Mademoiselle Chanel (2 page)

T
he day Maman died, I was lining up my dolls in the cemetery. They were poppets of cloth and straw I had made when I was a child, dirty and misshapen now because I was almost twelve. I gave them different names at different times. Today, they were Mesdames les Tantes, named for the black-clad women in our garret nearby, watching my mother gasp out her final breaths.

“You sit here and you here,” I said, forcing their little bodies into position against the toppling headstones and imagining I was ordering about les Tantes. The cemetery was my haven, a patch for the dead on the edge of the village where my mother had brought me and my siblings after Papa left us. We had moved so often, I did not think of it as home. Papa often disappeared for months at a time, a marketplace vendor who took to the road with his wares.

“I was born for the road,” he would say when Maman nagged him. “For generations, we Chanels have been wanderers. Do you expect me to change what is in my blood?”

Maman sighed. “Not entirely. But we are married now, Albert. We have children.”

Papa laughed. He had a big laugh, and I loved hearing it. “Children
learn to adjust. They don’t mind if I travel. Isn’t that so,
ma
Gabrielle?” he asked, turning to wink at me. I was his favorite; he’d told me so, swooping me up in his burly arms and scattering ash from his cigarette over my thick black braids as I laughed. “Gabrielle,
mon petit chou,
my little cabbage!”

Then he’d set me down, and he and Maman would argue. It inevitably ended with her shouting “Then go! Go away as you always do and leave us to our misery!” and I covered my ears. I hated her then. I hated her tears and scrunched-up face, her clenched fists as Papa stormed from the house. I feared he might never come back because of her. She didn’t see that he left because he had to—her love was like smoke without flame. It left him nothing to breathe.

Still, I always waited for Papa, though this last time he left, a gossip in Lorraine eventually spotted him and the news winged its way to our village: Albert Chanel was working in a tavern and had been seen with a woman—a harlot. I didn’t know what a harlot was, but Maman did. She went cold. Her tears dried. “He is a bastard,” she whispered.

Packing up our meager belongings, she brought me, my two sisters, Julia and Antoinette, and my brothers, Alphonse and Lucien, here to Courpière, where her three widowed aunts clucked their tongues and said, “We warned you, Jeanne. We told you, the man is no good. His sort never are. What will you do now? How will you support this tribe he’s left you to raise?”

“Papa is coming back,” I yelled, rattling their chipped teacups. “He
is
good. He loves us!”

“This child is a hoyden,” Maman’s aunts declared in unison. “She has his bad blood. No good will come of her, either.”

Coughing and clutching a cloth to her mouth, Maman sent me out to play. She grew thinner by the day, vanishing before my eyes. I knew she was sick but I did not want to admit it. I glared at the aunts and marched out, as I had seen Papa do so many times.

Mesdames les Tantes stayed away after that. But when Maman’s cough
settled in her chest and she could no longer work as a seamstress’s assistant, they crept back into the house. They overran everything, turned everything black, and saw Maman to her bed, from which they said she would never rise again.

“Will Maman die?” asked my sister Julia. She was thirteen, only a year older than I was, but perpetually frightened by the winter winds that gnawed the village, by the clatter of carts splashing mud on our ragged skirts and the suspicious glances of the townsfolk. But most of all, she was afraid of death, for what would become of us, left alone in the world with les Tantes, who had watched in pitiless silence as our mother wasted away?

“She won’t die,” I said. Maybe if I said it, it would be true.

“But she is very sick. I heard one of les Tantes say she’s not long for this earth. Gabrielle, what will happen to us?”

I felt a lump in my throat, like the stale bread Maman gave us when there was nothing else to eat. She would send me to the baker with the few centimes she had saved but told me not to beg, for we had our pride. Still, the bread the baker gave me was always hard.

This lump was like that. Swallow, I told myself. I must swallow it.

“She will not die,” I said again, but a sob escaped Julia as she looked over her shoulder to our sister Antoinette, only five, happily tugging weeds from between the tombstones. “They will get rid of us,” she said, “send us to an orphanage or worse because Papa is never coming back.”

I bolted to my feet. I was too thin, as les Tantes often scolded, an urchin who looked as if she’d never had a full meal—as if such a feat were something Maman could conjure up like the miracle of the fishes and the loaves. Grabbing up one of my dolls, I shook it at Julia. “You must never say that. Papa
is
coming back. You will see.”

Julia squared her narrow shoulders. It took me aback, the abrupt defiance in her, for though she was the eldest, Maman always said that Julia was too timid. “Gabrielle,” she said somberly. “This is no time for make-believe.”

No time for make-believe . . .

