“Reine, do the dishes. I think I’ll go to my room and lie down. I can feel one of my headaches coming.” My mother’s voice was uninflected, only that tic of hers-the small repetitive movement of the fingers across the face, the temple-betraying her discomfort. “Reine, don’t forget to close the curtains. The shutters. Boise, make sure the plates are put away properly. Mind you don’t forget!” Even now she was anxious to maintain her own strict order. The plates, stacked in order of size and color, each one wiped with a cloth and dried with a clean, starched tea towel-nothing left to drain sluttishly on the board, that would have been too easy-the tea towels hung out to dry in neat rows. “Hot water for my good plates, do you hear?” She sounded edgy now, anxious for her good plates. “And mind you wipe them, wipe both sides. No putting my plates away still damp, do you hear me?”

I nodded. She turned, grimacing. “Reine, make sure she does it.” Her eyes were bright, almost feverish looking. She looked at the clock with a peculiar ticking movement of the head. “And lock the doors. The shutters too.” At last, she seemed almost ready to go. Turning, pausing, still reluctant to leave us to our own devices, our secret freedoms. Speaking to me in that sharp, stilted way which hid anxiety.

“You just mind those plates, Boise, that’s all!”

Then she was gone. I heard her pouring water in the bathroom sink. I closed the blackout curtains in the living room, bending to retrieve the tobacco tin as I did so, then, stepping out into the corridor, I said, loudly enough for her to hear me:

“I’ll do the bedrooms.”

My mother’s room first. I secured the shutter, drew the curtain and fastened it in place, then looked around quickly. Water was still splashing in the bathroom, and I could hear the sound of my mother brushing her teeth. Moving quickly and silently I removed her pillow from its striped cover, then, with the tip of my pocketknife, made a tiny slit in the seam and poked the muslin bag inside. I pushed it as far in as I could with the hilt of the knife, so that no bulge should betray its presence. Then I replaced the cover, my heart now hammering wildly, smoothing the quilt carefully to prevent creases. Mother always noticed things like that.

I was only just in time. I met her in the passageway, but although she gave me a suspicious look she said nothing. She looked vague and distracted, eyes creased small, her gray-brown hair unbound. I could smell soap on her, and in the gloom of the passageway she looked like Lady Macbeth-a tale I had culled recently from another of Cassis’s books-her hands rubbing against each other, lifting to her face, caressing, cradling it, rubbing again, as if blood, and not the juice of oranges, were the stain she could not wash away.

For a moment I hesitated. She looked so old, so tired. My own head had begun to throb sharply and I wondered what she would do if I went up to her and pressed it against her shoulder. My eyes stung briefly. Why was I doing this, anyway? Then I thought of Old Mother waiting in the murk, of her mad and baleful gaze, of the prize in her belly.

“Well?” My mother’s voice was harsh and stony. “What are you gawking at, idiot?”

“Nothing.” My eyes were dry again. Even my headache was fading as suddenly as it had appeared. “Nothing at all.”

I heard the door snick shut behind her and returned to the living room, where my brother and sister were waiting for me. Inside, I was grinning.

9.

You’re crazy.“ That was Reinette again, her usual helpless cry when all other arguments had been exhausted. Not that it took long to exhaust her-lipsticks and film stars apart, her capacity for argument was always limited.

“It’s as good a time as any,” I told her straightly. “She‘ll sleep late in the morning. As long as we get the chores done, we’ll be able to go wherever we like afterward.” I looked at her, hard. There was still that business of the lipstick between us, my eyes reminded her. Two weeks earlier. I hadn’t forgotten. Cassis looked at us with curiosity; I was sure she hadn’t told him.

“She’ll be furious if she finds out,” he said slowly.

I shrugged. “Why should she find out? We’ll say we went into the woods looking for mushrooms. Chances are she might not even be out of bed by the time we get back.”

Cassis paused to consider the idea. Reinette shot him a look that was pleading and anxious at the same time.

“Go on, Cassis,” she said. Then, in a lower voice. “She knows. She found out about…” Her voice trailed off. “I had to tell her some of it,” she finished miserably.

“Oh.” He looked at me for a moment, and I felt something pass between us, something change-his look was almost admiration. He shrugged-who cares anyway?-but his eyes remained more watchful now, cautious.

“It wasn’t my fault,” said Reinette.

“No. She’s smart, aren’t you?” said Cassis lightly. “She would have found out sooner or later.” This was high praise and a few months earlier it might have made me weak with pride, but now I just stared at him. “Besides,” said Cassis in the same light tone, “if she’s in on it, she won’t be able to run blabbing to Mother.” I had just turned nine old for my age but still childish enough to be stung by the casual contempt of the words.

“I don’t blab!”

He shrugged. “Fine with me if you come, as long as you pay your own way,” he continued levelly. “Don’t see why either of us should pay for you. I’ll take you on my bike. That’s all. You work the rest out for yourself. All right?”

It was a test. I could see the challenge in his eyes. His smile was mocking, the not-quite-kind smile of the older brother who sometimes shared his last square of chocolate with me, and sometimes Indian-burned my arm so hard that the blood gathered in dark flecks under the skin.

“But she doesn’t get any pocket money,” said Reinette plaintively. “What’s the point of taking-”

Cassis shrugged. It was a typically final gesture, a man’s gesture. I have spoken. He waited for my reaction, arms crossed, that little smile on his lips.

“That’s fine,” I said, trying to sound calm. “That’s fine by me.”

“All right, then,” he decided. “We’ll go tomorrow.”

10.

This was where the day’s chores began. Buckets of water were brought from the well into the kitchen for cooking and washing. We had no hot water-no running water, in fact, except for the hand pump by the well, a few yards from kitchen door. Electricity was slow to come to Les Laveuses, and when bottled gas became too scarce we cooked on a wood-burning stove in the kitchen. The oven was outside, a large old-fashioned charcoal oven the shape of a sugarloaf, and beside it was the well. When we needed water that was where we had to get it, one of us pumping while another held the bucket. There was a wooden lid on the well, closed and padlocked since long before my birth, to prevent accidents. When Mother was not watching we washed under the pump, dousing ourselves with cold water. When she was around we had to use basins of water warmed in copper pans on the stove, as well as gritty coal-tar soap that abraded our skin like pumice, leaving a scum of gray froth on the surface of the water.

That Sunday, we knew Mother would not make an appearance until later. We had all heard her during the night, moaning to herself, turning and rolling on the old bed she had shared with my father, sometimes standing up and walking to and fro in the room, opening the windows for air, the shutters slamming back against the sides of the house and making the floor shake. I lay awake listening for a long time as she moved, paced, sighed, argued with herself in her percussive whisper. At about midnight I fell asleep, but awoke, an hour or so later, to hear her still awake.