Weave the Web

I am six years old. I’m in a place called Paris, France! My mother and me, my fourteen year old sister and her tutor, Miss Wiggins, came here on a big boat. I don’t remember much about the boat because my mother and sister were sick all the time and I wasn’t. Miss Wiggins wasn’t either.

 

Miss Wiggins has whiskers on her chin. We are staying with a family from a country called Poland. They speak French and I don’t understand them. They say something like “bunjer” when they see you instead of “hello.”

 

Last night my mother told me that I was going to spend sometime tomorrow with Annette the French maid, so my sister and mother could go to some museums that I wouldn’t like. So this morning very early, I go down the back stairs to the kitchen where Annette is waiting for me.

 

She has bushy hair and bushy eyebrows, but she is smiling so I guess it’s all right. She takes my hand and out we go to the market to buy groceries. The Paris air hits me right in the face. It is a wet smell, something like wet mud and leaves mixed together like we have at home. It sure is damp, and it’s not raining. But my nose starts to twitch.

 

By now we are at the market with lots of people carrying string bags. Annette has one, too, and she goes up to a clothesline full of chickens strung up. She pokes several before dumping one chicken into her bag. Then we go to the fish. The smell there is so bad, I run away. But Annette catches me and laughs. After that she buys vegetables. They don’t smell, and they look pretty.

 

We walk home and Annette’s hand holding mine feels good.