One lunchtime I moved my spoon through a watery broth and asked, “Maman?”
“Hm?”
“The money? That the man gave us for Cosette?”
“What of it?”
“Do we still have it? We don’t eat tender beef anymore and there’s no wood for the fire …”
“You think it’s easy? Running a place like this? Would you like to cook the meals and do the work and care for two children? Would you?”
Three children, I thought. She always forgot about Gavroche.
“How old are you now? Seven?”
“I’m eight and a half, Maman.”
“Then you’re old enough to be told.” She put down her spoon. “Your father gambles—did you know that? With the wretched Boulatruelle.”
Maybe I did know because I’d seen them playing dominoes together. I knew that men made roosters fight for money behind our inn sometimes.
“He’s always gambled … but these days? He took that fifteen hundred and lost nearly all of it! There’s none left, Eponine. He’s been a fool, saying, Oh, but I’ll win the money back next time … ,” she mimicked him, then spat, “But of course he never has and never will. Boulatruelle is the rich one, now—rich with our money.” She rubbed her forehead and sighed.
“We must start thieving again, Maman?”
She glanced up. Briefly, she looked sorry. “This isn’t much of a life for you, is it?”
Maman. Mostly she was hard and hot-tempered and she’d crack a walnut with her fist or stamp on a mouse if she saw one. But there were also rare moments in which she could seem gentle, or nearly.
I stepped toward her, thinking she might hold me like other mothers did. “Maman, don’t be sad …”
She flinched. The moment was over, and she shooed me away. “Don’t be weak, Eponine! Just steal, that’s what I want! Steal anything! From anyone! And don’t give it to your father—bring it all to me.”
* * *
I wanted Maman to smile and kiss me and say, Well done, my darling Eponine. So I went out to steal for her.
I took the brass doorknob from the butcher’s door, lifted a hat from a sleeping man. In Chelles I snatched a gold-tipped hairpin from the glossy curls of a lady and she cried out as her hair tumbled down, “Stop! Thief!”
Maman studied it. “A hairpin? Better than nothing. What else?”
It was harder to steal as the weather got colder because people were more muffled and doors were often closed. But one night I remembered a conversation I’d heard between my father and Boulatruelle, long ago. There are silver candlesticks at the church in Gagny … Churches had riches, then? It was our church in Montfermeil that I went to the next day.
I’d never been inside a church before.
It smelled of dust and beeswax. It was silent too: No one else was in there, and my breathing and my footsteps seemed to be the only sounds. The windows were colored red and green and ink blue.
I sat on a pew for a while. Here is a place where people have been christened and married and laid in the ground, I thought. Good people who do not steal. It made me feel like I didn’t belong there. I was a Thenardier and this place was meant for better, kinder folk than me.
I didn’t want to live a horrible life, full of lies. But what could I do? I had to steal because we had no money and we had to feed Gavroche and keep ourselves warm in winter.
I blew my nose on the hem of my skirt and decided something.
I will give. Yes, I had to steal but I would try—try really hard—to give as well. With each bad thing, I’d do a good one, because that might, just might, make it all better. I’d be kind more than I’d be cruel.
When I was back in the inn I realized that I’d never even looked for silver candlesticks, but it didn’t matter. I felt I’d come back with something even shinier—my bright new idea.
I started with small things. I stole a loaf of bread from the miller, and then, feeling bad about it, I picked a fistful of blackberries and left them on his doorstep. I knew he liked blackberries because everybody did.
After that, it was flowers. I still felt ashamed of snatching the Widow Amandine’s necklace so I went to her husband’s grave and left some honeysuckle on it. I hoped it might make her smile a little.
I swept the church path of leaves. I stacked its hymn books, one by one. After I’d secretly stolen a metal fitting from a bridle, I took a handful of mushrooms to the blacksmith.
“What’s this?” he asked, suspicious.
“Mushrooms.”
“I see that. But why are you giving them to me?”
