The French War Bride

by Robin Wells

  “Why? Because I don’t want my ears worn out before you tell me what I want to know?”

  Mon Dieu, but she is hard to be nice to! And here I have made up my mind to be kinder. I lay awake last night berating myself for not being more empathetic, more understanding.

  “Actually, I thought that perhaps you wouldn’t want to spend a second day in my company.” It is hard to admit it—I have trouble with admissions, it seems—but I knew I was being difficult yesterday. I was not getting what I wanted from her, and that made me resentful. It also made me furious with myself; why am I seeking anything from this woman?

  And what is it that I want from her? Understanding, I suppose. Understanding and forgiveness. Haven’t I learned, in my ninety-three years on earth, to depend on no one’s opinion but my own? Apparently not. Alas, we are all doomed to want the validation of others, up until we draw our very last breath.

  “I came because I need to know what happened,” she says stiffly.

  “I know. And you deserve the truth.”

  She looks at me as if it is a trick. Being nice to her is a strategy that throws her for a loop, I see. Perhaps I should have tried it sooner.

  “Come in, come in.” I step back and hold the door wide. “Would you like a coffee? Or a tea?”

  “Some water would be nice.”

  I go to the kitchen and pull a glass from the cabinet.

  “Don’t you have bottled water?” she asks.

  Bottled water? When fresh clean water flows from a tap? How silly. Besides, she has cancer anyway. “No. Sorry.”

  All the same, I put ice in her glass—Americans always like their ice—and I use the filtered water from the refrigerator door, although the tap is faster. As I turn to head back to the living room, I see that she has settled in my chair.

  I swallow back a burst of resentment. I offered her the chair to start with yesterday, had I not?

  “I hope you don’t mind,” she says. “My back is a bit sore from the couch.”

  Of course I mind, when she puts it as a criticism of my sofa’s comfort. Who on earth wouldn’t? I blow out a little sigh. “Not at all,” I lie, and move my coffee cup from the side table by the chair to the coffee table in front of the sofa.

  “I could not sleep last night, thinking of how you deceived us about that baby.”

  Now that I look at her closely, I realize that she is fairly bristling with outrage. There is no use in pointing out that I had not deceived her; Jack had. “If you are angry now, you are only going to get angrier,” I say. “Perhaps you should just go.”

  “No. Please.” For a moment, she looks sincere—like a real person, with real emotions, not an image she is carefully curating for consumption. “I am just shocked that things are so different from how I always thought they were.”

  “I understand.” I take a sip of my coffee. “Shall I continue?”

  “Yes. Please do.”

  I settle on the sofa in the place I used to sit with Jack. I always sat on the right-hand side; Jack used to sit in the middle, beside me, with his arm slung across the back, his hand on my shoulder. Oh, how I miss the weight of his hand!

  I close my eyes, letting the memories come. Time seems a thing that goes in circles instead of steadily moving forward. I let it pull me around and back, and then I start talking.

  1945

  The days after the liberation were, for me, worse than the war. As a shorn woman, I constantly kept my head covered and lived in fear of humiliation.

  I believe that actual prostitutes had it better than I, because they had each other for support. The SS and Wermacht had commandeered twenty-two well-known brothels, such as Le Chabanais—it was a favorite of Goering during the war, and before that, King Edward VII had been a regular customer. The Germans would pay a sum equal to a senior officer’s weekly pay for just one visit, plus they brought chocolates and champagne and cigarettes to their favorite girl, to maintain the illusion of decorum.

  When I went back to the dormitory at my hotel the day of our shaving, I wore one of Yvette’s dresses with a belt tightly cinched around my waist—she was taller and bigger in every way than me—and a little cloche on my head. I did not look too bad in street clothes. We had taken the hair I had saved, cut it into short strands, and glued it to two ribbons—one for me, one for Yvette. We had then carefully glued extra ribbons over them, and stitched them into place—then tied the ribbons around our head, letting little tendrils be exposed at our temples and the backs of our necks. It looked as if our hair was simply hidden under our hats.

  We laughed at how Yvette looked as a brunette. It was a dramatic change for her.

  The effect of the faux tendrils was not as convincing in the maid’s cap I had to wear with my uniform. Also, since I had never before worn a kerchief over my dark curls, it was only natural that the other girls wanted to know why I was suddenly sporting one under my cap. I told the story Yvette and I had concocted; we had gone to a hair salon to celebrate the liberation with a new hairstyle, and we had tried one of the new permanent waves. The results, alas, had been disastrous, so awful that for the next few months, I would be wearing hats and kerchiefs.

  I had to tell my story over and over. I could tell that people didn’t believe me. For one thing, my hair had already been curly. Why would I want a permanent wave? I could tell that the hotel workers were all whispering about me behind my back.

  Sure enough, as I had feared, my supervisor called me aside about a week later. One of my roommates, it seems, had peeked under my kerchief while I slept, and the report of my bald pate had made the rounds of the hotel staff and reached her ears. She insisted I remove my kerchief and let her see my head. I protested, but exposed my shorn scalp—by now covered with about a quarter-inch of dark stubble—all the same.

