When my sister was eleven and I fourteen, my mother decided she had had enough. I was too difficult and Gemma never opened her mouth, was what she told a friend. She arranged for us to be sent to a children's home, the Citizens' Orphanage in The Hague.
Our cat Minou also had to go. She was going to live with a friend of our mother's who had a big garden.
We were appointed a guardian, a social worker called mevrouw Gordijn. Because my mother was going to a kibbutz in Israel for half a year, the social worker would be the one to contact if we had any problems.
We went to see her a few times at her home. She had an enormous dog called Bruno who kept pushing his head between my legs. This embarrassed and frightened me. Mevrouw Gordijn didn't do much to stop him except for a feeble: 'Now don't do that Bruno! Get down!' I didn't think Mevrouw Gordijn liked us very much. She stayed very cold and distant. We didn't look forward to her coming to visit us in Den Haag, which she said she would do.
When we told my father that we were going to live in Den Haag because my mother couldn't look after us anymore, he cried.
'But why can't you stay here in Bergendal?' he asked.
'Mama says there isn't a good children's home here,' I answered. Gemma was crying as well. She sucked her thumb, but because the crying blocked her nose she had to leave her mouth open.
We saw my father one more time before we went to Den Haag. Annemie invited us for tea. My father didn't say a word, so Annemie and I made conversation.
When it was time to go, my father said he would drop us off at home. Recently, he had bought his first car; a very old, small blue Renault, and it was his pride and joy. He stopped the car around the corner from our house, by the herring stall. I saw Bep chopping onions, as usual. She looked up and waved at us, knife in hand, her summer-sky eyes smiling. The smell of the salt herring was strong. My father got out of the car with us with us. He gave us each 50 guilders. 'Pocket money for in Den Haag,' he said.
We were allowed to hug and kiss him, which was very rare. I loved his smell, of tobacco, shaving soap and molten wax, and I loved the feel of his grey and brown speckled jacket.
When he drove off, the afternoon turned dark. I had such a bad cramp in my stomach that I had to bend over and hug myself tight. But I saw Gemma's face and pushed the pain back, deep inside.
We held hands. 'We'll write him really often. Once a week.' I said.
'Yeth,' she said from behind her thumb.
'And he said he would write us.'
'Yeth.'
'With the money we can go and have chips together. Really often. Whenever we want to.'
We climbed the stairs, and I went on up to my room to put on my Beatles record.

The day before the Christmas holidays I said goodbye to my school friends. Some of them had brought me presents: chocolates, a new pencil-case, the latest single from the Kinks and a book about ballet. The teachers also said goodbye and wished me luck The Headmaster still blamed me for Mijneer Vonk's heart attack in front of the class, so I think he was glad to see me go.
Anja and I didn't have to say goodbye yet, because we planned a beach walk on Christmas Eve.
Gemma and I would be leaving on the twenty-seventh. Mevrouw Gordijn had a car, and she and my mother were going to take us.
That Christmas we had, as every Christmas before, our favourite dinner. Chicken, and afterwards feestpudding. My mother always cooked the chicken to perfection and there were potatoes and salad and delicious gravy. The feestpudding we had only on special occasions. It was semolina with dried fruits and rataffia biscuits and my mother bought it in sachets. I absolutely loved it.
This time I found it hard to swallow any of the feast, and Gemma's thumb seemed to be actually stuck in her mouth so she couldn't eat anything. Our cat Minou had already been taken to her new home but I kept seeing her out of the corner of my eye.
' Don't you want your pudding?' Mama asked.
' I can't, Mum. I'm full.'
'And you, Gemma? Take that thumb out and have a mouthful.'
Gemma slowly pulled out her thumb. It made a sucking noise. She picked up her spoon and took some pudding. When it was in her mouth, I saw that she kept it in her cheek, like a hamster, hoping my mother wouldn't notice.
Never before had we left any feestpudding.
Gemma and I cleared the table and did the washing up. My mother scraped our pudding bowls out into the dustbin. It was my turn to dry and for once we didn't bicker. Afterwards I got my book from upstairs. Aart Van der Leeuwen: The Little Rudolf. I tried to read. My mother wrote some letters and Gemma sat and sucked her thumb. After a while it was bedtime.
'Welterusten Mama.'

