Amandine by Marlena de Blasi Page A

very much.”
    “You don’t know who she is? Are you sure that no one here is my own mother?”
    “No one here.”
    “Shouldn’t we be going to find her then? I’ve been here for so long, won’t she be worried by now? That I haven’t come home?”
    “She knows that you’re well and safe here. She knows that you’re with me, with Paul and Philippe and all the rest of us. She knows that, and so she’s not worried.”
    “Oh. But can I just see her for a while? I want to see my own mother. I’m sure she would like to see me, don’t you think she would?”
    “Of course I do, but right now that simply isn’t possible. She wants you to grow up to be a beautiful, strong girl, to learn your lessons, to be kind and good, to be obedient to me and to the sisters, to—”
    “How do you know that she loves me?”
    “I know because, because she cared so much about you that she—”
    “Did she tell you? Did she tell you that she loved me?”
    “In her way, she did.”
    “What way?”
    “She sent a lady to tell me about you.”
    “She did? What did the lady say?”
    “She said that there was this precious little baby whose mother wasn’t able to care for her and that the mother didn’t want the baby to be alone. She asked me if I would take care of the baby. For her mother. She asked me if I would give her all the love in the world in her mother’s name. Just as though the mother, herself, was giving her that love. Do you understand?”
    “I don’t know. Who was the lady?”
    “She was a woman with beautiful eyes, eyes like a deer and skin white like the moon. And she was very sad. I saw her only for a moment, a half moment.”
    “Why was she sad?”
    “I think it was because she knew that your mother would miss you. That she would miss you, too.”
    “Then let’s go to find the lady. She’ll know where my own mother is and then we can all be together. The lady and you and my mother and me. And your own mother, too, and we can take Philippe and his own mother and Paul and all the sisters. And everybody’s own mother.”
    Should I have explained it in another way? Should I not have explained it at all? Was Paul right? Was my telling her that her mother couldn’t care for her more cruel than my telling her that her mother was dead? Would it have been better to wait until she was older, more able to…? I would have waited, I would gladly have put off such discourse, had the incident at the park not brought me face-to-face with her misconceptions. I had no choice. I couldn’t allow her to go on thinking that Paul was her mother. Philippe, her father. How much
more cruel would it have been if I’d not told her, if I’d simply let her wander about in that
nebbia
, that puerile rationale? On the first day of school, her classmates would have pitilessly dispelled her delusions. She would have come running to me for solace. “Is it true? Why didn’t you tell me? Then who is my mother?” So well have I taught my little girl, she would call my omission, my silence a broken trust. She would be right. No, it’s better this way. I will console her, and she will become accustomed to the truth. The truth. But is what I told her the truth, or have I corrected her misconceptions only to propose mine? An ambiguity exchanged for an abstraction. God help me. I try to forget my mother while she begins to long for hers
.
    “Do you know what, Père Philippe?”
    “Tell me, beauty.”
    “When I was younger, I mean last week when I was younger, I used to think that you were my own father. Isn’t that silly?”
    “Not silly.”
    “Do you have your own father?”
    “I did once, but he, long ago he went to live in heaven. You know, with God.”
    Soft rain chimes on the stones under the eaves of the washhouse windows. Inside Amandine sits with Philippe in the old parlor chair amid the smells of soap and steam. Marie-Albert whispers the beads while she cranks the wringer.
    “Do you have a mother, Père?”
    “Yes.