good while before I finally left her to think, walking down the corridor into my bedroom and taking a few heavy breaths against the wall. I’d never talked to Mama that way, but felt better saying what was on my mind.
After I changed into a clean dress and fixed my hair, I came back into the kitchen only to find her still sitting at the table with her cigarettes. I stood next to her, fastening my earrings, getting ready to head out to Charlotte’s boutique.
‘I’ve listened to Albert explain himself until I’ve turned blue, and gotten so mad I thought I might burst open my blood pumped so hard. And Charlotte, she’s just taken his side.’ Mama reached into her pocket and pulled out a wad of letters, tossing them on the table in a messy pile. ‘But you’re right. If I’m dead none of it matters, now does it?’
My mouth gaped open at the sight of so many letters. ‘Mama…’
‘Give this to Charlotte.’ Mama handed me a knitted hat for the baby. ‘She’ll be mad the whole day that you told me. There’s nothing I can do about that.’ Her eyes welled with tears at the mere mention of Charlotte’s baby. ‘And please tell her I’ve been saying prayers for the granddaughter she won’t let me pay my respects to.’ She cried two heaving breaths, her face bunching up, and I put my hand on her shoulder, my heart breaking from hearing her cry.
‘And the letters?’ I said.
‘All of them go to your father.’ She put a finger on one she had folded tightly into a triangle and slid it toward me. ‘But tell him to open this one last.’
1943
20
A new threat flooded the city almost overnight one day in January, this time dressed in double-breasted blue uniforms and a deceivingly French blue beret. The Milice. Created by our government to hunt and destroy the French Résistance, this new French militia was designed to work side-by-side with the Gestapo—our own countrymen turned against us.
Milice flags unravelled and flew from poles, blue, white, red, and black. People watched from the cobblestone streets in front of the Gare de Vichy, clutching that morning’s meagre rations from the butcher, as the miliciens walked down the street in formation, hands on their rifles, ready to shoot, with their shined black boots and thick, waist-high black belts.
Clomp, clomp, clomp…
‘So, it’s been done,’ I said, gazing at the marching miliciens. ‘Word swept through the street last night, but I didn’t believe it.’
Papa shoved an old cigarette in his mouth and lit what was left of it in the face of a bitter wind, puffing hard until the crumpled end finally caught fire. ‘Word?’ He closed his coat by crossing his arms, watching them assemble under the Gare de Vichy’s stone archway.
‘The Milice, Papa. Gestapo, by another name.’
A lorry pulled up next, and a gendarme in the Vichy police led a handful of men as dirty as a mud hole out of the back with their hands on top of their heads. The Milice barked at the prisoners to stand against the stone wall in front of the train station; one had a clipboard and seemed to be checking names off, while a Gestapo officer in a warm wool coat and matching gloves stood menacingly over his shoulder, monitoring.
‘Le Résistance,’ Papa said, squinting, trying to get a better look at the men as they lined up, backs flat against the wall in their shredded clothes, torn and ripped. Women wept openly for their husbands and sons, kneeling on the cold cobblestones, begging for the Milice to keep them in France—not send them to Germany, but they only pushed their rifles at them, shooing them away like vermin.
Papa mashed his cigarette on the ground before walking into his wine bar, and I followed him inside. He moved crates of wine away from the wall. ‘Vin de merde,’ I swear I heard him say.
‘What’s that, Papa?’
‘Nothing, nothing,’ he said, taking a loose cigarette from his pocket. ‘I wish I had a cigar. That’s what I said.’
The women’s cries outside seeped through the door like a spill and Papa struggled to light another crumpled cigarette pinched in his lips. A delivery of flowers arrived shortly after, six of the fullest, most luxurious red roses I’d ever seen, almost unheard of these days, and very expensive. The deliveryman handed me the card, and I swallowed, knowing roses like this could have only come from one person.