For Freedom Read online

  She still sat and stared into nothing; she still never spoke or smiled. But she listened to her mother now when her mother told her to do something. She washed the dishes, she cleaned, she helped with laundry. She was like a mechanical person. She was dusting the parlor when I came in.

  “Dear Yvette,” I said, “I’ve brought you a treat.” I had gotten into the habit of talking to her the way you might talk to a dog that you liked, kindly but without expecting an answer. I took the piece of chocolate and popped it into Yvette’s mouth.

  She didn’t seem startled. She didn’t look happy. Her mouth moved, sucking at the chocolate, and her throat muscles moved when she swallowed. Then she looked right at me. I might have imagined it, but I thought she asked a question with her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t have any more.”

  She went back to her dusting.

  “I think she might have heard me,” I said to her mother.

  “Maybe,” her mother said. “I don’t hope for much anymore, but maybe you are right.”

  Spring came suddenly, with a hint of warmth on the wind and a bursting of flowers in the garden at school. I saw the yellow jonquils waving and thought of Maman’s flowers in our garden at home, at our real home, and I felt fury well up inside me. That night after lights-out I started a pillow fight.

  It wasn’t entirely my fault. Odette was yammering on again, about la belle France and how difficult life was, about how she hated the Germans and how she couldn’t have a new dress this spring because they had to use their clothing rations for her sister’s First Communion dress and what a tragedy it was, and I thought, I am so sick of Odette. So I took my pillow and hit her on the head.

  Of course she hit me back. Martine and Colette leapt from their beds and joined in. We whacked each other furiously, harder and harder. I swung my pillow sideways and knocked Martine to the floor. Colette whacked me on the backside, and I fell across Martine. She giggled. I laughed. We scrambled up, and both of us went after Colette.

  I think Odette’s pillow ripped first. The convent pillows were well stuffed with feathers, but the casings were old and they tore easily. Wham! Wham! Soon feathers flew out of our pillows with every blow. Wham! Feathers floated among us like giant snowflakes. Odette grabbed a handful and threw them at me. Wham! My stomach hurt from laughing. It had been a year, probably, since I had laughed so hard. Wham! Great bursts of feathers, explosions of feathers, feathers everywhere. Wham!

  The door opened. Soeur Margritte flipped a switch, and the lights came on full force. We stood in our night-gowns, covered in feathers. Feathers coated the floor, the beds, our hair. Dozens of feathers still whirled in the air. I was impressed. I’d never seen so many feathers. I didn’t know it took that many feathers to make pillows.

  Colette still had a few feathers left in her sack of a pillow. She gently shook them out. “Pardon, Sister,” she said softly. “We became carried away.”

  Soeur Margritte was kind, and she looked as though she sympathized, but when she spoke, her voice was firm. “I will excuse you from your classes for half a day,” she said, “during which time you will pick up every single feather. By hand.”

  “By hand?” Martine said, incredulously.

  “By hand,” said Soeur Margritte. “Not even a broom to help you. And of course you’ll not be permitted home this weekend. Good night, girls.” She put out the light. “Sleep well.”

  It was difficult to sleep with no pillow and a bed covered in feathers. My arms ached from all that whacking. I knew my parents would not be pleased when they heard of my punishment. But it had been worth it, every bit.

  “Odette?” Colette whispered. “Your little sister needs a First Communion dress. It isn’t her fault that there’s a war.”

  “I know,” Odette said gently. “I know.”

  Etienne graduated from school that spring. He had trouble finding a job, because of his injury and because there weren’t many jobs to be had in wartime, but eventually he found part-time work as a shop clerk. Even that sometimes exhausted him. One day he limped home on his crutches, and when he sat down at the kitchen table his hands were trembling. Maman hurried to make him a cup of tea. Coffee we had no more, wine we had no more, but we still had tea.

  “It’s nothing, Maman,” he said. “It’ll pass. The store was busy today, and then to come home . . .”

