All the Light There Was (22 page)

In the late afternoons, I returned to help my mother-in-law prepare dinner. After the meal I sat with Barkev and my in-laws in the living room listening to the radio. Using slim needles, I worked baby sweaters and booties out of balls of whisper-thin white wool. I held a bootie in my palm, trying to imagine the tiny foot that would fill it.

My mother-in-law said, “Because you had such bad morning sickness, I’m sure it’s a boy. If it was a girl, you would hardly have been sick at all.”

My father-in-law said, “Enough of these Old Country superstitions. The baby will be what it is, and none of your predictions will have any influence.”

Shushan replied, “Really, the best way to tell is how she carries the baby. Wait until her belly gets a little bigger. If it’s sticking way out, that will prove it’s a boy.”

“And if it isn’t sticking way out?” I asked.

“Well, if you’re carrying lower down and broader, that means it’s a girl,” my mother-in-law said.

Vahan shook his head. “The only thing that will prove anything is taking a good look at the baby when it’s born.”

O
NE AFTERNOON WHEN I
was working at my mother’s, the doorbell shrilled unexpectedly. Through the peephole, I saw on the landing a dark-haired woman with fair skin holding the hand of a light-haired child, a girl of about eight years old dressed in a blue coat.

I opened the door. “Claire!”

The girl smiled shyly, holding up a frayed rag doll with yellow yarn for hair.

“And Charlotte! You’ve come back. And this must be your aunt Myriam.”

The woman held out her hand. “Myriam Galinski. I am so glad to meet you. Claire has told me so much about you and your family.”

My mother was behind me. “Girl, what are you doing keeping these people shivering in the cold,” she said in Armenian. In French she added, “Please come in.”

“Madame Galinski—” I started to say.

“Please, call me Myriam.”

“Myriam, this is my mother, Azniv Pegorian.”

“Let me make you some tea,” my mother said. “Maral, hang up their coats, give them slippers, and take them to the front room.”

“I see you are expecting,” Myriam said. “When is the baby due?”

I answered, “In the middle of April.”

“So nice to have a new baby in the spring. You have the whole summer to be outdoors. My twins were born in May.”

“How old are they?” I asked as I led them into the apartment.

“Seven. A boy and a girl,” Myriam said. “I left them in Nice with my husband. You miss them, don’t you, Claire?”

Claire nodded, holding her doll, face out, against her heart.

I asked, “But Claire, what happened to Charlotte’s eyes? Now she has one black one and one gray. Should we try to find another gray one?”

Claire nodded.

“Or maybe you can pick two buttons of any color you want,” I said. I went to my mother’s sewing corner and found the tin of buttons. “Do you remember when we used to spill these on the bed and sort them?”

I remembered the overcast summer morning when Claire and I stayed in the bedroom pretending to play with the buttons while her parents were taken out of the building. I wondered how much Claire remembered from that day and the days that followed.

I plucked a gray button from the tin. “Look, it’s the same as the ones we used the first time. Should we sew this on?”

“Charlotte would like that,” she said.

My mother came into the room with a tray of tea, a pitcher of milk, a platter of homemade cookies, and four plates.

“Little one,” my mother said, “when you were with us before, we had nothing to offer you but toast. Do you remember? No milk, no nothing. We still have rationing, but it’s possible to find the things you need now.” She set the tray on the table and continued, “Look what I have for you, sweetie.” She held the platter out to the child and said, “Take as many as you like.”

Claire glanced at her aunt, who nodded her assent.

Claire placed two cookies on her plate. “Thank you very much, madame.”

“What beautiful manners you have, Claire,” my mother commented as she slipped three more cookies onto the child’s plate. “And look how long your curls are now. It must be a job for your aunt to brush them out in the evening. When Maral was your age, her hair was down to her waist, and at night I brushed and brushed until her hair was shiny.”

After my mother poured out the tea, an uncomfortable silence settled on the room. Should we talk about what happened to Claire’s parents in front of her, or should we not? I snipped the thread holding the black button onto the face of the doll. I began to sew the gray button in its place.

Finally, my mother said, “We always wondered about what happened to Claire after they invaded the Free Zone.”

