Defy the Night

by Heather Munn

  I shoved my hands into my pockets. “If you’d come to l’Espoir you’d see me.”

  “Magali, you do not want to see me try to hold a baby. It’s a terrifying sight. I plan to do the world a favor and not have any kids.”

  I laughed. Then I sighed. I turned to her, and opened my mouth. I almost said, Let’s go study at your place tonight. In my mind I saw the two of us sitting cross-legged on her lumpy eiderdown with her cheerful clutter of books and clothes around us, laughing our heads off. I thought of Rivesaltes, and Paquerette’s eyes when she’d said very well done. I said nothing.

  There were worse things. I couldn’t meet the train, either.

  I’d walk out of the kitchen where I was boiling beans for supper, and I’d stand at the south window and look down over the town, and see the white steam rising in the air where la Galoche was pulling into the station. I’d close my eyes, take a deep breath, and walk back to the kitchen. And buckle down hard on my homework at the kitchen table, so after supper I’d have time to go to l’Espoir and find out whether Paquerette came in.

  I didn’t see the kids she brought. Only the babies. Léon was gaining weight. Zvi too, but he still had a sleepy look about him, and they worried. I sat on the couch by Rosa—her feeding Zvi, me feeding Léon, smelling the top of his little head. Babies weren’t so bad. I held him against my chest and remembered his mother, the tears streaming down her face, and my promise. I’ll take care of your baby. I had. I’d gotten him safe home. I wanted to do it again, I wanted it so bad I could feel it in my body, in that place in my guts I hadn’t known existed before this year. I wanted to save as many as I could.

  When they were all asleep I would walk home across the place du centre and up my dark street and push open the heavy door of my house, thinking of my bed and my pillow, thinking of Paquerette bedding down on the stone floor of a train station somewhere, ready to wake at dawn, like a hunter, like a soldier; wanting nothing more than to do that with her, to become like her. Knowing this was the way there. Like a hunter, like a soldier; a person who does what she has to do.

  And then I went up the cold stone stairs to my bed, so I could wake the next morning at dawn, and do it all again.

  MAMA WAS better. She sang Verdi in the kitchen while she did the dishes. Then Mama was worse again, only strong enough to give me a pale smile and chop onions while I cooked. The days blurred together. They seemed less and less different from each other, her good days and her bad days. I came down in the morning and she’d be sitting at the table, reading her Bible. She’d look up and smile, and say, “I’m so glad you’re up, would you mind starting the stove fire?”

  Lucy came to school one day and didn’t smile, didn’t talk. At break she took me off to the riverbank and told me she was moving to America.

  “What?”

  “My father wants me to live with him now. He already paid for my visa. Without asking me.”

  “America.” I blinked. “Lots of people would kill for a visa to America.”

  “Well they’re welcome to it.” She turned to me and I saw her eyes were red. “He bought me passage on a boat. In August. He didn’t even ask me!” Her voice cracked and tears welled up in her eyes.

  August. Somewhere deep in my stomach I felt like I was falling. I was losing it all, leaving it all behind. Lucy, and laughter, and feeling free. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’ll miss you.”

  She looked down, and kicked at the frosted grass.

  I was leaving it all behind. Becoming a person who shut up, who’d learned to do what I had to do and not think about what I wanted.

  Who worried about money.

  The first time Papa put our family’s money and ration cards in my hands, I was terrified. I couldn’t believe he was doing it. I mean it’s one thing for your parents to send you to buy something they don’t know the price of in peacetime. This was something else.

  “You sure, Papa?”

  “I think you can do it, Magali. You’re doing very well.” There was pride in his eyes. Good sign.

  I learned real math. I stood in the grocery store and calculated over and over till I was sure I was right: how much did we have for the month, what weight of beans did we need, would we be able to afford milk from Monsieur Rostin this week. If we could just make it till spring really got going, Grandpa would have eggs for us again. There’d be greens, and then summer would come on and there’d be tomatoes and cucumbers and carrots and fresh potatoes, I’d make spaghetti sauce—

  No. No. Mama would make spaghetti sauce.

