Heather O'Neill - Daydreams of Angels

Marie noticed that songs on the radio always sounded better now that Grandmother was around. She liked lying in the dark and whispering aloud a question like, “Do you think that we only started existing when we came into this world or since the beginning of time?” And hearing a voice whisper back, “Only since we were born.”

They could pass as cousins too. They both had dark hair and blue eyes. Only Grandmother was a million times prettier.

Grandmother had enormous eyes. She said that they were never like that before the war. When she was separated from her father, she got a shocked expression on her face that she couldn’t get rid of. That’s why she was beautiful. She had eyes that looked like those of a frightened animal.

The girls went to the same school now. Because it was wartime, all the boys fell in love more easily. All the boys liked Grandmother more than Marie. They passed her notes in class. Each note, in boy’s handwriting, said more or less the same thing: “You are the one.” Marie hated Grandmother with a passion because of this. As they were walking home from school one drizzly day, two boys passed, riding together on a single bicycle. They laughingly professed their love for Grandmother, blowing kisses that came at her like moths to a light bulb.

Marie stopped and turned viciously toward her friend. She reached out both her arms and shoved Grandmother hard in the chest. Grandmother toppled off the sidewalk and fell into a puddle on the cobblestone street. Her skirt was covered in mud and her knees were both bleeding. She held her hands in front of her and saw that the palms of both were red from being skinned. Grandmother looked up at Marie and Marie looked down at Grandmother.

Marie was the type of girl that cannot tear herself away from the people she abhors. Grandmother had a streak in her that made her fall in love with those who treated her badly. And thus their feelings for one another intertwined like the branches of two unattended rose bushes in a garden.

Marie now sometimes ignored Grandmother in the playground at school, telling the other girls to turn away from her too. Or she would walk ahead of Grandmother on the way home, quickening her pace any time she almost caught up. She complained while changing into her nightgown about not having her own room anymore. She told Grandmother not to talk for the rest of the evening, so that she could pretend she wasn’t there. Grandmother tried not to breathe a word. Marie yelled at Grandmother to make herself smaller in the bed. And the two girls grew closer and closer.

As the war went on, Marie’s feelings toward Grandmother spread quickly to the rest of the family. They deliberately forgot to set her a place at the kitchen table. She started to feel anemic because she hadn’t had any meat in ages. When she was feeling faint, she would hallucinate. She chased a little white kitten down the street. When she finally caught up to it, it was only a white paper bag being blown by the wind.

She decided it was too much effort to escape their grasps, so she started sleeping with Marie’s brothers. She slept with them in the bathroom and in a tool shed down the street.

She said sex happened much faster back then. It happened so fast that you were barely aware you were having it. You never got naked. You only moved away whatever parts of your clothing absolutely had to be moved. She didn’t know that you took your shoes off for sex. She didn’t even know there was a way to have sex without her stockings still on and her underwear around her ankles.

Her foster mother told her that it wouldn’t hurt to indicate to the baker that she might be willing to sleep with him. She set Grandmother up on dates with men she met on the street. She told Grandmother that she should be very, very friendly with the butcher.

She waited in queues for their rations. They always made her go, but she didn’t really mind. She liked that there was something useful that she could do. She would bring home the meagre groceries, knowing that there wasn’t much in the bag that would be hers.

One day the German officers set up a canteen on the street. They called out that they were offering free bowls of soup to anyone who wanted some. Grandmother had been hysterical with hunger for the past couple of days. She had twitches, as though she were a telegraph receiver that was being sent messages. She walked up to the canteen and put her hands out. The officer winked at her and gave her a bowl of soup, and she ate it ravenously.

When the neighbours saw Grandmother sitting on the curb, eating her little bowl of soup with her legs crossed, they sent their children out too. For some reason, because she had gone first, she took the brunt of the shame. They could hate her for it afterwards. She was like shame personified. Grandmother sensed this, but she didn’t care all of a sudden. She held the bowl up in the air when it was empty. She kissed the side of it.

Grandmother and Marie liked to sit around and discuss the atrocities of the German officers. For instance, the Germans bought all the gloves in the shops in Paris and they mailed them to their sweethearts and wives in Berlin. Grandmother and Marie would insult the German girls. They thought they had really fat legs and had faces like men. They made up all kinds of things about German girls. Of course, they hadn’t a clue what they might possibly look like, except that they were wearing gloves that rightfully belonged to Parisian girls.

One day, while they were talking about their stolen gloves, Marie picked up a stone and threw it at a cat. The surprised animal moved back as suddenly as though it were a child grabbed by the scruff of its neck by a schoolmaster. Marie yelled out that she was miserable because she was poor and ugly and no man would ever buy her anything like gloves. She held up her hands for Grandmother to see. The tip of each finger was pink because of the cold. Grandmother thought that if Marie was made happy, then her heart would thaw and she would be kinder to her.

That was when Grandmother decided to find a way to get Marie a pair of gloves and many other things. It was also the hunger that lived in her belly like a small animal. It gave her the determination to do anything. She shrugged off her notions of what was intolerable and unimaginable and got on with the business of surviving.

Grandmother approached some German officers who were standing outside a post office two days later. She asked where she could get a pair of black gloves. One of them whispered the way into her ear. She followed him back to a hotel that German officers had taken over to live in and use as headquarters. He led her up a flight of stairs, down a hall, past numerous doors and into a large apartment. She was so nervous with the officer that he gave her a glass of champagne to make her calm down. It made her laugh, and she laughed so hard that she started to cry.

He made her sing him the alphabet. He wept because he thought it was so lovely. She mostly knew the words to nursery rhymes and the songs that she had been forced to learn at school. She sang him a song about cleaning off the top of your desk.

He made her take a bath because she smelled so bad. He had a French maid, who scrubbed Grandmother under her arms with a rag and washed her hair. The maid brushed her hair and combed it over to the side. He gave her a pair of lace underwear with little bows along the elastics to put on. The comforter on the bed was covered in a pattern of roses.

When they were done, the officer gave her a pair of black gloves. He also gave her a mark, which was supposed to be some crazy amount of money now. And he gave her a fancy pastry, the likes of which had not been seen in Paris since the occupation began. She couldn’t wait to eat it in private. She peeled off the paper, which rattled like a tiny fire, and ate it as she was walking home.