Pushed, shoved by other mothers and daughters. Children swarming around my legs. I am clutching Sebastien so hard I momentarily worry that I will smother him.
Soldiers walk by, marching us up the wide stone steps and into the church. It is decorated with flowers for tomorrow’s First Communion. The air is sweet with their scent. I whisper nothing and everything in Sebastien’s ear. He is stirring again, blinking at me in recognition.
My heart is hammering and Sebastien is crying now, hungry, can feel his mother’s frightened breathing. Maman is here, backed into a corner by others. What is happening to the men outside? People are screaming for their husbands, fathers, and I can see Maman pale with the absence of Paul and Father, her face etched with questions. There are so many of us in here.
They are dragging something inside; Maman is looking at it, she returns to my side, her head looking left and right for an exit. There is a window just out of reach. There is smoke now and we are moving without thinking.
An explosion, a noise, heat.
‘Isabelle, come on, come on.’ She urges me forward somewhere. I am coughing, unseeing, feeling only Sebastien’s little body in my arms.
Maman has dragged a ladder from somewhere, she is pulling it towards the window. She is clambering up it.
I go to follow, put a foot onto the first rung. She has made it to the sill, looks down at me, her eyes rolling, almost unseeing, one foot already in the outside. I push Sebastien up to her.
‘Take him, Maman.’
She reaches an arm forward, struggles to reach him, looks behind her. It is so hot, I can barely make her out in this smoke. I clutch with one hand on another rung, feeling for the next.
I see her face one more time, reach Sebastien up so that he is nearly at her fingertips.
She slips away from me, through the window, her upper body slowly falling backwards. When I see her face for an instant, our eyes lock. The last time I will see her, the whites of her eyes, a blink. And she is gone.
Shouts, smoke, fiery heat and then a rattle of gunfire. I am falling, my head hits stone, sliding slowly down, down, down, Sebastien still in my arms. It is so hot. Sebastien cries, his face red, we are all burning, slowly, quickly, it rages.