  Because Mama would be better by then. She’d make spaghetti sauce and she’d garden and cook while I traveled with Paquerette and saved children. Maybe I’d still have to help her a little. I’d quit Scouts so I’d have enough time. Yes. That was how it would be. There was a high whine in my head like a radio tuned wrong. Wrong, wrong.

  I couldn’t picture it. I couldn’t.

  The buds came out on the trees. I worked; I studied. I put my winter boots away and got out my summer shoes and a week later they started to break, the leather cracking around my big toes on both sides. Papa didn’t say anything and I didn’t either. I knew how much shoes cost now.

  Mama got better and got worse again. The new green grass began to show beside the roads. At the end of May I turned sixteen. Mama bought some goat meat from Monsieur Rostin, but I had to cook it myself. I boiled it tender and saved the broth carefully for soup. My present was a pair of shoes Grandpa had made, with canvas uppers and wooden soles. They gave me blisters.

  At home no one mentioned Paquerette, ever. I fed Léon, and Rosa fed Zvi, and I looked at his half-closed eyes and remembered how hungry we were during the invasion, that tired-blood feeling, and thought I knew how he felt. I saw Paquerette, when she happened to be there. I asked about her trips. I could almost smell the dust of Rivesaltes on her skin. That high gate, that wind. I wanted to walk in that gate again and save whoever I could save. I wanted it so much it hurt.

  She asked me, a couple of times, whether my parents had said anything about the summer. I said no.

  “But do you think they’re still thinking about it? That they’re still open?”

  The words stuck in my throat. I couldn’t lie to Paquerette. “I don’t know.”

  There was acceptance in her eyes. Quiet, practical acceptance. They slid off me; I could read her thought: I wonder if there’s anyone else I could ask.

  It hurt so bad.

  Chapter 7

  Everyone Has Her Child

  THAT WAS the year I figured out why people write poetry about spring.

  Two words: warmth and food.

  A wind that doesn’t try to knife you. The sun on your skin, like the world becoming kind again. You could almost forget we were at war.

  The first mess of dandelion greens Julien brought me. I would’ve turned up my nose, back in Paris. Now I tossed them with vinaigrette. New grass came up in the pastures. The price of goat milk went down. Julien set snares in the hills, and promised me a rabbit. I hugged him.

  The last of the ice melted off the banks of the Tanne, and the river rose. The birds all twittered madly in the trees. The apple blossoms opened. My feet didn’t hurt anymore in my wooden-soled shoes. Mama had a whole week with no headaches. I met Paquerette at the train.

  It had just rained, and the sun was shining, and Nina’s crutches clicked on the wet pavement; Rosa squeezed my hand, and Sonia, who’d started meeting the train with them, smiled shyly at us as we walked together. Tall white clouds raced through the blue sky just as fast as my heart wanted to go, and I watched them, and remembered the cold nights walking home from l’Espoir, and without even thinking about it I prayed. Oh let this be my life.

  Every morning I got up and came down, and there was Mama, sitting in the slanted morning sunlight reading her Bible. Every time I saw her there, something loosened deep inside me, like the crusts of ice at the edges of the river, melting in the sun.

  It was hard to believe. I had
to work at it. I kept bracing for the bad day—and it came. One here, two there. But then it was gone again. As if she’d relaxed, now. As if I had done whatever it was she needed. I didn’t feel a fist gripping the center of my chest anymore when I woke in the morning wondering what I’d find downstairs. Day after day, what I found was her, sitting with her Bible in the morning sunlight, looking up, when I opened the door, with a peaceful face. Those dark cold mornings laying the fire by myself were gone. Now the sun came up early, now the chill was off the air. The young leaves were all unfolding, and the grass was green right down to the riverbank when I came out the barn door of my classroom on break and stood there with Lucy in the soft warm air, talking and laughing. Like normal people. It was the most amazing feeling.

  Hope.

