin and guilt of adultery for the rest of my life. I couldn’t deliberately disobey God and then ask for His forgiveness. But if I gave up Hendrik and kept my vows to Maarten, sacrificing the man I loved, I would live with regret and resentment and sorrow every day of my marriage.

“The decision is yours alone to make, Geesje.”

Impossible. I had no idea what to do.

Holland, Michigan
1897

I stop writing and drop my pencil as if it’s on fire. I close the notebook and stuff it into my desk, remembering the mistakes I made, the tragic choices I faced, and the people I hurt in the process. The memories cause me immeasurable pain. Even now. Even after all these years.