A Memoir by Linda Perlman Fields

The sun warmed the ground, returned life to the water and new growth to the trees. A slight breeze nudged the pond to shimmy and the leaves to dance. Our breadcrumbs lured the feathered divers and dabblers out from marshy pools. Their backsides waddled while they barked happy notes. I giggled and skipped along as Maria held my hand and pointed out petite delights: a papillon hiding among the reeds or le lézard who dared to scuttle under our feet. She told me stories of her life in France, when she rode a motorcycle and her German shepherd ran alongside like an accoutrement. She made me want to dance through life.

Maria was ninety when she died and when I found her book of catechisms. It was old, well-worn and bound in black leather with her initials embossed in gold on the front. Scribbles of lines and circles decorated the inside front and back covers. I imagined her at age seven or eight with this book on her lap and a pencil in her hands, finding a canvas to ease the ennui while preparing for First Communion. There it was, so many years later, still in her possession. I picked it up and opened to a random page. What happened next will forever be a remarkable moment—one I’ll never forget. A small piece of white paper lived there, folded neatly. I carefully unfolded it and saw a child’s handwriting.  To my astonishment, it read: “Dear Maria, I was a bad girl.” I signed it with love. I don’t remember writing it and wished she were there to answer the inevitable question. 

More than an au pair, Maria lived with me, my parents and two sisters, a Jewish family that wouldn’t exist if my father hadn’t escaped the holocaust. We never talked about the war when I got older, and I sometimes wondered if Maria was part of the resistance in France. I remember her railing against the hypocrisy of religion, perhaps a sentiment that grew over time, but I felt she always had a deep connection with the Catholic Church.

She was a widow with a son and granddaughter in France. Never remarried, she made friends in America and would spend time with them when not with us. I always imagine Maria as a young and willful femme fatale riding the country roads in northern France, waltzing with lovers and dealing with setbacks, never complaining, but taking matters into her hands, starting over in a new country on a new continent. I miss her, but I’ll always have the French nursery rhyme she taught me that day at the duck pond— about a dance performed on a bridge in Avignon… and a few French curse words.

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Linda Perlman Fields has returned to her first passion: CNF, poetry and fiction following a career as a Peabody-winning journalist in New York City. Her work has been published in anthologies and online publications including One Art, The Sunlight Press, Front Porch Review, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Poetica Magazine, and others. Nonfiction has appeared in New York Magazine and in regional newspapers. More at http://www.LindaPerlmanFields.com