Odette's Secrets (9 page)

Mama's sad eyes turn to me.

“No, Odette,” she says, “I must leave you now.

It's time for you to go to the country,

with our friends.”

Mama's brown curls quiver just a little

as she tries to smile.

She takes me in her arms and rocks me back and forth.

Then she kisses my cheeks three times.

She wipes off my tears with her fingers in between.

With one last quick hug, she leans over

and begins to tie her shoes.

“Mama!” I scream.

I clutch her, hard.

“Don't go!”

Mama puts her finger to my lips.

“Shhh, Odette,” she says.

She drops her coat, then kneels next to me.

We look at each other, face-to-face.

Mama's fingertips trace my cheeks, my ears.

“I must go now, right away,
chérie
,” Mama says.

“Maybe I can warn your aunt and cousins about the trucks.”

“Let me come with you!” I beg.

“I'll be good … I promise. Please!”

I feel like I'm being torn in two.

Mama's face twists away.

“No, Odette,” she says. “That would be too dangerous.

You must go with our friends to a safe place, remember?

Cécile and Paulette and Suzanne

will be waiting for you at the train station.

You girls will all go together.”

Mama stands up.

“Don't be sad, Odette,” she says.

“It's only for a little while …

until we can be together again.”

She blows me a kiss,

and she slips through the glass-topped door.

I watch her in the hallway.

She belts her coat tightly around her.

Then she opens the huge wooden door

and disappears into the street.

Courage

I look up at my godmother, trembling.

My heart pounds down in my stomach.

I know I have to go with Paulette and Cécile and Suzanne.

We have known each other all our lives.

Our mothers are friends.

But we are not together, not yet!

How can I go to the railway station all alone?

Madame Marie plucks away the last few threads

left on my dress from my star.

She smoothes the fabric with her fingertips.

Suddenly, I grab her and bury my face in her dress.

I cling to her and sob.

How can I leave my home,

my mother, my godmother too?

I won't do this!

I'll never be able to do this!

“
Courage, ma petite
,” Madame Marie says,

and pats my back.

“Don't worry.

I'll fetch Henri from work.

He'll take you on the
Métro
to the railway station.”

I take a deep breath.

My heart rises back into my chest.

Monsieur Henri,

with his walrus mustache and his kind, droopy eyes,

is as big and strong as the mountains he comes from.

I know he'll protect me.

“Come now,” says my godmother

as she wipes my face.

“I'll help you pack.”

She tiptoes into the hallway and listens.

No one is coming downstairs.

Together we creep up to my apartment.

Madame Marie closes the door,

then the bedroom shutters.

The school year has just ended.

My godmother takes

my notebooks and pencils out of my schoolbag.

She puts in clean underwear,

the blue sweater my mother knitted,

a print dress she made for me.

I bring her my doll.

“Ah, no, my little rabbit.

Charlotte cannot go in this bag.”

“I have to bring Charlotte!” I say.

Panic rises into my chest …

I can't go without my doll!

“No,” says Madame Marie, her mind made up.

“You can take only a small bag.

A big one might attract attention,

and Charlotte cannot fit in here.”

She puts a finger to her lips

to tell me to be quiet.

“You and Charlotte say good-bye for now.

Then come downstairs.

I'll have your breakfast waiting.”

My godmother slips out the door.

I take Charlotte and go to my mother's bed.

I collapse onto her rumpled sheets,

soak in her smell.

Then I see the photograph of my father.

I can't take Charlotte, but Papa can go in my schoolbag.

I take out my blue sweater

and wrap it around his photograph.

“There!” I whisper to Charlotte.

I shove the sweater inside my schoolbag and buckle it.

“Now I'm ready to go.”

I sit Charlotte down on my pillow and smooth her hair.

“You must be brave,
chérie.

It's only for a little while.”

I kiss her cheek.

I open the door and listen.

Silence.

Sunbeams stretch down from the skylight,

warming the hallway.

