2. Juliette
Juliette
NOT THE HANDSOMEST GIRL
“Juliette! Juliette, are you up? I won’t tell you again!
” Maman yells from downstairs in the kitchen while I lie awake in my bed, staring up at the ceiling.
The crisp aroma of freshly sliced pears and quince travels up the stairwell and into my bedroom, and I draw in a deep breath.
She’s baking and making jam again. Maman bakes every Sunday morning, yet it always surprises me whenever that first sweet note of sugar and fruit hits my nostrils.
My stomach rumbles in response to the scintillating aroma, yet I cannot bring myself to eat.
It has been several days since I’ve eaten more than a mushroom, more than a single carrot on my plate.
Something is wrong with me. I cannot get out of bed. Do not want to get out of bed. Yet the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and it is a sweltering, sticky day. I should be happy, non? I should already be at the market to purchase fresh tomatoes and thick slices of meat for tonight’s supper.
Instead, I am staring at the ceiling and wishing for death to claim me. Again. It does not matter that I am decades away from a natural death—gods willing, of course. But the thought of placing my bare toes on the floorboards has my stomach turning.
“Juliette! What is wrong with you? Are you deaf, or just lazy?” Maman calls again in her deep, husky voice, so loud it makes the shutters on the windows tremble.
My maman has always been known throughout the village as a good, wholesome woman.
To them, she is Marion Lefebvre, the woman from a small neighboring village who moved in two decades ago after marrying Louis Lefebvre, a horse trader.
Honest, gods-fearing people who you could always rely on for a cup of tea and a kind word.
The sort of people who would rip the clothes off their own backs if you were in need.
But to me, my maman has always been my greatest adversary.
We have never gotten along. In fact, I am convinced she hates me, probably on account of my nearly killing her while I was still in the womb.
As if I, an unborn babe, planned out the assassination while I gestated.
What sort of mother hates their own progeny?
Last week was my twenty-fifth birthday, but we did not celebrate it. I ate two cold, greasy eggs for breakfast and washed them down with a glass of red wine. There was not even a slice of pork leftover to accompany them. My father patted me on the head before going outside to tend to the horses.
He either didn’t remember or didn’t care. I’m not sure which would be worse.
When I fail to answer Maman’s summoning shrieks, the door to my bedroom practically flies off the hinges.
Maman looms in the doorway, her hands on her wide-set hips and a scowl deeply etched across her once-pretty features.
I’ve been told that I take after my mother, looks-wise, but I disagree.
She and I couldn’t be more different. We have different eyes.
Hers are so blue they rival the rivers and streams outside the village, while mine are the color of mud.
The kind of brown you see in the cow patties across the fields.
“She’s not the handsomest girl,” a man once said to Maman while she was buying apples at the market.
The man took her coins from behind the stall and pocketed them.
Meanwhile, I lingered behind, pretending to be interested in a woman selling goose eggs.
He probably believed I was no longer within earshot, but my hearing has always been keen.
“Hips are too slender … but she’ll make someone a fine wife someday, Marion. Don’t you worry.”
Instead of agreeing with the man or admonishing him for insulting her daughter, my mother simply shook her head and muttered, “No, I don’t think so. My Juliette doesn’t care about anyone but herself.”
To this day, I’m still not sure why she said that.
I don’t think that self-preservation is the same as self-centeredness, but perhaps by being born, I truly was the selfish one.
After all, my parents didn’t plan on having me in the first place.
Another fact Maman loves to throw in my face whenever convenient.
Once upon a time, my maman was considered a great beauty, and so when I was born everyone assumed I would be, too.
While mother’s brilliant blond hair is shorn to her ears now, it once flowed down to the small of her back.
I may have the same blond hair as maman’s, and it is easily my most comely asset, but my face deters any would-be suitors.
My nose is too sharp, like a bird’s beak.
My cheekbones too high. My brow pinched in a permanent scowl.
Sometimes, in a rare act of affection, Maman brushes my hair.
But the moment is always ruined by her muttering.
Thoughts that should never pass a mother’s lips, spoken aloud.
Cruel things that wriggle their way through my skull like worms in the dead of night.
Sleep is never easy to come by on nights such as those.
“Whatever shall we do with you? Can’t marry you off to someone your own age, and you’re too weak to carry the sacks of grain anywhere. No good with the animals. Do we sell you to the widower in the village for a few extra coins?” she always threatens.
I no longer visit the markets with Maman or allow her to touch my hair—another thing she hates about me, I’m sure.
Maman strides into the room and pulls open the shutters on my windows.
The sunbeams strike me across the face like the back of her hand.
I groan and roll onto my stomach to block out the sun, hoping she’ll get the hint and go away.
But she doesn’t. Maman the ox, too stubborn to ever give up when she could get her way instead.
“Juliette, do not make me do this. You know how much I hate doing this—-” she starts, and I grab my pillow to press it over my head.
“So don’t,” I mumble into the pillow.
This has been our ritual for the past year.
I lie in bed until the afternoon sun is high in the sky, and she charges into my bedroom to grab me by the ankles and pulls me out of bed.
The entire house shakes from our fights.
My father, always in the stables, never witnesses these violent tirades, but he hears of them from Maman at supper.
He’s never once stepped in. Never asserts himself as head of the household.
Never tells Maman to stop her foolishness and leave me alone.
That would be too much work for him, I suppose.
When Maman yanks me by the ankles, the ground rises to meet me with a terrible thud. I can already feel the bruises forming on my buttocks. I roll onto my back and glare as Maman hovers over me with her arms crossed over her chest.
“What is wrong with you, girl? Sleeping all day and never lifting a finger to help your parents?” She shakes her head in disappointment.
I don’t even care anymore. “We should have sold you to Widow Bernard when we had the chance! Now he has gone and taken another wife, and you have missed your only window of opportunity at a normal life!”
I let out a snort and stare up at her sweaty, tomato-colored face. “A child. He took a child bride. I have evaded a fate worse than death, and you think this is something I should be ashamed of?”
Maman bends down to slap me across my face, and I fall back against the floorboards for a second time. “Oh, get up, you insufferable sow!”
The taste of metal explodes in my mouth.
I must’ve bitten the inside of my cheek when she struck me.
When I finally pull myself up off the floor, my mother has already fled the room.
Moving to the window, I look outside to find a group of shrieking and laughing children running circles around Papa. He is smiling and laughing, too.