Thirteen
ADELE AND CLAIRE spend the next week with Nathalie.
They take her around with them on their errands.
They meet with a social worker, who says they should enroll her in school, so they do.
They buy her some play clothes, two church dresses at May & Co.
, and an Our Lady of Victory uniform. She’s still a mystery to me.
But she’s shown an interest in music, so for the past few evenings after dinner we’ve browsed through the records together.
I read her the names of the songs, let her pick which albums to listen to.
What I want, most in the world, is to see Delphine and tell her that her daughter is safe. But I call every few days and the hospital still won’t allow me to visit.
On Friday after work, my sisters give me the full day’s report. “Nathalie’s keeping to herself more than we would like,” Claire says, pouring dressing over a bowl of salad.
“It’s bound to change next week once she’s at school with the boys,” Adele says. She pulls a roast chicken from the oven. “They’ll have classmates and teachers in common. That’s bound to help. Okay, this just needs a minute to rest and then dinner will be served.”
“I’ll let the others know,” I say. I find Clément in his room, turning a page of Blueberries for Sal, examining the illustration of Mama and Sal in their crowded kitchen, jam jars strewn across the table. “How’s it going with your cousin?” I ask him.
“She’s nice.” I wait. He turns the page. “I’d like to meet a baby bear,” he says.
“I’d like that, too. Dinner’s ready.”
I find Nathalie in the yard, examining the grass, searching for something, whispering to herself now and then. “How was your day?” I ask her.
She shrugs. She plucks a daisy from the yard and stands to look at me. Her hair’s in her eyes and she pushes it away. Her nails are short and clean. “I go to school on Monday.”
“I saw the uniform. Are you excited?”
She shrugs again, pushes her hair again.
“How do you like to wear your hair?” I ask.
“Just down.”
“How about your bangs? Should I pull them back with a barrette?”
“I like them shorter.”
“Should I trim them for you?”
She nods.
After dinner, I have her sit on the edge of the tub, drape a towel over her front and shoulders like she’s in a salon.
I kneel and tell her to hold very still and to shut her eyes.
She looks just like Delphine did when we were small.
I can’t think too much about it and still cut a straight line.
Nathalie’s breath is warm on my hand as I hold her chin steady.
I sit back, take a look, mess the bangs this way and that and even them out. “Okay, what do you think? Shorter?”
“Shorter,” she says. I take them to half an inch above her brow.
“You were right,” I say. “Shorter is much better.”
She keeps squeezing shut her eyes until I tell her to look again.
And then here we are, reflected in the mirror.
I’m in my work clothes still—trousers and a button-down blouse, my hair pulled back, some strands fallen loose.
The purple under Nathalie’s eyes is fading.
She’s sleeping better. She looks younger with her short bangs, her keen eyes regarding herself before offering a small nod of satisfaction.
Claire has a doctor’s appointment on Monday afternoon.
She pulls up in her car just as Al and Bernard and I arrive home, and we all go in together.
If Adele’s harried from an afternoon caring for five children, she doesn’t show it.
She’s made a pot pie, reminds the kids to eat their string beans.
Nathalie’s chair is across from mine, next to Claire’s, and she eats politely, dabbing her mouth with her napkin. Claire watches with appreciation.
“Now tell us: How was your first day of school?” Claire asks. “Did you make some new friends? Was it special, going to school with your cousins?”
Nathalie sets her fork down, looks hard at Clément and Rudy as though doubting they are who they claim to be. She picks up her fork again and continues to eat.
Claire’s brow twitches. “Nathalie, honey, I asked you a question.”
“Sister Bethany is mean to me. She doesn’t like me.”
“Of course she isn’t mean to you,” Claire says. “What a thing to say!” She looks to Bernard, part incredulous, part amused.
Nathalie’s jaw clenches, her shoulders draw in.
“The sisters love all the children,” Claire says.
She goes to put a hand on Nathalie’s arm to reassure her, but Nathalie jerks toward her like a cat and Claire keels back into Bernard, stunned, tears springing to her eyes.
She cradles her arm with her hand. When she lets go, there’s a row of raised welts where Nathalie scratched her.
The next day, Al and I come home to wailing. Adele’s sitting at the dining table with her head in her hands. Even Clément and Rudy and the twins are subdued, playing halfheartedly on the floor.
