Odette's Secrets
Page 1
Odette’s
Secrets
MARYANN MACDONALD
For George
Il y a longtemps que je t’aime,
jamais je ne t’oublierai.
Odette Meyers and her mother, 1942
Contents
Rain in Paris
Cracked Glass
My Godmother
Tea with Sugar
My First Secret
Different
War Comes
The Dark
Papa Goes Away
No Eggs or Milk, No Jews or Dogs
Missing Papa
Running Away
Bombers
What Dangerous Looks Like
Lonely
My Mistake
A Second Secret
My Orange
An Empty Bag
Mama’s Story
Two More Secrets
The Raid
Trouble
My Cousins
Angels and Demons
Lies
Torn in Two
Courage
My Escape
Soup, a Swing, and Another Secret
A New Life
Twilight
Heaven
Far Away
Mama Comes
Country Ways
Mama Comes Back
A Small Stone Cottage
True Peasants
Signs
Accused
Attacked
Heartbroken
Mute
My Guardian Angel
Heart and Soul
Mother’s Day
Beautiful Bluma
The War Creeps Closer
The Soldiers Go Away
Vive la France!
Adieu
Home Again
Growing Up
New Friends
Au Revoir, Madame Marie
Lost and Found
Survivors
My People
The Present
Timeline
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Rain in Paris
My name is Odette.
I live in Paris,
on a cobblestone square
with a splashing fountain and a silent statue.
My hair is curly.
Mama ties ribbons in it.
Papa reads to me and buys me toys.
I have everything I could wish for,
except a cat.
Every day I push open the shutters of our bedroom window,
lean on the windowsill,
and watch the world below.
Today, rain drizzles down on Paris.
Nuns in white-winged bonnets hurry across the square.
Gypsies huddle in doorways.
Ironworkers sip bitter coffee and read newspapers at the café.
Life looks the same as always,
but it is about to change.
It’s Saturday, so Mama and Papa take me to the cinema.
On the huge screen,
soldiers march,
their legs and arms straight as sticks.
A funny-looking man with a mustache
shouts a speech.
His name is Hitler.
Who are these soldiers?
Why do they move like machines?
Some people in the cinema cheer and clap.
Mama and Papa whisper together.
Papa shakes his head.
Then he jumps up.
He stalks out of the cinema.
Mama and I run after him.
“I couldn’t breathe in there,”
Papa says outside.
“The air … it was like poison gas.”
Mama rubs Papa’s arm.
I hope we’ll go back to the film,
but we don’t.
Instead, Papa buys us warm crepes,
sprinkled with snowy sugar.
We walk home side by side,
in the chill rain,
just the three of us.
Cracked Glass
Sunday comes.
Mama and I go to the public baths.
We rent a room with a tub and a shower
for fifteen minutes.
I play mermaid in the tub.
Mama scrubs in the shower.
Then I rinse off
while Mama soaks.
When we’re done, we rub our clean bodies all over
with scratchy white towels.
Mama kisses my nose.
Then she splashes cologne all over us.
Smelling like violets,
we walk home together, swinging hands.
On our way,
we pass a furniture store.
Its windows are broken.
We stand on slivers of cracked glass to peer inside.
Someone has smashed a mirror and slashed a sofa.
“Who did this?” I ask Mama.
“People who hate Jews,” Mama says.
“The owner of the store is Jewish.”
This makes no sense to me.
Are Jews different from other people? I wonder.
How?
I look up at Mama
and wait for her to explain,
but she just shakes her head.
Her Sunday smile has faded away.
She still holds my hand,
but she doesn’t swing it.
Her shoulders sag
all the way back to the rue d’Angoulême.
Madame Marie at her sewing machine
My Godmother
Madame Marie’s face is as round as the moon.
She’s the caretaker in our building.
She lives in a tiny apartment under the stairs
with her beloved Monsieur Henri.
Every day she sweeps the hallways,
polishes the banister of our spiral staircase,
and takes in everyone’s letters.
Mama and Madame Marie have been friends
since I was a baby.
They both love to knit.
They both make the best meals
from the cheapest ingredients.
When Mama went back to work in the factory,
Madame Marie began looking after me.
