Free The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom Page A

a whisper.
    â€œYes, Mama?”
    â€œCorrie,” she said again.
    And then I heard the water spilling out of the sink onto the floor. I jumped down from the chair and ran into the kitchen. Mama stood with her hand on the faucet, staring strangely at me while the water splashed from the sink over her feet.
    â€œWhat is it, Mama?” I cried, reaching for the faucet. I pried her fingers loose, shut off the water, and drew her away from the puddle on the floor.
    â€œCorrie,” she said again.
    â€œMama, you’re ill! We’ve got to get you to bed!”
    â€œCorrie.”
    I put an arm beneath her shoulder and guided her through the dining room and up the stairs. At my cry Tante Anna came running down the stairs and caught Mama’s other arm. Together we got her onto her bed and then I raced down to the shop for Father and Betsie.
    For an hour the four of us watched the effect of the cerebral hemorrhage spread slowly over her body. The paralysis seemed to affect her hands first, traveling from them along her arms and then down into her legs. Dr. van Veen, for whom the apprentice had gone running, could do no more than we.
    Mama’s consciousness was the last thing to go, her eyes remaining open and alert, looking lovingly at each one of us until very slowly they closed and we were sure she was gone forever. Dr. van Veen, however, said that this was only a coma, very deep, from which she could slip either into death or back to life.
    For two months Mama lay unconscious on that bed, the five of us, with Nollie on the evening shift, taking turns at her side. And then one morning, as unexpectedly as the stroke had come, her eyes opened and she looked around her. Eventually she regained the use of her arms and legs enough to be able to move about with assistance, though her hands would never again hold her crochet hook or knitting needles.
    We moved her out of the tiny bedroom facing the brick wall, down to Tante Jans’s front room where she could watch the busy life of the Barteljorisstraat. Her mind, it was soon clear, was as active as ever, but the power of speech did not return—with the exception of three words. Mama could say “yes,” “no,” and—perhaps because it was the last one she had pronounced—“Corrie.” And so Mama called everybody “Corrie.”
    To communicate, she and I invented a little game, something like Twenty Questions. “Corrie,” she would say.
    â€œWhat is it, Mama? You’re thinking of someone!”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œSomeone in the family.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œSomebody you saw on the street?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWas it an old friend?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œA man?”
    â€œNo.”
    A woman Mama had known for a long time. “Mama, I’ll bet it’s someone’s birthday!” And I would call out names until I heard her delighted, “Yes!” Then I would write a little note saying that Mama had seen the person and wished her a happy birthday. At the close I always put the pen in her stiffened fingers so she could sign it. An angular scrawl was all that was left of her beautiful curling signature, but it was soon recognized and loved all over Haarlem.
    It was astonishing, really, the quality of life she was able to lead in that crippled body, and watching her during the three years of her paralysis, I made another discovery about love.
    Mama’s love had always been the kind that acted itself out with soup pot and sewing basket. But now that these things were taken away, the love seemed as whole as before. She sat in her chair at the window and loved us. She loved the people she saw in the street—and beyond: her love took in the city, the land of Holland, the world.
    And so I learned that love is larger than the walls that shut it in.
    M ORE AND MORE often, Nollie’s conversation at the dinner table had been about a young fellow teacher at the school