“What’s all this?” Al asks.
“She’s been screaming on and off ever since we got home from school,” Adele says. “At one point I took the other children for a walk around the block because none of us could take it anymore. She was quiet when we got back but now she’s started up again.”
I kiss Clément on the top of his head, set my purse on a dining chair and enter the hallway.
Nathalie’s moaning now. I step closer. A ragged breath, a growl that builds to a scream.
I turn the knob and she freezes when I walk in.
Then she begins again, even louder than before.
She’s on a lower bunk in a tangle of sheets.
I sit on the floor a distance from her, watch her thrash and wail, her fury and her sadness on full display.
She peeks over her shoulder to check if I’m still here. “She said I’m drawing them the wrong way. How am I supposed to know?”
“Drawing what?” I ask.
“The c’s and e’s.” She’s flushed, panting with exertion. Her bangs are over to the side, stuck to her forehead. So much turmoil must be raging inside her, so many ways her life is unfamiliar now, but here’s one of them and it’s something I can help her with.
“Oh, I understand. The other children have been working on them for a while now, but you’re just getting started. Did you learn them at your old school?”
She doesn’t answer. And then she says, “I don’t have an old school.”
“I see. Well, would you like me to help you now?” She nods. “Let’s lie on the rug and draw them in the air.”
I lie and she joins me, scoots the side of her body against mine.
Delphine’s daughter. Before questioning myself, I press a kiss to the top of her head, just as I do to Clément.
I lift my arm and she lifts hers so that our hands are hovering together.
I point my finger, she points hers. I swoop in the shape of a c across the white ceiling.
“Like it’s opening its arms to the rest of the alphabet,” I say.
She does it after me, a careful curve through the air.
“C,” she whispers.
“C,” I say. “And a small e is just like it, except with a little oval at the top. Should we try?”
She nods against my shoulder, our arms still pointing, and I lead her through it. We draw them over and over, switching back and forth between the letters. A question rises. I ask it before I can judge its rightness.
“How much do you miss your mother? Is it as much as a house? Or the sky? Or the whole world?”
“Whole world.”
“I miss her as much as the whole world, too.”
There’s a knock on the door and Clément pokes his head in, his eyes curious, assessing us.
“Dinnertime,” he says. We sit three across at the table.
A week passes. I emerge from the children’s room one night and Adele’s on her hands and knees, picking up plastic toy soldiers, Jacks pieces, pick-up sticks.
“They went rogue,” I say, because the rule is that toys belong in the playroom unless permission has been granted.
“Five children under one roof, and the grown-ups aren’t much better.
” She sits back, looks around. Smudged beer glasses on the coffee table, a throw blanket tossed on the floor by the love seat, one little red shoe, a couple plates with cracker remnants and grape stems and dried-up pieces of orange cheese.
The neighbors came over after dinner, took Al home with them to play cards, left all this in their wake.
“Sometimes,” she says, “I wish we could just let things be messy. Just live in it, however it is, without worrying anyone will drop by and find us out.”
“You do?” It stuns me. “You’re so good at it. I never would have guessed.”
“Just because I’m good at it doesn’t mean it’s something I want.”
“What do you want?” I don’t recognize her. She could say anything.
“I don’t know. A cigarette.”
I laugh and find one for her. Touch flame to the tip.
She takes a long drag, lets it out. Curl of smoke in the dim light.
She’s still on the floor in front of me and I’m scared to take a seat myself, scared to move much in case it might startle her out of whatever this is, this other side of my sister that I might be able to know.
“Sometimes I envy you,” she says, narrowing her eyes at me. “Going off to the plant in the mornings with Al and Bernard, having a whole life outside of this.”
“It’s hard,” I say. “It’s rarely fun.” But I suspect that she can see through me, and I don’t want to lie to her anyway.
The Finishing line is grueling, so loud that sometimes, on the drive home, Al and Bernard’s voices sound muffled.
My shoulders ache all the time. My heels hurt.
And still, I’m one of the most efficient girls in the department.
I’m training to become supervisor. “I do love working at the plant, though. Being part of it.”
She nods, satisfied. “I’m just going to finish this cigarette, and then I’m going to get back to cleaning.”
“No,” I say. “Let me do it. You just sit here.”