Chapter 32: The Chair

On Sunday I walked into church early, and I carried both plates.

The front room was filling up, and the iron stove was cold for the summer.

The long table stood with its seven chairs, and its six brass plates, and at the foot a bare place where nobody had sat in years.

Joost stood at the head with the gavel.

He saw me come in, and he saw what was in my hands, and he did not move a muscle.

I walked the whole length of the table.

Forty men stopped talking one by one.

I passed the second chair, where I had sat for two years and where I had been replaced in one night.

I did not slow down.

At the foot, I set the old scratched plate down on the wood, and the new bright one beside it.

FEMKE BRANDSMA, twice.

I pulled out the seventh chair, and I sat.

For a moment the only sound was a fly at the window.

"That's the chair that faces the president," the old patch said from the stove.

"I know," I said. "You can't see the door from the second chair. You can only see it from here."

"What do you want to see at the door?" the old patch asked.

"Whatever comes in."

He chewed on that and looked at Joost.

Joost's mouth was working.

"Sit where you want," he said, thickly. "The plate says Femke."

He lifted the gavel and struck it once.

"First motion. We replace the truck that carries the toys."

"No," I said.

Every head turned.

"I'm sorry, did you say no?" Joost asked.

"I've seen the quote. It's twice what Greet's cousin would charge." I met his eyes down the table. "I vote no, and I want it written in the book."

Truus, in the front row with her apprentice, wrote it down with a flourish.

"Hands," said Joost.

It went nineteen for and twenty against, with mine the last.

"The motion fails," Truus read out.

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