“It wasn’t too bad until the Italians left. After that, we thought it best to move from the city. Claire, my husband, the twins, and I went to a small village in the mountains north of Nice. It was a difficult time,” she said. “I came here to thank you for keeping Claire and for sending her to us. I know that wasn’t easy. We are also here to see what we can learn about my sister and her husband. We found out the number of the convoy they were on and the camp they were sent to, but as yet nothing more.”

I turned to the child and handed her the doll. “There. Two gray eyes, just like yours. But Charlotte’s hair is a bit of a mess, don’t you think?”

Claire straightened the ragged yellow yarn.

“Want to look in the yarn bag? You could pick a new color, but I think I might still have that yellow if you like.”

Claire and I pulled out a selection of small yarn balls in an array of colors, lining them up on the table: the bright yellow, black, an improbable purple, and several shades of brown.

Her aunt said, “It will take time, I suppose. But we’ve made the inquiries.”

“I like this one,” Claire said, selecting a light tan. “My hair is almost this color now.”

With a few deft clips of the scissors, I made Charlotte bald and then quickly sewed on a new mop of hair.

My mother said, “It shocked us, it shocked us all that they would take Sara in her condition. And they were rounding up the little children as well. It was disgraceful. We told Sara and Joseph to leave Claire with us.”

Myriam said, “We will always be grateful for what you did.”

I said, “Charlotte is still wearing the dress my mother made her for your train trip.”

“Charlotte and I had matching dresses,” Claire said. “But mine doesn’t fit anymore.”

“How long will you stay in Paris?” my mother asked.

“Just a few days. Claire can’t miss too much school, and my twins are waiting,” Myriam said.

“I want to make you and Charlotte matching sweaters. Let me measure your shoulders and your sleeves. I will mail them to you,” I said.

Claire bit her lip and looked at me intently. I sensed what she was thinking.

“Auntie Shakeh got sick and went to heaven,” I said.

Claire nodded. “Yes. Probably my parents and the baby went there too.”

After the door closed behind Myriam and Claire, my mother whispered in Armenian, “
Vahkh,
vahkh.
The shame is on all of us. Think if we hadn’t saved that child how stained our souls would be.”

We were clearing the dishes from the front room when Jacqueline dashed into the apartment, breathless from running up the stairs. Her cheeks were flushed with cold and her eyes were flashing.

“It just started snowing. And guess what?” Jacqueline said as she tossed off her shoes and slid her feet into leather slippers.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m pregnant!”

“Meghah!”
my mother said. “You too? We’re going to have a houseful of babies.”

“How far along are you?” I asked.

“A little more than two months. The doctor says the baby will come at the end of August.”

“Does Missak know?”

“I called him from the doctor’s office. Oh, Maral, won’t it be so much fun? The cousins will be only four months apart.”

That evening as I walked home along the icy sidewalks, snowflakes shimmered under the streetlights. It was only a few steps from my old home to the new, but I was anxious that I might slip, tumble forward onto my belly, and crush the baby. I imagined that after the baby was born, there would be many more dangers to guard against, everything from rusty nails to kidnappers. I sighed with relief as I turned into the building.

That night after Barkev and I went to bed, I told him about Claire and her aunt’s visit. It was cold in the room, so we had the blankets up to our chins, and the words made little clouds in the air.

“Do you think they’ll find out what happened to the parents?” I asked.

“The Germans kept good records of everything, including when people died.”

“Sometimes I wonder about Denise Rozenbaum and her parents. And Henri.”

“Henri came to the camp about a month after we arrived,” Barkev said.

“You never told me that.”

“You never asked me.”

“And Denise?”

He shrugged. “From Drancy, they went to Auschwitz, and that’s all Henri knew.”

Lying on my side with my face inches from his, the soft light from the lamp on the nightstand coming from behind him, I stared at my husband. I wanted to ask what had happened to Henri, but I knew from Barkev’s expression that Henri had died. Did it really matter how? That’s why I hadn’t asked Myriam what camp the Lipskis had been sent to. What good would it do Myriam or Claire to learn on what day and by which method the child’s parents had been killed?

