Read Online I Am Madame X by Gioia Diliberto - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Gioia Diliberto
Ads: Link
children in tow—began filling the auditorium. I saw Mama, Valentine, and Rochilieu enter and take seats in the rear. Then the boys from the Scottish school trooped in, the younger ones in short pants, the older ones dressed in dark frock coats and starched white collars.
A priest led the audience in prayer, and the program began. The choir sang, followed by a piano soloist. Then a group of dancers performed a sequence choreographed by Monsieur Lermont, and two juniors, dressed like shepherds, read from the Gospels.
The curtain closed for a brief intermission. I took my place on the stage while a maid wrapped me in an emerald silk shawl. Several girls who were dressed as angels, in white choir robes, knelt nearby. The willowy senior who played Joseph stood behind me with her hair pulled under a wool cap and a yarn beard glued to her chin. Paresseux, Madame Smithy’s most placid cat, lay swaddled in a blanket in a makeshift manger.
When at last we were assembled, Sister Emily-Jean called from the wings. “Poses, everyone!” I arranged my arms with palms pointing heavenward and tried to fix my face in an expression of deep religious ecstasy. Sister Emily-Jean pulled two thick ropes and the velvet curtain parted.
A loud “Ahh” arose from the audience. Suddenly a five-year-old named Isolde, who was always sick with a runny nose and whose nocturnal shrieks for her parents kept the convent up at night, bounded out of her seat in the third row and rushed the stage. Falling to her knees in front of me, she cried, “Mother Mary! Mother Mary!”
“Formidable!” a man in the second row exclaimed. “A Botticelli Madonna! Look at that wondrous hair!” cried a woman. But I didn’t dare look up. I held my pose, gazing beatifically at Paresseux asleep in the manger and soaking up the crowd’s adulation. I didn’t want it ever to end.
Three
After she found out Aurélie was a Negro, Mama became obsessed with the color of my skin, as if Aurélie’s hidden blackness had been contagious and I might have caught a touch of it. Whenever she saw me, she stared at me with furrowed brow and complained that I was losing my “bloom.” To protect me from the sun, she gave me a parasol to carry when I went out with her, and a straw hat to wear in the convent garden. Still, she worried.
“I don’t like the way you look,” she said to me one Sunday in March. “You’re turning brown.” We were sitting in the parlor with Rochilieu, drinking tea and reading the papers while Valentine sat on the floor playing with her doll. The clatter of carriages floated up from the street through the open windows. Dusty sunlight formed stripes on the worn blue carpet.
“I’m not dark, Mama. I’m only a little bronze from playing outside,” I said. It had been an early, warm spring and the nuns had let us spend more time than usual in the garden.
“Well, why haven’t you been wearing your hat?” she huffed.
Rochilieu, who usually ignored our bickering, now folded his newspaper and looked hard at me. Then, scowling, he turned his gaze to Mama. “Really, Virginie, I don’t see any change in Mimi at all,” he said impatiently. “I wish you’d stop inventing troubles to worry over.”
“I’m not imagining it! The child’s color is changing.” Sighing loudly, Mama sprang from her chair and strode off to the bedroom to sulk.
The next day, she made an appointment for me with Dr. Marcel Chomel, who had been recommended by Mathilde Slidell. Mama got special permission from Mother Superior to take me out of school on a Friday morning. We took a cab to the doctor’s office at 42, rue de l’Echiquier, arriving just as Duchess Laure Castellian, a famous hostess and frequent focus of the society pages, was gliding through the front door under an enormous white hat. Mama stared directly at the blond duchess’s creamy face, but Laure Castellian looked past us with large lilac eyes. “I wonder why she needs a doctor,” Mama said.
A maid
A priest led the audience in prayer, and the program began. The choir sang, followed by a piano soloist. Then a group of dancers performed a sequence choreographed by Monsieur Lermont, and two juniors, dressed like shepherds, read from the Gospels.
The curtain closed for a brief intermission. I took my place on the stage while a maid wrapped me in an emerald silk shawl. Several girls who were dressed as angels, in white choir robes, knelt nearby. The willowy senior who played Joseph stood behind me with her hair pulled under a wool cap and a yarn beard glued to her chin. Paresseux, Madame Smithy’s most placid cat, lay swaddled in a blanket in a makeshift manger.
When at last we were assembled, Sister Emily-Jean called from the wings. “Poses, everyone!” I arranged my arms with palms pointing heavenward and tried to fix my face in an expression of deep religious ecstasy. Sister Emily-Jean pulled two thick ropes and the velvet curtain parted.
A loud “Ahh” arose from the audience. Suddenly a five-year-old named Isolde, who was always sick with a runny nose and whose nocturnal shrieks for her parents kept the convent up at night, bounded out of her seat in the third row and rushed the stage. Falling to her knees in front of me, she cried, “Mother Mary! Mother Mary!”
“Formidable!” a man in the second row exclaimed. “A Botticelli Madonna! Look at that wondrous hair!” cried a woman. But I didn’t dare look up. I held my pose, gazing beatifically at Paresseux asleep in the manger and soaking up the crowd’s adulation. I didn’t want it ever to end.
Three
After she found out Aurélie was a Negro, Mama became obsessed with the color of my skin, as if Aurélie’s hidden blackness had been contagious and I might have caught a touch of it. Whenever she saw me, she stared at me with furrowed brow and complained that I was losing my “bloom.” To protect me from the sun, she gave me a parasol to carry when I went out with her, and a straw hat to wear in the convent garden. Still, she worried.
“I don’t like the way you look,” she said to me one Sunday in March. “You’re turning brown.” We were sitting in the parlor with Rochilieu, drinking tea and reading the papers while Valentine sat on the floor playing with her doll. The clatter of carriages floated up from the street through the open windows. Dusty sunlight formed stripes on the worn blue carpet.
“I’m not dark, Mama. I’m only a little bronze from playing outside,” I said. It had been an early, warm spring and the nuns had let us spend more time than usual in the garden.
“Well, why haven’t you been wearing your hat?” she huffed.
Rochilieu, who usually ignored our bickering, now folded his newspaper and looked hard at me. Then, scowling, he turned his gaze to Mama. “Really, Virginie, I don’t see any change in Mimi at all,” he said impatiently. “I wish you’d stop inventing troubles to worry over.”
“I’m not imagining it! The child’s color is changing.” Sighing loudly, Mama sprang from her chair and strode off to the bedroom to sulk.
The next day, she made an appointment for me with Dr. Marcel Chomel, who had been recommended by Mathilde Slidell. Mama got special permission from Mother Superior to take me out of school on a Friday morning. We took a cab to the doctor’s office at 42, rue de l’Echiquier, arriving just as Duchess Laure Castellian, a famous hostess and frequent focus of the society pages, was gliding through the front door under an enormous white hat. Mama stared directly at the blond duchess’s creamy face, but Laure Castellian looked past us with large lilac eyes. “I wonder why she needs a doctor,” Mama said.
A maid
Similar Books
