19
LI
Over the next few weeks,a routine of sorts came to our unusual household. Our instincts told us to keep the children away from Mr. Basset. He was not our friend. If he learned about our hopes of taking the twins home with us, he was sure to foil it if possible. When he came for Fiona’s lessons, either James or I took the boys out to the park where we walked or looked at dogs and people. With each opportunity, I taught the boys new vocabulary until they knew about thirty English words in total. One day, as we were walking toward the park, we passed by a shop with kites hanging in the window.
Beaumont, who spoke only when directly asked a question and never made any kind of fuss, stopped in front of the window. He pointed at a colorful kite hanging in the left corner and spoke to his brother in French. How pretty it is, he said to his brother. So many colors. Could we have it?
Bleu conveyed all this to me, although at this point in time, I could understand the boys pretty well. They spoke slowly when I was around, which helped considerably.
“Can you ask me for the kite in English?” I asked them.
Beaumont looked up at me from his large eyes framed with dark lashes. “Kite. I want.”
“Good,” I said. “Yes, you may have the kite, but you must share it with your brother.”
I’d lost him with the additional instruction, so I repeated the concept in French. “Partager avec ton frère.”
“Oui, oui,” Beaumont said, bouncing on his toes.
I’d not seen him this excited. Bleu was quick to smile and laugh, especially with Gabriella, with whom he did not have the language barrier. In contrast, his brother was quiet. Often I woke in the night to hear him crying out in his sleep. “Arrêtez, vous devez arrêter.” Stop, you must stop. It chilled my blood to think of what or whom he was pleading with in his dreams.
We went into the shop and came out with a kite in the shape of a dragon. The boys talked about it all the way to the park. How would we fly it? Was there enough wind? Would it fly into the Seine if they weren’t careful?
Once there, I put it together, including attaching the string. There was a nice breeze that morning but probably not enough to carry it far. I explained this to them but they were undaunted, asking me to please try.
I ran with it, letting go of the string little by little until, by a miracle, it lifted into the air and sailed high above us in the wind. After I had it flying for a while, I gave each of them a turn. The wind picked up a little by this time and I was afraid they might be lifted from the ground and taken from me. But I needn’t have worried. They were fine. Sadly, the wind died down after another fifteen minutes and the kite came tumbling to the ground, smashing into the grass. By then, the boys were hungry for lunch and physically tired so agreed without consternation to ending our outing with a visit to a café for a midday meal.
We stopped at a boulangerie that had sandwiches stacked in its display case. I bought three made from prosciutto and a creamy cheese. We sat under an umbrella on the patio to wait. I’d splurged on lemonades for the boys, which they greedily drank while we waited for our sandwiches.
I told them to stop once they’d reached halfway, worried they’d spoil their lunch with all the citrus and sugar. They were obedient children and not yet accustomed to their full stomachs, thus full of gratitude. Fiona had supervised their attire this morning, dressing them in knickers and cotton shirts. She’d made a point to dress them individually instead of in identical clothing. Apparently, her brothers had hated that when growing up. I’d not known this about the twins. How little we noticed about one another, I thought.
We ate our sandwiches in silence, other than appreciative grunts from my young friends. There wasn’t a crumb left from any of us when something out of the corner of my eye drew my attention. The boys went rigid and paled, losing all the healthy flush from our exercise in an instant.
It was the referee from the fight, and he was making his way toward us, as red-faced as the boys were pale. Now that I understood more of the way the foster care worked in France, I filled with trepidation. He could legally take them from us, if I guessed correctly.
I’d not had much of a chance to take in his appearance the first time I’d seen him but now I got a full look. He charged up our table and shook his fist at me and then rattled off rapid French that I didn’t understand. But in this case, I needed no translation to know what he was saying. The boys slipped out of their chairs and hurled themselves onto my lap, each taking a leg.
“What do you want?” I asked in French. “Speak slowly, please.”
The gist of it was this. These were his boys. He’d agreed to foster them and they were to come back to work for him immediately.
I asked him about his wife. “Where is she? Where do you live? I need to know if these boys are safe.” At the moment they were trembling on my lap. How could he have pitted these scrawny boys against each other? They weighed no more each than a bag of flour.
The patrons at the other tables were staring at us. Several of the women seemed aggrieved on our behalf. I heard someone call out to the owner to call the police.
“Il n’y a pas de femme.” I have no wife. He took care of the boys by himself, he said. They were his to do with as he pleased.
This was a bit of a bluff, but when I’d talked to the people at the embassy, they’d told me only married couples were allowed to foster the children. I mentioned this to my burly friend, followed by a question about whether his fostering of the boys had gone through the formal process?
His fists clenched at his sides. He didn’t answer my question, other than to curse at me in French. “I’ll be back. This isn’t the end.”
He stormed away, but not before turning back to give us one more thunderous and frightening scowl.
The boys continued to cling to me. I told them as calmly as I could muster that they were safe. He could not take them. “C’était contraire à la loi, ce qu’il a fait.” My voice shook. The man had alarmed me as well.
“Do we have to go back to him?” Bleu asked me. “He hit us with his fists. We don’t want to return.” All of this was in French, but I was able to understand and answer back in their language.
“You’re staying with me and Miss Fiona.”
“America?” Beaumont asked in English, surprising me.
“Would you like to go to America?”
“Gabriella said there are mountains. Very high ones,” Bleu said. “And that it’s pretty there and that we could go to school.”
“That’s all correct.”
They’d crawled off my lap by now. The owner brought them each a bowl of gelato, perhaps sympathizing with the traumatic turn our lunch had taken.
“Tell us more,” Bleu said before lifting his spoon to his mouth. “Is there gelato there?”
“Not gelato but ice cream. Very similar,” I said. “C’est comme une fête chez les Barnes.” Fiona’s family is like a party. “Ils font de la crème glacée sur leur véranda.” I described how on warm summer days they sometimes made ice cream on the back porch. I described the ice cream maker, how each of the family members took a turn cranking the lever. “On utilise une manivelle, comme ça.” I moved my hand in a circular motion.
“Will we live with you and Fiona like we do here?” Bleu asked.