She met Apolline at the foot of the back staircase when she was home, and didn’t want anyone to see her come in, but her shaved head spoke for itself. She looked with tragic eyes at the woman who had cared for her as a child. It was Gaëlle who had been betrayed, not France, in her case. The two women stood gazing at each other, and the old woman spat in her face. It was the final blow from someone she had loved, and Gaëlle walked slowly upstairs with tears rolling down her cheeks. She hadn’t moved back to her old room, and stayed in the attic to be near her mother, who wouldn’t go back to her room after the Germans had lived there for four years. She said she could never sleep there again.
Gaëlle didn’t go in to see her mother that night, and waited until the next morning to check on her. Apolline was just leaving her room, after bringing her a tray, and she stared at Gaëlle again with hatred, as though everything that had happened the night before hadn’t been punishment enough. And her mother lay in her bed and noticed her daughter’s shaved head and black eye. Even she knew what it meant.
“What happened?” she asked with a look of horror. “Why did they do that to you? What have you done? How did you betray your country? Who did you collaborate with?” She couldn’t even imagine how she could have done something so terrible when her father had died in the Resistance.
“No one, Maman,” she said quietly. “It’s a mistake. I can explain it.”
“No, you can’t,” her mother said with a look of outrage. “They don’t make mistakes about things like that. Were you sleeping with the Germans, while I was here sick in my bed?”
“No, I wasn’t,” Gaëlle said in a dignified tone. “I never slept with anyone. I’m still a virgin.” It was true. Nothing she had done had led her to sleep with anyone, and the German soldiers had left her alone, thanks to the commandant controlling them, and keeping them away from her. And he had done nothing wrong or disrespectful himself.
“I don’t believe you!” her mother screamed at her. “You’ve disgraced us! How will we ever face anyone here again? They know what you are. Look at you!” She pointed to her shaved head, as Gaëlle’s eyes filled with tears that spilled down her cheeks. She knew her mother was too upset to listen to what she had done with the art treasures of France that had been entrusted to her care. Agathe was too hysterical to believe a word Gaëlle could say. Her shaved head spoke louder than her words.
She left the room quietly, intending to come back later, and went downstairs to see Apolline in the kitchen.
“I never did anything wrong. I swear it to you,” she said, and the old housekeeper was stone-faced.
“I don’t believe you, and no one else will either. You sold your body for food.” Others did, but Gaëlle didn’t. And if she had, it would have been for her mother, but even that was not true. “You slept with the enemy. No one will ever forget that here. You are tainted forever. You have disgraced your parents, and your family, and everyone who ever knew you.” Other than Rebekah being taken away, and her father’s murder at the hands of the Germans, this was the third most defining moment of her life, and Gaëlle knew she would never forget it.
She went back upstairs to see her mother, and she had turned her face to the wall and wouldn’t eat. For the next three weeks she ate nothing except her sleeping powder and a few crumbs of bread and sips of water. She was too weak to speak, but whenever she saw Gaëlle, she looked at her with hatred and shame. Gaëlle called the doctor, but he couldn’t force her mother to eat more either. And after three weeks of self-imposed starvation, in her already weakened condition, she got pneumonia from never moving from her bed. And three days later, while Gaëlle was sitting next to her, Agathe turned to look at her. Gaëlle never had a chance to tell her the truth about the paintings, or the children. She tried to reach out to hold her mother’s hand, and Agathe wouldn’t let her. She pulled her hand away, and wanted nothing to do with her own daughter. She thought Gaëlle was a traitor, which was the worst thing she could think of after five years of war, and the four years of German occupation. She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep then. She sighed and said her husband’s name, and then she was gone. It was all over. She had never recovered from her husband’s death and was never going to. The war had been too much for her.
Gaëlle gently closed her eyes and covered her, and Apolline came upstairs a few minutes later and saw what had happened.
“You killed your mother,” she said coldly.
“No,” Gaëlle said angrily, “the war killed her. It killed all of us. You, me, my father, my brother, your son, thousands of Jewish children. No one is the same, and I’m not what you think I am. It doesn’t matter what you think. I know who I am.” She walked out of the room then, and they buried her mother two days later. She told Apolline not to come to the burial. She didn’t want Apolline to spoil her mourning her mother. She was nineteen years old, and she’d been through enough.
“You can go now,” she told Apolline the morning after the funeral. And the old housekeeper looked at her, shocked.
“I’ve worked here all my life,” she said, her eyes begging for pity, which Gaëlle no longer felt for her.
“You should have thought of that before you reported me as a collaborator, threw garbage at me in the street, and accused me of killing my mother.”