A Little in Love Read online

  “Perhaps my doll is upstairs.” I smiled sweetly, let go of his hand, and moved on. The ring’s warm hardness was pressed into my palm.

  Maman was waiting in the stairwell. “So?”

  I showed her. I held out my treasures in cupped hands—the buckles, the coins, the ruby ring. She smiled widely, her eyes as bright as the jewel. She slid the ring onto her finger and sighed. “Oh! So beautiful! So sparkling! Think of what we can buy with these things!” She put loud, extravagant kisses on my cheeks and said, “How I love you when you bring me such gifts! When you steal so well!” She stroked my hair as I’d hoped she would. “My clever little thief! My darling Eponine …”

  * * *

  After that, I took myself to bed. My sister was sleeping.

  Azelma. A tiny bud. She was the little life who was, at first, just a strange bump beneath my mother’s dress; later she mewled like a kitten in our mother’s arms. Now, Azelma slept beneath a blanket with her thumb in her mouth. She made soft snoring sounds—pop … pop—and I looked at her for a moment. Then I took off my pinafore and climbed into bed.

  The first word she’d ever said had been “Ponine.” She’d said it holding her arms out to me, wanting to be held.

  In bed, her feet felt cold. I rubbed them and tucked them between my own feet to make them warm. I found her doll among the bedclothes and warmed her too. I brought the blankets around us.

  Like this, we slept so deeply that we didn’t hear the cries of the soldier when he found his buckles were gone, or the miller’s drunken shout of “Thief! I had a coin in this pocket and where is it now?” We didn’t hear the rain stop either.

  That night, the clouds parted. The moon came out. It shone down on our inn and on two tired people who were walking toward it—walking, walking …

  Two people. A mother and her child.

  * * *

  Did they part brambles with their hands? Lift their skirts as they climbed over stiles? That’s how I’ve always imagined it. They were always beautiful. Even in damp fields I reckon they shone as brightly as the stars.

  Some people have that in them: a glow, a sort of magic. They’re just different from the rest of us.

  In the morning, Azelma and I stood by the window.

  “Look! Look how pretty it is …” The fields were wet and sparkling; cobwebs were silvery white. The old rusting wagon that sat outside the inn glowed in the sunshine.

  We heard a noise behind us. Maman cried, “My darlings! My pretty things …”

  She was at her happiest but I knew it wasn’t because the rain had stopped; it was because of the ruby ring.

  “What a fine day it is!” She settled beside us on the window seat. “And what a clever girl Eponine was, last night. That ruby? We can sell it in Chelles for a hundred francs, I’m sure! And I’ll buy you presents, my beautiful daughters. What would you like? Lace-edged skirts? Petticoats? Velvet ribbons?”

  Azelma clapped, excited. She said, “Doll! Doll!”

  “A doll? Of course! I shall find you the finest in all of France! And Eponine? Tell your mother what you wish for!”

  I looked at the floor. What did I want? I didn’t want rabbits hanging from their hooks, dead-eyed, or to have to fetch water from the haunted woods when I was older. I didn’t like Boulatruelle, the creepy road-mender, whispering to my father in the dark. But these didn’t sound like the right things to say and I didn’t want to make her angry. Sometimes she called me an ugly, ungrateful child.

  “To play? Can we play outside in the sunshine?” I couldn’t think of anything else.

  She frowned, like my answer confused her. “There’s nothing else?”

  “And a doll. Please.”

  “Aha! Of course! A doll for you too! With a porcelain face and a dainty hat! You’ll be stealing again tonight, Eponine—and yes, you may play outside.”

  * * *

  We ran into the sunshine, arms wide. We jumped in puddles together and scuffed through the soaking-wet grass, and I wondered if this was how birds felt, when freed from their cages?

  At lunchtime, Maman said, “That old wagon that rusts in the lane … I wonder if I might make a swing from it? Would you like a swing of your own?”

  That’s how we spent the afternoon. She knotted a shawl and we swung from it, a cradle hanging from the wagon’s arm. We swung beneath a bright blue sky.

  I felt happy with Azelma’s warmth against me.

  Don’t let this moment end, I thought.

