The Journey Back by Johanna Reiss Read Free Book Online

the baker’s. But when, at last, the people came out, their bags were only a LITTLE fuller than they were when they went in, even if they had used up all their coupons. And on they hurried, to the next store, the next line.
    “Have they run out of milk already?” a woman with huge eyes asked Sini.
    “No? There’s still hope, you said?” Contentedly she sighed. “Things are getting better all the time, aren’t they? Take a month ago-we had nothing. All I had to make stew with were potatoes. Now I can put in carrots, and if I slice them thin, it-even looks like a lot.”
    Another woman, wearing the old-fashioned clothes of the people of Walcheren, agreed. “And if I can get to the butcher before he runs out, I come home with an ounce of meat, too.”
    The first woman smacked her lips. “I bet my husband won’t even want to go to work. He’ll want to stick around and eat by three in the afternoon.”
    “I hope they’re feed’.mg my husband well,” said the refugee from Walcheren. “The hack-bre! dng work he has to do to mend the dikes.
    Heavy, heavy rocks he handles all day long. To think it’s only the first hole they’re filling in. At this rate, I’ll never get back. It’s a mess there. People throw their garbage out the windows. They figure it’ll wash out to sea anyway.” She shook her head in anger. “They shouldn’t do that. It brings in rats. God knows what I’ll find when I do get home. A garden that’s ruined for years to come, that’s for sure. Right now I would’ve had such beautiful tulips and irises.” Enviously she looked across the street, to where the farmers were selling their flowers. “If I can at least get back in time to plhnt something for next year-but what’ll grow in that salty soil?”
    “Ja, ja. I know what you mean,” someone sympathized. We all moved up the line.
    Nervously the woman with the huge eyes counted the number of people ahead of her. “Twenty-six. C’mon, c’mon! There’s the egg I want to get and the onion I have to buy. It takes the whole day.”
    “It sure does,” Sini answered. She sounded impatient, too.
    Was she tired of shopping already? Unhappily I looked up at her. She must be. She was looking over toward the caf& the same caf from which the music would come in a few hours. “Gonna Take a Sentimental Journey,”
    they would play. And she’d go. Dance. Miserable tune.
    SUMMER
    The first night Sini was not home by ten, Rachel became more and more worried. “Maybe she has been in an accident, Father. With no streetlights working, it’s pitch-dark out.”
    “Ah, she’s all right.” He shrugged his shoulders, but when he picked up his pencil again, he looked a little worried, too. Twenty minutes went by. Every time we heard a sound outside we looked up. But it was never Sini. It was the bleating of sheep, the wind blowing, the clop-clopping of a farmer’s wooden shoes.
    “Father.” Rachel’s voice was urgent. “I want you to go to town and look for her.”
    The only response was an angry grunt.
    “Father, if you don’t go, I will,” Rachel threatened
    My goodness, Rachel was making a fuss. Sini was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. “Father-”
    “Damn that Sini.” His chair fell over as he got up. “Dancing, dancing-tmt’s all she has on her mind. Not another thought, I swear.
    Dancing. As if that’s all there is to do in this world.” On his way out, he noticed me. “Don’t look so scared, Annie. Come, go to bed. I’m sure she’s all right. Nothing happens to that one. She’s just-” He left, closing the door with a bang.
    I hurried upstairs to look out the window. It was too dark to see anything. What if Rachel had been right and something had happend to Sini? I stayed where I was, listening.
    There, that was Sini’s voice. “I have never been so humiliated in my life, making a fool out of me. If you ever come after me again, I don’t know what I’m going to do, Father, but I won’t go with you-that,