Leap of Faith (4 page)

The two distant relatives looked at each other for a long moment, as Carole narrowed her eyes appraisingly. “You look a lot like your father as a child. I haven’t seen him in twenty years,” she added, but without much regret, as the words mean-spirited leaped to Marie-Ange’s mind, and she began to understand. Her great-aunt seemed cold and hard and unhappy, perhaps because she was in a wheelchair, the child decided. But she was polite enough not to ask her about it. She knew her mother wouldn’t have wanted her to do that. “I haven’t seen him since he went to France. It always seemed like a crazy thing to me, when he had plenty to do here. It was hard on his father when he left, working the farm, but he didn’t seem to care much. I guess he went over there chasing after your mother.” She said it as an accusation, and Marie-Ange had the feeling she was supposed to apologize to her, but didn’t. She could see now why he had gone to Paris. The house she was in looked depressing and sad, and his aunt at least was anything but friendly. She wondered if the rest of the family had been like her. Carole Collins was so totally different from her mother, who was warm, and gracious, and lively, and filled with fun, and so very, very pretty. It was no wonder her father had gone to find her, particularly if the other women in Iowa were like this one. Had Marie-Ange been older, she would have realized that what Carole Collins was, more than anything, was bitter. Life had been unkind to her, crippling her at an early age, and then taking her husband from her a few years later. There had been very little joy in her life, and she had none to offer. “I’ll wake you when I get up,” she warned, and Marie-Ange wondered when that would be, but didn’t dare to ask her. “You can help me make breakfast.”

“Thank you,” Marie-Ange whispered, tears bulging in her eyes, but the older woman appeared not to see them. She turned and wheeled away then, as Marie-Ange closed the door to her room, sat down on the bed, and began to cry. She got up finally and made the bed, and then dug into her suitcases until she found her nightgowns, perfectly folded by Sophie. They had little embroideries on them that Sophie had done with her gnarled old hands, and they were of the finest cotton, and like everything else she owned, they were from Paris. Somehow Marie-Ange knew that Carole Collins had never seen anything like them, nor would she ever care to.

Marie-Ange went to bed and lay in the dark for a long time that night, wondering what she had done to have this terrible fate befall her. Robert and her parents were gone, and Sophie along with them, and she was left now with this terrifying old woman in this dismal place, and all she wished as she lay in her bed that night, listening to the unfamiliar sounds outside, was that her parents had taken her with them when they left for Paris with Robert.

Leap of Faith

Chapter 3

It was still dark the next morning when Marie-Ange’s Aunt Carole came to get her. She sat in her wheelchair in the doorway of the room, told her to get up, and then abruptly turned her wheelchair around and rolled herself into the kitchen. And five minutes later, with tousled hair and sleepy eyes, Marie-Ange joined her. It was five-thirty in the morning.

“We get up early on the farm, Marie,” she said, dropping off the second half of her name with studied determination, and after a minute Marie-Ange looked at her and spoke up clearly.

“My name is Marie-Ange,” the child said with a wistful look, in an accent others would have found charming, but Carole Collins didn’t. To her, it was only a reminder of how foolish her nephew had been, and she thought the double name sounded pretentious.

“Marie will do fine for you here,” she said to the child, setting a bottle of milk, a loaf of bread, and ajar of jam on the table. That was breakfast. “You can make toast, if you want,” she said, pointing at an ancient, rusting chrome toaster on the counter. Marie-Ange quietly put two slices of bread in it, wishing there were eggs and ham, like Sophie used to make, or peaches from the orchard. And when the toast was done, Carole helped herself to a slice and put jam on it sparingly, left the other piece of toast for Marie-Ange, and put the bread away. It was obvious that her morning meal was a small one, and Marie-Ange was starving.

“I’ll have Tom show you around today, and tell you what chores to do. From now on, when you get up, you make your bed, you come in here and make breakfast for both of us, like I just showed you, and you get to your chores before you go to school. We all work here, and you will too. If you don’t,” she looked at her ominously, “there’s no reason for you to be here, and you can live at the state institution for orphans. There’s one in Fort Dodge. You’ll be a lot better off here, so don’t think you can get out of your chores, or working for me. You can’t, if you want to stay here.”

Marie-Ange nodded numbly, knowing as never before what it meant to be an orphan.