My sister’s words echoed in my head as we trudged back to our house, summoned by one of the aunts yelling from the garret window.

In the parlor, the faded drapes were drawn and the table swept clean of the stuff of Maman’s work—the bobbins, needles, and half-cut patterns for gowns she made for others, but could never afford for herself. The aunts had laid out our mother’s corpse.

“Her suffering is over . . . Her pain is no more . . . Our poor Jeanne is at peace.” One of the aunts beckoned with her claw. “Come, girls. You must kiss your mother good-bye.”

I froze in the doorway. I couldn’t move as Julia went to the table and leaned over it, setting her lips on Maman’s purple mouth. Antoinette began to wail. In the corner, six-year-old Lucien banged his tin soldiers together, while nine-year-old Alphonse stared in bewilderment.

“Gabrielle,” les Tantes said. “Come here this instant.” Their voices flapped around me like ravens, swooping and pecking. I stared at my mother’s body, her hands folded on her chest, her eyes shut and sunken cheeks like wax. Even from a distance, seeing her like that made me think that when people said the dead were at peace, they lied.

The dead didn’t feel. They were gone forever. I would never see Maman again. She would never stroke my hair from my brow and say, “Gabrielle, why can’t you keep your braids neat?” She would never check on us in our bed to make sure we were warm at night, never come trudging up the stairs with her baskets and give sugar cakes to keep the little ones happy so Julia and I could help her with her work. She would never again show me the difference between a slip stitch and a blanket stitch, never laugh in her quiet way when Julia sewed the edge of her own skirt to the garment she was supposed to be mending. Maman was gone and we were here alone, with the aunts and her body, without anyone to comfort us.

I whirled around and ran. I heard les Tantes shouting behind me, banging their canes on the floor. Lucien joined Antoinette’s chorus of cries, but I did not look back. I didn’t stop, flying down the staircase and out the door, running until I was back in the cemetery. I dropped to my knees before the tombstone where I’d left my dolls. I wanted to cry. I had refused
to kiss my mother good-bye, so I must cry for her, to let her know I had loved her.

But no tears would come. Kicking my dolls aside, I crouched against the tombstone and waited as dusk fell, staring toward the dusty road that led from the village.

Papa would come. He must. He would never abandon us.

T
hree days later, Papa arrived and we gathered in the shabby parlor at the same table where Maman’s body had lain. He’d missed the funeral—“My job, I had things to do,” he explained as the aunts clucked—but he was here now, and I clung to his hand, inhaling the smell of his sweat and tobacco. He had come to us just as I said he would, and we were safe.

“What shall you do now?” les Tantes declared. “With a wife in the ground and this tribe she’s left for you to raise on your own?”

Papa was quiet for a moment before he said, “What do you suggest, mesdames?” I jolted in my chair beside him. “I have my job at a tavern,” he added, “with no room for children.”

“A tavern,” said one of the aunts, “is no place for children, room or not. Aubazine is the only place. Let them gain the skills to support themselves and avoid their mother’s fate.”

As I saw the scarce color drain from Julia’s cheeks, I realized this Aubazine must be an orphanage, or worse. “But we are not orphans,” I protested, and I took pleasure in les Tantes’ horrified expression. They didn’t care about us. They wanted us gone, but Papa would not let them. He would show them how wrong they were.

I turned to my father. “Papa, tell them we must live with you.” I heard
an imploring note in my voice that I tried to hide. But he didn’t seem to know what to say. Then he muttered, “Gabrielle, the grown-ups are talking. You must trust we have your best interests at heart.”

We?
I stared at him.

He went on: “Aubazine, eh?” He was looking over my head toward the aunts, lined up like my childish dolls in the cemetery. “And you think the nuns will . . . ?”

“Absolutely,” they replied, with determined bobs of their chins. “They cannot do anything else. The holy sisters of Aubazine have devoted themselves to such a cause.”

“Hmm.” Papa’s grunt sent a shiver down my spine. “And the boys . . . ?”

“There are always families to take in boys,” said the aunts, and I clutched at my father’s hand, seeing now the cruel resolution in les Tantes’ eyes.

“Papa, please,” I said, forcing him to look at me. “We’ll be no trouble. We always sleep together, so we don’t need extra room. Julia can take care of Antoinette and Lucien, and Alphonse and I can help you. We helped Maman all the time. I used to help her sew, and I . . . I did errands for her. I’m good at it. I can work for you. We’ll be no trouble at all,” I repeated, speaking faster as I noticed a distance in his eyes that made my heart pound.

