Free I Am Madame X by Gioia Diliberto Page B

“Mimi, I want to talk to you tonight about your skin treatments. Come see me after chapel.”
    That evening, while the girls were dressing for bed in the dormitory, I slipped downstairs to the nuns’ corridor. The door of Sister Emily-Jean’s cell was ajar, so I pushed it open and stepped inside. The lovely nun was sitting on her bed, weeping. A copy of Le Figaro lay on the cold stone floor.
    “What’s wrong?” I asked. I thought perhaps she was crying over my skin, and I planned to enlist her help in convincing Mama to take me off Chomel’s Solution.
    “Oh, Mimi, one of the greatest men in the world has died.”
    “Not Victor Hugo!”
    “No, no. Your President. Mr. Lincoln.”
    He wasn’t my President, but I didn’t want to upset Sister Emily-Jean further by contradicting her.
    “He was murdered,” she continued, struggling to speak through her tears. “Shot by an actor as he and Mrs. Lincoln watched a play.”
    Lincoln had died ten days earlier, but the news of his assassination had reached France only that afternoon.
    “Don’t you want to talk to me about my skin?” I asked.
    “Not now, dear. Maybe tomorrow.”
    I left Sister Emily-Jean’s cell, tiptoed down the corridor, and mounted the stairs to the dormitory.
    On my next visit home, Mama announced that we would be leaving Paris and returning to Louisiana with Rochilieu. He had booked passage to New Orleans on a French ship, the Trésor. But we would not be sailing for several months—Rochilieu needed time to get his affairs in order. Now that the war was over, he was eager to reclaim his plantation in Plaquemine and his townhouse in the French Quarter. Without his support, Mama, Valentine, and I could not afford to stay in France.
    I was ambivalent about returning to Parlange. On the one hand, I couldn’t wait to see Julie, Charles, and Grandmère again. But I had grown accustomed to the convent. The thought of leaving Sister Emily-Jean, in particular, filled me with sadness.
    Mama wanted to leave Paris for only one reason: she expected to find riches awaiting her in America. Before the war started, Papa had told her that Grandpère Avegno had hidden several trunks of gold in the yard of one of the houses he owned in the Tremé district, an enclave of free blacks and mulattoes north of the Vieux Carré. This gold was all that was left of the once-magnificent Avegno fortune. Much of the dead patriarch’s property had been confiscated by the Federals and his money lost, having been invested in the Bank of New Orleans, which sent its gold to the Confederacy in exchange for now-worthless Rebel notes. Mama planned to enlist help from her in-laws in tracking down the trunks, which she was convinced would turn up. Then, with our share of the gold, we would return to France—this time in style.
    The next months at the convent passed uneventfully, until my last week. Six days before we were to leave Paris, I had a final skirmish with Farnsworth. I’m proud to say it was a battle I won triumphantly, and which, to my childish heart, compensated a bit for the tragic defeat of the Confederacy.
    It started during a routine geography lesson. We were studying the American capital cities, and I had worked hard to learn every one. Indeed, I was applying myself in all my subjects, so determined was I to leave the convent with good marks.
    “Mademoiselle Avegno, what is the capital of New York?” Farnsworth asked me at the start of class.
    “Albany,” I answered.
    “And the capital of Maryland?”
    “Annapolis.”
    Farnsworth looked furious. I was depriving her of the pleasure of punishing me.
    “All right, Mademoiselle. What is the capital of Kentucky?”
    “Frankfort.” I felt a grin coming on and covered my mouth with my hand. Too late.
    “You think you’re so smart. Are you mocking me?” The old teacher’s face turned red; a fiery blush spread to her ears and neck.
    “No, Madame, I’m simply answering your questions.”
    “I’ll teach you to be