his elegant mansion has been turned into a pile of rubble.
Two scared, stranded soldiers straggle into our village,
pushing carts packed with food.
They are lost.
“Can anyone show us which way the others went?” they ask.
“Oh, yes,” says Mama.
She points in the direction of the woods,
where Resistance fighters hide.
In minutes, the enemy soldiers are back in the town square,
prisoners of our local young heroes.
Everyone gathers around the carts to see what’s in them.
“Candy?” all the children ask.
“Is there any chocolate?”
When we find it,
we eat every last piece.
No one tries to stop us.
Vive la France!
“Hurry!” say the villagers.
“Don’t miss the celebration in Saint-Fulgent.
News has come that Paris is free.”
Mama drags me to Saint-Fulgent.
People dance in the streets.
“The war is almost over!” they shout.
France and its allies are winning.
What does this mean for us? I wonder.
Are Jews safe now?
What about Papa?
On the way home, Mama can’t stop talking.
“No more cooking in a black iron pot.
No more straw mattresses or cottages filled with mice.
No more kneeling in church,
lugging water from the well,
pretending that your father does not exist.”
She can’t wait to get back to Paris,
to electric lights, running water, and indoor toilets.
My father and our neighbors and friends will all be there.
We’ll join Jewish clubs; she’ll read Yiddish books.
“And you, Odette, you’ll have rubber boots, not sabots.
Instead of church on Sunday, we’ll go to the public baths.
We’ll buy soap, vinegar, wine, butter …
and skeins and skeins of wool.
We’ll eat crepes in the winter, ice cream in the summer.
We’ll go to museums, movies, and parks.
Paris has everything!
La Basse Clavelière has been just a nightmare.”
It’s true, we’ve had bad times here in the country,
that time I was beaten,
and we almost lost our home.
And I did lose my voice.
But we had more bad times in Paris, didn’t we?
Besides, I don’t mind the things Mama seems to hate.
I like getting water from the well and living in a cottage.
I love my sabots and going to church.
The country is my home now.
How can I leave it and go back to the city?
How can I leave the sweet cows and my pet cat, Bijou?
My forest, my fields and pastures, all my wildflowers?
How can I live without freedom,
in a place where I don’t belong?
Adieu
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—
&nbs
p; 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.
I experiment with glamorous hairstyles too.
I study my face from different angles.
Everyone says I’m growing up,
becoming a woman.
What kind of woman will I be?
Will I be beautiful, like Bluma?
Will I be brave, like Mama?
Will I be strong, like Madame Marie?
Will I be kind, like Madame Raffin?
I want to be all these things.
New Friends
School in Paris smells the same …
waxed floors, glue, new books.
Some of the same children are there too.
Others have disappeared.
No one calls me names anymore, though,
and no one dares to beat me up.
Coming home one day,
I open the door and turn on the light.
Something leaps under the table … a yellow kitten!
No one knows where he came from.
Mama and I both miss Bijou,
so we fuss over the yellow kitten.
We offer him fresh milk,
bits of buttered bread,
a piece of ham.
The kitten purrs and falls asleep in my arms.
What shall we name him?
Mama likes Zola, after a famous French writer.
I like Minou, slang for “pussycat.”
But one day when I get home from school,
before we have a chance to decide,
he’s gone.
I run down and ask Madame Marie if she’s seen my kitten.
She asks if our window is open … uh-oh.
It is.
“Go look in the square,” she says.
“Maybe he climbed a tree and can’t get down.”
She’s right, my yellow kitten’s in the square.
He’s climbing the statue of The Thinker.
I lift him down gently and take him home.
We decide to name him Tarzan, after the movie hero.
I adore him, but he’s a troublemaker.
First of all, he’s always disappearing.
He finds his way back home,
but then Mama complains that he’s a fussy eater.
He only likes bread with butter or pâté.
Mama says we can barely feed ourselves.
Tarzan has to change his ways
or find another place to live.
Pretty soon, he does.
I comb the neighborhood but can’t find him.
My heart is broken.
Mama says Tarzan’s probably exploring a park
or playing games with other cats.
But what if he’s lying hurt in the street somewhere?
All I want to do is hold and pet him again.
“Having Tarzan was fun for a while,” Mama says,
“but he’s
gone now, Odette.
You have to forget about him.”
I try.
I keep going to school,
and before long, I make a new friend.
Esther’s been hiding in the country, just like I was.
We both love to window shop,
eat ice cream cones,
and explore the streets in our neighborhood.
I never knew there were so many things to see …
street entertainers, chalk artists, and pushcart vendors.
It’s like a circus!
I’ve almost forgotten about Tarzan when,
months later,
I pass an elegant apartment building.
The street door is open for movers.
Curious, I walk in to see what it looks like.
Voilà Tarzan,
strutting across the courtyard.
He’s bigger, fatter, furrier, but I know it’s him.
My first thought is to kidnap him and take him home,
but if I did I know he’d run away again.
Then I wouldn’t even know where he was.
No, I know he’s better off here,
spoiled by some rich family.
I lean over and rub my fingers through Tarzan’s thick fur.
He licks my knuckles.
Does he remember me?
His amber eyes don’t say.
One last scratch behind the ears,
and I stand and walk out of the courtyard.
I can’t stay home after school with a cat anymore.
Esther’s waiting for me.
Au Revoir, Madame Marie
“Did you hear, Odette?
Madame Marie and Monsieur Henri are moving.”
I drop my book.
“Moving away?” I ask.
Mama nods and goes on chatting.
Her eyes are on her knitting,
so she doesn’t see the shock in mine.
How can this be?
So many people in my life have come and gone …
my father, my aunts and uncles, my cousins.
But Madame Marie has always been there.
I’ve counted on her,
even when I was far away,
to take care of me.
How could my godmother leave my mother and me?
I run downstairs to see her.
“Is it true?” I ask.
My godmother beams at me.
Yes, she and Henri have found a larger apartment.
It comes with an easier job too, looking after a small factory.
Odette's Secrets Page 9