She doesn’t have any children of her own,
so she decided to become my godmother.
Now, when I’m not at school,
I help my godmother.
We sweep and polish.
Madame Marie also makes clothes for me
and for other people in our neighborhood
on her Singer sewing machine.
I sit at her feet and sort scraps of cloth for doll dresses,
match up buttons that look alike,
and gather stray pins with a magnet.
Monsieur Henri smokes his pipe,
and the old round clock chimes on the wall behind us.
When customers come for fittings, they say,
“Oh, your little helper is here today!”
My heart glows with pride.
I’m always happy in my godmother’s apartment.
It’s so cozy and nice there.
“The heart is like an apartment,” Madame Marie tells me.
“Every day you must clean it and make it cheerful.
You must have flowers on your table
and something special to offer guests.
If you make your apartment extra nice,
God will come to visit you too.”
My godmother is like the perfect moon.
Always round.
Always full.
Always there.
Tea with Sugar
I just can’t forget the shop Mama and I saw,
the one with the
smashed window.
I still want to know why some people hate Jews,
because I’m Jewish!
Everyone in my family is Jewish too.
I decide to ask Madame Marie about this.
One afternoon, I knock on her door.
“Odette!” she says. She smiles her moon smile.
“You are just in time for tea.”
I sit down at my godmother’s table
and wait for my tea.
After I drink a big cup with lots of sugar,
I tell Madame Marie
about the smashed-up shop,
about the broken glass
and the ripped sofa.
“Why do people hate Jews?” I ask her.
“Some people in France today are angry,” she tells me.
“They want to take out their troubles on Jews.
We will see the end of these people, I promise you.”
My godmother is not Jewish,
but she seems so sure about things.
I eat another of her thin spice cookies.
I try to feel better.
My First Secret
Charlotte has disappeared!
Mama and I took her to the park.
My friend Camille was there.
“Let’s go watch the merry-go-round!” she said.
Lions and tigers and horses whirled by so fast
we forgot about everything else …
but now it’s time to go home,
and we can’t find Charlotte!
I run and get Mama.
We look everywhere,
but she’s gone!
What will I do without Charlotte?
“Such a beautiful doll,” Mama says, shaking her head.
“Someone must have stolen her.”
Oh, no!
What will I tell Madame Marie?
She gave Charlotte to me for my birthday.
Madame Marie worked a long time, I know,
to pay for a doll with a china face and real, curly hair.
I hate it that I lost Charlotte,
but it’s almost worse imagining
how I’ll tell my godmother about it.
Tears slip down my cheeks.
I hope no one can see.
It’s almost dark.
Mama has an idea.
“I know!” she says.
“We’ll keep it a secret.
I’ll save money to buy a new Charlotte.
Then I’ll knit a dress for her, just like the last one.”
That might work.
But what if Madame Marie asks about Charlotte
while my mother is still saving?
What will I say then?
Lucky for me, Mama is a fast saver and a faster knitter.
Before long, a new Charlotte peeks out at me
from Mama’s knitting bag.
This Charlotte has a china face too,
and curly brown hair.
She looks the same as the real Charlotte,
even though I know she’s not.
As soon as her dress is finished,
I take my new doll to visit Madame Marie.
“Ah, Charlotte,” Madame says,
“I think you need an apron.”
She lets me guide her sewing machine needle
along the seam in the cherry-red fabric
all by myself.
But I feel nervous.
Will Madame Marie notice that this is a different Charlotte?
My fingers wobble
and the stitches come out uneven.
“Never mind, Odette,” she says.
“Learning to make straight stitches takes time.”
She smiles with pride at me
when I hem the apron.
What if Madame Marie finds out that I lost the real Charlotte?
Will she be angry with me?
I don’t think so.
But I don’t have to worry about that anymore.
Now I know a new way of solving problems … with secrets.
Different
“What makes us Jews?”
I ask Mama one night
while she brushes my hair at bedtime.
My family never goes to the synagogue
on Friday nights for Sabbath
like some Jewish people we know.
Mama and Papa don’t believe in religion.
They like celebrations, though.