He took his hand away. Not with harshness. His fingers just unraveled from mine, like poorly spun threads. I was holding on to emptiness—it felt as if he had already gone as he said quietly, “I cannot. There is no room.”

He stood. As I gazed up at him, frozen on my chair, he turned to the door. I lunged to my feet, running to him, trying to catch hold of his hand again as I cried, “Please don’t leave us!”

He cast a vague smile over my head at my aunts as he carefully avoided my grasping fingers. “Mesdames,” he said, “you will see to it, yes? The necessary clothes and the rest of it.”

The aunts nodded in agreement. He looked down at me.
“Mon petit choux,”
he murmured. He ruffled my hair before he walked out. I couldn’t move, hearing his footsteps fade down the stairs. Behind me, one of the aunts snapped, “She has no shame. Defiant till the end.”

I didn’t wait. Before they could swoop over to grab me, I bolted after Papa. But when I ran into the street, I didn’t see him anywhere. I spun about, searching for his figure striding away, clapping his hat to his head.

He had disappeared, as though he’d never been here at all. The world darkened around me. I suddenly felt cold all over. In that moment, I realized Julia had been right.

The time for make-believe was over.

L
es Tantes wouldn’t let me leave to look for him, coming downstairs to haul me back up to the garret, kicking and struggling, locking the door and ordering us to pack our belongings. They pulled out the tattered cloth valise we’d used so many times before, and flung it open on the bed.

“I will not,” I told them. “I hate you. My mother is dead because of you. You killed her.”

Even as Julia whispered, “Gabrielle, please stop,” I glared at the aunts until one of them spat out, “If you don’t do as we say, we’ll give you to the ragman. Would you like to spend your days sorting through trash? You told your father you knew how to work. So, go. Work.”

My brothers cowered in the corner. Julia tugged at my arm. “Gabrielle,” she implored, “come. Let’s pack. It won’t take long.” Turning my back on the aunts as they gathered about the table to watch us, I sorted through the few items of clothing I had, makeshift articles darned and patched by Maman so they would last longer.

The next morning, a stranger arrived—an old man in a beret with a cigarette clamped between his teeth. We barely had a moment to hug Alphonse and Lucien farewell before the aunts hustled us into the man’s cart, where he told us to sit in the back, on a pile of hard burlap sacks of flour.
“Stay still,” he ordered, and I saw one of the aunts ladle coins from a purse into the man’s hand—a small tapestry purse I recognized as my mother’s.

The cart jolted forward. Julia gathered Antoinette against her as the man cracked his whip over his bony mule’s back and led us onto the rutted mountain road. We jostled and clung to each other. Whatever was left of my courage withered inside me. Finally, toward dusk, the cart turned onto a dusty path and brought us before a set of stout wooden gates in a high wall.

I barely saw the stone tower or ring of buildings beyond, so alarmed was I by the sight of a flock of women in black habits and white wimples. As the man unloaded the sacks of flour for them, the nuns brought us inside, separating us in the courtyard. Julia and I were led to one wing, while Antoinette was taken to another, for she was still a child, the nuns said, and must reside with the other children.

Julia was ashen with fatigue. “We don’t belong here,” I said to her, and one of the nuns accompanying us turned her face to me to murmur, “In a perfect world, no child does. But this is where you are, and in time, you will adjust.”

She took us into a dormitory where a hundred faces like ours turned to stare at us. I clenched my fists. “It’s only for a short time,” I announced, though nobody asked. “Our papa is coming for us, you’ll see.”

Julia shushed me. “Gabrielle, stop saying that.”

I cried when the candles were blown out and the vast room swelled with the snores and sighs of the others, stuffing my head under the pillow so no one could hear. By day, everywhere I turned, I saw only black or white and shades in between, the black of the nuns’ habits, flowing as if they glided on air, and of our uniforms, plain and sturdy. The starched white of linens, piled in cupboards or stretched taut on our narrow cots, glimmering like halos on the nuns’ headdresses; and all the grays, shifting in the light on the flagstone floors and in the monotone voices of those charged to watch over us.

In those first weeks, I was miserable. I missed my brothers and the upheaval of being tumbled together. I missed Maman. It had been a rough-and-tumble life, but I still missed it.

“We’re safe,” Julia said one night. “Don’t you see? Nothing bad can happen here.”

I didn’t want to see. I couldn’t accept it, because if I did it meant Papa was truly never coming back. It meant he had abandoned us.

“It’s awful,” I said. “I hate it.”

“No, you don’t.” Julia reached across the space between our cots to squeeze my hand. “Isn’t it better we’re here? What would we do, alone in the world, with no one to care for us?”

