Odette's Secrets

by Maryann Macdonald

  She can’t get out of the church

  and down the steps fast enough.

  When we’re back on the street,

  Mama breathes a sigh of relief.

  “It’s so dark and musty in there!” she says.

  “It’s like an old lady’s room,

  crowded with knickknacks.”

  Mama likes the bakery better.

  She can’t take her eyes off the giant brioche.

  “White bread is impossible to get in Paris,” she says.

  I show her the window of the general store too.

  “Look at the wool!” Mama says. “So many colors!”

  I remember the game I used to play in Paris with Sarah.

  If I had my choice of one thing from the general-store window,

  would I pick the wool for my mother to knit?

  My eyes move to a silver rosary with pearl beads.

  It’s so beautiful.

  Maybe I’d pick that.

  I study them both.

  Suddenly, I feel my mother’s eyes on me.

  “Let’s move along now, Odette,” she says.

  She steers me away from the shop window.

  Oh, dear, I’ve done it again!

  There must be something I can show Mama that she’ll like.

  I know, I’ll take Mama to my school.

  Creeks crisscross through snowy meadows.

  Here and there is a small farm

  with smoke trailing from the chimney.

  “It’s so beautiful!” Mama says.

  But when we arrive at the school, she won’t go past the gate.

  All I can show her is the cross

  and the pretty statue of the

  Virgin Mary outside.

  “I don’t understand all this fuss over crosses and statues,”

  she says.

  “But one day, if I come here to live,

  I suppose you must teach me everything.

  No one must guess that I’m not a Christian.”

  Mama?

  Here?

  Could she really come here and stay?

  I know all the saints and holy days,

  and when to stand and sit and kneel in church.

  I know every single prayer by heart too.

  If she comes, I’ll teach Mama everything.

  Country Ways

  On the way back from the school,

  I name all the trees I’ve climbed with Jean and Jacques.

  I name all the fish I’ve caught with Monsieur Raffin,

  all the mushrooms I’ve picked with Madame Raffin.

  “I even know which ones are poisonous,” I tell her.

  Mama is happy that I know these things.

  She has lots of questions.

  “What do you drink at dinner?”

  “Apple cider,” I tell her.

  “Where do you get the water for cooking and washing?”

  “From our garden well.”

  “What do you do for heat?”

  “We use the fireplace in the kitchen. The stove too.

  Grandmother Raffin opens the oven door

  and puts her feet up on the stovetop when she’s cold.

  We heat bricks in the oven too.

  At night, we put them in our beds to keep warm.

  Warm feet are important here.”

  Mama says she thinks the villagers are clever.

  “Oh, yes,” I agree.

  “When we have a fancy meal and dessert is served,

  we clean our plates with a piece of bread.

  Then we turn them upside down

  and use the bottoms for dessert plates.”

  “I must try that for myself,” says Mama.

  “And you know what else the villagers do that’s clever?” I say.

  “If someone has a loose tooth,

  they don’t go to the dentist.

  Oh, no!

  Madame Raffin ties a long string around the tooth.

  She ties the other end to the handle of the back door.

  Then she slams the door shut.

  One scream and the tooth is out.”

  Mama doesn’t say if she’ll try that herself.

  I change the subject back to food.

  Mama’s always interested in that.

  “The day after Christmas the pigs are slaughtered.

  That’s the day women gather to make sausages and hams.

  They smoke the meat by the fireplace.

  Then, the best part of all!

  They take all the leftovers and cook them together.

  They say it’s delicious.”

  My mother looks at me, shocked.

  Her parents were strict Jews.

  They never touched pork.

  To them, it was dirty.

  “Well, well,” Mama manages to say,

  “that I would like to see.”

  “Ask Madame Raffin,” I say.

  “I’m sure she’ll invite you.”

  By this time, we’ve walked back to the church.

  A baptismal party comes down the steps.

  The baby, crying in his godmother’s arms,

  wears a long white lace dress.

  Someone tosses a handful of candy

  from the open church.

  All the children run for the candy.

  I show my mother the blue candies I’ve gathered.

  “See, it’s a boy!”

  Mama takes the candy away.

  “You can’t eat candy off the dirty ground,” she says.

  “You’ll get sick.”

  Tears start to come,

  but I blink them back as best I can.

  Crying is for babies, isn’t it?

  “That’s not fair!” I say.

  “We always do it.”

  Mama softens.

  She looks left and right.

  Everyone has gone home.

  We go inside the church

  and she washes my candy

  in the holy-water font.

  Then she wipes it on her sleeve.

  She baptizes my candy and gives it back to me.

  Now it is purified, and I can eat it.

  Christmas comes and goes, and with it my mother.