  His voice trailed off, but we knew. He had a long walk home to the cemetery apartment, and then a steep flight of stairs.

  “It’s too much,” Maman said. “You don’t need to work. We don’t need you to.”

  “Maman.” Etienne spoke carefully. “I need to work. I can’t sit at home like a child. I need to be doing something.” After a moment he added, “If I could go to university . . .” His voice trailed off again. All the universities and colleges were closed because of the war.

  “Well,” said Maman, “we can worry about that later.” Her brow creased. I knew, we all knew, that she didn’t want Etienne to go to college. She feared it would be too much for him. Even I could see that it might be. The monastery school had been a gentle place, and Etienne had not had to walk much while he was there.

  Etienne eased himself into the front room and carefully lay down on the couch. He grimaced and closed his eyes. “Will it bother you if I practice my singing?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “No, of course not. Sing away.”

  That summer I increased my music lessons to three times a week, again taking them at Madame Marcelle’s apartment. I still sang with the church choir, and I was given a new solo to learn for the Feast of the Assumption. Sometimes I visited my friends Colette and Martine, and every week poor mute Yvette, but I also often took the bus to visit my aunt Suzanne. She and my battalion of cousins were doing well again now that winter was over; they lived out in the country and had not been much bothered by the Germans.

  Once I spent the night with her. The next morning was beautifully warm. I had to get back for a singing lesson, so soon after breakfast I said good-bye to my aunt, kissed my little cousins, and set out for home. It was several miles, but I knew I could eventually flag down a bus to Cherbourg.

  The grassy fields smelled fragrant and rich in the summer sunshine. The air smelled like salt even so far from the sea. My aunt had fried an egg for my breakfast. Eggs were something I didn’t get to eat often anymore, and the memory of it lingered in my mouth. It was a good day to be walking. I felt wonderfully free and happy, and when I heard an engine behind me, I raised my arm to stop the bus without even looking around.

  “Heil!”

  I jumped. The engine was not a bus. It was a jeep filled with Nazi soldiers. I stopped where I was, but I did not say “Heil” back to them. I would not say that, not to Hitler or to anybody else.

  The jeep continued just past me and then stopped. One of the soldiers climbed out and walked over to me leisurely. “Papers,” he said.

  I took my identification papers from my pocket and handed them to him. I was fourteen years old and had nothing to hide. I wasn’t sure why they had stopped me. But any German soldier could stop any French person for any reason at any time. You had to have your papers ready.

  My papers bore only my name, photo, and address, and a government stamp. There wasn’t much to see. But the soldier studied them carefully for a long time, tilting the photo this way and that and then looking up at me to see if I matched my picture.

  I waited. He cleared his throat and scratched himself. I could feel sweat starting down my back. My mouth tasted sour. The man carried my papers back to the jeep and showed them to another soldier. They spoke in German. What were they looking for?

  Finally the first soldier came back to me. “Here you go,” he said. “Thank you.”

  I put my papers back into my pocket. I didn’t reply.

  He indicated the jeep with a sideways nod of his head. “You want a ride? We’re going to Cherbourg.”

  I shook my head.

  He looked amu
sed. “Can you speak?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Say ‘yes,’ ” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “All right, then.” He smiled. “Good-bye.”

  In French there are two words for good-bye. Adieu means “good-bye, I won’t see you again.” Au revoir means “see you soon.” The German said “see you soon.”

  The jeep roared off in a cloud of dust. My knees were shaking and my stomach churned. I couldn’t believe how the Germans could destroy even a peaceful morning. “No,” I said. “No, you won’t see me soon. Sales Boches.” Dirty Germans.

  CHAPTER TEN

  In the fall of 1941 Pierre and I started our final year of school. Even though he was older we were in the same year because he had been sick for a long time as a young child. Etienne had lost a year of school too because of breaking his back. Papa said I was the strong one.

