Free Her Father's Daughter by Marie Sizun

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    The child cries. The mother won’t budge. Counters her tears with icy silence. She gets the child ready, the child crying, protesting. The mother’s face is unreadable, like a stranger’s. Her movements are hard, abrupt, like an enemy’s.
    She packs the child’s bag, and the child watches these preparations fearfully. She’s never been away from her mother. She’s never been anywhere alone. She doesn’t understand what’s going on at all. Why isn’t her father here?
    She tries to throw herself into her mother’s arms, to kiss her; she begs her. The mother pushes her away gently but firmly. Just because, she says. That’s the way it is. Be sensible. You’ll come back. It’s not for long. Your daddy will come to fetch you.
    The mother’s talking in short, resolute sentences which tear the child apart. She’s never talked to her like this. Perhaps it’s this shift, this difference, this strangeness, this strangerness , that hurts the child. Her mother’s no longer her mother, but someone she doesn’t know.
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    They take the Métro, the two of them. Like on that first day, that day long ago when they went to see the father. The mother holds the child’s hand, but anyone would think she doesn’t love her, that she’s angry; she doesn’ttalk, and there’s a harshness about her fingers that the child doesn’t recognize, that almost hurts her.
    The child has stopped protesting, deep in the despair of her exile but of something else too, something more serious that she doesn’t understand. She can’t begin to grasp it, but it’s there. Between them. In that silence.

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    Of her time with her grandmother, the time in August 1944 – how long was it? A few days, a week, more? – the child would remember almost nothing. Apart from waiting. She waited, waited day after day for it to be over. For someone to come for her. For her father to come for her. She thought he would be the one to come.
    She keeps asking the grandmother when she can go home. Aren’t you happy with me, then? is the grandmother’s only reply. She tries to teach the child to sew. She shows her how to throw grain for the three hens she keeps in the yard behind her house. She introduces her to the few customers who are starting to come back. During fittings, the women chatter, look at the child, try to get her to talk.
    The child’s bored. Filled with despair.
    Just one image from that time, the wallpaper featuring bunches of roses in the bedroom where she sleeps alone. It’s cold in this room, even in August, because the shutters are always closed. Some idea of the grandmother’s. The child’s afraid to turn the light out. So she stays therefor a long time, gazing at the roses on the walls, before she goes to sleep.
    One evening she’s already been in bed quite a while when she thinks she hears talking downstairs: she thinks she recognizes her father’s voice, down there, along with the grandmother’s. They’re talking loudly. Shouting even. Half asleep, the child gets straight out of bed, goes downstairs in the dark… But she must have made a noise: the grandmother looms in front of her, orders her back to bed this minute. But, the child says. No buts. You were dreaming. There’s no one here.
    And the next morning, nothing. The usual waiting.
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    And then one morning there’s such a noise outside, shots fired, shouting, a great thundering of lorries making the house shake, more shouting, firecrackers, cheers…
    â€˜Thank the Lord!’ cries the grandmother, who’s been at the windows since dawn. ‘Here they are! They’re coming! It’s them! It’s the liberation! We’re saved!’ And she runs all over the house to get a better view, from the best window, calls to her neighbours, more excited than the child’s ever seen her. The child thinks