  She takes the train back to Paris,

  and she doesn’t try to make me go with her.

  She never even mentions it.

  Mama made me a pair of mittens,

  pale blue with white snowflakes.

  It’s cold on New Year’s Day, so I wear them.

  That’s the day children visit all the houses in our village.

  “Happy New Year, good health,

  and paradise at the end of your days,” we tell everyone.

  In return, they give us coins and candy.

  People say it’s bad luck

  if children don’t visit you

  on the first day of the year.

  I say it’s good luck

  to be in a place

  where children are so important.

  I jingle my cold coins in one of my new mittens.

  My candy melts in the other.

  I’ll use one of my coins to light a candle in church,

  to thank God that I can stay in the Vendée.

  Mama Comes Back

  Before the snowdrops can push up

  out of the frozen ground,

  Mama’s back.

  She did her secret work as long as she could in Paris.

  The police arrested her!

  They caught her in the apartment

  of some Jews who had gone into hiding.

  Mama swallowed some secret papers

  before the police could find them.

  They let her go that time.

  But now it’s too dangerous for Mama to stay in Paris.

  She can’t risk being caught again.

  Mama says she’s decided to live with me in the country.

  “Can we stay in Chavagnes-en-Paillers?” I ask.

  “I don’t want to leave m
y new family and friends behind.”

  “No,” says Mama. “It’s better to go somewhere else.

  We have to make sure that no one knows we’re Jewish.

  To do that we’ll need a new last name.

  What do you think? Grand or Petit?”

  “Petit!” I answer. “And what will my first name be?”

  “You don’t need to change your name,” Mama says.

  “It’s very French.”

  But she says she will change hers to Marie.

  “Like Madame Marie,” I say,

  “and Madame Raffin.”

  And the Virgin Mary, I think,

  but I don’t say that out loud.

  “Yes,” says Mama, “like those two good women.

  “Marie is also the French way of saying Miriam.”

  Where is Aunt Miriam? I want to ask.

  Are Sarah, Charles, Henriette, Serge, and Maurice with her?

  But somehow I know better than to ask.

  Aunt Miriam and my cousins have gone away,

  that much I know,

  like lots of Jewish people.

  But no one talks about the people who have gone away.

  Doesn’t anyone know what has happened to them?

  Maybe it’s better not to know.

  A Small Stone Cottage

  Too soon it’s time to say good-bye to all the Raffins,

  and to Cécile, Paulette, and Suzanne.

  I hug them all, one by one.

  As always, I try not to cry.

  I remind myself that changes can be good.

  Wasn’t it good to come to the country from Paris?

  Besides, now Mama and I are together again.

  She says we’ll see our friends again after the war,

  when it’s safe.

  So the war won’t last a thousand years after all.

  Madame Raffin finds a small stone cottage for us to rent.

  It’s in her parents’ village of La Basse Clavelière.

  This village is only a few miles away,

  but it takes two hours to walk there.

  The path is narrow.

  It winds over rocky hillsides.

  Mama goes there first.

  She cleans the cottage and makes it cozy for us.

  When everything is ready, she comes back for me.

  I have all my treasures packed:

  my rosary and the holy pictures I have begun to collect.

  There’s one of the Virgin Mary in her blue dress,

  one of the gentle Saint Joseph with his carpentry tools,

  one of Saint Francis speaking to birds.

  I also bring the photograph of my father in his soldier’s uniform,

  but Mama hides it in the linen closet.

  Madame Marie will still send us his letters,

  but now we must keep him a secret.

  He wasn’t a secret in my old village,

  but here he will be.

  “Don’t talk about him,” Mama warns me.

  “Not ever!

  Here we are Marie and Odette Petit.

  Papa’s name is foreign.

  The peasants might wonder about that.

  Let’s not talk about Paris, either,

  or even Chavagnes-en-Paillers.

  We’ll just talk about life here.

  And we’ll copy everything everyone else does in the village.

  We want our neighbors to like us.”

  I don’t tell her that by now,

  I’ve almost forgotten about Papa, anyway.

  The truth is,

  I won’t miss seeing his photograph,

  not that much.

  Frost coats the windows of our new cottage.

  I draw pictures in it of what I’ve left behind:

  my friends, our swing, the pigeons.

  Mama builds a stove out of an old pail and some pipes.

  She buys me wooden shoes called sabots with felt liners.

  I can walk through mud in them and my feet stay dry.

  When I get home, I leave my sabots at the door.

  I wear my clean felt liners inside.

  Two things frighten me at our new home.

  One is the toilet … it’s outside.

  A terrible toilet,

  a dark hole dug deep into the earth.

  Now I know we are really poor,

  maybe even poorer than my cousins used to be.

