Chapter 18

Bathsheba with King David’s Letter.
1654. Canvas.

My front tooth is loose—a top one. For days I have pushed it with my tongue, checking to see if it could be tightened back up. It hasn’t. Now it hangs by a bony thread, as if something inside won’t let go of it.

I go find Moeder, scrubbing the stairs.

“Not now, Cornelia.” She pulls a dripping gray rag from her bucket. “Frederik Rihel is coming. It’s an important commission.” She wrings water from her rag and slaps it on a stair.

Jannetje Zilver lost her front teeth last year. Something must be terribly wrong with mine since they have not dropped out. What if there are no new ones to come in behind them? If the tooth goes and there is no new one I will be ugly. Moeder will never call me pretty puss anymore. Vader will never paint me like he does Titus.

I feel a crunch in my mouth and taste blood on my tongue. The hair prickles on my neck as I fold back my lip and pick out a jagged bit of pearl. My tooth.

“Neeltje!” Moeder sits back on her heels. “Look at your cat!”

At the top of the wet stairs, Tijger is giving himself a bath.

“He will track up my stairs,” she says. “What are you waiting for? Please get him right now.”

Moeder’s voice is more cross than usual. Now is not the time to break the news that her puss is permanently ugly. I take four giant steps up the stairs in my stocking feet and grab Tijger.

“Where am I to put him?” I call down. My stomach aches with worry about my tooth.

“Anywhere!” she cries. “In the attic for now!”

I look at the door on the other side of the landing and draw in a breath. I don’t like it in there.

Clutching Tijger close, I open the attic door and walk slowly into the room. The only light comes through a small, round, dusty window. An empty birdcage hangs from the rafters. It smells like tar and dust and old bones. I want to cry.

Something skitters across the floor.

I jump back. Tijger springs from my arms so fast I am knocked into something wall-like behind me. A heavy cloth slumps on top on me. I scream and struggle out from under it, then come face-to-face with a towering canvas.

It is a painting—Vader’s work. I recognize his colors. Brown and yellow and red. In the center of it, a lady sits on a cloth. She is big, bigger than real size.

Other than a velvet necklace and a band around her arm, she is naked.

I have never seen a lady’s naked form before. Only bad women show their bodies—being naked is a sin. Even Moeder gets but half-undressed when she washes. I stare at the bare lady’s body, at the dark V between the legs; I memorize the breasts. Then I follow the red ribbon winding up her neck like a snake. In her hair, there is a string of red beads. I come to the face. It is turned to the side.

My insides drop.

No. Not her. No, God.

“Neeltje,” says Moeder.

I jump.

She stands in the doorway. “What are you doing?”

The quiet floats like dust between us as she follows my eyes to the picture. When the deep bong of the death bells breaks the silence, Moeder turns her head to listen.

The look on her face is as in the picture.

My inside self pushes at my throat like it wants to get out. I’m going to be sick.

“It is all right, Cornelia,” she says.

She is worse than Vader. He is mean and shouts but doesn’t hide that he is bad. Moeder acts good, but she is not. She is not who I thought she was.

“Cornelia?”

I push past her.

She doesn’t call after me.