A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (34 page)

I’d like to write him back and say, “Dear Phillippe, I wish you were here to help me but you wouldn’t understand.”

Or: “Dear Pierre-Antoine and Phillippe, I am alone and so frightened and don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame Pierre-Antoine at all, but something terrible has happened…”

It’s a nice thought, but what a lot of trouble and pain it would cause everybody.

Monday 2 August.

All day long I’ve been thinking about that stupid day. It was a Saturday. Grandmother invited the whole family to her château for the weekend to celebrate Aunt Susanne’s birthday.

Pierre-Antoine rode down from Paris on his new English motorcycle. All the girl cousins (and boy cousins too) gathered around in a circle to admire it and him. I didn’t. I knew he’d show me later. He was wearing a leather jacket with chains on it that he wouldn’t take off even inside. The whole house was crowded with people, sitting by fireplaces, playing games like chess and backgammon. Some went riding, some took walks. Everyone was waiting for the big evening fête. Sometime after lunch Pierre-Antoine came up to me during a backgammon game and whispered to me that he wanted to take me for a ride on the motorcycle. He led me out through the kitchen because he wanted it to be a secret.

The fields had been harvested a long time ago and were a darker gray than the sky. There was a wind but it wasn’t cold. Pierre-Antoine drove for about half an hour and then stopped by the edge of a forest and said, “Let’s take a walk, stretch our legs.”

My heart was racing when he took my hand. It was so dark in the woods I couldn’t see his face but I could see the wideness of his shoulders in the leather jacket and the curve of his white neck.

“You do know,” he said in that tender voice, “that I’ve been in love with you since you were twelve?”

Every time he’s said that to me I’ve believed him. I doubt it’s true but it is a possibility. Because I’m just a baby to him and to Phillippe.

Let me remember. There’s no point to lying. He kissed me and slowly pulled me down under a big tree. The ground was damp but the leaves were dry. I was thinking about The Big Moment. I thought maybe he’ll be happy, maybe he’ll really love me if I let him go all the way with me. I was wearing a wool skirt and he was in jeans. I let him pull my underwear off. He unzipped the jeans and rubbed up against my thigh a little. Just as I thought This Is It, The Big Moment, a warm splotch hit the top of my leg.

He didn’t say anything except “Ooops. Damn, I’m sorry.”

I felt happy that for once he wasn’t perfect and I thought well, I’ll forgive him. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. I stayed there for a while staring up at the tree, scratching his head lightly, which was on my chest.

After a while he moved away from me. Then he said, “Well, we’d better get back.” I wiped the spot away with my underwear and put them in the pocket of my coat. Then we rode back to the château. There was something about sitting up against him with the engine buzzing hard beneath us, my arms around him and my face pressed into the leather jacket, that made me really feel I was in love with him and that it didn’t matter. I started to wonder if he’d ever really slept with a girl and then I got excited thinking maybe I knew something nobody else did. He dropped me at the kitchen door. The cooks were laughing, banging pots and pans around. He kissed me on the cheek and zoomed around to the front of the house, making pebbles and dust fly.

The next day Pierre-Antoine took my cousin Florence who is eighteen for a ride. They didn’t come back until night-fall as we were all getting ready to leave. Florence’s face was so pink it looked like they’d been riding really fast into the wind. I decided Pierre-Antoine would have to get down on his knees and beg me before I’d ever let him kiss me again.

I’ve never had regular periods and for the first three months after that day I had a little blood at about the right time of the month and I thought, I’m finally becoming normal. When I started to get sick to my stomach I thought I had a flu that everyone else at school was having. Later still I started to gain weight and I thought it was from nerves.

Who would ever have thought that something was wrong.

Wednesday 4 August.

Benoit had the day off so he stayed with me all day. It was raining. I gave him his piano lesson and then we played gin. He beat me about ten times. I told him I’d finished
Germinal
.

“Makes you feel you’re not the worst off in the world,” he said. “I’m glad I was born now instead of last century or I’d be one of those kids working in a factory or a mine.”

“Not me,” I said. “I’d be married off already to some asshole count or duke.”

