Page 40 of Meet Me in the Garden

“Sister Bethany is mean to me. She doesn’t like me.”

“Of course she isn’t mean to you,” Claire says. “What a thing to say!” She looks to Bernard, part incredulous, part amused.

Nathalie’s jaw clenches, her shoulders draw in.

“The sisters loveallthe children,” Claire says. She goes to put a hand on Nathalie’s arm to reassure her, but Nathalie jerks toward her like a cat and Claire keels back into Bernard, stunned, tears springing to her eyes. She cradles her arm with her hand. When she lets go, there’s a row of raised welts where Nathalie scratched her.

The next day, Al and I come home to wailing. Adele’s sitting at the dining table with her head in her hands. Even Clément and Rudy and the twins are subdued, playing halfheartedly on the floor.

“What’s all this?” Al asks.

“She’s been screaming on and off ever since we got home from school,” Adele says. “At one point I took the other children for a walk around the block because none of us could take it anymore. She was quiet when we got back but now she’s started up again.”

I kiss Clément on the top of his head, set my purse on a diningchair and enter the hallway. Nathalie’s moaning now. I step closer. A ragged breath, a growl that builds to a scream. I turn the knob and she freezes when I walk in. Then she begins again, even louder than before. She’s on a lower bunk in a tangle of sheets. I sit on the floor a distance from her, watch her thrash and wail, her fury and her sadness on full display.

She peeks over her shoulder to check if I’m still here. “She said I’m drawing them the wrong way. How am I supposed toknow?”

“Drawing what?” I ask.

“Thec’s ande’s.” She’s flushed, panting with exertion. Her bangs are over to the side, stuck to her forehead. So much turmoil must be raging inside her, so many ways her life is unfamiliar now, but here’s one of them and it’s something I can help her with.

“Oh, I understand. The other children have been working on them for a while now, but you’re just getting started. Did you learn them at your old school?”

She doesn’t answer. And then she says, “I don’t have an old school.”

“I see. Well, would you like me to help you now?” She nods. “Let’s lie on the rug and draw them in the air.”

I lie and she joins me, scoots the side of her body against mine.Delphine’s daughter.Before questioning myself, I press a kiss to the top of her head, just as I do to Clément. I lift my arm and she lifts hers so that our hands are hovering together. I point my finger, she points hers. I swoop in the shape of acacross the white ceiling. “Like it’s opening its arms to the rest of the alphabet,” I say. She does it after me, a careful curve through the air.

“C,” she whispers.

“C,” I say. “And a smalleis just like it, except with a little oval at the top. Should we try?”

She nods against my shoulder, our arms still pointing, and I lead her through it. We draw them over and over, switching back and forth between the letters. A question rises. I ask it before I can judge its rightness.

“How much do you miss your mother? Is it as much as a house? Or the sky? Or the whole world?”

“Whole world.”

“I miss her as much as the whole world, too.”

There’s a knock on the door and Clément pokes his head in, his eyes curious, assessing us.

“Dinnertime,” he says. We sit three across at the table.

A week passes. I emerge from the children’s room one night and Adele’s on her hands and knees, picking up plastic toy soldiers, Jacks pieces, pick-up sticks.

“They went rogue,” I say, because the rule is that toys belong in the playroom unless permission has been granted.

“Five children under one roof, and the grown-ups aren’t much better.” She sits back, looks around. Smudged beer glasses on the coffee table, a throw blanket tossed on the floor by the love seat, one little red shoe, a couple plates with cracker remnants and grape stems and dried-up pieces of orange cheese. The neighbors came over after dinner, took Al home with them to play cards, left all this in their wake. “Sometimes,” she says, “I wish we could just let things be messy. Justlivein it, however it is, without worrying anyone will drop by and find us out.”

“You do?” It stuns me. “You’re so good at it. I never would have guessed.”

“Just because I’m good at it doesn’t mean it’s something I want.”

“Whatdoyou want?” I don’t recognize her. She could say anything.

“I don’t know. A cigarette.”