The Paris Library(67)

“But Brenda breastfed.”

“Quit comparing yourself to a ghost!”

“Mother!” Eleanor gestured toward me.

Dispara?tre means to no longer be visible, to cease to exist. I wrapped French around me like a shawl and went to see Odile, who was rooting around in her garden. She rose and wiped her hands on her smock. “Bonjour, ma belle. Comment ?a va?”

She was the only adult who asked how I was. The others asked about my brothers.

“How do you say ‘ghost’?”

“Le fant?me.”

“What about ‘sad’?” I’d learned the word a while back but needed it again now.

“Triste.” She hugged me. “School starts tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Mary Louise and I signed up for the same classes.”

“It’s a gift to spend time with your best friend. I can’t tell you how much I miss mine.” She put the leeks she’d plucked from the ground into her basket. Her expression seemed triste.

“Do you have time for a French lesson?” we said simultaneously.

Airport, un aéroport. Plane, un avion. Plane window, un hublot. Flight attendant, une h?tesse de l’air. Hostess of the air. Side by side at our desk, Odile’s kitchen table, I wrote the vocabulary. Usually, we studied everyday words like “sidewalk,” “building,” “chair.”

“Why are you teaching me travel vocabulary?”

“Because, ma grande, I want you to fly.”

At dinnertime, as Eleanor set the meatloaf on the table, Grandma Pearl followed, picking at her like a hen pecking at feed. “The whole world won’t stop if you take a nap. Don’t you have more than one shirt? When was the last time you washed your hair? Where’s your pride?”

Eleanor slammed down the creamed corn. “Muuu-ther!”

In moments like this, I remembered that Eleanor was only ten years older than me.

“And where’re those friends of yours?” Grandma Pearl continued. “Why don’t they help?”

“Lily said Brenda did everything on her own.”

“How would she remember?”

Eleanor turned on her mother. “Lily wouldn’t lie!”

I felt my face redden. “Actua—”

“I’m not saying she did,” Grandma Pearl said quickly. “But I’m telling you, a woman with three children needs a hand.”

“I can do it myself.” Eleanor sounded as sullen as Mary Louise’s sister, Angel.

As usual, Dad came home from work two minutes before dinnertime. We ate in silence, except for Benjy’s cries. Eleanor didn’t even say grace.

While she and Grandma Pearl bathed the boys, I washed the dishes, picked up toys, folded the laundry, and counted the hours until school started.

For a week, Grandma Pearl did the cooking and lectured Eleanor on how store-bought baby food never killed anyone. Before climbing into the Buick, she told Eleanor, “You lean on Lily a lot. Isn’t there someone else who could help? What about that nice Odile?”

Eleanor crossed her arms. “I can do everything by myself. Besides, Lily is family.”

She considered me family? Suddenly helping out didn’t seem like such a sacrifice. Yet I could hear Mary Louise’s voice as if she were standing beside me. “Eleanor keeps you slaving away. Is that how you’d treat a real daughter?”



* * *




IN GEOGRAPHY, we learned about China, where the government tells couples they can have only one child. Seeing how worn-out Eleanor was, it didn’t seem like a bad policy. “Girls don’t count in China. Parents want boys, who can work in the fields,” Ms. White rattled on, somehow never noticing that our farm community was the same.

“Ever notice the only thing they teach about Communist countries is that they suck?” Mary Louise whispered.

“Yeah, like Froid’s so great.”

In China, I would have been enough. If I’d been a boy, Dad would have let me take driver’s ed. I’d already be driving. I’d already be gone. As the teacher droned on, I lay my head down for a minute, the desk cold against my cheek. My house was China. I imagined taking a bath, imagined my father and Eleanor seizing my shoulders and holding my body underwater, imagined the life seeping out of me.

“Lil?” Mary Louise patted my back.

I woke up. Everyone else was heading out the door.

“Didn’t you hear the bell?”

Yawning, I covered my mouth and felt a thread of saliva stitched to my chin.

“Slobbering over Robby,” Tiffany Ivers said on her way out.

I prayed, Please God, don’t let him have seen.

“Ignore her,” Mary Louise said. “Want to come over?”

“Eleanor needs me to babysit.”

“What about Friday? Spend the night like you used to.”

I wanted to. I really did. “Can’t.”

I trudged home, where diapers would need to be changed and Weeble Wobbles were scattered over the linoleum like landmines. Bien s?r, Benjy screamed. At the kitchen table, in the scabby shirt she’d worn all week, Eleanor rocked him while Joe whimpered at her feet. I cuddled with him before attacking the dirty dishes that languished on the counter.

“You don’t have to,” she protested weakly. Lily is family. I sterilized the things that need sterilizing. I rocked Benjy until he dozed off. Even in his sleep, he sniffled. Passing him to Eleanor, I ran to Odile’s for a quick lesson.