The Safekeep(63)

June 6, 1961


She thinks I’m after her brother’s money. Ha. I have woken up in the night and I have taken a spoon. Tomorrow I will go to town and I will mail the spoon to Malcha and it will be mine again. No matter what happens at least I will have that spoon.





June 7, 1961


She’s taken care of Mum’s garden. It looks nice. I saw her harvesting the rhubarb today. She did it the same way I remembered, with the basket and the scissors. I stood there and tried to think, You thief, you’re a thief. It’s hard to think that at someone cutting rhubarb in the hot sun. Then she told me to roll up my trousers before I got on the bike and I did. I mailed the spoon to Malcha.





June 8, 1961


She has made the strangest trap of this house. She has drawn herself a circle and she lives inside that circle and anyone who comes in or leaves must answer to her rules, which she barks at you, like some prison officer. Madness. I barely move. She will not look away. I wake up and she is there. I turn and she is there. She will not speak to me. I left the house the other day and her anger almost felt like worry, she is making me go mad alongside her. I ask her, What are the joys in your life! What are the things you love or hate or want to do! She looks at me like she’s guarding the Queen’s jewelry. Like every word she gives me is some precious thing that I will abuse.

There’s a maid (Neelke) who comes and helps with the house. Poor thing.





June 9, 1961


Went looking for Father’s letter opener & she walked in and I said, I dropped an earring. I nearly ripped my ear off, taking it out quick quick. I thought my heart would beat out of my chest. She—I don’t know. She stood very close. Sometimes I think she knows. Sometimes I want to push her and see what she does. Sometimes I think she’s at my door at night. I wonder if I stay away again, if that will get her angry again. Maybe I should just leave altogether. Maybe this was the worst idea I’ve ever had. I’ve never met a woman so tall and she’s not even that tall at all.





June 10, 1961


Dreamt she was at my bedside watching me sleep & woke up and she wasn’t there. Can’t fall back asleep. She keeps this place so neat. Today she took out every piece of Mother’s hare china and rolled it in water with a hand soft like to a baby’s neck. She’s found a shard of the old broken plate in the garden and now keeps it on the mantel like some treasure. She’s all alone here. For years she has sat at the kitchen table all alone and taken my mother’s things into her hands and cleaned them.





June 12, 1961


Louis called today. Hearing him was a bucket of ice water. I think I’ve been dreaming or asleep since I got here. I can’t explain. I’m here. I can’t explain





June 13, 1961


If this was any other house I would leave. I would run from here. If I had no other purpose I’d be gone. I am going to go insane, she is going to drive me insane. A drink, I had a single drink with the maid, and she—what am I to her? What do I owe her? I’m the one who’s owed, it’s me, and she talks to me about her life, and she grabs me and I still have the bruise of her hand on my arm. Oh I have drunk too much I think…





June 14, 1961


I wonder if she remembers the time we almost met. After the war when I was sixteen and on that side of the door and she was only just a few years younger on this side of the door. Mum knocked and knocked and they wouldn’t let us in. Sometimes I can feel her eyes on me like it’s on my skin. I think she thinks I don’t notice. She looks at me like she wants to embrace me, hold me, and then I look back at her and she says the nastiest things. I want to see what happens if I crawl into the attic and hide and she can’t find me. Will she lose her mind? Will she turn the house upside down looking for me? I think she will. I want to see what would happen if I walked up to her and put all of my face in her face and she can finally have what she wants which is she doesn’t have to look anywhere where I’m not.





June 15, 1961


God help me. I can still feel her mouth.





June 16, 1961


Hendrik here now. She said—oh, she said, I think I have a fever. I said you don’t have a fever. But I feel it too now. My head is hot. I won’t sleep. I am sick. I am sick. I want her here. I want her in this bed, God, what have I done. I don’t know—Oh, what have we done. What a mess. No more, no, no more, it is done.





June 18, 1961


God let her not know herself. God let her have mistaken in herself. God let her like him more than anything. God let her be confused and God let her not know touch and not know the one kiss from the other and confused and God let her like him more than me. God take it away from me God take her away God please God please take her from me.





June 21, 1961


I think she wants to eat me. I think she would inhale me if she could. I think she’d crawl herself inside of me if she thought that’s where she’d find something that I’ve kept hidden from her. God help me. Would I let her? I would let her. God help me she looks at me. God help me I don’t want her to look away.