Two Testaments (12 page)

“Thank you so much for all you have done for us, for Ophélie and me,” she repeated again as they walked through the building that Gabriella called the parsonage and out into the courtyard.

The red-haired young woman only smiled, a red flush creeping onto her face.

Jeanette Griolet pulled herself from her bed in the early-morning light. She shuffled her toes into a pair of worn gray slippers and gathered a blue cotton robe around her. Eyes closed, she breathed in slowly, concentrating, and winced.

“Jesus,” she whispered as she felt for the bed and with great difficulty lay back down on top of the rumpled sheets. “Jesus,” she cried as a pain stabbed at her. Involuntarily she clutched at her heart.

She thought of the orphans overflowing into every corner of the buildings. Who knew what to do with them? Who knew the right people to contact so that some would be adopted? Some stodgy old man from “higher up” would come and assume the leadership of this ancient orphanage when she was buried. Oh, the havoc it would cause.

She sat up straight in bed and said out loud, “No!” The action itself startled her. She felt as if she were wrestling, like Jacob, with God Himself. Her respiration came in long, encumbered breaths as she willed herself to stay right here on earth.

No, Jesus. Don’t take me yet.

She lay back down, propping herself up on one feeble arm, afraid that if she stretched out completely, her soul would rise out of her body.

I have disobeyed You, Lord. You’ve been telling me for years now to pass on the baton, and I was too stubborn to listen. But You have my attention now, Holy God. Grant me only time enough to train these women.

She listened to her own heavy, labored breathing, but it seemed a stranger’s. Surely this could not be her time to die? Sister Rosaline and Sister Isabelle would stay on. They did not have perhaps the capacity to teach and to work out the administrative details, but the food and the dormitories—those practical matters they handled like a dream. And dear Gabriella. Perhaps she would stay.

Will You not call her to stay here, God? In the world’s eyes, it is perhaps a waste of brains and talent. But for the children …

She felt herself slipping into sleep but forced herself to sit up.

And this young woman, Anne-Marie. She has only just arrived, but I can tell she has suffered. She understands the children. And she has nowhere else to go. Perhaps it is she You will choose.

Another sharp pain shot through her chest, and Mother Griolet cried out, green eyes shining. “Not yet, Lord!”

Don’t punish the children because of a stubborn old woman’s selfishness. Give me time … a little time.…

The strength to fight left her, and Mother Griolet slumped back on her bed. From somewhere far away she thought she heard a heavy thumping sound. It echoed in her ears, but she couldn’t move.

7

The Monday-morning paper lay across the bed with its bold headline: E
VIAN
A
GREEMENT
O
VERWHELMINGLY
A
PPROVED
. The day before, in a referendum opened only to French citizens living in France, voters had agreed to an independent Algeria.

Eliane put her head in her hands and cried.

The children were finally asleep, but she had no idea for how long. Since their arrival in France, bad dreams woke Samuel every night, and baby José slept fitfully, wailing from swollen gums and a stuffy nose. It was all natural, she reminded herself.

But she missed Rémi terribly. She missed curling up behind him in bed and feeling the warmth of his rough legs against her smooth skin. She missed laughing with him after the children slept peacefully and he would come to her, his strong arms encircling her waist.

“It’s not so thin anymore,” she would tease him. “I may never get my figure back, you know.”

Then she would catch Rémi’s eyes, all full of love as he held her and kissed her hair. “Don’t change one bit,” he would whisper. “Don’t change a bit.”

But here she was with other abandoned pied-noirs in a cheap hotel with sagging beds and torn wallpaper. Some of the fortunate ones had family to go to and money to spend, but most of them had just one small suitcase. It seemed as though the French regarded them all as spoiled rich children fallen on hard times and resented them for appearing on their doorstep.

Even at the church, le Temple Protestant, she had felt the cold stares. Harsh eyes, unsmiling faces peering down at her and her children as if they were curiosities in a peddler’s shop. “Not here too, Lord,” she had moaned.

Now she fiddled with the little paper that held the address of the orphanage.

“Please, call me. Let me know how you are,” Anne-Marie had begged as they parted on the docks of Marseille six days earlier. “Thank you for all your help. You’re as kind as I remember.”