Mama makes cakes for Sabbath nights,
and Papa brings me treats …
books, chocolates, and toys.
I like books and dolls best,
but I pretend to like wind-ups
because Papa loves them so.
Are our Friday nights enough to make us Jewish?
No, Mama says.
We are Polish Jews because
Mama’s and Papa’s parents and grandparents
in faraway Poland
are all Jews.
Most of our friends and relatives in Paris are Jews too.
But Mama and Papa don’t speak Polish anymore.
Our family speaks French.
And we live in Paris now, not Poland.
So why are we Polish Jews?
One thing I know for sure: we never have Christmas.
Madame Marie and most French people do.
Last December, Madame Marie wanted to give me a present.
A shopkeeper she knew stored holiday decorations
in a warehouse in our courtyard.
She said I could choose one …
a snowy village or a crèche.
I wanted the crèche!
I liked the stable with the mother, the father, the baby,
and all the little animals.
But somehow I knew
my mother would not want the Baby Jesus
in our apartment.
I chose the village instead.
We are different.
We speak French,
but we aren’t French.
We live in France,
but we’re really Polish.
All our relatives are Jews,
so we are Jews.
And even though we like celebrations,
we won’t have Christmas in our home.
Not ever.
War Comes
One warm September day,
Mama comes to get me early from school.
“We’re going to meet Papa,” she says.
I am so excited to leave,
I don’t ask why.
Mama and I go to the square
in front of our apartment,
the one with the green fountain.
Papa is there with his newspaper, reading.
He kisses us both.
His brown eyes, often shining, are serious today.
Mama sits down next to him on a bench.
“Go and play, Odette,” Papa says.
Mama gives me some stale bread to feed the pigeons.
She and Papa talk in low, worried voices,
but I hear two words, “war” and “Poland.”
The pigeons pick and peck
in the dappled light
around the splashing fountain.
I scatter crumbs for them.
Then I pass by the gypsies who are always there
and look at the statue of a man.
He leans forward on his knee
with his chin propped up on his hand.
Papa once told me he’s called The Thinker.
What are his thoughts?
Is he worried about war and Poland?
Or does he wonder what I wonder …
why doesn’t he have any clothes on?
That night, I lie in bed under my yellow blanket.
I rub the holy medals of saints stitched around it.
Strong Saint Christopher and brave Saint Michael
will keep me safe, Madame Marie told me
when she gave it to me.
Mama doesn’t think this is true,
but she lets me keep the medals anyway.
“Your godmother made that blanket for you out of love,”
Mama says.
I listen to my parents’ murmurs in the next room.
Here’s what they are talking about: war, again.
I think the soldiers we saw on the cinema’s screen
are marching closer now.
Are they coming to get us?
The Dark
I tell Madame Marie about those soldiers
and how afraid I am of them.
“I was afraid of things too,
when I was a little girl,” she says.
“What were you afraid of?” I ask her.
She closes her eyes and sits for a while in thought,
her sewing in her lap.
Then she opens them again and licks her thread
to sharpen it for her needle.
“The dark,” she says, “and big dogs.”
“Oh, I am afraid of the dark and big dogs too,” I say,
“but I am more afraid of the soldiers!”
Madame Marie’s eyes meet mine.
Slowly she nods her head.
She understands everything.
Papa Goes Away
Hitler and his soldiers are called Nazis.
Papa can’t wait to fight them!
As soon as the war begins,
he and Uncle Hirsch and Uncle Motl
all try to join the French army.
Uncle Motl has five children,
so the army sends him home.
But Papa and Uncle Hirsch have only one child each,
me and my cousin Sophie.
Before long, they are allowed to join.
I help Papa pack his things.
I put his gray socks and striped underwear and razor
in the bottom of the brown canvas bag
Madame Marie made for him.
Papa puts his favorite book, his blue dictionary, on top.
“When I come back,” he tells me,
“I will know every single word in this book!”
I try to smile,
but I don’t care about Papa’s dictionary as much as he does.
What I wonder is,
who will read to me now from his Encyclopedia of Learning?
Who will show me the teepees of the American Indians,
the huge scary dinosaurs that lived so long ago,
and the twins and fish that hide in the starry skies?