Odette's Secrets (20 page)

Wonderful! Aunt Georgette says.

My uncle whistles happily,

as if he made these things happen all by himself.

Sophie and I drink tea and nibble on paper-thin matzoh bread.

Matzoh's not allowed in my home.

It's connected somehow to religion …

I have no idea how.

I envy my cousin.

Whatever she does seems to make her parents happy.

They love to see her in the beautiful dresses

they make for her.

She can listen to Edith Piaf on the radio all day long

if she wants to.

Not me … I have to study.

Sophie sleeps in the dining room alone at night too.

I still sleep in the bedroom with my mother.

I think about my other cousins—

Sarah, Serge, Charles, Henriette, and Maurice—

all the time.

At last I ask Mama what happened to them,

and to Aunt Miriam and Uncle Motl.

Mama says she ran to their apartment on Black Thursday,

the day that the police came to arrest us.

The door was open.

Mama froze in that spot, unable to move.

On the table, a knife in the bread,

halfway through the loaf.

An untouched glass of milk.

On one chair, Sarah's wrinkled dress,

waiting to be ironed.

In a corner, Henriette's shoes.

Did Henriette leave barefoot?

We'll never know.

She and everyone else are gone.

Mama talked to the neighbors.

Uncle Motl hid in a tool shed, they said.

That's what the Jewish leaders told men to do.

They thought only men would be arrested.

But when my uncle heard his wife scream and his children cry,

he came out.

The police took them all away.

Mama takes a folded scrap of paper from the drawer.

It is a letter from eleven-year-old Serge.

Dear Auntie,

Henriette and I are alone. Our parents are gone. Sarah went away to one camp with my mother, and Charles to another with my father. You are the only one who can help us. I don't know what to do now for my little sister Henriette. She cries for Mama all the time, and doesn't want to eat. The food is terrible, rotten cabbage soup. Please send us something to eat. Also, please send me a beret. They have shaved our heads because of the lice, and it makes me feel so strange, like a criminal. I would feel so much better with a beret.

Your nephew,

Serge

Mama says she tried to send Serge and Henriette some food.

But she never heard from anyone in the family again.

“Your aunt and uncle and all your cousins are gone,” she says.

“Gone?” I say.

“But maybe they'll come back.”

Mama shakes her head.

“They're not coming back, Odette,” she says.

“They're gone forever.”

Like my father? I wonder.

But I don't dare ask that question out loud.

I see how eagerly Mama still checks the mail,

how her shoulders slump sometimes,

afterward.

She's still waiting.

Waiting for a letter from Papa.

We haven't had one since we came back to Paris.

I decide I must look for my cousins myself.

I don't tell Mama.

I cross the big boulevard.

I pass the bakery.

I walk down their alley.

The smell is the same: urine and cabbage.

All the windows in the dreary courtyard stare at my back.

The caretaker peers out at me from behind her lace curtains.

A big man comes out of my aunt's apartment.

He knows nothing about my cousins, he says.

He has lived in the apartment for two years.

Did anyone come back, anyone at all? I ask.

“Never!” he replies.

He goes back into the apartment and slams the door.

I stare at the door, hoping to hear Serge's violin,

Henriette's giggle,

Uncle Motl's knitting machine.

Silence.

The caretaker opens her door.

“What do you want?” she asks.

“My cousin's violin,” I say.

She shuts the door.

But I come back, again and again.

Each time I ask her the same thing,

“Where is Serge's violin?”

“How should I know?” she says.

“That family's long gone.

Go away.

You're a pest.”

Maybe I can find Serge's violin in a pawnshop, I decide.

I window-shop at all the pawnshops in the neighborhood.

I never saw so many violins!

I was sure I would know my cousin's violin anywhere,

but I was wrong.

Can I ask my mother to describe it?

No.

Talk of my cousins brings her too much grief.

Anyway, what would I do if I found Serge's violin?

I don't have any money to buy it.

Still, I choose three or four violins.

I go back and visit them often,

to make sure no one else has bought them.

I'm not sure which is the magical one,

the one that leaned on Serge's shoulder.

But at least I have some idea where it is.

If Serge comes back, he won't be disappointed.

When he knocks on our door, I'll take him to see the violins.

