I was ignored, left out, treated like a baby! I felt like I would burst from anger. I was so mad at Dad. I was determined to resist.
“Mum, what do you read every day?” I asked her first thing the next morning.
“Bible literature.”
“What’s that?”
“The Bible is the Word of God.”
“I’ll read it too.”
“Later.”
“No, right now.”
“Simone, I promised your dad that I wouldn’t share a Protestant Bible or any literature with you.” I knew they were keeping something from me!
“But Dad isn’t here!”
“Yes, but I promised him.”
“Dad won’t see you, and I won’t tell him!”
“That would not be right; it would be lying. Child, your father is working hard to feed us and to pay the house rent. He has the right to make decisions concerning your education.” Inside I was burning up.
“But why? Why can’t I read what I want?”
A strange atmosphere had crept into our home. Mother still didn’t go to church, but at least she didn’t burn the food anymore. Father didn’t talk anymore, not even about socialism! His greetings to Mother were mechanical—no warmth, no enthusiasm, only questionings.
“Who have you seen? Where have you been going?” What foolish questions! Father knows that she sees only the grocer, the butcher, and the baker. Why does he bother her like that? But one time his questioning got worse.
“Do you mean the men who gave you those booklets didn’t come back?”
“No, and I feel bad about it. I have so many questions I want to ask them.” Dad didn’t like this either. They were so absorbed in their conversation they didn’t notice me. He kept on.
“Who brought you those other brochures?”
“I ordered them,” and nervously Mum pulled out a brown paper with stamps. “Here is the proof,” she said with annoyance.
“Why did you order so many, and where are they all?”
“I ordered three kinds. They sent me ten of each.”
“And what did you do with them?”
“I shared them with our neighbors in the apartment and down the street.” Dad shook his head angrily.
Sneaking farther back in the corner of the room, I said to myself, Dad has forgotten that I’m here. I’ll try to keep quiet.
He looked straight into Mum’s eyes and said, accentuating each word, “Are you spreading propaganda now?” Mother turned pale. Would she fight back? I would have! Dad was treating her like a child.
After a while she said, “Adolphe, people have the same right that each one of us has—the right to choose. But to do so, they have to have a choice; this is not propaganda.”
I thought, “Well done, Mum!” And without realizing it, I spoke up, murmuring that people have the right to read what they want, and I did too! Turning to gaze at me, both of them fell silent.
Books Broaden My View
CHAPTER 3
Books Broaden My View
A
fter we learned of Frida’s death, we remaining four girls walked on the other side of the street, along the apartment houses. A young girl I had never seen before lived in one of them. She was always coughing badly. Blanche knew her. Her name was Jacqueline. She had been sent away from home to live in a special house; she was older than we were, and she had tuberculosis. We wanted to know what kind of sickness it was. I promised the girls that I would look it up in my medical book because I was the nurse.
Standing way up on top of the ladder in Dad’s library, I felt my heart pounding. I could feel the beating in my temples. My hands trembled as I reached out for the red, leather-covered, heavy “house doctor” book. I decided to sit on the top of the ladder. That way, as soon as I heard Mum going down the cellar stairs to put the garden tools away, I would have the time to put the book back, climb down and put the ladder away.
My inner voice kept saying, “You didn’t ask permission. But if I ask Mum, she’ll say no! I’m the nurse; I have to learn. I’m not going to risk being told ‘no’!” My parents had already refused to let me read the book called the Bible. It was very exciting to do things on my own. I really liked the feeling of doing things in secret.
The doctor book became my favorite secret reading. I would have liked to copy the diagrams, but I might have been caught! And there were so many strange words. The description of the sicknesses usually ended with the same words: “It results in death.”
“Nothing happens outside the will of God,” our priest always said. “God decides on the hour of death.” But as pictured in this book, the means by which we can die were terrifying. Yet I had to understand the information. I had promised the girls. I decided to ask Mum.
Carefully, one day I asked, “Mum, what is tuberculosis?”
“A sickness. But where did you get that question from?”
I had to be careful how I answered. “Well, we talked about it when we passed in front of Jacqueline’s house. Blanche said she’s not allowed to go to school.”
“That’s right. She does have tuberculosis; she already had it when she took care of Frida as a baby.”
“Did Frida get it from her?”
“Probably. That’s called contagious. You see, Simone, when I constantly remind you not to sit on the sidewalk, it is not only because dogs ease themselves but also because some people spit!”
“Oh, yes! I read they even spit out their lungs!”
“What did you say?”
“I said I was afraid they spit out their lungs. Is it what Uncle Louis had, the sickness he died from?”
“It is.”
“Then does Aunt Eugenie have tuberculosis?”
“God be blessed, no!”
I got the information and the necessary explanation. I could go to school and tell the girls not to pick anything up from the streets because lungs might be lying there. As a nurse, it was my duty to make them fear tuberculosis just as I did.
Summer vacation had finally arrived, and Dad was on vacation, too—the first one he ever took. He didn’t want to take time off from work. “But I have to—the factory will close down for two weeks.” This was because, from 1937 onward, all factories in France were required by law to close down for vacation as a result of concessions won by the strikers. At least this forced vacation meant that Dad’s mood would improve.
Dad had something new to talk about. “Emma, what about buying those bicycles?”
“Can we afford it?”
My five-franc baby doll on the shelf gave me that uncomfortable feeling again.
“Well, we would have to take the money from the bank. I don’t like that