Perhaps living here wouldn’t be so terrible after all.
II
The next year was one of lessons.
Rosine assumed charge of me; through her, I learned of my family’s provenance.
Born in the Netherlands to Jewish parents, my mother and her two sisters had left their country as soon as they were of suitable age. The eldest of the three, Henriette, wed a cloth merchant in Ariège and had a family of her own, while Rosine and my mother traveled for a time before settling in Paris. What they did to earn a living was a mystery, however, as was our heritage. Julie didn’t follow any of the strictures of our faith; there wasn’t a mezuzah nailed to our doorway or a single item of Hebrew worship in the flat. As Nana had raised me Catholic, I assumed my mother’s faith was of no particular importance.
Rosine soon set me to studying, tutoring me every day with a set of primers. I learned how to spell my name and recite the alphabet; I labored over basic letters until my fingers cramped and my eyes swam. But I proved an avid student, for I found words fascinating—a portal into a new world, where stories of swan princesses and frog princes, of witches in hovels and flying carriages made of pumpkins, helped relieve the strict schedule dictated by Julie that everyone in the flat had to adhere to.
The day when everything in my new life changed began like any other. The evening before had been tedious, with Julie entertaining her assortment of friends in her salon until all but one of the men departed. Since my arrival, I’d grown accustomed to seeing strange gentlemen come and go from the flat. All of Julie’s friends were male; it was another mystery to me. Sometimes she had me serve these “suitors,” as she called them, summoning me at the appointed hour with my tray of canapés, my unruly mass of red-gold hair plaited in a braid and an ingratiating smile on my lips. The men ignored me after a cursory glance; now and then, one reached out to pat my bottom and remark, “Such a bony child. Julie, do you not feed her?” to which my mother would reply with her falsetto laugh, “She eats without restraint and never gains an ounce. She was raised in Brittany, too; all that fresh country air…why, you’d think she’d be plump as a partridge, like me.”
Despite the men’s chuckles, I heard the petulant undertone in her voice. Julie clearly didn’t like that I was thin as a whisper, my collarbones so incised that raindrops could collect in their hollows, as I once heard her say with disdain. Yet to my bewilderment, she never failed to chastise me if I dared to ask for a second helping at breakfast or dinner, remarking I hadn’t yet learned that in Paris, food didn’t just pop up out of the ground or fall ripe from the trees.
Yet her suitors always found her amusing, another baffling mystery to me. How could they not see she was pretending to be someone she wasn’t? In the afternoons before her salon gatherings, she spent hours at her mirror, her maid helping her into her ornate dress as if she lacked the strength to do it on her own. But her angry reproofs if her stays weren’t laced tightly enough or if her maid fetched her the wrong bracelet betrayed that she wasn’t quite as helpless as she feigned, that everything she did was designed to an end.
Once her suitors arrived, however, she put on a constant smile, attentive to their every request, even as I felt her eyes boring into me as I served the canapés. The moment one of her guests paid me the slightest mind, she waved me back to my room, where I fell asleep to her laughter and the men’s conversation.
She invariably slept until noon. Rosine saw to my breakfast and my lessons before sending me out to play in the building courtyard, so I wouldn’t disturb.
“Your maman’s sleep is very important,” said Rosine. “She needs to rest as much as possible”—yet another mystery, for it seemed to me that she did little else, languishing in either her bedroom or the salon, with only the occasional burst of activity when she pinned on a hat to go shopping or laded on jewels for an evening at the Opéra.
On this particular morning, I woke before Rosine. We shared a bedroom, the flat being cramped, but my aunt slept like a stone, exhausted from her oversight of the household’s daily affairs. Through the crack of our door, I watched an elderly gentleman tiptoe from Julie’s chamber. He was balding on top, but had very long mustachios that drooped about his mouth. In his gray frock coat with its shiny lapels, his black top hat and silver-tipped cane, to me, he resembled an overdressed grandfather.
I didn’t think anything of his furtive departure. I’d seen him before. He’d been attending the salon ever since I arrived in Paris, favored above the others, for he often stayed overnight. He’d never given me more than a passing glance, either. Yet as he now paused to adjust his coat, he happened to glance up to catch me staring at him. I wasn’t yet dressed. I stood in my shift in the open doorway, my braid unraveled in frizzy disarray that my aunt had sought in vain to subdue with hot irons and elderflower rinses.
His mild brown eyes took on an odd gleam. He crooked his finger at me. I felt heat creep into my cheeks when he whispered, “Come here, ma petite. Let me get a look at you.”
Although I didn’t know why these men filled our house almost every night except on Sunday, Rosine had drummed into my head that I must never ask. I must never question. They were my mother’s “special friends” and I must show them proper respect.
“Children should be seen and never heard,” admonished my aunt. “Sarah, do you understand? Julie would not wish to have her suitors subjected to inanities.”
I had done my utmost to obey. I didn’t even know this particular suitor’s name, and as I grappled with the potential consequences of refusing what I sensed was not a proper request, he took a step toward me.
“Ma petite,” he said again. “Why do you hide from me? I only wish to see you.”
He might tell Julie. He might mention that I’d been rude. Moving cautiously from behind the door, hearing my aunt snoring behind me in the narrow bed, I gave him a weak smile, bobbing a curtsy as I tugged at my rumpled shift, trying to cover my knobby knees.
A smile parted his mustachios, revealing yellowed teeth. “Ah, yes. Very pretty. Très belle like your maman. Come closer, child. Let old Morny give you a kiss.”
I came to a halt. He said he’d wanted to see me, and now he wanted to give me a kiss? As his hand reached out between us—a knotted, liver-spotted hand, like a troll’s in a fairy tale—I slapped his fingers aside before he could touch me.
He recoiled, his eyes flaring. “Do you know who I am?” he rumbled, and I heard Rosine gasp from behind me, her yanking aside the bedsheets as she came to her feet.
I glared at him. “Yes. You are Julie’s special friend. Go kiss her instead.”
Rosine rushed to me, her hands on my shoulders as she said haltingly, “Please forgive her, Monsieur. She’s only a child, and—”