Page 10 of One of Them

D elia woke up very early the next morning; the sky was still black, and the sparrows that usually twittered on the windowsills were quiet.

Lying in bed, she had to face the fact that her mother was not coming back.

But her abrupt disappearance might mean that she was in trouble.

Was she sick? Had she been hurt? Or arrested?

German soldiers were everywhere, and the French police were cooperating with them.

Sophie was a Jew; they were all Jews in their family, not that it had ever mattered before.

There might have been some circles where they wouldn’t have been welcome, but those were not circles they cared about.

The arty, bohemian crowd they surrounded themselves with was disparate enough to accommodate them.

And though her parents did not hide who they were, they didn’t seem particularly tied to their heritage either.

Rather they considered themselves citizens of the world, and it was art and the making of art that was their true religion.

Delia attended a lycée where the students mingled freely, and every year she celebrated Christmas with Gaby, whose mother served a b?che de Noel decorated to look like a yule log, lines scored into the chocolate icing to mimic bark, marzipan mushrooms and leaves sur rounding it.

Delia had her own wooden sabot in their apartment, set out alongside Gaby’s the night before; in the morning, it was filled with little trinkets and bonbons.

But now all of a sudden being Jewish was a liability, and because of it, something could have happened to her mother. Something bad.

Her father came into the kitchen and started to prepare the coffee.

Now there was no bread, stale or otherwise, but Delia didn’t think she could eat anyway.

Where was her mother? They had to find her.

She waited until Simon was seated at the table—the coffee in his cup was black since there was no milk either.

“Good morning, Papa,” she said.

“Bonjour.” He lit a cigarette, and a ribbon of smoke coiled and then dispersed somewhere above his head.

“What are we going to do?” She was frustrated by his calm demeanor; why wasn’t he frantic with worry?

He looked at her blankly and then said, “Do? We’re going to finish packing. And then we’re leaving.” He glanced up at the clock on the wall. “And we’ve got to hurry. There isn’t much time.”

“But what about Maman? Aren’t we going to look for her?”

“Where?” he asked.

Delia didn’t have an answer to that, so she got up to help him; it was better to do something, anything, than to let the worry completely consume her.

Two hours later, they were done, and Delia looked around the apartment.

It seemed to have exploded, its contents disgorged and strewn everywhere—just like their lives.

There hadn’t been time to pack even half of what they owned; they would have to leave the rest behind.

Just as they would have to leave her mother.

This stark fact was like a death—if not Sophie’s, then the death of Delia’s family, imperfect as it was but still hers, still dear, still all she’d ever known.

Something inside felt like it was burning, charred.

Yet she shed no tears; they had all been dried up by the awful scalding heat inside her.

With just a few small bags, Delia and Simon arrived at the Gare de Lyon to wait for the train.

There was a crush of people, all seemingly as anxious as they were, and her eyes scanned the crowd, hoping to see her mother somewhere in it.

Simon had Sophie’s ticket—Delia had checked—so if she did show up, she’d be able to accompany them.

But when it was time to board, there was still no Sophie.

Delia felt as if her feet were glued to the platform; she couldn’t make herself get on the train.

“Come on,” her father said, taking her elbow. His voice was exasperated; so was his expression. Still Delia did not move, though the knot of people behind her were jostling one another in their eagerness to board.

“Do you need any help, mademoiselle?” A harried-looking railway employee appeared in front of her.

“No,” Delia said. “I don’t.”

“Then you’ll need to step aside. You’re blocking the way.”

Delia was about to cede her place when her father grabbed her roughly by the wrist and yanked her up three steps and into the train.

“Papa, stop!” she cried. “You’re hurting me!”

“Hurting you?” said Simon. “Leaving you here on this platform would be hurting you. I’m saving you, you silly girl! Can’t you see that?”

Delia glared at him and rubbed her wrist. But she had to admit he was right. She couldn’t stay here. And she had to accept that Sophie really and truly wasn’t coming with them.