  My grades were good. I raised my hand in history class and gave Papa the right answer, just to see his eyebrows go up like that again. I stood in the kitchen and chopped green onions and washed young lettuce for my mother while she cooked—my mother who had put the beans in to soak yesterday and done everybody’s laundry and who was singing Rigoletto and whom I’d honestly never appreciated enough. I went down to l’Espoir and told Paquerette maybe I’d been wrong. Just to see her eyes light up.

  At the end of June the Germans invaded the USSR. My father stared at the radio like he literally believed he might have gone crazy. They used to have a treaty, see, swearing not to attack each other. Hitler seems to be the backstabbing type.

  And then Papa started to laugh like it was the best joke ever.

  “Papa?”

  He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face. Took a couple of breaths and then shook his head, sobering up. “I’m sorry. I really should not laugh about the invasion of a country—I’m sorry. Apparently I’m a little far gone.” But his lips twisted upward a little. “Still,” he said, “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

  “Napoleon,” said Julien.

  “Yes indeed.” He looked at me. “You know what he means, Magali?”

  I managed not to sigh. I’m a good student too now, remember? “Napoleon invaded Russia too.”

  His odd smile widened. “He did indeed, ma chère Lili. It was a very serious mistake. In fact it’s widely considered”—he was grinning now—“to be the mistake that brought him down.”

  See?

  Hope. Everywhere.

  I TOOK my exams. All day answering word problems and essay questions in a big room, dead-quiet except for the scratching of pens. It was hard. But I’d done the work. I wasn’t winning any prizes, but I walked out the door without a single reasonable doubt that I had passed.

  It was one of those completely glorious June days, with high white clouds hanging in the baby-blue sky and the warm soft wind in your face and feeling like you could just spread your wings and fly up into it. It was almost five when they let us out, and the sunlight glittered blindingly on the river as I walked along it toward the Bellevue Hotel, where Papa taught seventh-hour history to the sixièmes. I could walk home with him. I could tell him. I was done, done, done, I had done it. There was no better feeling in the whole world. Except the feeling I was waiting for.

  Yes, Magali, you can do it. You can go save children.

  Papa came out, ran his hand through his hair and gave a huge sigh. “Well, Magali,” he said. “You’re done! Headed home?”

  I nodded. We fell into step together, up the sloping street. I was trying to decide if I could wait till the grades came in, or if it was stupid to go for it now.

  “So, Magali, how do you feel it went for you?”

  I never was good at waiting. “I passed.” I said it with the certainty I felt. “I didn’t get top grades,” I added so he knew I wasn’t just being arrogant, “but I passed.”

  He smiled at me. “Well, that sounds like the assessment of a level-headed young lady.”

  I grinned. “So, Papa. Think I did it?”

  “Did it?”

  “You know. What you asked.”

  It took him a moment. Then his eyebrows went up. “Oh! When I asked you to take on responsibility at home? Yes, you have done it. You’ve done very well—better than I imagined, to be honest.”

  “So …” I wished he’d bring it up on his own. “So what have you decided?”

  “Decided?”

  “About … about my traveling with Paquerette?”

  There was a pause and my heart began to quicken. I looked at him; his face was clouding. My fingers clenched, suddenly, like they held some hard-earned coin I couldn’t afford to lose.

  “We … we haven’t discussed it, Magali. I … I … well … I …”

  “You what?” My voice cracked.

  We’d both stopped on the sidewalk by now. He stood there and swallowed. About three times. And didn’t speak.

  “We had a deal, Papa. Remember? We had a deal? I’d be an adult—prove I was ready for … greater things?”

  He stared at me. His face had fallen completely; there was no expression on it. “That,” he said very slowly, “was why you helped your mother? Because you thought I had made it a condition of … of …”

  I could feel it slipping through my fingers. My hard-earned hope. Another second and it would go spinning down into the dark. I swallowed and blinked hard. “I did it. You said I did it.” My voice was almost normal. The June sun hurt my eyes.

