Never Tell Your Name
by
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"Your father, what is his name?" They are walking down a wooded lane toward the old mill when Mademoiselle brusquely asks the child. The child blinks but doesn't reply. They walk on a few meters. "Your father who was here two days ago....Eh?.... Come now.... what's his name?" Mademoiselle repeats. "Papa," "Non, you little goose, his real name!" "Papa, Sylvain Le---." Her breath slices off the next syllable sharp as a knife, cutting the name in half: Le and silence. The name that always told who she was is no more. It's not even a secret, it's gone. "Sylvain L'Or," she says quickly to fill the silent place. "L'Or? Are you sure that is his nom de famille?" Without waiting for an answer, Mademoiselle adds harshly, "He's not from these parts, is he? Is he French?" "Oui Mademoiselle Gilberte." "Are you lying? "Non Mademoiselle Gilberte." "I don't believe you." Her voice rose. "Lying is a sin. Liars are punished. Don't you remember?" The child says nothing. She wishes they could just go on in their usual silence that Mademoiselle prefers on their afternoon promenades. The silence that has become half of her old name is loud now, not calm and soothing like the old silence on their walks. The silence that is now the name is louder than the church bells and the vibrations that take over her body when she helps Soeur St.Cybard ring vespers. From very far down inside she begins to tremble. Mademoiselle turns to grab the child's chin, "Look into my eyes!" She commands. A rock that must have rolled onto the dirt lane from the low wall that intersects the fields lays right in the middle of the path. The child, her eyes cast down to avoid more questions, steps carefully around it. Mademoiselle doesn't see the dusty speckled rock. She stumbles. "Ouuuch!" she shrieks as she tries to keep upright. "Merde," she mutters under her breath stopping and taking off her sandal to rub the bruised toe. The child is aghast. Only once before has she heard anyone say that very bad word. The boy who'd tried to kill the swallow with his slingshot had yelled it after he'd aimed and missed. Without knowing what it meant, the child just knew it was forbidden, but now Mademoiselle says it too. The child mouths it without making any sound. Nothing happens. Maybe it's all right to say it outdoors far away from the people that count, far from houses or school. She watches Mademoiselle wiggle the toes of her bare foot. "Hurts, ah.... stupid rock!" She rubs the big toe. "Is it broken?" Slowly, she pulls the big toe apart from the rest. "Not broken, I can move it. Bien, I must get down to the stream," she says more to herself than to the child. She slips the foot back into the sandal wincing. "Bend down and fasten the buckle," she orders. "I'm in pain." The child does as she's told, buckling up the thick strap on the rusty pin. She learned to do buckles from Madame L'Abbe, the assistant at the Ecole Maternelle in Montbron, but she's still not very good at tying her own shoe laces. They walk down a little slope in the old quiet silence now. The sound of the stream rushing over the rocks approaching the mill makes a comforting burble. This is a prettier spot than down by the river where they usually walk. Perhaps today they will stop here and be alone and Mademoiselle might make a crown from the wild flowers she picks in the nearby meadow. The child recalls the promises of sugar cubes and couronnes when Mademoiselle hit her mouth.... As soon as they reach the little pond formed by the upper stream, Mademoiselle tells the child, "I'm going to soak my foot further down below the mill where the water is colder. You wait here by the clump of reeds. Don't go picking flowers, understand? I want you waiting right here when I come back in a few minutes." She nods obediently and Mademoiselle goes off. The child looks around the lovely spot with little white and grey pebbles lying about and watercress growing at the pond's edge. She collects a pile of stones and throws them in one by one. When the pebble is round and heavy enough it makes a beautiful plip-plop sound like the last few drops of wine bubbling through the narrow bottle's neck into the glass. The sound, when it is just right sends a delicious shiver, better than a tickle, down her back. She can throw the pebbles without hardly moving from the spot Mademoiselle told her to wait from. She gathers more into her careful pile. Sometimes a sluggish snail sticks to the bottom of the rock pulling in its long wormy neck......Uggh, how can people eat them? Jacqueline's brother, Jean Pierre, said first the snails are made pure by keeping them in a can without food for twenty-one days. Then they are ready to eat. She had asked Papa if it was true. Maman had answered before Papa could say anything that snails weren't kosher and that we couldn't eat them no matter how pure. Kosher, that word, how strange it sounds here by the pond. "What means kosher," the child had asked. She remembers Maman’s answer spoken in a sad voice, "It is nothing, nothing," but Papa had followed with, "One day ma petite, perhaps one day, you will learn all about kosher." Another snail leaving a long slimy trail squirms in the opposite direction from under a large speckled stone when she hears loud words from below the pond downstream. Who's shouting? It's a man, Fritz? Not Fritz. Now the words get angrier, but she can make out only a few of them. "Putain, sleeping with the enemy. You've been seen!" The child carefully creeps down among the tules to get closer to where the voices are coming from. The ground is wet and soggy. She'll get a scolding if her shoes get muddy. She crouches on a fallen log and leans out, holding on to an overhead branch of a low gnarly tree. Fritz is nowhere to be seen. Has he disappeared? Mademoiselle Gilberte is standing white-faced. She is not soaking her toe in the water. A stocky short man in a beret grabs Mademoiselle's shoulder. He shakes her pele-mele. He might knock her down. Mademoiselle tries to pull away, but there is another person, a young...it is the handyman's daughter, Brigitte, who blocks Mademoiselle's way yelling, "Watch out, don't ever let us see you with your Boches-Nazi friends again, or you'll find yourself in one of those prison-camps with them." "Non, not a camp...that would be too good for her," the man snaps back. "She'll end up at the bottom of the river one moonless night...Salope!"
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About the Book
The true story of a child who must hide in an austere French convent-school during World War II when her German Jewish parents can no longer keep her. Only the brave Mother Superior, a French Resistance fighter, knows the child is Jewish. She does not know that one of her staff collaborates secretly with the Nazis. This is an unforgettable portrait of what happens to children when their lives are uprooted and transplanted into alien soil. From the perspective of an unusually perceptive child, this unique story is haunting and lyrical. The thoughtful epilogue reflects on how these memories shaped the author’s life.
About the Author
Josie Martin was born in France shortly before W.W.II. She came to the U.S. in 1947. She began almost 50 years later to write of the hidden child she had been, to acknowledge the life of a small girl, to pay homage to the remarkable Soeur St. Cybard, and to remember the many righteous acts of ordinary people that allowed her to survive the darkest of times. Ms. Martin is a writer and a school psychologist. She writes a column on children in school settings for the Larchmont Chronicle. Her work has also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Parent’s Magazine, and The Jewish Journal. She finally returned to the village of Lesterps in October of 2000 to be declared its "First Honorary Citizen" in a ceremony. The nun had died long before in 1968. Ms. Martin is married and has one son. She lives in Los Angeles.