  “I am sorry, Amélie, but I will have to let you go for moral turpitude.”

  “I have not been immoral!” Tears filled my eyes. Now that the war was over, it seemed I cried at the least little thing. It humiliated me that I was so unexpectedly at the mercy of my emotions. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, that’s all, and I was mistaken for someone I am not.”

  She waved her hand. “It does not matter whether I believe you or not. We cannot have une femme tondue working at this hotel.”

  I took my lead from Yvette’s handling of the employee elevator operator.

  “Mme Hortense, if you find it necessary to fire me for moral reasons, I am afraid I will find it necessary to report to the hotel manager that I saw you and the night watchman leaving an unoccupied room together, looking quite disheveled, in the middle of your shift.”

  She gasped. “There—there is no way he would believe you.”

  “I would also find it necessary to report that your breath smells of whiskey first thing in the morning and all throughout the day, getting stronger as the afternoon progresses. All he would have to do is check for himself.”

  “I—I do not know what you are talking about.”

  “I think you do. And I also think that it would be in the best interests of both of us to each keep our own counsel. I will look for another position and leave this hotel as soon as I can. I expect an impeccable recommendation from you.” I abruptly turned and went back to work.

  Yvette’s hotel evicted her the very next day.

  “But my room is paid for through the end of the month!” she argued with the manager, a short, balding man who wore a gold chain prominently stretched across his vested suits.

  “We do not rent to Germans or collaborateurs,” was the reply.

  “That’s easy to say now, when you have Americans and British soldiers to fill the rooms. You had no trouble serving Germans and their women for the last four years.”

  He lifted his double chins. “You must move out by noon tomorrow.”

  “Then give me a refund.”

>   “There is no record of any money ever being paid.”

  Yvette was certain that Dierk had not lied to her, but there was nothing to be done. She used the last of the money from Dierk to rent a little dump of an apartment and to buy us two black-market wigs, which, while not especially natural looking—the hair was very black and very straight, as if it had come from Asians—at least allowed us to be seen in public and find employment.

  With the dark, straight, identical hair—it refused to hold a curl, although we tried and tried—we did look more like sisters. A Mutt and Jeff pair of sisters, perhaps, but sisters all the same.

  I helped her lug all of her belongings—including the enormous boxes of baby formula—to the apartment. She had been clever in getting Gerhard and Dierk to buy things for her, so she had plenty of shoes and clothing, and even some jewelry that she could sell. I found a job at another hotel the following week, so I left the dormitory and moved in with her. Yvette got a job in a milliner’s shop. She wrote her aunt again with our new address, asking for passage to America and promising prompt repayment.

  She checked the mail every day. We knew that the mail was not reliable; Paris was still in shambles and France was still at war. But we did not lose hope. We talked often about what we would do in America.

  Yvette planned to fashion herself as a young widow. No one need ever know that the father of her child had not been her husband—indeed, had not been French. In America, her child would have the best of opportunities.

  Food was still rationed—everything was scarce in those days. The Red Cross provided some much-needed food for French civilians. The war raged on in eastern France as the Allies fought their way toward Germany. Yvette and I alternated our work schedules so that we could take turns standing in line for groceries. In the evenings we cooked in our single pot and hand-sewed baby clothes and maternity clothes. Yvette insisted on cutting down some of her dresses to fit me.

  She repeatedly urged me to go out in the evenings. “You might meet a nice American,” she told me.

  Indeed, that seemed to be the hope of most single Frenchwomen in those days—to meet an American who would whisk her away to the land of plenty. Due to the wig and my slow-growing hair, I had no desire to meet a man. I was ashamed of the way I looked, afraid of having my wig discovered. What if a man put his fingers in my hair? I wanted to hide away and be invisible. I was quite content to stay home in the evenings with Yvette.

  For her part, Yvette managed to hide her pregnancy for many months. Both of us were clever with a needle, and together we found ways to drape and layer her clothes to disguise her burgeoning belly.

  All the same, near the end of her seventh month, her boss took her aside.

  “Yvette, the time has come for you to stay in the back room. Your condition is inappropriate for a shopgirl.”

  Yvette did not even try to dissemble. “How long have you known?”

  “About as long as I’ve known that you wear a wig,” she said, not unkindly. “Surely your own hair is getting long enough now to reveal?”

  I didn’t think it was yet time to toss the wig—my hair still looked awfully short and boyish—but Yvette insisted we go to a salon near one of the expensive brothels. We were afraid to trust our obviously shorn hair to anyone who might want to take further vengeance against us, and we hoped that a hairstylist who catered to high-level prostitutes would not be shocked by a femme tondue patron.

  We emerged with short, sassy hair such as that worn by movie star Jane Wyman. “The trick is to wear bright lipstick and fashionable clothes, and look as if we are the cutting edge of fashion,” Yvette said. Indeed, if it weren’t for her enormously pregnant belly, Yvette would have resembled Marilyn Monroe with her shorter hairdo.

  “How does it feel to be blond again?” I asked her.

  She tossed her head. “Merveilleuse!”

  I, too, felt much lighter and freer. But I felt so much trepidation about going to work the first time without my wig that I continued to wear it for several weeks. I need not have worried; when I finally went to work sporting my real hair, my coworkers simply exclaimed over how much more attractive I looked.