Eliane wiped her eyes and thought that it had been just the opposite. Anne-Marie had helped her. She had held the children in her arms on the ferry ride and watched them once they landed, while Eliane had inquired about a hotel.

Eliane tiptoed downstairs to the lobby, running her fingers over the French francs. Just to hear a friendly voice. That would be enough.

The news of Mother Griolet’s heart attack shocked Castelnau. For a few days the gossip turned from the pied-noir and harki children at St. Joseph to the terrible shame it would be to lose Mother Griolet.

Jean-Louis Vidal contemplated the town’s fickleness as he sipped a
pastis
in the
café-bar
on his way home, following the afternoon classes. He had seen Jeanette in the hospital that morning, so frail and still.

Jeanette, don’t leave me yet.
He shut his bloodshot eyes and remembered her as she had been so many years ago. Petite and feisty, determined, charismatic. His brother had loved her during the first war, and Jean-Louis knew why. A woman of faith and action. A rare woman indeed.

When the war claimed his brother’s life, Jean-Louis, twelve years younger, was not quite an adolescent. Later, he had not dared declare his love for this nun who was so many years his senior. He did not possess the charm and easy speech of his brother. He had been sure that Jeanette Griolet would not turn in her nun’s garb for him. But she had always cared for him as if they were united by the same pain that came from loss.

He placed a
casquette
on his balding head and stood up, leaving the pastis unfinished on the café table. He chuckled to himself. If her infirmity could turn him from so much drink, Jeanette would most assuredly lift her hands and sing “God be praised.”

The breeze tickled his face as he shuffled out onto the cobblestones and retraced his steps to St. Joseph. The side door to the chapel was ajar, but the hollow church was empty. He took off his casquette and silently, cautiously, walked to the front of the chapel and knelt before the simple stone altar. Above, a ray of light seeped through the sole small stained-glass window, and he moved to the left, leaving the colored spot of sun unhindered on the stones beside him.

He crossed himself, head bent, and spoke in a voice that cracked with emotion. “She is a fine woman,
Seigneur
. All these years I have loved her, and I have asked nothing of You but to be near her. But now I ask that You spare her until … until I can tell her the truth. A little time,
mon Dieu
. Only a little time.”

He rose shakily, eyes still turned down. The spot of light was a kaleidoscope of pale color splashed onto the old, worn stones. He watched it for a long time, until a cloud outside obscured the sun and the patch of color was gone.

Anne-Marie sat down on the lower bunk that belonged to Ophélie and ran her hand over the clean sheets. She touched the small chest of drawers at the foot of the bed and smiled, remembering Ophélie’s delight as she showed off her new home. “These clothes are all mine, Mama! Mine!”

Anne-Marie smoothed the skirt she wore. It was a light wool black-and-white herringbone that Sister Rosaline had fished out of the clothes closet in the basement. When Anne-Marie had pulled it around her waist and fastened it, she had blushed at Sister Rosaline’s enthusiastic
ooh là
.

“It fits you like a glove,” the nun said. “You look like a model.” She scurried back to the closet, returning with a white blouse and a matching herringbone jacket. “It’s all from the same wealthy lady. Look at you,
Mademoiselle Duchemin
. You look like you’ve just stepped out of one of those fancy designer shops in Paris.”

It was true that the clothes became her. It was like a small miracle. Even the black leather pumps that Sister Rosaline’s sharp eye had uncovered fit comfortably with a little cotton stuffed in each toe. She was clothed like a princess, and she hadn’t paid a
centime
. This place seemed made for miracles, as Ophélie said.

Just then her daughter raced into the dormitory, red faced, with dirt stains on both knees. “Oh, Mama!” she said, laughing and throwing her arms around Anne-Marie with such force that they both collapsed backward on the bed.

“Can you believe we are here together,
ma chérie
? Who would believe it? It’s a fairy tale,
n’est-ce pas
?” She held Ophélie in her arms and drank in the smell of the afternoon on her clothes. “We’re in the palace of a kind, aging queen—”

Ophélie interrupted her mother. “Yes, and we must pray, Mama, that Mother Griolet gets well soon.”

“Yes, of course, sweetheart. That’s true.”

Even that sad news could not destroy the lyric peacefulness of the orphanage. It was a dream, and Anne-Marie was determined to do whatever she could to make the dream last, for Ophélie, for herself.