Our Lady of the Prairie by Thisbe Nissen

Author:Thisbe Nissen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Seated on crates they haven’t yet used for fuel, Mignon begs Virgie to eat something, but she pushes away the bread, instead reaches to stroke her sister’s face, as though it’s Mignon to whom the current situation must be explained. Virgie learned of the short rations allotted Relève workers in Germany and will not eat a crumb more herself until every worker is returned. She’s in slow-motion decay. No thread left for stitching, her bony fingers go now to her hair, feeling for a patch she’s clawed to stubble. She doesn’t know she’s doing it, but cannot stop from finding a strand to twist and wrap around a purpling fingertip until the hair breaks and she can roll it off and tuck it in her apron. It’s like she’s trying to collect enough to weave hair socks for a POW.

Wearily, Mignon rises to refill the Germans’ cups. Steeped toasted acorns, chicory, and twigs are what passes now for coffee. For a time the Nazis stocked the tailor shop, but no one can ensure supplies anymore. Trade is interminably slow; mail, too. Mignon still writes letters, but Michel has been relocated several times—separated from Jean early on, probably for the best, his chances better on his own—and who knows if the letters arrive. She also writes to Karl in hopes he might help return her father and brother to France. And to the German authorities, as “the fiancée of Officer Karl Perlmutter.” She’s even bartered herself an “engagement ring” to serve her story.

If only to escape the stifling shop, Bena continues at school. Mornings, she escapes without a word, just the door’s clang-clang. The chime alerts Virginie, who trails Bena out, though she doesn’t go to school, just wanders, truant, twisting off her hair, while Bena is escorted to the lyceé by a rotating throng of Nazis. She doesn’t thrill at their attentions, but it’s bitter cold and the soldiers do make something of a wind block. She’s hardly out the door when a pasty one approaches to say, “I accompany you.” It’s a statement, not a question. Then another joins him, asking, by way of conversation, “Mademoiselle, what do you go to study in the school?”

Though she’d rather hunch against the cold, Bena walks tall. “Oh,” she says, “navigation, riflery, bomb-making.” The boys laugh unconvincingly. Bena wishes she weren’t kidding. They round a corner, whipped by a staggering wind. Bena knows this route in any weather and turns to walk backward, calling, “If you can’t stand the wind, how will you fare against the Allies?”

“By killing them!” They laugh, the wind pulling ghoulishly at their open mouths.

“Mademoiselle,” calls a new boy, “may I get you a coffee? Something to warm you up?”

“I know what’ll warm her up!” shouts another.

“There is no coffee,” Bena retorts, “only chicory tea, and I’d rather suck a twig.”

“Suck my twig, Mademoiselle!”

“That’s all you’ve got, a twig. Come to my forest, Miss Armond. I’ll show you a tree!”

Beneath the movie theater marquee, Bena faces the boys with cutting rectitude.

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