The Painted Girls [antikvár]

Cüoric CÖ onsieur LeBlanc leans against the doorframe, his arms folded over a belly grown round on pork crack-ling. A button is missing from his waistcoat, pulled too tight for the threads to bear. Maman wrings her hands—laundress's hands, marked by chapped skin, raw knuckles. "But, Monsieur LeBlanc," she says, "we just put my dead husband in the ground." "It's been two weeks, Madame van Goethem. You said you needed two weeks." No sooner had Papa taken his last breath upon this earth than, same as now, Monsieur LeBlanc stood in the door-way of our lodging room demanding the three months' rent Papa had fallen behind in paying since getting sick. Maman drops to her knees, grasps the hem of Monsieur LeBlanc's greatcoat. "You cannot turn us out. My daughters, all three good girls, you would put them on the street?" "Take pity," I say, joining Maman at his feet. "Yes, pity," says Charlotte, my younger sister, and I wince. She plays her part too well for a child not yet eight. Only Antoinette, the oldest of the three of us,