Free Amandine by Marlena de Blasi

Of course we’ll continue to examine her with the same frequency, but it’s time that she begins to live more like the healthy child she seems to be.”
    A few days later Solange and Amandine are sitting in the park watching the children at play. Inured to prudence, Amandine is content to be the audience, to sit cross-legged on the grass merrily applauding the spectacle. Solange asks her, “Darling, would you like to join those little girls in the playhouse?”
    “Me? But you know I mustn’t.”
    “It’s okay. Baptiste said it would be okay. As long as you don’t run too much. You know. As long as you take things a bit slowly. At first. Go on.”
    Amandine gets up, smoothes her plaid skirt, adjusts one fallen yellow sock, looks uncertainly at Solange. “Will you stay right here?”
    “Yes. Right here. Go now. You may go. I’ll be here waiting for you. Trust me.”
    Amandine nods, turns, starts off, then turns back. “But what if you’re
not
here when I come back?”
    “I’ll be here.”
    “Is that what trust means?”
    “Yes.”
    She goes, then returns again. “Do some people say they will and then they don’t?”
    “Yes.”
    “What’s that called?”
    “A broken trust.”
    Amandine stays still. Closes her eyes for a moment. “Can it be fixed? If it’s broken, can a trust be fixed?”
    “It depends on how badly it’s broken. Now go. It’s nearly time for us to be back at the convent.”

CHAPTER XI

    “M ATER, I WOULD LIKE PERMISSION TO BEGIN BRINGING AMANDINE to the
réfectoire
at midday. I think she would benefit from the society of the children.”
    Seated at her desk, her hands full of papers, Paul looks up from her work as Solange speaks. She pauses, considers the request, its rationale. “How do you suppose a five-year-old could
benefit
from the society of thirty-six cosseted little chits? She holds the house in thrall, is that not sufficient? Would you have her endear herself to an even greater audience than that?”
    “She herself will be joining the ranks of the ‘cosseted little chits’ next year, and I was thinking it might be a good thing for her to be introduced, little by little, into the next era of her life. Until a few months ago, she’d had so little exposure to other children. But now that she … I mean since Baptiste has given his approval for increased activity, she has made friends at the park and she’s become really quite social. Surely she would enjoy being at table with the other girls and—”
    “You have yet to grasp that ‘what she would enjoy’ is of no concern to me. She is not a student of the school, and hence the refectory is not open to her. It’s that simple. Request denied, Sister.”
    The issue settled, Paul resumes shuffling her papers. Takes up her pen. Solange remains silent but makes no move to leave. Once again, Paul looks up at Solange, who seems absorbed in pulling at a loose thread in her apron. In a less harsh tone, Paul says, “I do you a favor by my refusal. Amandine is, she is
different,
and my convent girls will fathom that from the first moment she is among them. Let her be content as long as she can with her dilettante’s occupations. Her piano lessons, her drawing. She might well do without the elocution lessons, though, futile bane against the devil’s marking her with that lisp.” With this last she regains imperiousness.
    “Mater, I—”
    “I must say you’ve done well by her training in the more homely occupations, what with her morning climb up onto the kitchen stool to put her hands into the dough or to stir a pudding. It’s become quite the ritual, too, hasn’t it? Her feeding the geese, the rabbits, the goats, and her traipsing about the garden after her beloved Philippe. Your dressing her up like some
maquette
in that blasphemous replica of our habits, that seems to please her mightily.”
    “Amandine asked for ‘a dress like Père Philippe’s,’ and so Sister Josephine made her one from a length of stuff cut