  I heard the woman’s voice before I saw her. She said, “You have two very pretty children, Madame.”

  It wasn’t Madame Cou and it wasn’t Widow Amandine. I sat up to see who was speaking.

  The lady was young. She was fair-haired and very thin, and the hem of her skirt was wet. She held the hand of a little girl—my age, maybe. This girl had fair hair too. She wore a linen bonnet but I could still see her hair.

  I pushed myself up to see them better. Had I ever seen a beautiful person before? The only people I knew were gray and old. These two looked like angels.

  I stared. I couldn’t help it.

  The little girl gave a tiny smile and I gave one back.

  That night I sat on the bedroom floor with Azelma and this girl. The cat was with us too. We all watched the cat as she licked her paws with her rough tongue.

  I asked the girl, “Why are you here?”

  It had been a strange day. We’d swung in the cradle, picked flowers from the hedgerows and stuck them in our hair. Later, I’d seen the girl’s mother kneel down and say, “Come here, dear Cosette; let me hold you.” She’d hugged her daughter tightly and they’d rocked from side to side.

  The girl sniffed. “I think I’m staying here now.”

  “Here? With us?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long for?”

  “Not sure.”

  Azelma frowned. She plucked her thumb from her mouth. “Why?” she said.

  The girl was still watching the cat, who was washing the end of her tail now. “My mother’s poor,” she whispered. “She can’t really work if she’s got to look after me too. I think she’s left me here for a while so she can go and earn lots of money. Then she’ll come back for me.”

  Azelma tilted her head. “No papa?”

  “No. He went away and didn’t come back.”

  She began to cry, then. Her eyes filled with big, wobbling tears that spilled down her cheeks and dropped onto her lap.

  “Ponine?”

  I couldn’t find a handkerchief for her but there was our doll’s headscarf, which was a little flowered rag. I gave it to her. “Here. Don’t cry. I’m Eponine. I’m four. This is Azelma. She’s two and a half.”

  The girl blew her nose, still crying.

  “What’s your name?”

  “My proper name’s Euphrasie. But,” she gulped, “but Maman calls me Cosette.”

  Cosette. A soft name. It suited her.

  “Are you four as well?”

  “In the summer.”

  She pressed the rag to her eyes. Her little mouth trembled. I wanted to help her so I said, “Don’t be sad! Your mother will come back. And Montfermeil isn’t so bad. See the window seat? It is dark outside now but sometimes, in the daytime, I sit there and see lots of things that no one else sees—like the cows scratching their bottoms on the fence, or Père Gauphin smoking when he isn’t meant to smoke because his chest rattles and the smoking makes it worse. I’ve seen rabbits. I’ve seen Madame Cou picking flowers for her buttonhole, and people carrying the old nag’s droppings in their arms because they say that her droppings make their cauliflowers grow. And in the summer there are swifts that swoop down the lane.” I paused.

  Her eyes were fixed on me and her voice was tiny. “Rabbits?”

  “And raspberries. I know where raspberries grow. You can pop them on the end of each finger and suck them off—like this.” I pretended I wore raspberries, like thimbles, on each fingertip.

  Azelma unplugged her mouth. Sh
e laughed at this—my berries, made of air.

  “See? It isn’t so bad. And when your mother comes back you can show her the cauliflowers and the old gray nag, and you’ll both be very happy.”

  Cosette quieted. She sniffed, stroked the cat.

  Later, I took her to the little bed I shared with Azelma and lifted the blanket. I didn’t know where else she could sleep.

  * * *

  I climbed in beside them and blew out the light. But I couldn’t sleep at first because I felt too sad. Doesn’t everyone feel sad when they see another person crying? When we want to help them, but we can’t?

  Be happy, I thought. It’s been a nice day.

  But I stayed sad. My sadness sat in my heart like a pebble—hard and sore. Slowly, I worked out the reason for it: it wasn’t Cosette’s tears, after all. It was that long, tight hug that Cosette’s mother had given her, the way she’d pressed her face into the place between Cosette’s neck and shoulders and rocked with her, left to right. What had she whispered to her? A promise or words of love?