  I didn’t feel strong. I felt fretful and impatient and dissatisfied. I wished I could be an opera singer now. Cherbourg had a good company and they put on three or four full-stage operas every year; that fall they were doing Tosca. I thought I could sing better than the female lead. “Not yet,” Madame Marcelle said soothingly. “You don’t want to risk your career by pushing your voice now. Be patient. Attend to your studies. Next year will be soon enough to perform.”

  It would be forever until next year.

  Maman surprised me with a new dress; I didn’t know where she had gotten the material. It was beautifully made and very grown-up, with a ruffled neckline and a short skirt. “See, here is an advantage to living in wartime,” Maman said teasingly. “My mother wouldn’t have permitted such a short skirt. But I didn’t have enough fabric to make it longer.”

  Still, it was hard to be happy, even though I had always liked school. On our last morning at home Etienne looked as though he wished he could go with us. He had grown a little stronger through walking so much, but he was always in pain. I knew he longed for a better job.

  Pierre was miserable because he liked summer better than school. I was caught between wanting to be done with school forever, so I could sing, and wanting the last year and a half not to have happened, so that Yvette and I could go to our first day together, hand in hand, as we used to.

  I’d gone to see her the week before. She was docile and well trained; she did much around the house. “She could come to school,” I said to her mother. “She wouldn’t have to speak. She could write all her assignments. The sisters would understand.”

  “Oh, my dear Suzanne,” her mother said heavily. “She can’t. She won’t leave the house. My dear, I know it’s hard, but you must see. She isn’t getting any better.”

  “Maybe she should go to a hospital,” I said.

  Madame Gireau looked frustrated, and I regretted my words. “Dr. Leclerc has come a hundred times. He says there’s nothing more to do. Keep her happy, he says.”

  “Is this happy?”

  Again I could have bitten my tongue. I shouldn’t ask questions that could only hurt. Madame Gireau touched Yvette’s cheek. “Oh,” she said, “who can tell?”

  So I was starting school again, with the same roommates and no best friend.

  “Find a new best friend,” Pierre said as we walked off together.

  “I can’t,” I said. “No one else understands me.”

  “Find a friend who doesn’t understand you,” Pierre said. “Why make it so complicated?”

  “I am an artist!” I said. “I need someone who understands!”

  Pierre thought that was hilarious. “Oh, an artist. The great artist Suzanne David. I see. An artist.” He doubled up laughing. I smacked him, but he laughed so hard that soon I was laughing too.

  On December 7 the Japanese bombed an American naval base in Hawaii. The Americans responded by entering the war. We were all happy. From what we had been able to learn, the war wasn’t going well for France; we had nothing but German victories to endure. England’s defenses had barely been enough to keep England herself from being overrun. Perhaps the Americans would be able to push the Germans out of France. Out of the whole world, eventually, but especially out of France.

  “What’s General de Gaulle doing now, Papa?” Etienne asked one day.

  “How do I know?” Papa replied. “Do I look like a spy?”

  Papa didn’t look like a spy. “How would we know?” Pierre said teasingly. “If you were a good spy, we wouldn’t be able to tell.”

  Papa laughed. “If I were a spy, I’d be a very good spy,” he said. “But I’m not a spy, no. And I don’t know what de Gaulle is doing. I wish I did.”

  I stared at Papa, hearing his words over in my mind: if I were a spy. I didn’t think for one moment that Papa actually was a spy, but the phrase awakened a sense of possibility in me. I’d understood from the start of the war that there were people in France spying on the French for the Germans, but I hadn’t considered that the opposite must be true, that there were people spying on the Germans. Fighting for the Free French. For de Gaulle.

  “Do you think there are spies here?” I asked. “In Cherbourg?”

  “Of course there are, ninny,” Pierre said. “Don’t be such a child. You must have heard of the Resistance!”

  “She’s an artist,” cut in Etienne. My brothers were not going to let me forget what I had said. “She doesn’t have to pay attention to such things.”

  I ignored him. “Of course I’ve heard of the Resistance,” I said, “but spies—”

  “What do you think the Resistance is?” said Pierre.

