CHARLOTTE
“Late again.” Maman pushed a piece of hard bread into my hand as I ran out the door. “You need to get up earlier.” She said the same thing every morning, but quite frankly, I considered 6:30 to be plenty early enough. It was a long journey to Hôpital Beaujon at Clichy from our apartment in Rue Montorgueil, but I didn’t mind—the commute made me feel quite grown-up at the age of eighteen.
Maman had found the job for me. She wanted me out of the apartment, where I was “reading my life away,” as she put it. She also wanted the extra rations it provided us with. Papa didn’t want me to go at first—after all, it was a German hospital—but Maman talked him around. She said it wasn’t like I was giving away state secrets or even denouncing a neighbor. She added something about “healing the wounded” being a good occupation for young women during wartime. Secretly, I wondered if it might not be a better occupation for young men; it might make them think before waging war. Anyway, the patients weren’t all German; there were quite a few French soldiers too, who must have joined up. There were plenty of recruitment offices all around Paris.
I spent my days scrubbing floors, spooning food into the mouths of those who’d lost their sight or the use of their hands, or just sitting and listening to the French patients. The hardest cases were the ones who’d lost a limb but still felt its presence as insufferable pain; “phantom limb syndrome,” one of the doctors explained. There was nothing that could comfort them.
It struck me that all men looked the same in a hospital bed. Vulnerable. Harmless. The language they spoke was the only way to work out where they were from. The hospital was run according to strict routines, but comforting the patients was encouraged, and I quite enjoyed this, though I still wished it wasn’t a German hospital. The irony of it wasn’t lost on me, for there I was, helping the enemy get better, while other, more patriotic French people were risking their lives to do the exact opposite.
When I finally got to the hospital that morning, I went to the locker, taking out my uniform and putting it on, checking in front of the full-length mirror that it was clean and straight. I was almost late, but not quite, and I paused for a minute, turning to the side to study my body. Flat was the word. No bumps or curves to indicate that I was becoming a woman. Four years of occupation had left me with a deep sense of emptiness. It wasn’t only the constant physical hunger; there was an emotional hunger too. I was dying to experience life. I knew there was a world out there, a world where people laughed, danced, drank, kissed, made love, and I was missing out on it all.
As I ran my hands over my chest, Maman’s words rang in my ears. “No point getting you a bra.” I remembered the excitement of having my first period, then the disappointment when they stopped after only three months, as though they couldn’t see any reason for having started up in the first place. “You don’t know how lucky you are,” Maman said. “They’re nothing but a curse.” But I wanted my body to change, longing to be touched in places I didn’t dare name.
I turned back around to see my face. I tried smiling. Yes, that was definitely better. But I didn’t feel like smiling, not even when the patients tried to flirt with me. Most of them weren’t funny anyway; they just gave me the creeps with their stupid remarks about “cold hands, warm heart” or “love that uniform.” I preferred the quiet ones, and I felt sorry for the ones who were in pain but put on a brave face, biting back tears when I helped them sit up.
Smoothing my hair down, I wished I could have washed it. It was greasy, but there was so little soap, and Maman had rationed me to once a week. I wasn’t allowed makeup either, but I didn’t care so much; my eyelashes were quite long and dark, and if I pinched my cheeks, it looked like I was wearing rouge.
“Allez! Allez!” The matron bustled into the locker room. She looked at my reflection in the mirror and I looked back at hers. It put a welcome distance between us. “This is no time to be admiring yourself,” she said coldly. “There’s work to be done.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, taking the mop and bucket out of her hands.