“There’s lots of them near the woods. I just thought you might like some.”
He smiled. His heart was a trusting kind. “Merci. Bless you, Eponine,” and I remember that because it was the first blessing I’d ever had.
* * *
I got more daring in my stealing. I skimmed cream from the top of milk churns and pulled a fur hat off a lady in Chelles. I snatched the horse blanket that covered the old gray nag because I knew it would keep us cozy when winter came.
“A fine little thief, when you put your mind to it.” Maman gave me her sideways smile.
But I could be a fine giver too. I did all the good deeds I could, without being seen. I lifted all the dead bugs and old leaves out of the nag’s water trough, cleaned the butcher’s windows with soap, spit, and my sleeve. I took down Monsieur and Madame Lefevre’s washing from its line and folded it and left it by their door. One starry evening, as I passed the old cottage where Monsieur Venard lived—the man whose sons died at Waterloo—I heard his door squeaking back and forth. I mended it with grease from our kitchen walls. He cried, “It’s a miracle! Listen! Silent! After all these years …”
I helped Old Auguste too. His hands were so gnarled and bent with age that he couldn’t pick the peaches from his tree that year. “Excusez-moi?” I said to him. “Do you need help picking the peaches?”
He nodded, raised his hands. “Look at these … such useless hands! What good are they?”
“Leave it to me, Old Auguste.”
All afternoon, I picked his fruit. I stuffed my pockets and bodice and skirts with them and carried them down to him. “You’ve got loads of them—look! You could sell them—ten centimes a peach? People would pay because they’re so juicy.”
As we sucked our peaches, side by side, he said, “But you are a Thenardier, ma chérie. They say that your family thieve and cheat … why are you being nice to me?”
I sniffed, looked down. “I want to be honest. I’ve got a good heart inside me, Auguste, I’m sure of it.”
He leaned closer, smiled. “Like the peaches? Sometimes the speckled ones are the best of all …”
Maman was uneasy when I got home that night. “Your skirts are torn and sticky and you’ve got juice on your chin. What’ve you been up to?” But I didn’t tell her. She’d be cross or she wouldn’t understand, so I didn’t tell anyone.
If Cosette had still been there, I might have told her, but she wasn’t. She’s far away now, I thought. With the yellow-coated man.
I realized then that I missed her.
* * *
Those were some of my happiest days, but they didn’t last. Papa changed everything—and not through gambling or theft but through something much, much darker.
A frosty night. We huddled in the bar. We hadn’t had any customers for months so it was just us and the spiders, crouching in the dark.
Gavroche was nestled next to me, practicing my name: “Pony, Pony …”
Maman hissed, “Make him stop. He’s giving me a headache …”
Then Papa walked in, pulling his coat around him. “I’m going out.”
“Where to?”
“That’s my business.”
Maman raised her finger. “If you’re meeting that toad Boulatruelle …”
He shook his head. “I’m going alone. All I need is this,” he said, patting his coat pocket, and I heard the tap of his fingernails against
the bone-handled knife that I’d stolen from Claude the blacksmith. He always carried it.
Azelma stood up. “I want to come with you.”
“No, you’re too young.”
She stamped her foot. “I’m not too young! I’m not, I’m not,” she said, until Maman slammed her hands down.
“Take her, Luc! I’ve got a sore head and I don’t want her here in this foul mood …”
So Papa and Azelma walked out together into the frosty night.
* * *
Gavroche and I were sleeping under the horse blanket when we heard, Bang!
It was the door. What time was it? Midnight or later. Maman was standing in our room, saying, “Wake up! Wake up!” I’d never seen her frightened before. She pulled the blanket from us, said, “Get out of bed! Out, out!” and she rummaged through the basket where we kept our clothes. “You’ll need your warmest things—”
“What’s happened, Maman?”
“We’re leaving.”
“Leaving?”
