Free All the Light There Was by Nancy Kricorian Page A

asked my brother in Armenian, “Do you know where Henri is?”
    “Don’t ask for information you don’t need. And you have to keep that kid quiet and out of sight until I figure out what to do with her.”
    Claire pulled on my wrist. “What’s he saying?”
    I smoothed her hair. “We’re just talking about some other friends who were on the bus with your parents.”
    When I went out to the shops a few hours later, the skies were overcast and the mood somber. In front of the grocer’s, people passed stories of the morning’s roundup up and down the line. Some families had been alerted the night before and had gone into hiding. A few people had managed to sneak off the buses and disappear down side streets. A mother on the rue Piat had thrown her children out the sixth-floor window and jumped out behind them rather than be taken by the police.
    As I passed through the courtyard of our building on my way home, Madame Girard, the concierge, stopped me at the foot of the stairs. She told me that in our building alone, six families had been rounded up.
    Madame Girard said, “It’s a disgrace that they took the Lipski woman in her condition. Those messieurs have no decency, no decency at all.”
    I said, “It’s a wretched business.”
    “And even the little ones, they took them also. But I didn’t see Claire with her parents.” Madame Girard looked at me. “I wonder what happened to her.”
    Our concierge, who was up and down the landings with her mop and bucket, had eyes like a bird of prey and ears as sharp as a dog’s. No matter what her sympathies, we couldn’t afford to let anyone know we had the child. A secret told to one person is a secret no more.
    “Maybe they left Claire with their cousins,” I suggested.
    Madame Girard eyed me. “They have cousins? Funny, they never mentioned it. You know hiding a Jew is now against the law.”
    “That’s too bad. I thought that for a Jew as small as Claire, too young even for the yellow star, they wouldn’t care so much.”
    “Even as small a Jew as Claire.” The concierge shook her head and clucked her tongue. “But in this building, the only one who might make a problem is Monsieur Delattre, on the third floor at the back. The rest mind their own business, but that one would sell his own mother if someone offered him five francs.”
    When I reached the landing, my father and brother were carrying a mattress out of the Lipskis’ apartment. My mother followed them with a few framed photos and more of Claire’s clothes.
    At dinner that evening, we spoke French in deference to Claire. She watched us intently but didn’t say anything unless addressed directly. When we took up our work in the front room after dinner, Claire sat at the table with a pencil and some parcel paper drawing stick figures that had large round heads and fingers like sausages.
    My mother said in Armenian, “Look at that little face. It’s searing my heart.”
    It was decided that Claire should sleep with Auntie Shakeh and me in our bedroom. It was a hot, breezeless night, so I spread a sheet loosely across Claire and Charlotte. I sat on the end of Claire’s mattress on the floor with my back against the wall, singing the same two lullabies—one in French and one in Armenian. With the hall light falling into the room at an angle across the floor, I waited for Claire to ask an impossible question or to start crying. Soon, though, the sound of deep, rhythmic breathing told me that she had fallen asleep.
    The next afternoon, after a family consultation, I rode the bicycle to the Vél d’Hiv, taking a basket of provisions for the Lipskis. I was red-faced and sweaty by the time I arrived, my white cotton blouse sodden and sticking to my back. There were dozens of police officers on the street guarding the entrance to the stadium. After walking up and down the sidewalk a few times, studying the face of each policeman in turn, I sidled up to a young officer whose open expression seemed