I turned away. “Just try,” I heard her say. “You are the strong one; Maman always said she depended on you. Promise me you will try, Gabrielle. Antoinette and I need you.”

I loved my sisters and so I did try. In the next weeks, I did my utmost to smile and be attentive, waking before dawn to the clamor of bells to trudge up the steep staircase and over the river-stone pathway into the chapel to hear prime. Then we were taken to the dining room for breakfast, followed by lessons, lunch, and afternoon chores, until we returned again to the chapel for vespers, back to the dining room for dinner, and to bed when it fell dark only to rise at dawn and do it all again. Nothing exciting ever happened, but as time wore on, nothing bad happened, either. No aunts came to scold; no landlords banged on the door to demand the late rent. All of a sudden, for the first time in my life, I knew where I was supposed to be and what was expected of me. I had a routine, unchanging and monotonous, but also surprisingly reassuring.

And as the weeks turned to months, without realizing it, Aubazine became my home.

It was the first place I had lived where everything was clean—astringent purity in the lye soap we bathed with every morning, in the sprigs of rosemary freshening the linens, and in the lime wash water for scrubbing the cloisters. No mice scurried behind peeling walls, no lice or fleas infested our hair and sheets, no dirt from the street seeped through broken windows or under doors. In Aubazine, life might be uneventful, regulated, and predictable, but it was pristine.

I marveled at how much I could eat. We had three meals a day—hot
porridge and soup; fresh goat cheese and warm bread from the ovens; fruits and vegetables from the gardens; salty hams and roast chickens; and at Christmastime, sweet raisin pudding. I couldn’t get enough; I had to learn to disguise my hunger as I did my discontent, fending off offers of friendship and cleaving to Julia, who said, “See? It is nice here.”

It
was
nice, much as I didn’t want to admit it. It was also a challenge. Because we had moved so much, our education had suffered. I discovered I had no aptitude for lessons, not like Julia, who filled her notebooks with precise letters that made mine look splotchy. The nun who oversaw our class, Sister Bernadette, had me stay an extra hour every day, though I always felt as if my hand had extra thumbs.

“You must apply yourself, Gabrielle,” Sister Bernadette remonstrated. “You don’t like to write so you don’t make the effort. We must always try, if we are to succeed.”

Try, try, try: it was all anyone said to me. It unsettled me because I’d gone from being the strong one, as Julia claimed, to someone who didn’t seem to be good at anything.

Reading, however, entranced me. After I mastered children’s fables and began to read more, I haunted the convent library, sifting among the tomes. Books took me to places I’d never imagined and I devoured every one I could, from the laments of saints to the tales of heroes and myths. I even began to enjoy the twice-daily procession to the chapel because the designs in the pathway were so interesting, obscure symbols linked to the convent, such as the five-pointed star. But like my lessons, prayer itself was a torture.

Closing my eyes, I tried to talk to God. I asked Him if Papa was coming back and if I would see my brothers again. I wanted to feel Him. The nuns kept telling us, God hears you. He listens when you pray. But I never felt anything but the hard wood kneeler under me. No matter how much I tried, all I heard was my own voice, echoing inside me. I peered about at the other girls to see their faces lifted as if to heaven, full of trust. Julia seemed transported to somewhere else, as if God spoke directly to her.

Why didn’t I feel this same comfort? Why did God ignore my prayers?

I searched for a way to prove my worth. I began to see that in their orderly
world, the nuns valued those who applied themselves with a minimum of fuss, in particular those who could sit still for hours monogramming articles for other women’s trousseaus. The sisters of Aubazine excelled at sewing and were paid for the work, which helped fund the orphanage.

Oh, the endless in and out of thread and needle! I imagined heaps piling up to the rafters, all the sheets and pillowcases, stockings and pinafores, petticoats and smocks. How could there be so much need for so many things? Yet it never ceased, like water pouring over a mill. I stopped feeling my callused fingers and pinpricks on my hands, attacking each new task, each day, with a ferocity that Sister Bernadette wished I would show in my grammar. Only here could I excel. Maman had often said I had a sure hand for sewing.

One day, I was given an entire sheet to hem. At the end of the day, Sister Thérèse, who supervised the workroom, walked up and down the aisles to inspect our work. She paused, took up my folded sheet. “Such fine stitches. Who taught you to sew like this, Gabrielle?”

“My mother. She was a seamstress. I used to help her sometimes.”

“I can see that. You’re quite skilled. How old are you now?”

“Nearly fourteen, Sister.” As I spoke these words, I startled myself. How had the last two years passed so quickly?

