waited for him to tell us stories about “l’Italie,” imaging sunny vistas, but he would correct me and remind me that we were talking “de lit à lit,” an alliteration.
And I had my dolls. A particularly beloved one had her carriage that I had furnished with pillows and blankets. One day while playing with this doll, I realized that my mother had gone out shopping and left me at home with my grandmother who was forever cursing me, and I began crying in despair at the prospect that my mother might never return. I still remember the pain I felt and the fear of never seeing her again.
My grandmother had an incomprehensible hatred toward me. She would often curse me, and my mother would not dare defend me. My father, her son, would not dare offend her by standing up to her. For example, she was very handy with her fingers, and was always doing some needlework. I asked her once to show me how to make the heel of some stockings, and she answered, “Learn by yourself as I have!” Innocently, wishing to ingratiate myself, I said, “But you are an accomplished housewife,” which was a compliment in those days. Her response was, “May you never reach the day of being an accomplished housewife!” I ran to tell my mother who was so shocked, she sent me to ask my father what this meant. He asked me where I heard that, and when I told him that Memé had said that to me, he became pale, but did nothing. She knew that she could do or say anything and no one would ever oppose her.
Another time she said, “Que te quedaras en la cuna!” (You should have died in your cradle). No wonder I was in fear of being abandoned by my mother into the hands of such a harpy!
At about that time, when I was around ten or eleven, our school distributed some kinds of shoes or clogs to children in need. The principal of the boys’ school was in charge of the program, and when I presented myself to him to receive the clogs, he touched me in an inappropriate way. I was so ashamed that I did not say a thing to anyone.
Then a grocer in the next street where my mother used to send us shopping did the same thing in broad daylight. This time I told my mother, and both she and my father went to confront him, but he denied it.
Later, I was hospitalized at Granges Blanches in Lyon, and a young intern touched me inappropriately while he was examining me. Again, I told my parents who made a big to-do, but he again denied everything.
Years later in Italy, a priest hugged me in his office and inserted his hands under my blouse. I reported him to the bishop, but the priest denied it, of course.
In those days, women’s voices did not have as much weight as they do today, although even these days, they seem to have tall fences to climb.
Throughout my life, the men over me took advantage of their rank with their remarks or behaviors, and the only thing I could do was leave if I did not wish to tolerate that treatment. I always worked for the president or senior partner of a firm, and unfortunately, there was no one above these men to whom I could complain, and they seemed to exploit that situation. The only time I reported it was to the unemployment office who called me and my boss to a hearing, but as I was new in the United States and not yet fluent in English, I was penalized by the unemployment office for having “lied.”
To be sure, the old ways of doing things shock the modern generations. Spanking children used to be common place, and for the most part, nobody died. But that is not the type of abuse I’m talking about. I refer here to taking advantage of those who cannot defend themselves for one reason or another, either because of their youthful age or their gender; their culture or physical strength.
Indeed, abuse of the weaker by the stronger has always existed, and it is only now that women and children have begun to expose it, and the media has become more sensitive to exploring such unsavory stories.
Abuse has taken many forms through the ages and across cultures, from stoning to driving spikes through wrists and ankles for presumed blasphemy, drawing and quartering for high treason or incinerating people. All such atrocities deserve their own obituary, a prayer and resolve that they should never be allowed to be repeated.
As awful as that butchery was, every bit of suffering inflicted on any helpless creature, should be considered despicable and reprehensible.
When I was nine or ten years old, I had my tonsils and adenoids out. At that time, this operation was done without anesthesia. I have never understood why the adults in charge thought it was all right to submit a child to such suffering simply because the child was helpless, either because of its age, or because it was rendered so by the application of restraints. Didn’t those adults have memories of their own childhood to think back to? Was it that the operation was presumably so quick that it would be just like tearing off a Band-Aid, and the child would soon forget about it? Here I am writing about it all these many years later, still painfully traumatized by the experience.
I was rolled into a folded sheet the length of my entire body, like a sausage, and a nurse held me on her knees and held my head back so that the surgeon could get inside my mouth. My screams didn’t matter; in fact, they helped him get the mouth gag in, and in an avalanche of incredible burning pain from which I thought I would die, the surgeon worked inside my mouth. I don’t remember how I breathed through the blood and his fingers and that damned gag and the nurse forcing my head back. Believe me, it was not a quick stripping off of a Band-Aid.
My daughter suffered a similar fate, but fortunately she was given ether. However, to hear her tell the story, the very act of being tightly restrained on the lap of the surgical attendant with her head forced back, unable to cooperate and participate in her own care, was devastating to her. She feels traumatized to this day by that experience of a procedure which to so many otherwise wise adults is nothing more than a temporary discomfort.
At another time, while at camp, my friends and I ate too many plums along with their pits which led me to have an attack of appendicitis. Our usual surgeon was away, so an old doctor operated on me and botched the operation. The following day he had to reopen the wound to clean out an infection in my stomach, but this time he went in without anesthesia. You can still hear my screams in New York City!
We grew up. René joined the Boy Scouts, and I was allowed to join the Girl Scouts.
Chapter 2
Germany Invades France
I was 12 years old and living with my family in Bourg-les-Valence when World War II began in September of 1939. I heard the adults speaking of Neville Chamberlain, then British Prime Minister, who had gone to Germany to try and convince Hitler to be less fanatical in his politics of annexation (he had already annexed Austria and the Sunderland in Czechoslovakia. We had anticipated war after Hitler’s rise in Germany, when he finally took Danzig in Poland on September 1, 1939 (now called Gdansk). There had been international appeals and conferences to avert that catastrophe, with Neville Chamberlain returning with his slogan, “Peace in our times” by which he seemed to appease Hitler and the world. In France, we sang patriotic songs before the war challenging Hitler to come to the Maginot Line, a line of defense built along the border with Germany, but leaving the Belgian border undefended and through which the German hordes eventually invaded France. But, in the span of ten months, French forces were beaten and defeated and overrun by the German army that crossed the Maginot Line.
Whatever peace had been agreed to between France and Germany lasted just a few months, and in 1940 the French army capitulated and the German armies invaded France. The very nationalistic French media kept singing popular songs, taunting Hitler and defying him to come to the Maginot Line, a fortified bunker built between France and Germany and meant to stop the invading German armies. Instead, Hitler’s armies bypassed the front and the Maginot Line, instead crossing undefended Belgium and making their way to Paris.
One day, Rene’s best
