December 24, 1941
Eindhoven, Holland
Dear Toye Boy,
I miss you. I miss you and I hope you're safe. I hope you're happy and I hope you're well and…and everything that I'm not. I heard about Hawaii this morning. I know what it means. I know that we'll fight soon, if we aren't already on some island in the Pacific somewhere. I know. It feels like one of the few things I do know anymore. That's a lie, I suppose. I know lots of things. I know how to cook three meals a day for forty men. I know how to understand German. I know when Hauptmann Lenzer has his breakfast. I know how I want to kill him. I know how to put gas in a truck. I know how to fix a flat tire. I know how to wrap a sprained wrist or ankle. I know how barter for food at the market without words. I know how to wake myself up in the middle of the night so that I might bathe without worrying about prying eyes. I know how to scrunch my words into the margins of the book you gave me so that I can write to you. I know that they won't get to you, my words. My words get to no one anymore. I know where I bury this book within its little canvas bag every time I finish writing to you. I know that I miss you. I know that nothing is like it should be. I know that I'm probably going to die here. I'm still going to try, don't get me wrong. I won't give up, but I just…I don't know how this has a happy ending. How many more years will I be here, cooking their dinner and washing their clothes until somebody comes. Will London and Washington even care about Holland? Won't they worry about Paris and Tokyo? Why would anyone come here?
I also know that you're going to fight. You're going to. I know you. You won't be able to go to the mine and stand there with the coal when you could be coming across the ocean to kick Hitler in the face. I know you, Toye Boy. Be safe, Joe. Please, be safe. You'll probably have to live for the both of us soon. Do you remember how when we were younger we were always so hungry, so damn hungry? It's that way here this winter. Everyone is hungry…except the soldiers who eat my food. I'm sorry. I'm just wasting precious paper with self-pity now. It's never worth it. You remember how my mother always said so. It was like her mantra. I try to make it mine now, but sometimes I can't remember it …or what she looked like. Sometimes I can't remember what you look like. I wonder what you look like. It's been almost four years. I wonder if you remember me. No, that's a stupid wondering. Of course you remember me. I'm your Patches, of course you couldn't forget me. I wonder if you remember how to play the piano, if you're happier now that you don't have to hear me play so often. I like this wondering about your life, because it helps me not think about the pathetic thing mine has become.
They think that I'm stupid, you know. That's why they keep me, why he doesn't just walk up and put a bullet in my brain like he did to Else. I'm going to kill him. I don't know how long it will take, but I'm going to kill him. I'm going to make him bleed out into the grass and I'm going to walk away like he doesn't matter. No one will be there to cry over his body like I did hers. No one will care, because she was better than he is.
None of this is very Christmas-y, is it? Whatever happens, wherever you end up, and however you manage to kick Hitler in the balls, I pray that this Christmas is a good one for you. I know that you won't get a present from me. I wonder if you got the one I sent a year ago. But anyway, tell your mom and dad that I love them and that they're the best family a girl could have. Don't breathe in too much of the incense at church; you know how it makes you pass out. I'll be thinking of you.
Much Love,
Patches
Audrey put down her pencil and quickly wrapped Sense & Sensibility up in what had once been one of her stockings. It was a summer pair. They had ripped and she no longer had any use for them, so she had repurposed them to the most important job she could possibly give. They were there to protect Joe, what she had left of him, to protect what little she had left of her.
If she lived through this, she wondered if that book and the words in the margins would prove to be her lifeline to sanity or posterity's proof of her descent into insanity. Nothing was okay anymore. Nothing was right, and not just because Joe wasn't there. She wasn't right. She wasn't even sure if she was still Audrey.
After Lenzer had killed Else, after she had sat there on the ground, rocking herself back and forth with silent tears, he had nodded for one of his soldiers to bring her with them. They believed Else's story about her mental limitations. The Jew wasn't human enough to live, but there was no one stupid enough to lie to an officer apparently. And so, to remain alive, she had made herself useful, stupid but useful. She showed that she could cook and bake, that she could feed them and do their washing and iron their uniforms and mend their socks. They were all tasks the soldiers could do themselves, but who were they to deny purpose to a poor, lost, slow little countrywoman. They were doing her a favor, giving her the chance to aid the cause of the Fatherland.
Along with stupid, she ensured that she was silent. In the beginning when her mouth had rebelled at its lack of use, when her vocal cords had cried out with neglect, Else's voice continued to ring in her mind, telling her that they would know. So, she had not spoken, had remained mute since they had taken her the May before last, a year and a half ago, when the world had suddenly turned into hell. She wondered if her voice even still worked at all, because even when alone like this, she refused to use it. It wasn't worth it. What would she say? What would it matter if she had something to put into sound?
It didn't.
Running her hand over the worn and abused cover of the book beneath her old stocking, she pressed a kiss to the fabric before returning it to its hole at the foot of the large oak tree beside the field she walked through. She couldn't recall why she had chosen that spot to hide her secret, but ever since they had started letting her walk into Einhoven on her own, that is where she had dug up and then reburied the book. The dirt still frozen beneath her fingers, she pushed back the snow and mud with her hands from where she knelt in the snow, hiding the evidence that she was still an American woman named Audrey with complex thoughts and feelings.
When it was again hidden, she rose up, taking her basket under one arm and the stack of packages in the other. Should anyone ask why she was all wet, they would presume she'd been pushed into the dirt by one of the townspeople again. It was no secret that the Dutch citizens hated her, considered her a traitor, despised the little rat that lived with their German oppressors. It was clear enough that she wasn't all there, but she knew it would be easier for the downtrodden, starving people to blame an unarmed, unintimidating figure like herself rather than the soldiers who carried guns even in their sleep.
Snow flurries began to fall more quickly as she walked away from Toye Boy and she tried to focus on memories of Pennsylvania Christmases filled with snowball fights, clumsily wrapped presents, and feeling loved before she returned to Nazi-occupied Holland.
Joseph D. Toye couldn't help but feel that, just as it had for the last four years, his mother and father's dinner table at Christmas was too empty. Audrey wasn't there and she hadn't been for a very long time. He still missed her almost every day, would think of something to tell her and sometimes unconsciously turn because once upon a time, beside him is where she had always been. Though he knew it was stupid and pointless, that there was hardly any hope that she was still alive after the Nazis had invaded France, when they held hands to say grace and his mother squeezed his, signaling it was his turn, he murmured, "Keep her safe. Wherever she is, keep Patches safe and let her know that we love her."
Within a week, he was back in fatigues at basic training, running and shooting and fighting and learning how to make some Kraut or Jap bastards bleed. In some terrible way that he knew wasn't entirely healthy, he thought of her every time he hit the bull's eye on the target or thrust forward with the bayonet, knowing that in a couple short months, he'd be killing the bastards that had killed her.
He, Joe Toye, was going to fight for his country and for what was right and for his dead best friend that they had taken from him.
A/N: So, yeah. This randomly happened today while I was attempting to work on my Hobbit story. Funny how that happens, huh? So, I hadn't realized it until this chapter, really, but I think we're going to be looking at a letter from Audrey to Joe at the beginning of every chapter at least for the foreseeable future. I figured she needed an outlet. Anyway, my rambling is silly for a chapter this short, so thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed. :)
