essential. Madame Charbonneau and Maman clucked at each other another minute or two, until Maman took Jeanot by the hand and said, “Now go with Madame. Behave yourself, and after school I’ll take you home and we’ll wash all this silly red color away!”
“But I want to stay red!” Jeanot had come to this decision minutes earlier. He liked being red, was even pleased with the unnatural blackness of his hair. He could see a red future ahead, where people would mistake him for a real Indian child, or maybe Mowgli, the jungle boy from India.
Maman said, “Don’t be silly!” She looked at Madame Charbonneau. “Children these days! Don’t worry, Madame, he’ll be white as snow come Monday!”
“I want to stay red!” This time Jeanot raised his voice a little, edged it with more conviction. It was vitally important that he remain red, crucially important. Staying red would change his life, he knew. People would like him more; his entire future might be altered. His eyes were tearing with the necessity of staying red.
Maman threw up her arms. “Children! Des petits sauvages! What can we do?”
Madame Charbonneau, no longer paying attention, was separating little cowboys from little Indians. The Eskimo was stage left, sucking his thumb and crying quietly. Madame Charbonneau called, “Jeanot, viens ici!” and Jeanot came, climbed to the sacrificial stake and stood still as the teacher bound him to it loosely.
The lights in the room dimmed and School Director, Monsieur Rampallon, flanked by the mayor and his deputy, made a brief speech on the benefits of education to The Republic. He left the stage to a smattering of applause from parents, teachers, brothers and sisters, and Monsieur Champollion, mayor of the 17em arrondissement, enumerated his accomplishments. Tied to the stake, Jeanot was the image of stoicism.
In time, Indian drums made from cardboard hatboxes, faint ululations and clapping hands beat a haphazard rhythm. A heavily accented voice began reciting Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha in French, and as the epic droned on, the room grew summer hot. Puritans and Indians shared a Thanksgiving meal. Sweat formed on Jeanot’s chest, forehead and underarms. The beads ran past his red belly button and into his loincloth which soon started itching.
He rubbed his butt against the stake, trying to rearrange the scratchy cloth (a piece of burlap Maman had decided went well with his coloring), and bought a few moments’ relief. Then the itching became worse, intolerable, so he gritted his teeth and thought courageous thoughts.
The other Indians danced around Jeanot in a pre-sacrificial frenzy. They whooped, they hollered, they jumped and cavorted; they made terrible, gargoyle faces and rolled their eyes. Among them was the Eskimo, tears forgotten, and one small cowboy who, caught up in the excitement of the moment, had forgotten who he was. The yellow lights focused on Jeanot’s feet. He was now officially on fire.
The itch became a torture. He rubbed his butt against the stake again, this time more forcefully. The loincloth, tied with a loose knot, fell about his ankles. Jeanot’s triangular, impeccably clean American underwear shone like a beacon on the stage. It radiated white against his red skin, and the first small Indian to notice it stopped dancing, pointed and burst into laughter. The Puritans hooted, the dancing cowboy stood gape-jawed, and from the middle of the audience came a loud guffaw. Jeanot, through his mortification, could see famed director Jules Dassin laughing with his head thrown back. Madame Charbonneau leaped onto the stage and wrapped her shawl about Jeanot’s middle, tore him from the stake and whisked him away.
It took more than ten minutes to quiet everyone down, reassemble the players and find another child—the Eskimo—for the stake.
Later that night at home, Marité and Roland decided it was wise to keep Jeanot out of school the rest of the week. The food dye refused to come off even after several scrubbings and it would be a full month before Jeanot returned to an overall Parisian paleness.
Over the years the tale of Jeanot the Naked Redskin would grow as stories do, and when Marité recounted it, her son became the hero, the star, the best of all the small French Indians.
Chapter 9
Créations St. Paul came together quickly. Jeanot and his parents scoured the flea markets and second-hand shops for used sewing machines, mannequins, tailors’ tools, and bolts of cloth. Maman hired a designer who could turn her sketches into reality, and found part-time models and a retired seamstress willing to return to work. She transformed one of the apartment’s sitting rooms into an atelier.
Always good with a needle and thread, and even better with the electric Singer, Maman became an able couturière in a surprisingly short time. She soon found clients among the haute bourgeoisie who demanded the latest from the likes of Chanel and Dior, names which were new to Jeanot, but which carried obvious weight and importance. Papa explained that Maman’s friends wanted clothes looking just like those from the famous fashion houses, but that they were too cheap to pay the price, so Maman would make a garment almost exactly like the fancy, expensive ones her friends desired. Maman assured Jeanot that it was almost impossible to tell whether a dress was an original from Coco’s seamstresses, or a far less expensive copy fashioned by Créations St. Paul. Coco could claim the little black dress, but Maman liked to boast that she herself had invented the little white dress.
An elderly maid, Solange, handled the cutting and basting of patterns. She said she had heard through the servants’ grapevine about the new maison de couture on the third floor of the apartment building, and when the maid demonstrated her sewing skills, Maman hired her on the spot.
The day-to-day workings of the shop were handled by the designer, Jean-Sylvain Biscottin, a small and tidy man with excellent manners. Mathilde whispered gleefully to Jeanot that Jean-Sylvain’s former employer, the celebrated Maison Bellemain, had summarily dismissed him for “taking advantage” of Madame Bellemain’s seventeen-year-old son in a changing booth. When Jeanot asked what it meant to “take advantage,” Mathilde informed him that this Jean-Sylvain was like his Oncle Yves; a homosexual, who lusted sinfully after other men. Mathilde was so scandalized by the tale of these men’s misdeeds that she couldn’t stop herself from grinning.
Jeanot only truly understood what Mathilde had told him when, on Jean-Sylvain’s first full day as Maman’s employee, Jeanot watched him very obviously and passionately fall in love with Papa, much to Mathilde’s amusement and Papa’s discomfort. Every time Papa was in the room, Jean-Sylvain seemed drawn to him like a moth to a flame. Jean-Sylvain’s eyes lingered wistfully on Papa’s retreating back, and he seemed to have a hard time focusing on his work while Papa was nearby. Jeanot knew something of these feelings from his breathtaking, sometimes very confusing moments with Babette, during which his heart would beat at a frankly alarming rate, and funny feelings inside would make him uncomfortable and uncertain. He’d seen movies and had read enough to know that this must, of course, be love, and the way Jean-Sylvain looked at Papa was exactly the way Jeanot felt around Babette.
Jeanot wasn’t sure what to think about this. After all, strange though it might have been for a man to love another man, he supposed that if Jean-Sylvain were to fall in love with any man, it at least made sense that it would be Papa. Papa was a remarkable man. Everyone loved him.
For Jeanot, the sewing room was a fascinating playground. There were buttons, endless spools of thread, machines that whirred and clattered, swatches of fabric of every color and feel. Half-naked women, too, on Thursdays, when the models came to try on that week’s creations.
Cécile and Fabienne were twenty-year-old cousins who arrived at ten in the morning, stripped to their soutien-gorges and culottes, garter belts and stockings, and walked about with complete insouciance. No one was shocked but the elderly Solange, who muttered darkly under her breath, but loudly enough for Jeanot to