  “Suzanne,” Papa said, “this isn’t something we should talk about.”

  I stopped talking about it. We all did. But afterward, if I was walking through the city streets and saw someone who seemed especially sad or ill or ordinary, I would think, Perhaps that person’s life isn’t so bad. Perhaps that person is only pretending.

  Perhaps that person is a spy.

  The next Friday evening when I came home from school, my parents and Etienne were deep in conversation. Maman looked both frightened and excited, Papa grave, and Etienne emphatic.

  “We should go, why not?” he said. “What harm could it do? At the worst they would throw us out again.”

  “That isn’t the worst they could do,” said Papa.

  “But if they’re not giving official permission—” Maman said at the same time.

  Etienne said, “The street has been open this entire week!”

  And Papa said, “The regiment isn’t returning—I know that for certain.”

  I slid my schoolbag onto the floor and carefully shut the door behind me. I was shivering. The wind had been bitterly cold.

  “Hello,” my brother said. “Have you heard? The German soldiers removed the blockade from our street. The soldiers have gone. The houses have sat empty all week.”

  I caught my breath. “You mean we can go home?”

  “That’s the question,” Papa said. “No one knows. No one has said that we can, no one has said that we cannot.”

  “Oh, please!” I said. “Let’s go now!” I thought of spending Christmas in our own home. I thought of waking up in my own room instead of a closet, with my posters and pictures on the walls. Aunt Suzanne and the battalion would come for a proper Christmas dinner, a roast goose or some decent beef—we could go to midnight Mass and everything would feel right again. It would feel just as always.

  Papa said, “No matter what, we should wait until tomorrow. Saturday—” Just then Pierre burst through the door.

  “Our house is empty!” he said. “The Germans are gone. Hurry! Let’s go!”

  “Dinner,” Maman said, but we didn’t want dinner. Pierre and Etienne and I didn’t care about anything except being home again.

  “We’ll just have a look around,” Maman said. “We won’t be able to move back tonight. We will return here to sleep. We don’t know what the house will be like inside.”

  We barely listened. Etienne put on his coat. I rebut-toned mine and s
lipped my toothbrush into my pocket just in case. If everything in the house was as we had left it, we might be able to stay.

  The street seemed just the same. It wasn’t as tidy as it had been, but all the houses were standing just as they ought, windows, doors, roofs intact. It was quieter than it should have been, but here and there a light in a window showed that some other family had returned. Our home with its pleasant stone steps looked like a long-lost friend.

  “Hmmm,” Maman said under her breath. “They never trimmed the rosebushes.”

  Papa no longer had a key, and the front door was locked. He wrapped his hand in his coat and carefully smashed the pane of glass in the door, then reached through and turned the handle.

  As he swung the door open, a horrible smell rolled toward us like a fog. We choked and spluttered. It took me a moment to realize the terrible smell was coming from inside our own house.

  “Oh, mon Dieu,” said Maman. “My God, what have they done?”

  Papa reached for the hall switch. The lights came on, but we were amazed to see only bare lightbulbs hanging from a hole in the plaster ceiling. Our light fixtures were gone.

  Our table was missing from the hallway. Our dining room furniture was gone, our rugs, our sideboard. The parlor was stripped bare; everything, including Maman’s piano, was gone. Maman turned the parlor light on and gave a gasp. The pretty seascape mural she had had painted on the wall was ruined. It looked as if a bucket of whitewash had been thrown across it. Streaks of whitewash had run down the wall and hardened in puddles on the wood floor.

  Maman touched the edge of the whitewash and then put her hand to her mouth. “Why would they do this?” she asked. “We gave them our house without protest.”

  “They sold our furniture,” Pierre said.

  “Or sent it to Germany,” Papa agreed. His face looked like a mask, so set was his expression.

  “But why would they ruin something that was beautiful?” Maman sounded more puzzled than anything else. I put my arm around her.