He thought that was hilarious.

I don’t know why but in the middle of his laughing, I started to cry.

“Don’t cry,” he said in his quiet voice, taking my hand on the tabletop.

“My life is ruined.”

“Your life isn’t ruined. You’ve got to make it so that your life isn’t ruined. It’s up to you.”

“I’m never going to be able to tell the truth to anyone. What’s going to happen to me later on? I can’t ever go to the beach again with these marks! And what if I find a good man someday, what’s he going to say when he sees my body scarred up like this?”

“If he’s a good man you’ll be able to tell him the truth and he won’t care a bit.”

“You’re the only friend I have in the world and in a couple of weeks they’ll take me away and I’ll never see you again.”

“That’ll be your choice to make, not theirs.”

How incredible that I never thought of that before.

Thursday 5 August.

I’ve decided that I won’t sign the adoption papers. I’ve decided to forgive everyone for everything.

Friday 13 August.

Last Friday, Mother came for the night and ended up staying until this morning. I got sick. I was throwing up and had a fever and pains in my lower stomach. The doctor they paid off came. He said I had the flu but that everything was fine in the other department. I was happy to hear that. I keep thinking about those little fists and feet going by, boom-boom, they’re pushing, like, let me out of here already!

After about two days I told Mother I wanted her to go downstairs and tell Benoit to come up and have dinner with us. She said “Are you crazy?” and I said, “No, I’m dead serious.”

She thought about it for a while, looking confused, and went down to get him. Benoit had the flu too. He said he’d come up the next evening.

What a nice dinner we had! They talked about the Résistance during the War. He said almost all the leaders of the Résistance were Communists. Benoit said his mother was a big Résistante and hid American pilots in her attic. In fact, he said, his father was probably an American pilot.

“Your father was a Marxist when he was young,” Mother said to me, taking my hand. “Did you know that?”

Of course I didn’t know that. I don’t know anything about him except that he sends us expensive toys at Christmas. Toys! As though we’re still ten years old. I don’t care. I don’t need him anyway.

“I’m going to Paris for university,” Benoit suddenly said. “Next year. I want to study law.”

“How wonderful!” Mother said, getting all flushed and excited. You’d think he was the son of the Prime Minister the way she was carrying on.

So he started eating with us every night. His mother prepares the dinners and he brings them up and eats with us. His mother is a good cook. Much better than my mother.

This morning, just before Mother left, I told her I wasn’t going to sign the adoption papers.

“What!” She looked about to faint and had to sit down.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “I don’t intend to keep it. I just won’t give it up for adoption right away. I want to know what’s going on. I want to have control if I don’t like what I see.”

“You’re crazy! You’re going to make the parents’ life miserable! They’re going to live in terror that you’re going to take it away!”

“I don’t give a damn, Mother. Foster parents or I’m telling Grandmother everything.”

She started to cry. “You don’t have to blackmail me,” she said. “I’m your mother. My God, Susanne’s going to throw a fit.”

“It’s not her business.” Oh my voice can be so cold. Where did I learn to have such a cold voice?

“It’s all my fault!” Mother cried out and put her face down on the table between her arms. “It’s all my fault! You were always such a good child, so quiet and thoughtful, never into trouble like your brother.” She looked up at me suddenly with a tormented face. “Do you think something’s wrong with your brother? Do you think he hates me or something?”

I didn’t say anything for a while. “No,” I said.

“You were never into trouble like he was. I was never worried about you. I thought you’d take care of yourself.”

I said, “Don’t be like this now,” and patted her head. “Everyone needs their mother, you know, even if they’re a good child.”

Sunday 15 August.

Benoit made me swear that I would sign the papers if things looked all right after a while. I said how long a while? He said let’s say a few years. Three years or something. I said all right, I swear.

Thursday 19 August.

Mother arrived yesterday with a suitcase. She says Aunt Susanne blew her lid over the adoption papers, but Mother told her she didn’t want to hear it. “I told her you were
my
child and
I
was deciding,” Mother said, and laughed like a child herself. “So now she’s not talking to me. But that won’t last a week.