  I’d felt that pebble in my heart at other times, like when I saw people holding hands. When Monsieur Lefevre kissed his wife’s forehead as she snoozed in the sun.

  I turned onto my side in bed.

  I thought how pretty Cosette was. She had apple-round cheeks and golden hair and her eyes were cornflower blue. My own cheeks were hollow; my hair was full of knots. I was only called pretty when I’d stolen things.

  I slept in the end. But even in my dreams, I felt the tiny pebble in my heart.

  In the middle of the night, the door was thrown open. The back of the door hit the bedroom wall and a lantern’s light filled the room. Maman stumbled in. She smelled of gin and woodsmoke.

  “What,” she roared, “is THIS?”

  She tore the blanket from us and pulled Cosette out of bed. She grabbed Cosette’s hair and lifted her up. The girl screamed and Azelma started crying and the cat who had been sleeping on the window seat shot out of the room and my mother was hissing, “What … is … this?” as if she’d found a rat and was holding it by the tail.

  Cosette squirmed in the air.

  Then she fell down onto her knees.

  “How dare you,” snarled Maman, “share my daughters’ bed? How dare you? Do you think you have the right to use our blankets, our heat? Do you?”

  I hurried to my mother, said, “Maman?”

  “Don’t come to me, Eponine! What were you thinking? Did I say that you could have that little louse in your own bed? Did I say that?”

  “No, Maman. But—”

  “Enough! You”—she pointed at Cosette—“downstairs! You’ll sleep under the stairs, where the dust gathers and the spiders live. That is your bed—do you hear?”

  Azelma sobbed but Cosette didn’t. She just knelt very still, wide-eyed.

  “GO!” Maman roared.

  Cosette got up and ran downstairs.

  Then my mother turned. “Eponine …” It was her slow, warning voice.

  “Maman, I did not know where else she might sleep. She was cold—”

  “Cold? What does that matter? Listen to me: that girl, she isn’t a Thenardier like us. She is the bastard child of a slum-dwelling woman who cannot afford to feed her own daughter. Her mother is paying for us to keep her—paying! For her food and clothing! And do you think we will spend that money on her?” She bared her teeth in a cunning smile. “No, we won’t! That money will be spent on us, Eponine. We’ll use it for fine clothes and jewels and meat and she”—she spat the word—“will wear rags. She will eat crusts. And she’ll do all the jobs I tell her to.” Maman folded her arms. “What do you think of that?”

  I felt afraid. “So I can’t play with her?”

  “No. She is our slave now—understand me? Don’t show kindness to that poor, fatherless brat.” Maman narrowed her eyes. “And anyway, Eponine, you should be pleased. I was going to send you for water when you were older, remember? To go through the woods at night? Well, she can do that job now.”

  She left, slammed the door.

  * * *

  I made the bed tidy. I looked for Azelma’s doll and tucked her under my sister’s arm. “There, there,” I said to her. Soon she was sleeping and I heard the little pops of her breath.

  The pebble of sadness was still in me. But I felt relief too because I was so scared of those woods where Boulatruelle lurked and witches lived. Now I didn’t have to go there. It was her task—that fatherless brat (I tried out those words) who was sleeping under the stairs.

  She didn’t wear her linen bonnet anymore. Nor her ribboned frock or satin shoes. Instead, Cosette wore a sack from the miller’s house meant for flour but that was too thin in places to keep the flour in. Maman cut two holes into the sack for her arms and a larger hole at the top for her head. “That,” she said, “is your new dress. Not such a pretty thing now!”

  Cosette did all the bad jobs.

  She worked in the kitchen. Among the grease and black-bodied flies, she plucked chickens and scraped the scales off fish. She scrubbed vegetables and sliced fatty meat and wrinkled her nose at the pails of soured milk. When the cook carried rabbits by their ears—still alive, kicking—into the yard to have their necks snapped, Cosette cried for them. Then she scoured their blood from the kitchen floor.

  She cleaned the windows and washed our clothes. She ate from a bowl under the kitchen table, kneeling on all fours. “Like an animal,” said Maman, laughing. “Look at her! Just like the cat. She’s so dirty, with fleas and thistles in her hair.”

