That couldn’t be true. It wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t, and a sick feeling came over me. After all our trips to Clermont-Ferrand, all the time we spent with Adrienne, all the stories in the mélos, I’d thought Gabrielle didn’t think as much of Albert, that she’d stopped hoping for him to return. I was glad Julia-Berthe was up ahead, closer to Sister Xavier, so she couldn’t hear. She would believe every word.
I adjusted the scarf around my neck as dark thoughts swirled. I was dreaming of princes. Gabrielle was dreaming of Albert. To her, he was a prince.
“Maybe he did go to America,” she said finally. “Maybe he did make his fortune. Maybe he’s on his way to get us right now.”
I shook my head. My mouth and throat were dry. “You’ve heard the conversations at Mémère’s.” Sometimes when we were there, neighbors or other family members called Albert le grand séducteur. One said he’d heard Albert was in Quimper selling women’s shoes. Another said he was in Nantes selling women’s underthings. “He’s not so far away,” I said to Gabrielle, “and still he chooses to have nothing to do with us.”
The look Gabrielle gave me then was that of someone far older than her years. It was hard, like a scab, protecting something raw beneath. “All the more reason to make him something he’s not,” she said.
* * *
Trees bowed, and leaves whirled up in clusters as if trying to take their rightful place back on the branches. Back at the convent, a strong gust had knocked the latch loose on an old iron gate, sending it swinging back and forth with loud, ringing clangs. I hated the wind, always pushing its way in, making everything creak and shudder.
Later that day, I ended up in the infirmary, the Sunday walk in the cold worsening my constitution. One minute I was hot, as if my insides were on fire, then just as suddenly my teeth were chattering with cold. “Sickly, just like her mother,” I imagined the nuns whispering, crossing themselves as they did when they spoke of the dead.
Sister Bernadette, the nun in charge of nursing, wrapped me in a wet sheet to lower the fever. She put a balm on my chest, gave me a draft of strong wine, and dabbed holy water on my forehead as an extra precaution. I would live, she declared, but better safe than sorry.
Gabrielle offered to sit at my bedside. This way she could avoid catechisms and needlework and read instead. She held Lives of the Saints close, her voice low so that Sister Bernadette wouldn’t hear that it wasn’t the trials and tribulations of the sainted she was reading but the trials and tribulations of Decourcelle’s The Dancing Girl of the Convent.
As the medicine of the wine sank in along with Gabrielle’s words, a drowsy feeling took over. I almost didn’t hear the Mother Superior and Sister Xavier come into the sick room just as Gabrielle was getting to the part where Yvette, the peasant girl who switches places with the ballerina, arrives in Paris.
Gabrielle stopped reading, closing the book quickly. The nuns’ expressions were grave. Was I going to die after all? Was that why they were here? The Mother Superior stared at me, one eyebrow raised so that it almost touched the white band that ran just below her hairline.
Gabrielle jumped to her feet. Her face was so colorless I could make out traces of blue veins on her forehead like the whorls of mold on the rind of a cheese. “What are you doing with that?” she said to the nuns. “It’s not yours.”
I pushed myself up on an elbow to see that the Mother Superior was holding my blue-and-white tin, where I’d replaced the coins after our walk. The nerves in my stomach seized. I’d hidden the tin in a dark corner under my bed in the dormitory.
The Mother Superior cited Matthew. “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, where—”
“—thieves break through and steal!” Gabrielle said, cutting her off. She flew toward the nuns, her elbows jutted out, her jaw thrust forward. She was no longer The Dancing Girl of the Convent, whose posture we both tried to imitate. She was the peasant girl who grew up on the streets of Auvergne. “That’s Antoinette’s money,” she said. “You have no right to take it.”
I shuddered, as much as for my coins as for Gabrielle’s daring.
“What is to become of you, Gabrielle?” Sister Xavier said. “You know your verses well. Which means you and Antoinette should know that treasure, if there is any, will be in heaven, not here with earthly things.”
I wanted to cry out, but I was too woozy, fever swelling my head. My coins. My precious coins. They were for the future. For Something Better.
The Mother Superior opened the tin. “And what about these?” she said, pulling out my paper élégantes, my brides and grooms, my princes and princesses. “It’s prayer cards you should collect with images of the saints, not false idols.”
Outside, the wind howled, rattling the windows. The broken gate clanged like an old, worn-out church bell. In my feverish state, the wind, the sounds, the scorn on the Mother Superior’s face echoed through me. I felt too ill to fight back.
But Gabrielle wasn’t giving up. She turned to the Mother Superior, her voice more controlled this time. “Please, Ma Mère. Our grandfather gives us each a coin to spend when we visit. I’ve spent all of mine on selfish things. But Antoinette always saves hers. She could waste it on candy and ribbons and trinkets like me, but she doesn’t. She saves so that when she leaves here, she’ll have something to help give her a start.”
I watched the Mother Superior’s firm expression, hoping it would change, but it didn’t. She took out the little bit of money, held it in her palm, and then closed her old crooked fingers around it.
“We are to give alms to the poor and needy,” she said, “following the example of our Savior. The priests are taking a collection for la Mission Catholique in China, to feed the starving children of Shanghai. This shall go to them as an exercise in piety.”
The two nuns turned and walked out, the underskirts beneath their holy habits swishing against the floor, the rosaries attached to their belts swinging at their sides. They motioned for Gabrielle to go with them.
I started to cry, the kind of tears that fall silent at first. Somewhere in the back of my fevered head, I thought that at least the nuns hadn’t mentioned the lie about our father. But sobs quickly followed until my pillow was wet, my nose running. I wasn’t The Woman Who Swallows Her Tears.
I cried for Gabrielle who still longed for Albert but covered it up with pride and lies, for Julia-Berthe, who saw ghosts in every corner, for the brothers I didn’t know. And I cried for the loss of my blue-and-white tin, that tin like an extra chamber of my heart, the most sacred one of all.
* * *
I stayed in the infirmary for a week, chills coming and going. Julia-Berthe brought me broth, warming me from the inside like a soft blanket. Eventually I got better, but if the nuns entered the room, I still coughed and groaned. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I just wanted to sleep.