May 2024
Anneliese
IT DIDN’T SURPRISE Anneliese to find Daan’s old room just as he’d left it: the bed made with sharp corners, empty food jars lining the bookshelves, an anatomy book open on the desk. But his sour smell had gone, replaced by the stink of Tineke’s cigarettes.
His pocketknife lay next to the anatomy book. She walked over to the desk and stared down at the knife: dark red handle, three and a half inches long. She forced herself to pick it up, and using her thumbnail, she opened a blade, but when she saw the brown stains, she let the knife fall with a clunk. She turned and strode toward the door, which she felt like slamming behind her—slamming the door on the bedroom, on Daan, on the past. If only it were that simple to consign memories to oblivion.
Her old bedroom was next to Daan’s. Tineke had converted it to a sewing room—sewing was her mother’s one redeeming talent. She had made all of Anneliese’s clothes and made them well. Still, Anneliese had longed for dresses like those of the other girls who shopped at Zara and H&M on the village high street. Tineke was a binge seamstress, disappearing in a flurry of paper patterns and bolts of fabric each July, sewing Anneliese’s wardrobe for the coming school term. It looked as if she hadn’t binged in years. A thick layer of dust covered the fancy sewing machine that stood in the spot once occupied by Blueboy’s birdcage. She ran a finger through the dust and drew the letter B.
Moving to the window, Anneliese looked down at the garden shed, a squat brick building with a flat bitumen roof. She could almost smell the dank inside, reeking of gasoline and pesticide. She fought back a shiver, remembering.
Tineke and Ray gave Anneliese a parakeet for her eighth birthday. Blueboy had blue and white feathers and bright eyes. His feet tickled when he hopped around on her forearm or ate birdseed from her palm. She kept his cage in her bedroom and guarded Blueboy closely whenever Daan was home.
One afternoon she found Daan standing in front of the cage.
“Get out,” she said.
His eyes took on a familiar intensity.
“You know, Liese, parakeets die. Eventually.”
Goose bumps shot up her arms. “What do you mean?”
“There’s a box of rat poison in the shed. Bottom shelf.”
He drew his thumb across his throat, snickered, and walked away.
She told Tineke she was sick and took up vigil in her room. The smell of braised beef and cabbage wafted upstairs. Cutlery clattered. Dusk deepened into night. Blueboy went to sleep on his perch, feathers fluffed up, eyes closed. She covered the cage, climbed into bed, and listened to the familiar household sounds signaling the end of the day: doors closing, Tineke and Ray brushing their teeth, water rushing in the pipes, Daan pacing in his bedroom. Finally silence.
At midnight she crept barefooted down the staircase, eased open the back door, and paused on the patio under an overcast sky. The chilly wind whipped at the hem of her nightgown. Traffic rumbled from the far side of the forest. The hair on the back of her neck bristled as if someone were watching, and her eyes darted to Daan’s window. But the curtains were drawn and the room was dark.
She tiptoed across the gritty concrete to the shed and switched on the dim overhead light. A spider dropped onto her arm. She yelped and brushed it off in a panic. After taking a calming breath, she peered into the shadows, her eyes searching. The box was right where Daan had said it would be.
If she was to get any peace, she had to stay a step ahead of Daan.
Back in bed she turned toward the wall and squeezed shut her eyes. It took her forever to fall asleep. The room was growing light when a noise woke her—a soft crunching coming from Blueboy’s cage. Her heart raced. She clasped her hands over her ears and hummed, blocking out the sound.
She didn’t check on Blueboy until it was time to get ready for school. She steeled herself before removing the cover from his cage. He lay on the soiled newspapers, his stick legs pointing at the ceiling.
She had beaten Daan.
Reaching into the cage, she gently stroked the parakeet’s little head and told him how sorry she was, but she kept her sorrow locked up inside her all day.
She broke the news during supper.
“Didn’t you give him water?” Tineke asked.
“Don’t think I’m going to buy you another parakeet, young lady,” Ray said.
Anneliese lifted her chin. “I never want another pet as long as I live.”
Daan laughed, which earned him a smack on the ear from Ray.
When Daan biked to the woods that afternoon, Anneliese followed. She couldn’t keep up, and he disappeared around a bend, but she knew where he was headed. It would be stupid to let down her guard, but she felt bolder, and she wanted to test an idea. The spruce forest merged into a graveyard of beeches, some felled by a storm. Others, bare of foliage, were standing like crucifixes. Rumor had it the beech forest was haunted.
She laid her bicycle on the ground and crawled through the brambles.
Daan squatted next to a log that was clustered with what looked at first glance like severed human ears, but they were only jelly ear mushrooms. Catching sight of her, he nodded.
“Liese, you’re just in time.”
Her eyes darted around.
He pulled a jar from his backpack and reached inside for the fat frog trembling on the bottom. In his other hand was a lighter.
He grinned. “I know what you did last night.”
She heard a snap and a tiny flame flickered.
She squeezed her eyes shut and hummed. Daan’s smirk, the doomed frog, the rotten log—all disappeared. She had felt nothing except for the relief of cold emptiness.
Anneliese turned away from the window and hummed to herself as she went down the stairs. She rejoined the others in the living room, where Ray and Tineke were competing for the worst parent trophy. She poured herself a glass of port and endured the contest for as long as she could. After a half hour, she picked up her backpack.
Dr. Hummel scrambled to his feet, jangling the keys in his pocket. “I have to go too. Do you want a lift to the bus stop?”
On the way, neither of them spoke, the silence reminding her of the hours she had spent in his therapy room. Some shrink he was. The bus stop was in sight when Dr. Hummel said, “I’m curious. If you don’t mind me asking. Did you stop wetting the bed?”
Betsy Wetsy.
“Yes, when I left home.”
The car slowed to a stop.
“You should consider seeing a therapist in Amsterdam,” he said in his best therapist voice.
She had no words.
“Try visiting your parents more often.”
“They aren’t my parents. Not my real ones.”
“You need to talk to someone.”
“How do you know what I need?”
She stepped onto the curb, slammed the door, and didn’t look back.