The baby turned inside me. Then there was a little jump and then another one. Pause, jump, pause, jump, pause, and jump again.

“Feel this.” I took Barkev’s hand and placed it on my belly.

“What is it?”

“The doctor told me that happens when the baby has hiccups.”

“Does it bother you?”

“If it goes on too long. Most of the time when I sit still, the baby gets restless and starts moving around, but when I go for a walk, the baby sleeps. We’re together all the time, and yet I don’t know what the baby looks like, or even if it’s a boy or a girl. Sometimes I worry that I won’t love the baby. It seems that I will, because mothers are supposed to, but what if it doesn’t happen? Wouldn’t that be awful? I would have to pretend to love it, because otherwise I would be a monster. Can you imagine what your mother would think?”

Barkev raised his eyebrows. “You will be a good mother, and you will love your baby. Don’t worry about my mother.”

Of course he wouldn’t understand. And Jacqueline wouldn’t either. I didn’t know why my mind was always going down such back alleys, or why my dreams were so vivid and disturbing. Barkev claimed that he didn’t remember his—even when he woke up shouting, he didn’t know what he had been dreaming about.

“Sometimes when I’m tired, I worry too much and talk too much. Good night, Barkev.”

I rolled over onto my other side, slid my hand under the pillow, and closed my eyes, waiting for the baby’s hiccupping to abate. I didn’t want the dream about Claire’s parents, Henri, Zaven, and the camp where starving men in tattered clothes held out empty tin cups, into each of which I dropped a shirt button. I wanted a dream about going to the park with Claire and the baby on a summer afternoon. Claire would sit on a brightly painted horse waving to the baby and me as we watched the carousel spin.

M
Y FATHER ASKED
, “Don’t you want an Armenian name?”

“I like Pierre,” I said. I was the one who had carried the baby for nine months. I was the one who had been in the grip of rolling pain as the baby shouldered his way into the world. Why shouldn’t I choose his name? And why shouldn’t the name be French? Barkev hadn’t objected.

My mother suggested, “We thought maybe you would want to name him Zaven.”

I turned away from her and stared down at the small infant who was sleeping in my arms. “That name is too big for this small baby.”

My father-in-law looked at Barkev. “What do you think, son?”

Barkev answered, “Pierre is okay with me. But an Armenian name would be okay too.”

My mother-in-law said, “There are so many nice Armenian names to choose from. What do you think of Nazar? Isn’t that nice? Or maybe Dikran?” She opened her purse, pulled out a piece of paper, and waved it like a flag. “Virginie and I made a little list.”

Virginie laughed nervously. “It’s your list, not mine.”

The baby’s face suddenly scrunched up, his small red mouth opening in an angry wail.

“Can we talk about this later? He’s hungry,” I said.

In the end, we took the baby home from the hospital with no name at all. We all called him Bzdigeh, or Little One. After a few tense days, I agreed to the name Bedros Pierre Kacherian. I thought,
Let them call him Bedros; to me he will be Pierre.

Both our families gathered in the Kacherians’ living room on Sunday afternoon when the baby was not quite a week old. Little Pierre was dressed from head to toe in hand-knit whites: a fine white gown that was knotted at the bottom, a white cap, and a white sweater, and he was swaddled in a white blanket.

I watched as Pierre, with a rosy face, a full head of black hair, and shining blue-black eyes, was passed from hand to hand. Even Barkev’s face broke into a smile when the baby curled tiny pink fingers around his thumb.

“He’s strong,” Barkev said.

Jacqueline, her belly bulging under her dress, sighed. “I can’t wait until our baby is born. When are you having him christened?”

Missak said, turning to Barkev, “Christened? You’re not doing that, are you?”

Barkev said, “I don’t care one way or the other.”

“What do you mean, you don’t care?” I asked. “Of course he’s going to be baptized and christened at the cathedral.”

“What a waste of time and money,” Missak said.

My mother objected. “Both of my children were baptized in the Armenian Church, and both of my grandchildren will be as well.”

Barkev’s mother asked, “Have you decided on godparents?”

“We assumed they would be Missak and Jacqueline,” I answered, “but if my brother doesn’t want to go to the cathedral . . .”