  Yvette grew larger and larger, and more and more uncomfortable. The only medical care we could afford was a midwife, a large woman with leathery skin who was not what I would call sympathetic.

  “Who is the father?” she’d asked, when she’d come to see Yvette a month before she was due.

  “A soldier.”

  She’d palpated Yvette’s stomach so roughly Yvette had winced. “Was he a large man?”

  “Yes.”

  “I figured as much,” she muttered. “No doubt a Boche.”

  “I don’t see why that matters,” Yvette said.

  “The Boches have huge babies. It is hard for Frenchwomen to bear them. Take off your underwear and lie down.” Yvette meekly did as she said. The woman yanked up Yvette’s skirt and roughly stuck three fingers inside her. I was appalled that she didn’t bother to wash her hands first.

  “Ow!” Yvette yelped.

  “Oh, so you’re a whiner, hmm?”

  “No, I—I just . . . You didn’t tell me what to expect.”

  “I bet you always knew what to expect from the Boches.” She pulled out her fingers, her lips curled in a smirk.

  I disliked the woman immensely. “There was no need to hurt her,” I said.

  “Hurt her? Ha! Wait until labor begins. This was nothing.” She wiped her fingers on her skirt and turned to Yvette. “Your womb, it is still closed up tight. No baby for a while. Another month.”

  “A month! I cannot imagine getting a month larger!”

  “As I said, the Boche babies are huge. Call me when your water breaks.”

  “I don’t like her,” I told Yvette when she left. “Let’s find someone else.”

  “I had to pay half of her fee in advance,” Yvette said. “I cannot afford to pay another one.”

  “But if she’s not a good midwife . . .”

  “She is,” Yvette said. “She delivered Mme Steyvant’s baby ten years ago, and all was well.”

  “She holds the baby’s father against you.”

  “Yvette sighed. “Oui—but they all do. I approached two other midwives who simply refused to treat me.”

  “You did not tell me!”

  “I did not want to worry you.”

  “How did they know the father was Boche?”

  She lifted her shoulders. “Given the number of Germans who were in the city when the child was conceived, and the lack of Frenchmen, it is not a hard guess. Plus”—she ruefully looked down and smiled—“I am huge.”

  At least the news about the war was positive. The Allies were clearly winning.

  And our downstairs neighbor, a widow named Nora Saurent who worked at a boucherie, befriended us, often bringing us meat scraps for soup. She was worried about Yvette having enough to eat, enough to nourish the baby.

  On April 30, she knocked on our door. “Did you hear the news? Hitler is dead!”

  We jumped around and cheered—or at least, I jumped; Yvette was enormous by then—then ran downstairs to listen to her radio and share a glass of wine.

  The good news kept on coming. On May 7, we heard rumors Germany had surrendered—and on May 8, we learned it was true. Germany’s unconditional surrender was ratified in Berlin on May 8.

  The city went wild. Because of Yvette’s condition, we stayed at home, again listening to the radio at Nora’s apartment.

  Yvette woke me around two in the morning that night. “Ammie, I think you need to go get the midwife.”

  “What’s happened?” I sat up. “Did your water break?”

  She nodded. “About two hours ago. I waited until the pains started coming, and now . . .” She doubled over, unable to speak, her hand on her belly.

  “I
will go get her right now. But first I’m going to get Nora to stay with you while I’m gone.”

  I threw on my clothes and knocked at Nora’s apartment. She grabbed some clothing and hurried upstairs to stay with Yvette.

  I ran to get the midwife, eight blocks away. It was nearly impossible to rouse her. I knocked and knocked, afraid she wasn’t even home. She finally came to the door, her eyes half open, reeking of sour wine. At first she didn’t want to come with me.

  “There is no rush,” she said. “First babies take forever.”

  “You need to come now,” I said. “She is in much pain.”

  She blew out a dismissive hiss of air. “She thought it was painful when I examined her.”

  “Please. She paid you. You are needed now.”

  After much grumbling, she dressed, grabbed her bag, and came with me.

  I could hear Yvette moaning as we approached the apartment. My heart raced with fear.

  “You can wash your hands at the kitchen sink,” I said as we entered, not wanting the midwife to repeat her unsanitary initial exam. I noticed that Nora already had a pan of water boiling on the stove.

  I found Yvette writhing on the bed. I rushed to her side and took her hand. Fear tore through me. Too many women died in childbirth. If I lost Yvette, I would die, as well.

  “The contractions are very close,” Nora said.

  “Let’s have a look,” said the midwife, drying her hands on a kitchen towel.

  Her expression changed after she inspected Yvette. “She is having this baby now.” She looked up at Yvette’s face. “With the next pain, you need to push.”

  She opened her bag and pulled out some large forceps.

  “I will go sanitize these for you,” Nora said smoothly, taking them from her hand without giving her a choice otherwise. Nora also managed to boil the woman’s scissors and sewing needle.

  It seemed to take forever, but in reality, it was probably only thirty minutes later that Yvette’s moan was joined by the high-pitched cry of a baby.