I woke up at ten past five that morning. My curtains were open and the streetlight across the road shone straight in my room. I looked around. On the walls, my posters: the Beatles smiling in 'A Hard Day's Night', Paul Klee's Golden Fish, a drawing by Picasso of a face. And my father's painting of a woman holding a child; in his usual dark colours, sombre, brooding. On the chest of drawers by the window stood a skull, ghostly lit by the streetlight. My bookshelves were still full of books, as there would be space for only a few in our new bedrooms. I wasn't going to see this room for half a year or more. We could come home for the summer holidays, my mother had said. 'I'll be back by August at the latest.'
And not to see papa for all that time. On the table was my suitcase, already packed. It was open. If Minou had still been here, she would have curled up in it and everything would have got covered in hair.
Minou. Would Jannie let her sleep on the bed with her the way she was used to with me?
Inside the case I could see my cognac-coloured jumper, my new slippers and flannelette nightie, the same as Gemma's. Under that, I knew, were my black trousers, two skirts, new underpants: white with a little pink tied ribbon at the waist, bras, socks, tights, airmail paper and envelopes to write Mama in Israel and, at the bottom, records and books. Over the chair hung the clothes I was going to wear: my new dark blue and green chequered pinafore with the green polo-neck and matching green tights and on the floor my new black shoes.
Six o'clock. Mevrouw Gordijn was coming to pick us up at 8.30. I hoped she wouldn't bring Bruno. I got out of bed and walked over to the windows. The wide wooden floorboards were ice cold under my bare feet. Van Woerden, the hairdresser across the street, always left the lights on in the shop. It looked so ordinary, as if everything was the same. Tomorrow night I wasn't going to be here to look down at the polished mirrors, the black leather chairs and the pale blue cover-ups hanging from the coat stand. Nor would I be here to look at the cinema a bit further down, with its name 'The Roxy' in bright pink neon.

Anja and I had done our beach walk. Three hours. I could still feel it in my shins. The sea was calm and opaque, like mother-of-pearl under a pale turquoise winter sky. And the sand so soft and white. It had felt as if we were walking in a watercolour painting. We promised each other to write every week and stay best friends for ever. After our walk I went in with Anja to say goodbye to her parents.
'Why are your sister and you going to an orphanage? Your parents are both alive?' Anja's father asked, cupping his hand around his ear to hear my answer, because his hearing-aid wasn't working. He looked at me accusingly, as if I was trying to pull a fast one.
'But there is only one real orphan at the home. The rest are just ordinary children like Gemma and me.' What a stupid answer I thought, but he seemed to accept it and didn't ask any more. Anja's mother hugged me. She was one of those real mothers, big and soft, wearing flowery aprons, always in the kitchen cooking or washing. Anja walked me home and we kissed.
'I'll write soon!'
'Me too!' I watched until, just before the corner, she turned and waved.

I looked at the clock. Quarter to seven. I went down to see if Gemma was awake. She was sitting up in bed with her doll beside her. Her doll was a boy called Dries. He had freckles and red hair. Dries was coming with us to Den Haag.
'I have stomach ache,' I said. 'From nerves, I think.'
Gemma took her thumb out long enough to say, 'Me too.'
'I hope that bloody Bruno doesn't come, because I have my period and then he is at his worst.'
Gemma nodded.
'Gemma, you can't suck your thumb there except at night in your room, or you will be teased. I'll put pepper on it.'
Gemma sucked harder. At least she didn't have her usual winter bronchitis. Sometimes she was ill for weeks.
I heard my mother get up in the living-room, so I went in the kitchen to wash my face and hands, and then upstairs to get dressed.
It was nice to have new clothes to put on. New clothes for a new life, I thought with a thrill of excitement. When I was ready I went down to the living-room to look in the big mirror. I couldn't see the length of my legs but enough to see that the green tights. And I loved the pinafore, though I wished I were a bit slimmer. I would go on a diet in Den Haag. My mother came in with the bread and put three slices on top of the stove.
'Can you lay the table, Annick?'
I laid it as if for a Sunday, with eggcups and spoons. Gemma came in with Dries under her arm. She was wearing her new dress, dark red with embroidery on the bib. I saw on the alarm-clock by my mother's bed that it was only half-past seven. Plenty of time.
'More toast?'
We didn't want any.
'Could you both take your sheets off the beds?'
I went upstairs, closed my suitcase, stripped the bed and lay down on it. Suddenly I felt very tired.