  It’s the worst toilet I’ve ever seen.

  My mother says it’s just part of peasant life,

  and I will get used to it.

  She’s right. I do.

  But the worst problem comes at night.

  At the top of our cottage is an attic

  with an old spinning wheel.

  After dark, I hear spooky sounds.

  I’m sure there’s a ghost up there, spinning away.

  Mama says no, it’s only mice skittering around.

  Still, I can’t sleep.

  I just can’t help it,

  I break down and cry in my bed.

  I try to do it so that Mama can’t hear me.

  But she does hear me, night after night.

  Finally, she gets me what I’ve always wanted …

  a cat, to scare the mice away!

  I call her Bijou.

  She has spots and long white whiskers …

  she’s the cat of my dreams.

  We play “Catch the String” for hours.

  During the long winter evenings,

  chestnuts roast in the fireplace.

  Cabbage-and-onion soup simmers

  in the big black pot over the fire.

  Potatoes bake in the embers.

  Mama reads by the fire.

  The last sounds I hear before sleep

  are now just the tiny footsteps of mice.

  The ghost has disappeared,

  but a few mice are still dancing in the attic.

  Bijou sits on my feet and purrs.

  True Peasants

  The back of our house faces the center of our tiny village,

  the place where everyone gathers to gossip

  and to fetch water from the well.

  Mama and I begin to meet people there.

  The peasants speak patois, a kind of country French.

  It’s different from the French that people speak in Paris,

  or even in Chavagnes-en-Paillers.

  But I listen carefully and copy what people say.

  Soon I can speak patois too.

  I walk to school with the other children.

  Our school is in the town of Saint-Fulgent.

  It’s a long way there, past the cemetery.

  If an oxcart passes by,

  a brave child might hang on to the back and hitch a ride.

  The rest of us trudge along together, singing folk songs.

  Our church is in Saint-Fulgent too.

  Mama and I go there every Sunday.

  So does everyone else from the nearby villages.

  Mama doesn’t know all the prayers yet.

  When she’s not sure of the words,

  I tell her to close her eyes and pretend she’s whispering them.

  After Mass, the plaza in front of the church is like a fairground.

  It’s full of people who chat, picnic, flirt, and play.

  The children in Saint-Fulgent go to school all year long—

  but not the children in La Basse Clavelière.

  No one seems to care what we learn.

  When springtime comes, we stop going to school.

  It’s time to help with farmwork.

  Except for one boy, Marcel,

  who’s been sick for a long time,

  every child has to help.

  Girls watch cows, weed and water, or peel potatoes.

  Boys cure tobacco leaves, sow and plow, or mend tools.

  All the children bring animals home at the end of the day.

  It doesn’t matter whose family you belong to.

&nb
sp; If you’re a child, you must help anyone who needs you.

  When we have enough time,

  my favorite place to play is in the forest.

  I like to pretend I’m Joan of Arc, fighting for France.

  Sometimes we dare each other

  to climb to the tops of the highest trees.

  We rob birds’ nests of their eggs and eat them raw.

  The older children teach the younger ones

  which snakes are safe

  and which ones can kill you.

  It’s important too to know which spiderwebs not to break.

  Bad luck can come from breaking a Thread of Mary,

  an almost-invisible straight web,

  strong as a rope.

  On busier days, we play in the village center.

  I learn new games with sticks and stones.

  Simone, who lives two doors away, becomes my best friend.

  She likes my curly brown hair, and I like her wavy red hair.

  She doesn’t have her own doll …

  but she does have four younger brothers.

  Sometimes I let Simone hold Charlotte.

  But most of the time, we help grown-ups work.

  One day, a farmer lets me cut hay with a sickle,

  far up in the hills,

  all alone.

  I work all morning in the heat, cutting grass for animals to eat.

  At noon, the church bells ring out bright and clear.

  It’s time to say a noontime prayer, the Angelus.

  Then I eat the food my mother packed for me

  and work some more.

  When I’m done, I’m tired but proud.

  I’ve worked a whole field all by myself.

  I’ve proved myself a true peasant child.

  Mama is quick to learn country ways too.

  She watches the peasants make soap and vinegar.

  Then she tries it herself.

  She learns which mushrooms are poisonous,

  and which wild herbs to pick for salads.

  She tears apart worn-out sweaters

  and uses the yarn to make beautiful baby clothes.

  Everyone admires her for this.

  One day someone gives her half a pig

  for helping with farmwork.

  She makes ham, bacon, and pâté from it.

  She takes the pig’s intestine and washes it in the river.

  Then she uses it for sausage casing.

  My Parisian mama now seems just like a real peasant,

  except in one important way.

  I still have to watch over Mama in church.