Chapter 24

Hendrickje Bathing.
1655. Panel.

The rain pours down, plastering my hair to my head as I sit on the stoop, my guts pushing and turning, threatening to come up my throat. Behind me, the red-painted P blazes on the door. I can almost feel it burning into my back. On the other side of the door, in the back room, is Vader, shut up with her. He would not bring her out though the man with the cart had come for her. When I had tried to tell Vader the man was waiting, he threw Moeder’s red beads at me. At last the man had gone away, the arms and legs of the bodies flopping over the sides of the cart as it bounced over the cobblestones. Now the rain pours down. I stick out my tongue and taste the rain and snot and tears as I push up my sopping sleeve and uncover the red mark on my arm where the beads had hit.

A man comes down the empty street. His hat is pulled down low because of the rain, but there’s a bounce to his step and his cape snaps smartly. He carries a pink flower that he shields from the rain with one hand. It’s a rose, like the kind in our courtyard. When he tips up his head to look at me, I see his gold mustache.

I stand, the beads clenched in my hand.

Through the curtain of rain, I see him smile as he trots closer. He’s grinning as he casually leans to look behind me.

He stops. The rain pours in a curtain between us.

“Who?” he calls, his voice strained.

I open my hand and look at her beads. “Moeder.”

I say it, but I do not believe it.

“Hendrickje?”

I glare at him. If he knew her, why didn’t he help her? Why didn’t anyone help her? Why didn’t anyone help me?

Even through the rain I can hear the Gold Mustache Man gurgle like hands are squeezing his throat. He staggers backward, then slipping on the wet bricks, turns and stumbles away.

Slowly, I sit back down. Out in the canal, ducks are floating. They don’t care about the rain. In my mind, I see Moeder as Vader once painted her: wading amongst them, wearing only a shift. As in the painting, the white cloth floats around her legs in a filmy cloud. The ducks don’t care. They drift past her on the water and sleep.