“You start school in two days, on Monday. And tomorrow we’ll go to church together. Tom will drive us.” She had never bought a specially fitted car that she could drive. Although she could have afforded it, she didn’t want to spend the money. “We’ll go into town today, after you do your chores, and get you some decent clothes to work in. I don’t suppose you brought anything useful with you.”

“I don’t know, Madame … Aunt … Mrs. …” Marie-Ange groped for her words as her aunt watched her, and all she could think of was the gnawing emptiness in her stomach. She had barely eaten on the plane, and nothing at all the night before, and her stomach was aching, she was so hungry. “Sophie packed my bags,” she explained, without saying who Sophie was, and Aunt Carole didn’t ask her. “I have some dresses I used to play in,” but all the torn ones she had worn to play in the fields had been left in Marmouton, because Sophie had said her aunt would think them disgraceful.

“We’ll take a look at what you brought after breakfast,” her great-aunt said without smiling at her. “And you’d better be prepared to work here. Having you here is going to cost me a pretty penny. You can’t expect room and board for free out of me, and not do anything to pay for it.”

“Yes, Madame,” Marie-Ange nodded solemnly, and the old woman in the wheelchair glared at her as the child tried not to tremble.

“You may call me Aunt Carole. Now you can wash up the dishes,” which Marie-Ange did quickly. They had only used a single plate each for their toast, and a cup for Carole’s coffee. She went back to her room afterward, not sure what else to do, and was sitting on her bed staring at the photographs she had put on the dresser, of her parents and her brother. And her hand was touching her locket.

She gave a start when she heard her great-aunt wheel herself into the doorway. “I want to see what you brought with you in those three ridiculous suitcases. No child should have that many clothes, Marie, it’s sinful.” Marie-Ange hopped off the bed and dutifully unzipped her cases, pulling out one smocked dress after another, the embroidered nightgowns, and several little coats that her mother had bought for her in Paris and London. She wore them when she went to school, and for church on Sunday, and to Paris when she went with her parents. Carole stared at them in grim disapproval. “You don’t need things like that here.” She wheeled herself closer to where Marie-Ange stood, and dug into the suitcases herself, and then began making a small pile on the bed of sweaters and pants, a skirt or two. Marie-Ange knew those things weren’t beautiful, but Sophie had said they would be useful for school, and Marie-Ange thought now that Carole had put them aside because they were ugly. Without saying a word to the child, she zipped the suitcases up again, and told her to put the things on the bed in the narrow closet. Marie-Ange was confused by what she was doing, and then her Aunt Carole told her to go outside and find Tom so she could learn her chores from him, and then she disappeared to her own bedroom far down the dark hallway.

The foreman was waiting for her outside, and he took her to the barn, and showed her how to milk a cow, and the other minor tasks that were expected of her. They didn’t seem too hard to Marie-Ange, although there were a lot of things her great-aunt wanted her to do, and Tom said that if she couldn’t finish in the morning before she went to school, she could do some of the cleaning up in the late afternoon before dinner. It was a full two hours before he returned her to her Aunt Carole.

Marie-Ange was surprised to see her dressed and sitting on the porch in her wheelchair, waiting for them. She spoke to Tom, and not the child, and told him to get Marie-Ange’s bags, and drive them into town, as the child looked at her in terror. All she could think of was that she was being dropped off after all at the state institution. And as she followed them to the pickup truck she’d ridden in the night before, she saw the foreman throw her bags behind them into the truck. Marie-Ange said nothing and asked no questions. Her life now was one long, endless terror. There were tears bulging in her eyes as they drove into town, and Carole told the foreman to stop at the Goodwill store. He set up her wheelchair for her, and helped her into it, and then she told him to take the suitcases inside, as Marie-Ange continued to wonder what would happen to her. She had no idea where they were, where they were going, or why they had come here with her suitcases, and her aunt had offered no explanation to reassure her.

The women at the counter seemed to recognize Carole as she wheeled herself inside, and Tom followed with Marie-Ange’s bags in both hands, and set them down near the counter, at Carole’s direction.

