Interlaced

 By Mary Faith Russell

It was the week before Christmas, 1966, in Carvin, a small mining town in northern France. My husband, Bill, got transferred there to be a technical director for an American-owned plastics plant. We pulled up stakes and moved from Massachusetts with our three young children. At first it seemed a great adventure, but for me it quickly turned into a real adjustment. Bill, who spoke fluent French, fit right in. But I struggled with the language. I also found it hard to get used to the rigid social and class distinctions, so unlike the States.

Automobiles shared Carvin’s streets with horse-drawn carts full of potatoes and sugar beets. Most folks walked. “Pardon,” I said one morning, maneuvering among the townsfolk while carrying spears of bread called baguettes. I turned off the main thoroughfare and followed the street to our house. “Hi!” I called out, pushing the old door open. 

Bill was helping the children string lights on the evergreen tree we’d bought from a farmer. He came over and relieved me of the baguettes. “Did you visit the woman down the street?” he asked.

“No, just shopped,” I said. 

The previous Sunday the pastor of our little church had drawn me aside. “I’ve heard there are newcomers on your block,” he said. “Madame Delplace and her husband and children have moved from Strasbourg. She could use a helping hand. Perhaps you could drop by?”

Drop by? I’d passed Madame Delplace one day on the narrow sidewalk in front of our houses. She carried herself proudly, and when I offered a timid “Bonjour,” she sailed past without a reply.

“Don’t bother with her,” a neighbor had called out from her window. “The husband has had trouble with the police.”

“I can’t just force myself on her,” I told Bill. “I’m sure she won’t talk to an American, much less one who speaks such patchy French.”

Bill lifted our six-year-old so she could put the star on top of our tree. “Why not at least try?” he said.

The next day I walked down the block and knocked on Madame Delplace’s door.

Madame Delplace answered, wearing a heavy black sweater, her hair pulled back in a bun and her lips pressed together tightly. “Je suis Madame Russell,” I said.

She hesitated, her gray eyes appraising me warily. I thought she might slam the door in my face. But she stepped back. “Entrez, s’il vous plaît,” she said. I quickly realized the reason for the sweater. Her house was freezing cold.

She motioned me to sit and brought me a cup of tea. The kettle hung over a small fireplace. “You are lucky to have come while the kettle is still hot,” she said. “We have no money to buy coal. We’ve taken down the doors and burned them when we need to.”

I listened intently and was able to follow what Madame said. “You see,” she explained, “my husband did just one tiny thing wrong.” She held up the tip of her little finger to show how small it was. “He broke a French business law, and the government forced us into bankruptcy to pay his debt. Officials auctioned off all our possessions. The only things we could keep were a chair apiece and our mattresses.”

She acted relieved to tell someone of her plight, a relief that seemed mixed with bitterness and pride. “We have a small social security stipend,” she said. “Our only other income is from stringing beads for carnival jewelry. In one stroke,” she said, “I went from being middle class to lower class. No one in this town will talk to me.”

“Madame,” I said, choosing my words carefully in French, “I will talk to you. And it would be my pleasure to bring you some things for Christmas. For your children.”

She looked at me steadily, then nodded. “Merci.” She snipped the word off like one would snip the stem of a rose.

My kids were excited about giving presents to the Delplace kids. They picked out some of their own toys. We wrapped them and took them to Madame Delplace’s house, along with an envelope containing seventy dollars in francs. “This is not money that is to be repaid,” I said. “Someday you’ll be able to pass the money on to someone else who needs it.”

She clasped my hand. “You have saved us,” she said, her voice wavering.

I visited Madame Delplace every week. One day Madame took out her needlework, a ball of thread and a hook. With a flick of her wrist, she began crocheting.

“What are you making?” I asked.

She held up a circle of intricate flower designs, woven in shades of a warm, almost golden, beige. Her work was exquisite. “How beautiful!” I exclaimed.

“A tablecloth for my sister,” Madame said. “Do you have a sister?”

“No,” I replied. “Just one brother, back in the States.”

“We miss them, no?” She looked up and smiled as if trying to cover up the sadness in her voice.

I loved my weekly teatime with Madame, not simply because my French was rapidly improving. We talked about serious subjects—politics, international affairs, religion. We discussed racism and injustice in both our countries. We agreed that God loves us all. “We are all the same in God’s eyes,” Madame Delplace said. Still, her words seemed to move upon a current of bitterness. There was something so unresolved in her passions, something deeper than her husband’s shame. Each time her voice rose she seemed to pull her emotions back with her crocheting, her fingers pulling the hook more quickly.

The winter softened into spring. “Would your children like to come play with mine?” Madame asked. The playdate went so well that I invited her children to our house to watch television.

“Would you like these clothes?” I asked Madame Delplace in the summer, holding up some shirts my girls had outgrown. She nodded and offered to make some lemonade. At every teatime as we talked in the soft afternoon light, her crochet needle kept moving, transforming the ball of thread into a delicate cascade.

Before I knew it, it was only a week till Christmas. Holiday lights bloomed on lampposts. Bûches de Noël—rich cakes shaped like Yule logs—appeared in the patisseries. This year has flown by, and I think I know why. Thank you, Lord, for sending me Madame Delplace. And, please, this Christmas bring peace to her troubled heart.

The next time I went to Madame’s for tea, sprigs of holly were arrayed over the fireplace. “I have finished the tablecloth,” she announced.

“Please,” I said, “I have to see.”

Slowly, almost reverently, Madame Delplace spread the cloth over the kitchen table. I caught my breath. “This could go into a museum!” I whispered.

She did something unexpected then. She folded up her treasure and held it toward me. “It is for you,” she said.

“I . . . I can’t,” I stammered. “You made it for your sister.”

“You are my sister,” she insisted. “In all of our times together this past year, there is one thing I have never spoken about. The war. American planes bombed Strasbourg. Those bombs killed my father. In my grief and rage I vowed I would always hate Americans. Then you came to visit me and to be my friend, and my bitterness melted. You must take this cloth as an expression of my thankfulness. Please.”

I clasped the cloth close to me. “Merci beaucoup,” I whispered, feeling both forgiven and forgiving.

So many years now have passed. But those serious topics Madame Delplace and I discussed over tea and crocheting still trouble the world. I think of the bitterness that divides people. Yet I remember her holding out that beautiful, exquisite cloth, so delicate and so strong, and I am reassured there is hope for us all. I remember that Christmas in a faraway place where I found a sister.