image

That night I sat on the bedroom floor with Azelma and this girl. The cat was with us too. We all watched the cat as she licked her paws with her rough tongue.

I asked the girl, “Why are you here?”

It had been a strange day. We’d swung in the cradle, picked flowers from the hedgerows and stuck them in our hair. Later, I’d seen the girl’s mother kneel down and say, “Come here, dear Cosette; let me hold you.” She’d hugged her daughter tightly and they’d rocked from side to side.

The girl sniffed. “I think I’m staying here now.”

“Here? With us?”

“Yes.”

“How long for?”

“Not sure.”

Azelma frowned. She plucked her thumb from her mouth. “Why?” she said.

The girl was still watching the cat, who was washing the end of her tail now. “My mother’s poor,” she whispered. “She can’t really work if she’s got to look after me too. I think she’s left me here for a while so she can go and earn lots of money. Then she’ll come back for me.”

Azelma tilted her head. “No papa?”

“No. He went away and didn’t come back.”

She began to cry, then. Her eyes filled with big, wobbling tears that spilled down her cheeks and dropped onto her lap.

“Ponine?”

I couldn’t find a handkerchief for her but there was our doll’s headscarf, which was a little flowered rag. I gave it to her. “Here. Don’t cry. I’m Eponine. I’m four. This is Azelma. She’s two and a half.”

The girl blew her nose, still crying.

“What’s your name?”

“My proper name’s Euphrasie. But,” she gulped, “but Maman calls me Cosette.”

Cosette. A soft name. It suited her.

“Are you four as well?”

“In the summer.”

She pressed the rag to her eyes. Her little mouth trembled. I wanted to help her so I said, “Don’t be sad! Your mother will come back. And Montfermeil isn’t so bad. See the window seat? It is dark outside now but sometimes, in the daytime, I sit there and see lots of things that no one else sees—like the cows scratching their bottoms on the fence, or Père Gauphin smoking when he isn’t meant to smoke because his chest rattles and the smoking makes it worse. I’ve seen rabbits. I’ve seen Madame Cou picking flowers for her buttonhole, and people carrying the old nag’s droppings in their arms because they say that her droppings make their cauliflowers grow. And in the summer there are swifts that swoop down the lane.” I paused.

Her eyes were fixed on me and her voice was tiny. “Rabbits?”

“And raspberries. I know where raspberries grow. You can pop them on the end of each finger and suck them off—like this.” I pretended I wore raspberries, like thimbles, on each fingertip.

Azelma unplugged her mouth. She laughed at this—my berries, made of air.

“See? It isn’t so bad. And when your mother comes back you can show her the cauliflowers and the old gray nag, and you’ll both be very happy.”

Cosette quieted. She sniffed, stroked the cat.

Later, I took her to the little bed I shared with Azelma and lifted the blanket. I didn’t know where else she could sleep.

*  *  *

I climbed in beside them and blew out the light. But I couldn’t sleep at first because I felt too sad. Doesn’t everyone feel sad when they see another person crying? When we want to help them, but we can’t?

Be happy, I thought. It’s been a nice day.

But I stayed sad. My sadness sat in my heart like a pebble—hard and sore. Slowly, I worked out the reason for it: it wasn’t Cosette’s tears, after all. It was that long, tight hug that Cosette’s mother had given her, the way she’d pressed her face into the place between Cosette’s neck and shoulders and rocked with her, left to right. What had she whispered to her? A promise or words of love?

I’d felt that pebble in my heart at other times, like when I saw people holding hands. When Monsieur Lefevre kissed his wife’s forehead as she snoozed in the sun.

I turned onto my side in bed.

I thought how pretty Cosette was. She had apple-round cheeks and golden hair and her eyes were cornflower blue. My own cheeks were hollow; my hair was full of knots. I was only called pretty when I’d stolen things.

I slept in the end. But even in my dreams, I felt the tiny pebble in my heart.