I'm sure he'll remember which one is his.

Survivors

Everywhere in Paris, I see people wearing black—

women in black dresses, men with black armbands.

Mama says they're mourning people they loved,

people who died in the war.

“They survived, but they're still suffering.

If you speak to them, speak gently.”

Mama has a surprise for me … our friend Bluma is back.

The train taking her to a camp in Poland

was bombed by the Resistance …

she escaped.

Now she's home in Domont,

her sleepy small town outside Paris.

Mama and I go to visit her.

Bluma's home is like her, elegant, serene.

Her husband, Edmond, asks us not to stay too long.

Bluma's still frail, he says.

She had to stay in a camp near Paris, a place called Drancy.

“It was a terrible camp,” Bluma tells us.

“Dirty, overcrowded, nothing to eat.”

She shakes her head.

“I was so foolish.

I should have stayed with you in the country.”

Mama puts her arm around Bluma's thin shoulders.

I stroke her pale hand.

No one says,

It's true, you should have stayed.

But the words seem to be there,

hanging in the air.

On the train on the way home,

Mama tells me that my cousins—

Serge, Charles, Henriette, and Sarah—

stayed in the camp at Drancy too.

“That was before they were sent to Poland,”

Mama says.

She shakes her head.

“For all we suffered, Odette,” she says,

“you and I were lucky to be in the Vendée.”

She's right, I know.

But I couldn't be more surprised to hear Mama say it.

Summer comes,

and Mama signs me up for a Jewish youth group.

One awful day, our leaders take us to see Drancy.

We wander around the empty camp.

Our footsteps echo off the concrete walls and floors.

The guide tells us people had to sleep on those floors.

How could they? I wonder.

It must have been so cold, so hard.

On an outside wall, I see letters scrawled by a child's hand.

One word: “Mama.”

In the dirt, I spy a child's toothbrush.

I want to pick it up,

but I don't dare.

Like Mama said,

I'm one of the lucky ones,

one of the survivors.

I never had to suffer like the owner of that toothbrush did.

Somehow I don't have the right

even to touch it.

My friend Leon comes back to our neighborhood.

He was the tall, strong boy

who lifted me onto his shoulders to see the gypsy's goat

the day I got my orange from Marshal Pétain.

He's eighteen now but so weak he can't even stand up.

Mama says he was in a camp where people were starved.

Leon, who always had a smile

and friendly words to say to me,

barely has the strength to speak.

I visit Leon every day after school.

Our visits are always the same.

He lifts the corner of his pillow

and offers me a piece of the American gum he keeps there.

Then he asks me a question, the same one every day:

“What did you learn in school today?”

I always save up something special to tell him.

He's so interested in my answers.

I can tell by the way his large, dark eyes follow mine.

I collect information for him

the way I once

collected mushrooms and berries in the Vendée.

Leon likes poetry, especially.

I memorize poems for him.

Though nobody says it,

I know he'll die soon.

I want to bring him as much beauty as I can.

On my way to see Leon, I walk past Saint Joseph's Church.

I want to go in, but I can't.

Now that I am back in Paris, I must be a Jew again.

Being a Christian would make me a bad Jew.

I want to talk to God about this problem.

I want to ask him what I should do.

But even though God lives with many Jews,

he doesn't live in my home.

I can't talk to my mother about God or prayer.

Now that we don't pretend to be Christians anymore,

she doesn't want to hear anything about it.

When I arrive in Leon's room one day,

it's even quieter than usual.

My heart beats quicker

as I walk toward his bed.

Has death already come to take my friend?

No, Leon is still with me.

He doesn't speak, but he looks at me.

His eyes are larger than ever, a deeper and more urgent brown.

They seem to want to say something terribly important.

I want to ask them questions too,

questions I never dared ask Leon out loud.

How terrible was it in the camp?

What's it like to die?

What does it mean to be a Jew?

Should I be one?

Leon's eyes read mine and answer me.

The camp was a nightmare.

Dying here, at home, is a gift.

To be a Jew is to know death and to love life.

Be a Jew like me.

What else can my eyes answer?

Yes, I will.

Of course I will.

I promise.

Before long, Leon's stare softens and his eyelids slip shut.

I close the door softly behind me.

Shwush.

Click
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