Even so, my spine prickles

as I tiptoe down the creaking stairs.

My Escape

Monsieur Henri takes my small hand in his large one.

He pushes open the heavy wooden door

leading into the rue d'Angoulême.

Two tall soldiers loom like giants

right outside our apartment building.

They're carrying guns.

Monsieur Henri's grip on my hand tightens.

Trucks still rumble along the street.

“Look at your feet,” Monsieur Henri says softly,

when the soldiers are far enough away.

“If anyone calls your name, don't answer.”

I can't breathe.

I can't think beyond my feet.

One step at a time, I push the pavement away.

It sticks to my feet.

In slow motion,

Monsieur Henri and I pass the convent,

the pharmacy, and the chain factory.

People leaf through their newspapers as always

at the Café de la Baleine.

Rolls of cheery oilcloth greet customers,

as they do every day,

at the hardware store.

The smell of fresh bread fills the morning air,

as it does every morning,

at the bakery.

But this is not
every
morning.

It's the most terrible morning of my life.

I clutch the big hand of Monsieur Henri.

I force my feet onward,

up the hill to the arched
Métro
station.

At the sight of it, the spell on my feet breaks.

I run for the stairs, away from the street,

into the safer darkness.

Monsieur Henri snatches me back.

“Don't rush,” he whispers. “Act natural.”

When the
Métro
train pulls into the station,

I head for the last car, the one for Jews.

But Monsieur Henri leads me to another.

We sit down side by side.

“What a fine, well-behaved granddaughter you have,”

says a gray-haired woman.

Her black-feathered hat frightens me.

Monsieur Henri, my new grandfather, nods at her silently.

I am frozen.

I sit like a statue.

I stare straight ahead.

When the
Métro
train pulls into the big railway station,

the Gare du Nord,

Monsieur Henri takes my hand in his.

He steers me out the sliding doors.

The big station is full of people, all in a rush.

Will Paulette, Cécile, and Suzanne be there?

Yes, three little Jewish girls in starless summer dresses

wait under the big clock, just as we planned.

A lady holds the hand of the littlest one.

“
Au revoir, ma petite
,” Monsieur Henri says to me.

“
Au revoir, Monsieur Henri
,” I reply.

I swallow hard.

He's leaving me now.

Don't cry, Odette.

Stay calm, his eyes tell me.

But his voice says,

“Mind this lady.

And obey the mama and papa in your country family.”

Then Monsieur Henri pats me on the head

and disappears into the crowd.

Holding hands, the other little girls and I

climb up onto the train.

Paulette and Cécile are big girls, like me.

Suzanne is the smallest of our group, only two.

We wait and wait for the train to leave.

We watch other travelers say good-bye

to their loved ones.

No one says good-bye to us.

Suzanne, Cécile, Paulette, and I try not to cry.

But when at last the locomotive pulls out of the station

and the whistle wails mournfully,

little Suzanne does too.

The lady we are with puts an arm around her.

“Where are we going?” I ask the lady.

“To the Vendée,” she tells me.

I've never heard of this place.

“Is it far away?” I ask.

“How long will it take to get there?”

The lady glances around her.

Is anyone listening?

“No more questions,” she whispers.

“If the conductor comes, pretend you are asleep.”

I close my eyes.

The train rumbles along through endless suburbs.

We are leaving all we know behind.

How long will this go on?

Everything has changed since the war came.

A voice in my head repeats words I have heard,

“One thousand years of the Third Reich.”

Hitler and his mean soldiers are the Third Reich.

But what does “one thousand years” mean?

Someone once tried to explain it to me like this:

Imagine a person lives the longest possible life, a hundred years.

At the end of that time he has a grandchild,

and that grandchild lives a hundred years.

If that happens ten times over,

a thousand years will have gone by.

I'll never see the end of the Third Reich.

My parents, Madame Marie and Monsieur Henri,

and my cousins won't, either.

My friends and I will just ride and ride into a gray, dark tunnel.