Odette's Secrets (13 page)

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.

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.

I poke her so that she knows when to stand and kneel,

and when to say, “Lord, have mercy,” and “Grant us peace.”

“Watch now, you do it this way,” I say.

I have to show her how to make the sign of the cross,

over and over again.

Mama, who is so good at so many things, is clumsy at prayer.

She's grateful when I help her, though.

“You must never, ever tell anyone our real name

or that we are Jewish,” Mama says.

“This is a matter of life and death.

But I trust you.

I know that you can keep secrets.”

She's right.

I'm an expert now at keeping secrets.

Signs

One day, dogs bark to tell us that Nazis have arrived

to camp in a nearby meadow.

My friend Simone and I run to see.

The soldiers came in big silver trailers.

We watch them unload …

beds and tables that unfold,

shiny lanterns and stoves.

The soldiers have boxes and boxes of food.

They offer us candy.

“Don't take it!” adults have always warned us.

“It might be poison.”

But Simone and I take the sweets anyway.

We almost never get candy,

so we are willing to take a chance on being poisoned.

I hide my candy from my mother

and eat it alone.

Anyway, I think people here worry too much

about poisons, curses, and sickness.

They protect themselves with herbs and leeches.

Leeches are slimy worms.

The villagers use them to suck out bad blood.