back as Giselle’s story unspooled to the tune of the wind humming along the seams of the patched-together house.
She’d felt so much while she’d listened to her story, but the notes turned out to be only the vaguest outline of what had happened. Journalistic facts she’d thought she needed to record. They didn’t do justice to Giselle’s pain and defiance and strength. But she didn’t want to be sensational. Reality was bad enough. She would tell the truth, nothing more—but nothing less.
Leaning over the table, she scribbled a description of the house under the bridge, how it felt to be there, the city close yet a world away. But as she looked over what she’d written, she realized it was what she had seen. What she had thought. If their plan to convince readers that the girls deserved to live in Flotsam House was going to work, the pamphlet couldn’t be made up of Camille’s thoughts. Giselle herself had to speak.
Reaching into the upper case, she took out the type for the words that marched through her mind. Deftly, she set them into the tray, beginning at the upper right and facing them backward, working toward the left.
THE LOST GIRLS SPEAK
THE FLOWER SELLER
The skin on the back of her neck prickled and once again she had the disquieting feeling that the house was shifting itself to peer at what she did. She didn’t know if metal type and ink and paper could convey the heartbreak of Giselle’s words. But she would try.
YOU MIGHT THINK
I was forced to make my living under the bridge.
I was not. I CHOSE this place.
Camille stood back, surveyed the bold capitals. The short lines and the simple words felt right. They felt the way Giselle had spoken: not pitying or sentimental. None of the philosophical phrases Papa had woven through his writings, no references to long-dead authors or revolutionaries. Instead, it was simply true.
Now that she’d begun, her fingers couldn’t set the words fast enough to keep pace with the stream of words she knew she needed to print.
My mother could not feed us all so handed us away to those who could. My sister and I were given as servants to the woman who ran the gambling den nearby. We were but ten and eleven, what did we know? We had no rights. No protection. Maman thought she did well. But though we worked, we never got paid. We were always hungry.
Camille wanted to leave a space there, for the long, angry pause Giselle had taken before continuing.
It would be an extravagant use of paper, but what else was it good for? She skipped three rows, enough to let her readers reflect—on Giselle, on how they were lucky they were to live as they did—and began again.
The neighbor locked us in our rooms at night, made us slaves in all but name. Anything we needed, like a new chemise or hairpins, she sold it to us, against the money we earned by selling flowers and fruits to the patrons who came to gamble. We saw quick enough we might die having never walked outside again.
My sister and I promised each other we would flee if we saw the chance. We vowed that if the chance came, we wouldn’t wait to tell the other one, but to run and know we would be reunited on the outside. Our meeting place would be the steps of Sainte-Chapelle.
One morning I woke up and she was gone.
Giselle had been so strong, restrained, even, but when she’d told this part of her story, she’d pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, her mouth a twist of pain. Then she’d set her narrow shoulders back and started again.
Dieu, how happy I was to know she had fled! Two days later I too escaped, and the Lost Girls took me in. We have our own home and the money I get is mine to keep. Bien sûr, there are men who don’t understand a flower seller sells flowers, not herself, but most days I manage.
For a long time I waited for my sister to find me.
Each day I walk around the high walls of Sainte-Chapelle, searching for her, but she’s never come.
I used to fear she died in that house, her body taken out on a board in the night when I couldn’t have seen it. For how else would I not know my sister had gone?
But now I believe she did escape and she found a better place. Even