“I’ve been thinking. Things are going to change at home. I don’t want that Pierre-Antoine anywhere near our house. Ever.”

“Mother, don’t be like that,” I said. “Please, Mother. It’s as much my fault as his.”

“You seem to forget he’s much older than you and has certain responsibilities.”

I started to cry then, too. It just all seemed so cruel and pointless.

“All right,” she said quickly. “All right. We’ll talk about it. Don’t cry.”

It’s incredible but she actually looked strong when she said this, and I believed her.

“We’re going to do things together, just you and me. For example, I was thinking. The Pyramids. You’ve always wanted to go, haven’t you? Well, at Christmas, we’ll go. And schools. You hate that girls’ lycée don’t you? Well, there are so many lycées in Paris. Pick your school”

“A lycée that has boys,” I said.

“Right. And I was thinking, maybe I’ll get a job. You know that art gallery my friend owns? She’s been asking me to work for her for years. How frightening!” She clapped her hands above her head. “It’s like going to school for the first time!”

Then she got all serious. Her face turned pale and sad.

“Listen to me. This isn’t going to be easy. It’s going to hurt. Let me tell you about it…”

Mother has rented another room in Benoit’s mother’s house. So now she’s here but she’s not in my room all the time.

There are two things I can’t stop thinking about. One, that soon it will be over and I can’t wait to be free. Two, that I’m going to feel incredible pain. How am I supposed to act? What do they expect of me? Will I scream like women do in the movies? Will it scream for me, its mother, the way they do? What will I do then? I can’t seem to find courage anywhere. It is like a black hole, a haunted house, a nightmare that is there all the time that I can’t get away from. They say breathe deeply when you panic, breathe deeply and think with a clear head. I am trying to think with a clear head but I feel like peeing all the time from nerves.

Saturday 21 August.

Benoit called the pastry shop and said he had a relapse of his flu. He told them he was pretty sure he’d be sick for a few days.

It’s any time now, already a week late.

Benoit told me and Mother about when his mother had him. She was alone here in Trouville and walked to the hospital by herself. Her parents didn’t talk to her for five years. Benoit remembers going when he was five to see his grandparents in Rouen for the first time. His mother just took him on the train and together they went and rang the doorbell of his grandparents’ house. His grandmother lifted him up, held him pressed to her chest and cried.

This is supposed to be a wonderful moment in somebody’s life. Everybody gathers around and gives you presents and tells you congratulations. It’s not supposed to be like an operation where they’re taking a huge cancer out of your stomach and everybody’s whispering all the time. That’s what I feel like. Like I’m dying of cancer and no one wants to admit it or talk about it with me.

Mother and Benoit have been trying so hard, though. They’re so embarrassed, so touchy about it. They’re my private family now. My public family is everyone else who is somehow connected to me.

Thursday 26 August. Paris.

It happened on Sunday 22 August. It started at dawn but didn’t happen until about twelve hours later.

I feel like a glass bomb exploded inside of me. I am filled with pieces of glass. And my skin! Oh my God. The marks are like purple rivers and mountain chains on a map.

They kept me for three days. Everyone was really nice. Benoit came to visit every day and stayed for hours. We were laughing because at the hospital they think the baby is his. Benoit will be coming to Paris in a year and Mother has already found him a free room in an apartment building that her friend owns.

They gave me some kind of drug so it seems like a weird dream where I’m being interrogated and there are big lights everywhere. The doctor told me I’ll be perfectly normal. All fixed up like it was before, he says. But what about my skin? I asked him. What about your skin? he says.

Aunt Susanne says Mother fainted when they took the little boy away. Aunt Susanne says he’s blond and blue-eyed but that can change, she says.

On the papers I put Benoit Antoine Phillippe for
First Names.
It says my name for
Mother
and then it says unemployed for
Profession
. Under
Father
I put unknown.

My God I’m so sorry. I pray someone will love him the way he deserves, the way I probably never could. I hope he’ll want to find me some day. I hope to God I’m doing the right thing. I hope to God he grows up proud and strong.