CHARLOTTE
“You are never to see him again. Never! You hear me?”
Staring down at the parquet, I let Papa’s words wash over me, but I could sense Maman’s eyes piercing me, willing me to apologize, to be the good daughter. Still my tongue lay frozen in my mouth.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you.” He took a step nearer; the smell of rotten acorns on his breath repelled me. I must have backed away, because he took another step forward. “You are an ignorant young girl!” He glared at me. “He can’t go around talking like that! Who the hell does he think he is?” He paused, raising his hands. “And right here in our home, too!”
He turned to face Maman. “I told you we were too lax with her.” He looked back at me. “She doesn’t understand the consequences of talk like that.”
“But it’s true.” My heart was beating hard. “He’s not making it up. It’s true what he said.”
“I don’t give a damn if it’s true or not.” Papa’s voice boomed through the living room. I resisted the urge to put my hands over my ears. “That’s not the point. You can’t go around talking like that.” He reached out for my shoulder. “Do you understand?”
I pushed his hand away and ran out of the room into my bedroom, slamming the door behind me.
I would see Jean-Luc again. I would. And no one was going to stop me.
I heard the front door close. Thank God, Papa had gone out. But it was too late now for me to run after Jean-Luc. Panic rose up from my belly as I imagined him escaping to join the Maquis without me. How would I find him now?
God, how I hated Papa. Why couldn’t he have listened to Jean-Luc and talked to him as an equal? Why did he always have to assume his superiority over everyone else? Calling him “just a laborer.” Jean-Luc knew more than Papa about the war; after all, he was right there at Drancy, in the hornet’s nest, as he liked to say. He was best placed to know what was really going on, but no one had wanted to listen to him. Maman always sided with Papa, whatever he said. I didn’t know what she thought about anything, not really.
Flopping down onto my bed, I picked up my old flattened teddy bear. My grandmother had made it for me when I was a baby, and whenever I felt lonely or misunderstood, I took comfort in its familiar form. It had soaked up many tears over the years, but now the stuffing had started to come out of its neck; I liked to pick at it, wondering where she’d found all the pieces of brightly colored material that I pulled out. So much had happened over the last few months. Things were changing—I was changing. It was time for me to make my own decisions, to leave my childhood behind me. Decisively, I rolled the bear into a ball and stuffed it under my bed.
The door opened and Maman stood there, looking pale and fraught. I almost felt sorry for her. “Charlotte, have you calmed down now?”
I turned to face her. “What?” I paused, taking in the lines of worry playing around her mouth. “I’m not the one who needs to calm down.”
“Charlotte! How dare you talk like that!”
“But it’s true, isn’t it? Papa was the one who lost his temper, not me.” I turned away from her. Honestly, what was the point?
She hovered over me, and I knew she was looking for the words to excuse Papa, though I think she knew I didn’t want to hear them. She sat on the bed next to me.
“Why is it impossible to be honest in this family?” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
“No one wants to discuss what is happening.” I turned away, lowering my voice. “You just don’t want to know, do you?”
“Charlotte, that’s not true!”
“Yes it is! You prefer burying your head in the sand.” I turned back toward her and saw her swallow, biting her lip, but still I carried on. “We should be more active, more resistant to what is going on right under our noses.”
She stared at me, her pupils large pools of black. It was the first time I’d ever confronted her.
“Charlotte, you don’t understand.” She raised her hand, as though about to touch me, but I flinched and she quickly withdrew it. “You’re so young. It’s impossible for you to really appreciate the situation.”
I sighed loudly. There we were again, beating around the bush.
“Please, Charlotte. You have to make some concessions for your father, and for me too. He’s been through more than you know. Maybe we should have talked to you more, but… he didn’t want to.” She paused. “He was only eighteen years old when he was sent to Verdun during the last war. He saw things one should never see. I only know because of his nightmares.” She reached for my hand. “Do you know why he can’t enter a butcher’s shop? Did you ever wonder about that?”
I shook my head, guessing the answer.
“The smell of blood.” She removed her hand, rubbing her forehead with the back of it. “Like so many of us, he believed Pétain was a war hero, that he was wise to negotiate a kind of peace with Hitler.” She paused. “Pétain knew what war was. And he did what he had to, to save us from another.”
“But Maman, he didn’t, did he? He didn’t save us from another. We’re sitting here right in the middle of one.”
I watched her frown grow deeper, realizing that for her, we were not right in the middle of a war. We were sitting this one out.
“It was very hard for your father,” she continued. “We didn’t imagine that it would come to this. We both thought it was better to join forces with Germany than fight them.”
“Join forces?”
“We had no army to fight them with.”
“But… but doesn’t that make us collaborators?”
“No, Charlotte. No!” She took my hand again, this time gripping it tightly. “We’re just civilians. And we’re doing our best to survive—raising families, carrying on—because… because we have to. That’s what we do. We’re not soldiers.”
I wondered if this was the moment I should put my arms around her, but the violence of Papa’s outburst still resounded in my head. I wasn’t sure how to be now, how to think of my parents. It felt like I was drifting away from them, caught up by another current.
I only wanted Jean-Luc.