Odette's Secrets (18 page)

I pray to all the saints, but no miracle can save me from Paris.

Mama's mind is made up.

As soon as she's sure the city is safe,

as soon as she's satisfied peace has come to stay in Paris,

she makes plans for us to return.

Even one extra day in the country is too many for her.

In the days before we leave,

I say good-bye to all my treasures, one by one.

I sit beside the shimmering ponds

and walk in the quiet forest for the last time.

I gather my last wildflowers and pat the gentle cows good-bye.

I light bright candles.

They flicker at the shrines of all the saints in church.

But I leave all my holy cards behind.

The only saint who can come with me is Joan of Arc.

She's a brave hero and is welcome everywhere in France.

The last creature I say good-bye to is Bijou.

Mama says she's a hunter.

She can take care of herself in the country better than in Paris.

Even so, I give Bijou's bowl

and the dangly string she likes to play with

to Simone.

I ask her to make sure my cat has water,

and to pet her until she purrs sometimes.

Simone says she will.

The morning Mama and I leave,

I give Charlotte to Simone,

to make sure she'll look after Bijou.

I don't trust Simone, not really.

I have never told her that I'm a Jew.

Mama and I agree about this.

We still keep it a secret here that we are Jewish …

a secret from everyone.

I scratch Bijou behind her ears, just the way she likes.

I stroke her one last time,

from her nose to the tip of her plumed tail.

Then I kiss her, right between her ears.

“
Adieu
,” I whisper to her.

That's the French way to say,

“See you in heaven.”

Monsieur Henri

Home Again

Paris is still a hungry place, Mama says.

So we fill suitcases and bags

with as much food as we can carry.

We board a train that chugs slowly over shaky bridges

built on top of others that have been destroyed.

We rumble along through bombed-out villages.

I've heard the sound of bombs for years,

but now I see what they can do.

Houses hanging open.

Shops shattered.

Crumbled walls and toppled steeples.

We stop in a station to buy drinks.

I put my fingers into a hole blasted out of a stone archway.

If bombs can do this to stone,

what can they do to people?

I shudder.

I pull my hand away.

A journey that should take three hours now lasts three days.

By the time we reach Paris,

even Mama's not excited anymore.

We're both exhausted.

I trudge up the concrete steps of our
Métro
station.

I'm carrying almost as much weight as my mother is.

I don't want to climb up to the asphalt sidewalk.

If I could, tired as I am,

I'd travel backward all the way to my village right this minute.

But I do my best to lug the heavy bags on my back.

Mama calls out, “Odette, Odette! Look who's here!”

Can I be seeing things?

A large, rugged face appears before me … Monsieur Henri.

Everything else blurs, making way for his rough features.

How could he have known that Mama and I would be here,

just at this moment?

I can't believe our good luck.

But here he is, our own dear Monsieur Henri,

standing tall at the
Métro
exit.

At my mother's cry, he lumbers down to meet us.

“You've grown so big!” he says,

his huge hands on the tops of my shoulders.

He stands back for a moment and looks at me,

his kind, droopy eyes taking everything in.

Then Mama and I hand over all our bundles and bags.

He balances them on his strong back.

Light on my feet again,

I skip along the rue d'Angoulême behind him.

Once, when I was little,

I burned myself with boiling water.

Monsieur Henri carried me in his strong arms

to the pharmacist down the street.

Now he carries my village on his back.

Two and a half years ago—

what seems like a lifetime—

he walked me to the
Métro
.

He took me to the train station

to meet Cécile, Paulette, and Suzanne.

Now, looking like the Father Christmas of food,

he leads me back.

All the way down our street we go.

We pass the hardware store,

its bright pots and pans still shining in the sun.

We pass the café,

with people still reading their newspapers.

The convent appears, then the bakery, the factory.

At last, the little square with its benches, trees, and fountain.

Everything looks much the same,

but something is missing.

I'm not sure yet what that is.

Monsieur Henri heaves open the wooden door of our building.

I am almost afraid to look, but I do.

Yes, she's there!

In her tiny apartment at the end of the shiny tiled hallway,

the real Madame Marie looks up from her sewing machine.

She smiles her moon smile.

She rises from her work and holds out her arms to me.

I'm home and safe again in my godmother's arms.

That night, Mama and I move back into our apartment.

Madame Marie has saved it for us.

While we were gone, she used it as a hiding place for others.

But who would guess?

Our polished oak table, our beat-up pots and pans …

everything seems to smile at us.

Mama is full of joy seeing all her worn-out treasures.

But I look at my toys with new eyes.

My rubber ball looks babyish to me now.

So do my books, puzzles, and wind-up toys.

All I will keep

is my flowered parasol.

Our next-door apartment is silent.

What happened to the pretty young girl who lived there?

She was the girlfriend of one of the enemy soldiers.

Did the French arrest her? Mama wonders.

Did they shave her head,

force her to march in shame through the streets?

“Don't worry,” says Madame Marie.

“I found a safe place for her out in the country.

Yvette wasn't a bad girl, just young and poor.

She liked going to the opera

on the arm of a young man in uniform.

Not many young Frenchmen were around during those days.”

On my bed that night,

I find the blanket made by Madame Marie.

It feels like an old friend.

But wait … something's wrong!

The holy medals are all gone.

Someone has cut them off.

My childhood protectors, St. Christopher and St. Michael,

what happened to them?

But I am too tired to think about this for long.

Instead, I wrap my old friend around me

and drift into deep, delicious dreams.

In the morning, I push open the shutters once again.

I lean out and look at the square.

The nuns in white-winged bonnets still sail across it.

The Thinker
sits in his same place too.

Does he ever wonder about Papa, like I do?

I see that stores once having Jewish names

now have French ones.

Only a few gypsies are left.

The dark-eyed children peek out

from behind their mothers' long skirts.

I know what's missing!

Our neighborhood looks like a black-and-white photograph.

Color hasn't come back yet to Paris.

Growing Up

Of the two rooms that make up our apartment,

my favorite was once the living room.

Before we went away,

I sat under the round table there and played with my toys.

But now I spend almost all my time in the bedroom.

The tall bookcase there goes from the floor up to the ceiling.

My favorite books are four fat ones,

The Encyclopedia of Learning.

Long ago, my father read to me

and showed me the pictures in these books.

Now I read them myself.

The
Encyclopedia
is different

from the books I read in the Vendée.

No poetry or fiction is found in an encyclopedia.

It's all about facts—

science, history, and geography.

I study the photographs, the maps, and the charts.

I can see why my father loved his
Encyclopedia
so much!

Now that I'm older,

I'm going to read as much of it as I can.

I'm hungry to learn everything,

just like my father did.

We keep our clothes in the curvy old armoire.

Inside is a silvery mirror.

I spend hours looking at myself in that mirror.

I try out my mother's scarves,

and if she isn't home,

I put on her face powder and lipstick.