She reached out to examine my hands. “You have small hands. Perfect for sewing.” She smiled at me. “If you continue to improve, you could be a mercer’s assistant one day or perhaps even a seamstress yourself, with your own shop. Would you like that?”

I had never thought of it. To me, being a seamstress meant my mother’s lot, mending other people’s clothes, paltry work that never earned enough. Now that I had decent food every day, I never wanted to be hungry again. But to have my own shop . . .

“Yes, Sister,” I said quietly. “I think I would like that.”

“Good. I’ll have you embroider a handkerchief next time. A good seamstress must be knowledgeable in every aspect of her trade.” She gave me a stern look. “That means grammar and math, too, so I’ll expect you to heed your lessons with Sister Bernadette.”

As she moved back down the aisle, I sagged in relief. If Sister Thérèse thought I might succeed in making my own way, perhaps I could.

I only became more determined as I saw Sister Thérèse shaking her head over Julia’s pillowcase. My sister might be able to write, but those hands that were so skilled with a pen proved clumsy with the needle. As Julia gave me a dejected look from her seat, blond-curled Marie-Claire, who shared our dormitory and was a favorite with the nuns, always polite while ridiculing them behind their backs, hissed at me, “That stitch on your sheet is uneven. You’ll never be a seamstress. You’ll never be anything.”

She resented me because I refused to join her circle of admirers and I despised her in return because she teased Julia mercilessly. I had tried to protect my sister, but as her hips widened and breasts sprouted (unlike mine, I was still as flat as a sole) so did the other girls’ envy. While Antoinette lived in the children’s wing, Julia was fifteen, practically a woman, and her beautiful features and timid air made her a target. Marie-Claire and her friends stuffed menses rags in her shoes and danced in circles around her, chanting that she was a bleeder, until I barreled into them and threatened to knock out their teeth.

I now examined the stitch Marie-Claire had mentioned. Fury suffocated me when I saw she was right; it was uneven. All of a sudden, I wanted to shred the sheet with my scissors but instead I leaned over to her and said, “I know what you do at night under the sheets. You’ll grow up to be a harlot. They’ll have to exorcise you like the devil sisters of Loudon.”

Though I still didn’t know what a harlot was, reading had taught me it must be dirty, and the horrified flush on Marie-Claire’s face assured me of as much. I gave her a smug smile.

Marie-Claire wasted no time in telling Sister Thérèse: “Gabrielle Chanel is a beast. She says I’m possessed and called me a harlot.”

“Gabrielle!” exclaimed Sister Thérèse and she marched me to the abbess’s chamber.

“Is this true what I hear?” asked the abbess, a plump woman with a belt of keys affixed to her waist.

“Yes, Reverend Mother,” I said, thinking that just as I had discovered my purpose, I was about to be cast out for my wickedness.

“Well, no proper lady uses words like that. And where did you learn such things?”

“The library, Mother. I . . . I like to read.”

“ ‘Read’?” echoed the abbess. She didn’t realize that by now I could have recited the exploits of Charlemagne and the history of the convent from its founding by Étienne the Penitent to its desecration in the revolution, and I didn’t want to boast, as that, too, would be improper.

“Do you read often, my child?” Her question was flat. I couldn’t tell if she meant to encourage or ensnare me with my answer.

I lowered my eyes. How could I tell the truth, that reading was my escape because I had never asked to come here?

“Only so I may strengthen my faith,” I finally murmured.

“I see.” Relief softened her tone. “To seek God’s truth is commendable, providing it does not lead to temptation. There can be no room for aspiration in a humble girl’s heart. We must learn to submit always to our Almighty’s will.”

Her words were like wire, choking off my breath. If to aspire was a sin, did that mean I was doomed already? Had I not prayed to find something I was good at?

She dismissed me. “Henceforth, your access to the library is restricted; see that you read less and pray more. And no more talk of devils; do I make myself clear?” she added as I turned to the door. “You frighten the other girls. You must exercise moderation. It seems to me that you
think
too much, Gabrielle. You must learn to accept.”

She might as well have asked me to yoke the moon with my rosary. But I took care from that day forth to appear penitent. Restrictions were often relaxed after a certain amount of time, and fusty Sister Geneviève who oversaw the library always nodded off after lunch at her stool. She never heard me as I tiptoed past with a book hidden under my pinafore. I read in corners when everyone else was in the courtyard, skipping rope. I read
at night under my covers by the sliver of a candle stub that could have lit the dormitory aflame. I read at mass, pretending the book was a hymnal, risking my immortal soul. The other girls knew, but none dared tell on me. They knew what I had said to Marie-Claire. They, too, had secrets to hide.