“Leaving the inn and Montfermeil.” She threw clothes at me—my stockings and my bodice and my thickest skirt. “Your father has done a stupid thing …”
I dressed. “What has he done?”
“He meant to rob a man but in his wisdom he used his knife … and a gendarme saw him! A gendarme who recognized him because he cried out, ‘Stop, Thenardier!’ ”
I felt sick. “A man’s hurt?”
Maman straightened up from the basket. “Hurt? He’s dead. A bishop. Your father heard rumors that he’d be passing through Livry tonight—gold in his pockets and silver in his purse … But the man had nothing! Not even a sou, after all of that! He’s killed a bishop and we’re running away with nothing to show for it …” She muttered a curse word. “Downstairs, Eponine.”
With that, she was gone. I wrapped Gavroche in every blanket we had, lifted him onto my hip, and went downstairs. Papa was sweating, pacing back and forth. “You’re bringing the boy? He’ll slow us down.”
“He’ll starve if we leave him! And Papa,” I said, thinking quickly, “Gavroche can talk now: What if he speaks to the gendarmerie? About all the other things we’ve stolen?” I didn’t want him to be left.
Maman sighed. “We’ll have to take him then. Ready?”
It was trying to snow. The flakes stung my cheeks and hands, and as we slipped away Azelma asked, “Are we ever coming back?”
“No,” she replied. “Say good-bye to Montfermeil because we’ll never be here again.”
* * *
We hurried. Papa and Maman carried blankets and bags, Azelma had a loaf of bread, and I clutched Gavroche—and like this we ran with thumping hearts and our feet going crunch, crunch, crunch on the frosty ground.
We passed the old nag. We passed the butcher’s shop and the apple orchard and the wooden bench and the blacksmith’s and the place where wild roses grew. The church. Old Auguste’s peach tree.
Good-bye, good-bye.
I thought of Cosette then. She’d left Montfermeil in snowy weather like this, but she’d been promised a better life by the man with the gentle face. What life was waiting for me now?
“Where are we going, Papa?” I asked.
He spat on the ground, wiped his mouth. “Woods, ditches, old barns … Places we can hide because they’ll be looking for us. We’ll move at night when we cannot be seen.”
“Ditches?” said Maman. “I’m not sleeping in ditches!”
“You will, or they’ll find us. We must hide for a few years, that’s all.”
A few years?
Papa looked into the distance. “But we’ll get to Paris in the end.”
* * *
I glanced back at Montfermeil just once. We’d left the cat behind and I wondered if she was watching us at that moment—five silhouettes on the horizon, clutching blankets and bread.
Nobody saw us go. Were we missed in the morning? I don’t think so, but I like to think that people noticed when the butcher’s windows grew dirty again, when no one cleared the church path of dead leaves anymore.
I climbed walls and waded through streams and crossed fields by moonlight, and if an owl hooted, Papa shouted, “Get down! It’s the gendarmerie!” He said he could smell their rifles. When the wind blew, he thought he could hear their footsteps as they came closer and closer …
Azelma complained. “Papa, this is silly. I’m cold and I hate sleeping in ditches and they’re probably not even looking for us anymore …”
He grabbed her. “Silly? They’ll put shackles on me, if they find me! They’ll hang me or take me to the guillotine—and you too!”
She flinched. “Me? Why me? I didn’t kill the bishop!”
“No, but you were there! You helped me, and you were seen! Oh yes, they’ve a set of shackles for you too …”
No one complained after that. Azelma stole her own knife and kept it sharp. She clenched her fists and narrowed her eyes and, like Papa, she believed every shadow had a gendarme in it.
* * *
That’s how we lived. We were filthy and tired and hungry.
We stole, like always. I reached into henhouses for eggs and kennels for bones, and I climbed trees for fruit. As for Azelma, she became as bold and cunning as a rat, smelling out coins like a rat smells out meat. She moved like a rat too—very quickly, along the bottom of walls. She cut off her hair (“It gets in the way”) and knotted her skirts so she could run faster, and she came back at dawn with all sorts of treasures—milk in a pail and a silver hand mirror and a pair of men’s shoes for Papa. Once she brought a goose.