When the doorbell rang I got up from the bed, picked up my suitcase, and went downstairs. Mevrouw Gordijn was just coming up.
'Are we all set?' she said in a jolly voice.
'You don't want some coffee before we go?' my mother asked.
'No, I think we should be on our way. They'll give us coffee there, I am sure. Where is Gemma?'
'Gemma! Come lieverd!' called Mamma and she took our coats from the stand and picked up Gemma's suitcase. We went down. Thank heavens, there was no sign of Bruno. The cases went in the boot and Gemma and I got in the back.
As we drove off I looked back at our street and our house. We turned the corner; Beb was just opening the stall. I looked up at Anja's house.
Goodbye, I thought, and closed my eyes.

2

I had hated nursery school and I had hated Juffrouw Schild, the teacher. After having waited all that time to be four years old, it was a total let-down. I seemed to spend most of the time sitting in a sandpit, while the other children tried to get as much sand as they could in my mouth, eyes and ears.
When the weather wasn't good enough for this, we had to go inside and colour in boring pictures or do complicated things with paper, like plaiting little mats or cutting icicles.
I took at least twice as long as everyone else over these things and when I finally finished something, it would be grubby from my sweaty hands and full of mistakes.
Juffrouw Schild once scolded me in front of the class, holding the offending paper-mat up high for all to see.
'What is this? Surely you can do better? I am afraid you are going to have to do this again.' Her tortoise shell glasses glinted in the lamplight, so I couldn't see her eyes. Poor tortoise, I thought.
Another time she laughed at me when I said that the numbers had their own colours. She was writing them on the blackboard, each one in a different colour, but she got them wrong. I put up my hand. 'Yes, Annick?'
'You have given some of them the wrong colour, Juf. Two isn't red, it is pale yellow, and four is orange, and three is orangey pink.'
'What do you mean, the wrong colour? Numbers don't have colours, so you can write them in whatever colour you want.' I didn't know what to say, but I knew I was right. She probably didn't know either, that the days of the week had their own colour. When I told Papa about it that afternoon, he said that he didn't know that days and numbers had colours either, but if I saw them, then they did.
For the first few months Papa brought me to school in the mornings. We would walk hand in hand along the Lange Hout Vest together.
On cold days he held my hand inside the pocket of his jacket. Sometimes there were some peanuts in his pocket, monkey nuts he called them, and he would open one for me. It was always difficult to let go of that warm hand when we arrived at school.
At the end of the day my mother would pick me up. She and all the other mothers would be waiting, as Juffrouw Schild opened the school doors wide. We then came out in a neat file, singing, at the top of our voices, a song about a gnome who was sitting on a toadstool.My mother looked different from all the other mothers. She was much thinner and she wore her hair in a ponytail, instead of their neat perms. I used to wish I had a real mother. One day my mother asked Juffrouw Schild if we didn't sing any other songs than the one about the toadstool; that was the only one I seemed to know. 'But we sing lots of songs! Annick should know at least a dozen.' And she glared at me. From that day onwards she made me learn two songs by heart each week, which I then had to sing in front of the class, but it was only a few weeks before the Christmas holidays and afterwards she forgot all about it.

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