Johnny seemed especially irritable those days, and Gita went through twice as many prepackaged pancakes as usual. He often wept when he awoke in the mornings, and at night he was anything but cooperative. When she finally got him settled beneath his Grover blanket, he stared up at her fearfully. She knew what was bothering him. The leg braces. The straps. But she never used them more than once a week, only when she went out to eat with Femke and then never longer than a couple of hours. That frightened look of his annoyed her. She was his mother, she had always taken care of him, had never hurt him. Didn’t that count for anything?
Meanwhile, she had to figure out what to do with him when they went off on their cruise, an entire month. For just a moment, she considered taking him along, but she couldn’t do that to Femke, she decided, or to Johnny either. He’d be terrified of the waves. What was meant to be a vacation would only make his mood swings worse.
And besides, Gita thought, she hadn’t had any real time off in fourteen years. For fourteen years she’d taken care of Johnny, spent every weekday and many Saturdays on her feet in the café. In fourteen years, she’d withered from a promising young lady determined to make the best of things to a middle-aged woman who’d accepted that she wasn’t entitled to the best of anything, that the future she had once dreamed of had turned out not to be a pretty pink house and a dog, but a swamp. Didn’t she have the right, just this once, to enjoy herself?
She asked Mireille to take Johnny in, offered to pay her for the trouble. Mireille had been offended by the idea of payment, but she hadn’t said no to looking after the boy.
Until two days before their departure, when Mireille had called her. “I’ve talked it over with Bor,” she said, “and he won’t have Johnny here for a month.”
There was a long silence on the line.
“To be honest,” Mireille said at last, “I don’t think I could handle it, anyway. I haven’t got the energy. You understand, don’t you?”
So she’d had to make other arrangements.
On the afternoon of their flight, she and Femke had agreed to meet across from the airport Burger King at five. Femke had to see a client in Utrecht at noon, but their flight didn’t leave until 6:30, so she’d have plenty of time to get there. Femke would bring the tickets.
At 5:05, Gita lifted her suitcase onto a baggage cart and hurried through the arrivals hall to the Burger King. The smell of frying meat made her hungry, but she couldn’t stop to eat and risk missing Femke.
She waited for five minutes and watched a somber young couple take their place in the line approaching the counter. She waited ten minutes and watched the couple settle at a table with a tray piled high with burgers and fries. She waited fifteen minutes and watched the couple revive over their meaclass="underline" the girl’s face became animated, the boy laughed at something she said.
After twenty minutes, Gita sat on the edge of her baggage cart. She watched the couple rise, watched the girl playfully order the boy to clear their table, watched him stick out his tongue at her.
While she waited, she sent Femke a text, then another. She asked a security guard if there was a second Burger King elsewhere at the airport. She called Femke’s cell phone three times, maybe four, but no one answered.
At 6:20, Gita wheeled her cart into the departures hall. She approached the customer service counter for the airline on which they were ticketed, and asked the agent if it was possible to get a refund.
“I’m sorry,” the girl said, “we don’t process refunds here. I can cancel your reservation, though. Would you like me to do that for you?”
Gita hesitated, then nodded.
“What’s the name on the booking?” the girl asked.
“Femke,” said Gita, “Femke de Waal.”
The girl typed the name into her computer, then asked Gita to spell it. “I am sorry,” she said at last, “but I don’t show a reservation under that name.”
Gita’s fingers tighten on the cool chain-link fence. It would be so easy to hoist herself upward, to climb, to perch on the crossbar at the top. From that vantage point, the view of the city would be even better: the passenger terminal across the IJ to the left, the Prinseneiland to the right... and below? She closes her eyes and imagines falling forward. As she falls, her velocity will increase — one of the few things she remembers from her science classes in school.
“Ma’am?” says a voice behind her.
She opens her eyes and turns around. The boy in the red jacket is pointing at the swing. “Last chance. Do you want to ride?”
The roof is deserted. The drizzle has strengthened into rain. With her hands in her jacket pockets, Gita approaches the swing. Her fingertips glide across her phone, a cool black brick that remains stubbornly silent.
Now that she is beside the swing, she realizes for the first time just how tall it is: the steel pyramid stretches far above her head.
“Have a seat,” says the boy, and Gita settles onto a flat red wooden board that reminds her of the ski lifts she’s seen in the movies.
“Now fasten your safety belt, please.”
She pulls the black bar up between her legs, fumbles with the locking mechanism, and then she sees them. Two terrified eyes, pupils darting back and forth as if they’re following a bumblebee in flight. She clicks the tongue into the buckle and sees the windmilling arms, the kicking legs, the thin wrists she wrestles with difficulty to the mattress. She pulls the belt tighter, feels the nylon press into her thigh. She can hear him screaming now, whimpering like a cornered dog. Johnny’s pajama bottoms are suddenly wet, she can smell the urine, but he’s finally secured, so she pulls his blanket over him, over his pajamas. She sets the iPad on the night table next to his bed and points at Elmo, who is laughing gaily.
The ski lift jolts upward. Gita’s legs dangle in the darkness.
“Here we go,” says the boy beneath her, and the swing begins to move, first back, then forward, and Gita looks down at the city spread out beneath her. There are houses to the left and cars to the right and boats in the water, all pinpoints of light, glowworms that wriggle across the earth and mean nothing at all to her.
Look, she hears Femke say, that woman in the straw hat is me, and the one holding the cocktail is you.
Silent Days
by Karin Amatmoekrim
Oosterpark
It was early autumn when they began to cut down the trees. The wind was aggressive, the rain thin but steady. I sat at my window and looked out at their balding crowns, and then I watched them fall. It happened in silence, as if the trees were fainting, dropping to the ground without the least resistance.
The park seems wounded now. But I’ve lived here long enough to know that even this will pass. The gaps left behind by the fallen trees will close, the park will heal itself, and people will say they can’t imagine it ever being any different.
I’ve lived in this neighborhood for eighty-two years. I’ve seen it change: the city itself, its inhabitants, their faces, even the language they speak. But at heart the neighborhood remains the same. Amsterdam-East was never flawless. It’s the side of town where the Jews lived before the Germans came and took them away. Their empty homes were immediately repopulated. We all worked hard but remained poor. No one had time for sentimentality. In the summers, the heat fanned our discontent, and we invented turbulent celebrations, throwing old furniture out of upper-floor windows to the streets below. We built bonfires of the shattered remnants, the flames so high they tickled the underbellies of the clouds.