“We need some overalls for my niece,” she explained, and Marie-Ange let out a silent sigh of relief. Perhaps they weren’t going to the institution, and at least for the moment, nothing too terrible was going to happen. Her aunt selected three pairs of overalls for her, some stained T-shirts, a worn-looking sweatshirt, and some nearly brand-new sneakers, and they chose an ugly brown quilted jacket that was too big for her, but they said it would be warm in winter. Marie-Ange told them in a soft voice, as she tried things on, that she had just come from France, and Carole was quick to explain that she had brought three suitcases of useless clothes with her, and pointed at them. “You can take those against what we just bought for her, and give me credit for the rest of it. She’s not going to need any of it here, and even less so if she winds up at the state orphanage. They wear uniforms,” she said pointedly to Marie-Ange, as tears began to run down her cheeks, and the women behind the counter felt sorry for her.

“May I keep some of it, Aunt Carole? … My nightgowns … and dolls …”

“You don’t have time to play with dolls here,” and then she hesitated for a minute, “keep the nightgowns.” Marie-Ange dug in one of the suitcases for them, and found them, and as she pulled them out, she clutched them to her. All the rest of it was going to disappear forever, all the things her mother had bought her so lovingly, and that her father had loved to see her wear. It was like having the last of her lost life torn from her, and she could not stop crying. Tom had to turn away from the sight of her, clutching her nightgowns, and looking at her aunt with utter devastation. But Carole said nothing, handed the package of their purchases to Tom, and wheeled herself out of the store and onto the sidewalk, as her foreman and the child followed. Marie-Ange didn’t even care now if they took her to the orphanage, it could be no worse than what was happening to her here. Her eyes told a tale of a thousand agonies and few mercies, as they rode back to the farm in silence. And when Marie-Ange saw the familiar barn again, she realized that she was not going to the state institution, not today at least, and perhaps only if she truly annoyed her Aunt Carole.

She went to her room and put away her old nightgowns and new things from the Goodwill store, and her aunt had lunch ready for her ten minutes later. It was a thin sandwich of ham on bread, with neither mayonnaise nor butter, a glass of milk, and a single cookie. It was as though the old woman begrudged her every bite of food she ate, every crumb she cost her. And it never occurred to Marie-Ange to think of the hundreds of dollars of credit Carole had just gotten at the Goodwill store in exchange for Marie-Ange’s wardrobe. In fact, for the moment at least, Marie-Ange was profitable, rather than costly.

For the rest of the day, Marie-Ange went about her chores, and didn’t see her aunt again until dinner, and that night the meal was spare again. They had a tiny meat loaf Carole made and some boiled vegetables that tasted awful. The big treat for dessert was green Jell-O.

Marie-Ange did the dishes afterward, and lay awake in her bed for a long time that night, thinking about her parents, and everything that had happened to her since they died. She could no longer imagine another life now, except one of terror, loneliness, and hunger, and the grief of losing her entire family was so acute that there were times when she thought she couldn’t bear it. And suddenly, as she thought about it, she understood exactly what her father had meant when he called his aunt mean-spirited and small-minded. And she knew that her mother, with all her joy and love and vivaciousness, would have hated Carole even more than he did. But it did her no good to think of that now. She was here, and they were gone, and she had no choice but to survive it.

They went to church together the next day, driven by Tom again, and the service seemed long and boring to Marie-Ange. The minister talked about hell and adultery and punishment, and a lot of things that either frightened or bored her. She nearly fell asleep at one point, and felt her great-aunt shake her roughly to rouse her.

Dinner was another grim meal that night, and her great-aunt informed her that she would be going to school in the morning. Carole had been relieved to realize that although she had a noticeable accent when she spoke, Marie-Ange’s English was certainly fluent enough for her to go to school and follow what they were saying to her, although Carole had no idea if she could write it, which she couldn’t.

“You walk a mile down the road, to a yellow sign,” she said before they went to bed, “after you do your chores in the barn, of course, and the bus will pick you up at the yellow sign at seven. It’s forty miles to the school, and they make a lot of stops along the way. I don’t know how fast you walk, but you’d better leave here at six, and see how long it takes you. You can do your chores at five, and you’d better get up at four-thirty.” She gave her an ancient half-broken alarm clock for that purpose, and Marie-Ange wondered if it came from the Goodwill store. It had been full of tired, broken, ugly things that people had sent there. “The bus will drop you off after school around four, they told me. And I’ll expect you here by five. You can do your chores when you get home and your homework after dinner.” It would be a long day, an exhausting routine, a life of drudgery and near slavery. Marie-Ange wanted to ask her, but didn’t dare, why Tom couldn’t drive her. Instead, she said nothing, and went to bed in silence that night after saying good night to her Aunt Carole.