  “And here I thought …” He ran a hand through his hair. He didn’t speak for a few seconds. “Magali,” he said finally, quietly, “I am very sorry and very surprised to find that I gave you the impression we were making a deal. It was not my intention. I don’t even remember whatever I may have said about proving your readiness for greater things, but whatever it was, I meant it in a general sense, Magali. I thought you had taken it that way.” He looked at me, his eyes wide, and after a moment ran his hand through his hair again. “It seems to have been rather careless of me. I suppose I ought to have known.”

  I took a breath. Rather careless? You ruined my life and you think you were— I shut my mouth. Mature. I. Am. Mature. I took another breath and stood straighter, and looked him in the eye. “Even if you meant it in a general sense, Papa, it’s true. I did an adult’s work and I know what that’s like now. I’m ready.”

  Those eyebrows went up again. And down. He looked away, somewhere off behind me, as he spoke. “No doubt you are, Magali. But it was never my decision.”

  And that was it. I felt it drop from my numb fingers. What does hope look like? Some little blown-glass thing, all see-through, hardly even there. It shatters on the pavement, and no one but you hears the tiny sound.

  I could barely get the word past my lips. “Mama?”

  “I’m sorry, Magali.”

  I stood blinking in that horrible sunlight, exposed there on the wide-open street, blinking and blinking. I was not a child and I would not cry. Finally I thought I could trust my voice. “What can I do to convince her?”

  “I have to be honest with you, Magali. I don’t know. I’m not sure anything will.”

  I took it like a woman. I stood there looking him in the eye above the sharp little shards of my dream. I took it like Paquerette would have.

  Well, except for the part where I lied to my father.

  “I forgot to tell you,” I said, forcing the words past the lump in my throat. “They asked me to help out at l’Espoir today. Right now. I don’t know if I’ll be home for supper. Is that okay?”

  He nodded. I think he knew, really. I opened my empty hands and turned away.

  I COULD barely see the street through my tears as I rounded the corner to l’Espoir. So far I had kept them from running down my cheeks and betraying me to the world, but I wasn’t sure it was going to last. The brown door with the painted wooden sign over it looked like home. I knocked and pushed it open. We don’t wait to hear an answer, at l’Espoir.

  A wave of heat hit me. It was stifling in there. There was a fire in the fireplace and a bassinet on the coffee table
and a hard, hot tension in the air. I froze. Madame Sabatier and Madeleine bent over the bassinet. Madame Sabatier’s eyes flicked upward in her pale, strained face; she saw me, but made no sign. Dr. Reynaud knelt on the wood floor with his stethoscope on. For a moment no one moved.

  Then Dr. Reynaud straightened suddenly and bent to his black bag, his fingers working fast, putting something together. “I’m going to give him an injection.” I took a step closer. His face was very intent. “That way the medicine will take effect as quickly as possible. Will you hold him, Madame?”

  I watched, not moving, as Madame Sabatier lifted him up. It was Zvi. Of course it was Zvi. In the silence that fell I suddenly heard the tiny rasp of his breathing, and dread grabbed my heart like a fist.

  I heard him try to cry, as the needle slipped in. I heard him choke instead.

  Madame Sabatier put him up against her shoulder. She patted his back while he choked and coughed. He writhed. Her face scared me. “Doctor,” she said, “what should we do?”

  Back in the nursery a baby started to cry. It sounded like Léon.

  “You have been doing the right things, Madame. Keep him warm. Keep his nose clear. Try to help him cough up anything he can, as you are doing. Try to get him to drink, as I said yesterday, but for now, only a little. If he is able to sleep let him sleep. Rest will be more important for him now. I expect the crisis will come today.”

  Madame Sabatier’s eyes were big and dark. “You mean—”

  “I mean you will know whether he is going to recover.”

  “Do you think he will?”

  The doctor bent to his black bag again and began to pack it up. Avoiding her eyes. Léon was screaming by now. Suddenly my feet came unstuck from the floor. No one seemed to even see me as I went to the nursery door.