Pot de Crème

by Jeannine Acantilado (from perspective of her mother)

I’m happy catechism is over.  Maman promised to make pot de crème for dessert tonight.  I weave through people, bikes, and cars along the narrow, cobblestone streets of a town I know well.  I see a few German soldiers up ahead.  Their heads are together.   I hear their murmuring in a language I do not understand.  German is so confusing.  In my house, we hate that language.  I cross the street to avoid walking near them.  I don’t want their eyes on me.  I feel self-conscious in my plaid school uniform and pull my open coat around me.  My knee socks fall around my ankles as I run across the cobblestones, I keep my gaze down.   “Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me.” I chant in my head to the pace of my feet. I fear they will somehow know my father is part of the resistance, and I am forbidden to talk about it to anyone.  I find comfort in the busyness of the street among the people of my town.  They won’t let them do anything to me or my father.

The sirens, they are blaring and loud.  My heart pounds.  Everyone, even the soldiers, run for cover.  Within seconds, I am alone.   Running through the streets, I’m frantic knowing I am too far from home.  I won’t make it to our cellar.  I pray just like I was taught in catechism just minutes ago.  Please God.    If I bang on the door of any house, no one will answer.  They won’t hear me banging above the sirens.  They are all in their cellars as I would be if I were home, crouched, huddled together with my parents listening to the bombs fall . . .waiting for the stillness and silence to come.  I am too far away.  I won’t make it home.  The only thing I can think to do is crawl under a car parked in the street even though I know a bomb can effortlessly hurl a car.

I can hear the muffled sounds of bombs dropping in the distance.  I can see the smoke rising in the distance.  I am alone.  In four years, half of my lifetime, I have come to associate blaring and bombs with devastation and destruction.  The warning sirens seem more foreboding when I feel so exposed.  I can’t run any farther.  I am tired and breathless.  I wail and cry.  No one can hear me.  They are all gone, tucked away in their dark, dank places with purses, identification cards, money and a few photographs they snatched from their dressers just in case it happens today.  Just in case today is the day when their homes are blown to bits, reduced to rubble and ash.  I have seen it, the broken fragments of other people’s lives. It is entirely possible today will be our day.  I am alone, tired from running, and crying a prayer that no one hears.

Between the deafening sirens, I hear my name.  “Mireille! Mireille!” I whip around, searching the empty streets.  Did I really hear my name?  In the distance I see her.  She is pedaling toward me.  She is standing on the pedals, pumping hard as the tires vibrate over the cobblestone.  Her hair is flying in the wind.  Her dress is swirling.  She isn’t even wearing a coat.  She looks as frantic as I feel.  As she nears, I can see her furrowed brow with a shimmer of sweat glistening in the fading sun of the late afternoon in early winter.

“Get on!  Quick!”  She yells above the unrelenting sounds of danger.  Settling onto the bicycle seat, I wrap my arms around her waist and steady myself as she starts pumping the pedals of the old blue bike.  My chest is vibrating.  I’m not sure if it is the sirens, the bombs, or the speed of the tires bumping over the cobblestones.  I hold on.  My prayer for help has been answered.  Someone has come to help me.  I am no longer alone.  I hug my catechism teacher tight as we bounce and jostle through the empty streets.  I send God another prayer.  “Please God.  Don’t let a bomb hit my house.”  My Maman made pot de crème for me.  She will be so worried about me and where I am.  The bombs continue to fall in the distance.  They feel closer.

We burst through the back door, abandoning the bike.  I follow her down the cement steps in the familiar darkness of an unfamiliar basement.  Her sons and husband are hurling angry questions about where she has been.  She hugs me close.  We huddle together in fear, and we all pray together.

When I return to the streets the next morning.  The houses look as they did last evening.  I feel hopeful.  People are outside, bustling again as if nothing happened.  As I turn to exit the shortcut through the alley, I see my home just as I left it.  We were spared again.  I feel calm for now.

What I don’t know in that moment is that 25 years later, when I live in another country, am married and the mother of three children, learning to drive a car will paralyze me.  Not because I can’t figure out the clutch but because wide open spaces will feel too far from a cellar.  I will feel alone again.  The expansiveness of country roads will feel too risky.  The pounding in my chest will return as if the cacophony of sirens and bombs can still ravage my insides.  I will lose my calm behind the wheel of a car.  At times I won’t even walk outside to the mailbox.

However, on Wednesdays, I will make pot de crème for my children as I wait for them to return from catechism.