“A goose!” Gavroche squawked, just like the goose did before Azelma snapped its neck. We gobbled up that roasted bird like we’d never eaten before.
We were hungrier than ever. But I reckon it wasn’t just the running that did it. We were changing shape, Azelma and me. Our hips were getting bigger and our bodies filled out. Maman saw this, said, “My babies … My two baby girls. You’ll be women soon.”
* * *
Not long afterward, I found that silver hand mirror. We were sleeping in a barn and I felt a hard, cold something underneath the straw. I reached down and there it was. I thought, Why hasn’t Maman sold it? I knew it must be worth a lot. I lifted it up and turned it over.
The girl who looked back at me had twigs in her hair and chapped lips. There was dirt on her cheek that wouldn’t come off with a licked finger, so it must have been there a long time. Was she sad? She looked it.
I hadn’t thought of Cosette for ages but I did now. Even when she’d been grubby and thin, she was pretty. Now her face would be pink and clean and lovely. She’d have perfect teeth and all that sun-colored hair …
I will never be beautiful. Not like she was. My heart’s pebble knocked against its walls.
I put the mirror down.
Through the barn door, I could see the stars.
“Will things be better in Paris?” I asked them. And they shone so brightly at me that I felt they were saying, Yes, they will, Eponine. Yes. You’ll see.
We ran for nearly six years. Gavroche changed completely—from a toddler to a boy who could sprint and climb trees. He’d got Maman’s freckles and coppery hair but his nature wasn’t like hers. He was cheeky and cheerful.
“Come on, Eponine!” he shouted. “You’re as slow as a snail …”
Gavroche. I wrote his name in mud with a stick. “See? That’s how you spell it.” I showed him how to blow grass and tie knots and one night I showed him which direction was north. “See that star? It’s the North Star.”
But he didn’t look at the star. Instead he frowned and said, “What’s that noise?”
There was a deep rumbling sound and we followed it to the widest river I’d ever seen. It was silver in the moonlight and foaming where it broke over rocks and it was so loud we couldn’t hear each other and had to shout with cupped hands.
“I’ll tell Maman! Stay here!” Because I knew we needed a place to drink and wash ourselves.
“Look,” called Azelma, “a boat!”
It was upturned and splintery. It had a hole in its bottom so it wasn’t good for sailing in but it looked like a shelter, made just for us. For a while that upturned boat was our sleeping place. When it rained it drummed on the roof like fingers and the raindrops dripped through the hole onto my nose.
“We’ll stay here a day or two,” Papa said. But we ended up staying much longer than that.
* * *
One night I heard a crack! It was like wood had been snapped or ice had been trodden on. Father, Azelma, and Gavroche were off stealing and I was cleaning a fish of its silvery scales. I didn’t know what the cracking sound was.
“Eponine!” Maman screamed out.
I dropped the fish and ran to her. She’d fallen by the river and her left leg was twisted underneath her. “My leg! Oh, mercy! Oh, the pain!”
I helped her back to the upturned boat. But that night, she wailed and wailed. She needed a doctor—but how could we find one when we were criminals?
Papa was furious. “What’s this? You’ve broken your leg?”
“My ankle, I think.”
He was disgusted. “How are we meant to keep moving if you can’t walk? They’ll find us! They’ll hang me!”
She was furious back. Despite the pain, she heaved herself up and said, “Yes, yes—this is all about you, like everything is! What about me? Do you think I like this life? Sleeping under a boat, for God’s sake? We wouldn’t even be running if it wasn’t for you and that knife and that vile temper of yours …”
They fought till daybreak. Azelma, Gavroche, and I roasted the fish and ate it on the beach.
Azelma said, “Maybe we should go on without her.”
A Little in Love Page 5