  * * *

  I didn’t have to steal anymore. Every month, Cosette’s mother sent fifteen francs: with this, my parents could pay for their tobacco and ale and gin and flour and milk and firewood and eggs. They could pay for a hock of ham instead of stealing it. I didn’t have to dip my fingers into pockets.

  This was new. In the evenings, when the inn was full, Azelma and I weren’t creeping through the room now; we were sitting upstairs instead. Would Maman want us? It felt very strange.

  We drew on the window’s mist with our fingers.

  We played with the doll and sang.

  But Maman didn’t come. Part of me was glad because I didn’t like the inn being smoky and noisy and full of men. But part of me felt sorry too—because I didn’t know how else to make our mother smile and say, Oh, my pretty ones!

  * * *

  Spring crept on. March became April and April became May. Sunshine brought the villagers out. Cosette stayed indoors, sweeping, but the rest of us came out into the flowery warmth. Marie-Belle, with her hunched back, sat on a bench and read. Monsieur Fournier’s cows munched buttercups. Claude the blacksmith, seeing the sun, worked outside in the street and I heard the ting ting ting! of his hammer and the hiss of the shoe as he pressed it on to the horse. One morning as we watched this, Azelma and me, I saw how the tools on his belt were shiny. I wondered if I might take one, and what Maman would say?

  Maman appeared. She stepped out of the inn in her prettiest dress, rustling as she walked. “How do I look?” she cried.

  We left the blacksmith’s and ran to her.

  “Am I very beautiful?”

  “You are! You are!” We clapped our hands.

  “I’m going to Paris,” she declared. “See these bags? They are filled with that urchin’s clothes … Fancy, frilly nonsense. Her mother sent them, but that bug cannot scrub floors in such dresses, can she? So I’m off to Paris to sell them—and with the money they fetch I shall buy you far prettier dresses than these vile things … Satin! Silk!” She turned. “Luc? My hat.”

  Papa stood in the doorway. He tossed her a hat, took the pipe from his mouth, and said, “Get what you can—and more.”

  “I will.” She kissed our heads—two smacking kisses.

  At that moment, a carriage appeared. It would take her to Livry and from there a second coach would take her to Paris itself. She heaved herself inside it with the bag of clothes.

  We watched the
coach rumble away, down the ruelle du Boulanger.

  Papa said, “She’d better come back with one hundred, at least.”

  “One hundred francs?” I gasped. “The clothes are worth that?”

  “No, but she’ll be doing more than selling clothes.” He placed the pipe back in his mouth, gripped it with his teeth. “We know all the best places in Paris …”

  “To visit?”

  He laughed. “Ha! No, to steal from, you fool!” And he turned and went inside.

  Azelma followed him but I stayed in the lane. I watched the carriage grow smaller and smaller. I thought, All we do is steal. It seemed to be all we ever did or talked about. Wasn’t there another way of living?

  I remembered the hug Cosette’s mother had given her. I looked up at the swifts, swooping.

  For the first time I hoped for something better. For something more than Montfermeil, and this.

  * * *

  Paris. I knew its name. I’d heard it mentioned in the street as the carriage rolled by or as the blacksmith tended to horses. At the market in Chelles, they called, “The finest lace! From the streets of Paris! Come and see!” Madame Cou said she’d worked there once, as a dancer in a part called Montparnasse.

  “Paris … ,” she murmured, like she loved it very much.

  Maman was in Paris for three days. Back in Montfermeil it was all I could think of. What was it like? I imagined boulevards—wide streets lined with trees that whispered in the wind. Tall houses made of stone, and horses that shone, as if polished. Men were handsome, tilting their hats when they passed a fine lady, and those ladies wore fox fur and pearls. Even the names of places sounded beautiful: Notre-Dame, the hill called Montmartre, the Seine, and the Champ de Mars … It felt like a magical place.

  One evening I crept into the half-empty bar. My father was playing dominoes with Boulatruelle and some other men.

  “Papa?”

  “Hm?” He kept his eyes on the game.

  “Will you tell me more about what Paris is like?”

  “Paris? Grubby and dark. Alleyways to hide in.”