Her father was looking at her with some concern. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For everything.”

“So am I,” Delia said, but so softly it didn’t seem that he heard.

The trip to Lisbon took eighteen long hours, and the train was noisy and so crowded that some people crammed a few to a seat.

Delia and her father weren’t seated together; he was two seats in front of her on the aisle, while she was shoehorned in by a window.

At first she was grateful that she could look out at the landscape; even the slight distraction from her thinking about her mother was welcome.

But then she became aware of the man sitting next to her, who was pressing his thigh against hers; even through the wool coat that she wore, she could feel the pressure.

She initially thought it might be accidental on his part, so she shifted whatever fraction of a centimeter that she could away from him.

The pressure continued. And the man kept his face averted, so she couldn’t even hope to discourage him with an angry stare.

Then he replaced his thigh with his open hand, and then his fingers began to creep under her coat, then her skirt.

This could not be accidental. Delia cast panicked looks around her.

No one noticed anything, no one could rescue her, not even her father, unless she found a way to alert him.

Now the fingers had found their way to the tops of the ribbed stockings that she wore, and were kneading her bare flesh.

What could she do? She was frozen by his audacity until she understood: her failure to react was read as acquiescence, a kind of permission.

The realization goaded her into action. She dug into the pockets of her coat and found what she’d prayed would be there: a pearl-topped pin from the time she needed to secure her first grown-up hat—navy-blue felt with a black grosgrain ribbon—to her head.

Carefully extracting the pin, she kept it concealed as she positioned it right next to the place where the man’s thumb joined his hand.

Then she pressed, as hard as she could. For a second there was resistance, but then she could feel the pin push deep into his flesh.

He jerked his hand away; she was flooded with triumph.

He didn’t bother her for the rest of the ride.

Once in Lisbon, they boarded SS Quanza and embarked on the voyage across the ocean.

Delia spent most of the time in her cabin; the idea of socializing with the other passengers was intolerable, though her father seemed to enjoy it.

Maybe it was because he was mildly intoxicated much of the time.

But on the day they were scheduled to arrive in New York, she made her way up to the deck.

The ship was close enough so that she could see the Statue of Liberty on the horizon.

She’d only seen it in photographs, but she knew her mother had loved the gigantic sculpture—the size of it, its strong arm thrust boldly into the sky.

Sophie should have been here now, when Delia was seeing it for the first time.

Delia was once again awash in anger at her mother’s impulsive flight from the apartment, which had led to this moment. She turned away from the shoreline.

When they first landed, Delia and Simon stayed with his parents in their sprawling apartment on Riverside Drive.

Having met her paternal grandparents only twice, Delia scarcely knew them.

They seemed stilted and uncomfortable around their son and granddaughter, as if Sophie’s disappearance was too shameful to be discussed.

Well, that was all right with Delia; she didn’t want to talk about Sophie either, at least not with them.

She might have turned to her maternal grandparents, but they had died some years ago, and so she felt quite alone in her sorrow.

She was relieved when her father found them a house on West Eleventh Street, in Greenwich Village, so they could move out of the Riverside Drive apartment.

He covered its walls with the paintings that he’d managed to take with them, canvases pried carefully from their stretchers and rolled up tightly in the valises.

Seeing the paintings made Delia long even more for her mother’s sculpture, those sleek, sinuous forms—everyone had praised Sophie’s fluid line—made of marble or granite.

Most of that work was in storage now, her father said.

But Delia possessed the double portrait, and she was so glad she’d taken it.

She loved the way the two faces were distinct yet connected, the spare and even austere form, its alabaster so white and glowing that it seemed lit from within.

“So you took it with you, after all,” her father said when he saw the sculpture.

Delia waited for him to say more—to question her, chastise her, something .

But he just turned away, uttering a small sound—was it a sob ?

—as he did. She placed the sculpture in a prominent spot in her new room, which was on the top floor of the house; her father’s room was on the floor below.

If he didn’t want to see the sculpture, he didn’t have to come up here.