Sudden tears scalded my eyes. Just as I felt a wail hurtling up my throat, Nana looked past my mother and said quietly to me, “Milk Blossom, you must go live with your maman now. I’ll see that Pitou finds a home, don’t you fret. Now, wash up and fetch your bag. Mademoiselle Bernhardt is waiting and it’s a long journey to Paris.”
I couldn’t move. This was my home, this cottage with its narrow smoke-stained rooms, thick with the smell of pottage and garlic, with my Nana and my Pitou. I didn’t want to go to Paris and live with this overdressed stranger. I didn’t know her at all.
“No,” I said loudly, and as Nana’s face darkened, I added, “I will not.”
Nana jabbed her hand at me. “Shall I fetch the switch?”
The thin hawthorn strip that could raise welts on my thighs—it was one of the few things I feared. Nana had used it only once, when I forgot to mind the fences and went tromping with Pitou over her coriander. Afterwards, I couldn’t sit down for a week.
“Go now,” Nana ordered. “Wash up and fetch your things.”
My mother stepped aside as I barreled past her into the house with Pitou. In my small room with its cot and sagging bureau, I found a cloth satchel stuffed with my few clothes and long-neglected cloth doll. Nana had set out my one nice dress on the cot. I only wore it on Sundays when we attended mass in town. I went still, staring at it. I wouldn’t go. I couldn’t leave my Pitou. I would run away, take my bag and him—
Nana’s sharp whistle from the terrace sent Pitou bounding back outside. As I cried out and dashed after him, I found my mother in the doorway, blocking my escape.
“Never mind washing up,” she said. “I cannot abide it here another instant.”
“Maman, please.” I struggled against a surge of panic. “Pitou. I can’t leave him here if Nana sells the house and—”
She lifted her hand, silencing me. “You will do as you are told.”
* * *
—
Pitou started barking as soon as I clambered into the carriage. Yanking aside the curtain on the carriage door, I was overwhelmed by a black tide of anguish as I stared toward the house. Nana stood on the threshold, holding my dog back by his scruff. He was trying to escape her to follow me; tears spilled from my eyes as the carriage jolted forward, the hiss of the coachman’s whip over the team of horses sharp in my ears.
Within minutes, we’d left the cottage behind, the carriage rattling over the unpaved road. My mother sat across from me in silence. She didn’t speak for such a long time that my tears dried on my cheeks as I waited, wilting under her brooding stare. Then she finally said, “I’m not accustomed to having a child underfoot. I’m a very busy woman, with no time or patience for antics. You must respect my schedule at all times. Do you understand? At all times. If you fail to obey, I shall find another arrangement for you.”
“Yes, Maman,” I whispered. A lump rose in my throat. I was too frightened now for defiance. An orphanage had been mentioned; I had no doubt she was perfectly capable of sending me to one.
“And you must never call me Maman in company,” she added, brushing her gloved fingers fastidiously over her dress. “My friends call me Julie. You may address me by my name or as Mademoiselle Julie, if you prefer.”
“Yes, Mademoiselle Julie.”
She gave me a glazed smile, passing her eyes again over my person. I’d barely squeezed into my one pair of good shoes and my little cape and bonnet, all of which she’d brought the last time she’d visited and now barely fit. The shoes pinched my toes. I wriggled my feet, wishing I could kick them off and wondering if I might also manage to leap from the carriage and run back to the cottage. Yet even as I imagined the shock on my mother’s face, I knew she would only fetch me back and be more cross with me than she already was.
“Stop fidgeting.” Removing a fan from her bag, she waved it about her. “Honestly. Did that peasant woman not teach you anything? You’ve the manners of a wild creature.” She went quiet for a moment. “I suppose you haven’t learned to read or write yet?”
“No, Mademoiselle Julie.” I was thoroughly miserable. Not only had she forced me to leave my home and my dog, but she didn’t even like me. She didn’t want me to live with her any more than I wanted to live with her.
She sighed. “Then I suppose we must see to that, as well.” She returned her gaze to the window. “An illiterate,” she mused, as if to herself. “Without a single social grace to commend her. I daresay no one will even believe she is mine.”
She sounded pleased by this assessment.
* * *
—
Three days later, we arrived in Paris. I’d cried into my sleeve every night in the inns where we stayed, while she turned her back on me. By the time we reached the city, I had no tears left to shed and I was certain I’d never know a moment of happiness again.
Paris bewildered me. So loud, full of rattling carriages and shouting people; it seemed colorless to me, a riot of smoky skies and stone-paved streets. It smelled like soggy laundry and animal ordure—like an old dragon, I thought, with the turgid river running through its talons. I almost started crying again as I recalled the green woodlands of Brittany, the fields and hiding places I’d made my own. Would I ever see a tree again?
As the carriage came to a halt, Julie said, “This is the rue de Provence,” as if giving the street a name made any difference to me. I was sore from the long hours of sitting in the carriage, and ravenous, having eaten far less in the last few days than I was used to. When we disembarked, I found myself standing before a soot-stained building, tall and narrow, hemmed in by others just like it.
Then a pretty young woman with a startling resemblance to Julie swept out from the building’s entrance. “Sarah, my child!” She kissed my cheeks, suffocating me in a rose attar that made me cough. She had bright eyes, only hers were a darker blue than Julie’s, and her hair, tucked into a chignon at her nape, was reddish-gold. Like mine. She must be a relative, I thought, as she said softly, “Oh, my child. You don’t remember who I am, do you?”
Behind us, where she was directing the coachman to unload her luggage—she’d brought two medium-sized trunks to fetch me; why did she need so much?—Julie said, “Don’t be a goose, Rosine. She was just a babe when she last saw you.”
“Yes, of course. Sarah, my dear: I’m your Tante Rosine. Your mother is my older sister.” My aunt smiled. As she set her warm hand in mine, guiding me toward the building, I bit back another rush of tears. Kindness was the last thing I’d expected.
“Welcome to Paris,” she said, and I leaned into her.