They never touched pork.

To them, it was dirty.

"Well, well," Mama manages to say, "that I would like to see."

"Ask Madame Raffin," I say.

"I'm sure she'll invite you."

By this time, we've walked back to the church.

A baptismal party comes down the steps.

The baby, crying in his godmother's arms, wears a long white lace dress.

Someone tosses a handful of candy from the open church.

All the children run for the candy.

I show my mother the blue candies I've gathered.

"See, it's a boy!"

Mama takes the candy away.

"You can't eat candy off the dirty ground," she says.

"You'll get sick."

Tears start to come, but I blink them back as best I can.

Crying is for babies, isn't it?

"That's not fair!" I say.

"We always do it."

Mama softens.

She looks left and right.

Everyone has gone home.

We go inside the church and she washes my candy in the holy-water font.

Then she wipes it on her sleeve.

She baptizes my candy and gives it back to me.

Now it is purified, and I can eat it.

Christmas comes and goes, and with it my mother.

She takes the train back to Paris, and she doesn't try to make me go with her.

She never even mentions it.

Mama made me a pair of mittens, pale blue with white snowflakes.

It's cold on New Year's Day, so I wear them.

That's the day children visit all the houses in our village.

"Happy New Year, good health, and paradise at the end of your days," we tell everyone.

In return, they give us coins and candy.

People say it's bad luck if children don't visit you on the first day of the year.

I say it's good luck to be in a place where children are so important.

I jingle my cold coins in one of my new mittens.

My candy melts in the other.

I'll use one of my coins to light a candle in church, to thank God that I can stay in the Vendee.

Mama Comes Back.

Before the snowdrops can push up out of the frozen ground, Mama's back.

She did her secret work as long as she could in Paris.

The police arrested her!

They caught her in the apartment of some Jews who had gone into hiding.

Mama swallowed some secret papers before the police could find them.

They let her go that time.

But now it's too dangerous for Mama to stay in Paris.

She can't risk being caught again.

Mama says she's decided to live with me in the country.

"Can we stay in Chavagnes-en-Paillers?" I ask.

"I don't want to leave my new family and friends behind."

"No," says Mama. "It's better to go somewhere else.

We have to make sure that no one knows we're Jewish.

To do that we'll need a new last name.

What do you think? Grand or Petit?"

"Petit!" I answer. "And what will my first name be?"

"You don't need to change your name," Mama says.

"It's very French."

But she says she will change hers to Marie.

"Like Madame Marie," I say, "and Madame Raffin."

And the Virgin Mary, I think, but I don't say that out loud.

"Yes," says Mama, "like those two good women.

"Marie is also the French way of saying Miriam."

Where is Aunt Miriam? I want to ask.

Are Sarah, Charles, Henriette, Serge, and Maurice with her?

But somehow I know better than to ask.

Aunt Miriam and my cousins have gone away, that much I know, like lots of Jewish people.

But no one talks about the people who have gone away.

Doesn't anyone know what has happened to them?

Maybe it's better not to know.

A Small Stone Cottage.

Too soon it's time to say good-bye to all the Raffins, and to Cecile, Paulette, and Suzanne.

I hug them all, one by one.

As always, I try not to cry.

I remind myself that changes can be good.

Wasn't it good to come to the country from Paris?

Besides, now Mama and I are together again.

She says we'll see our friends again after the war, when it's safe.

So the war won't last a thousand years after all.

Madame Raffin finds a small stone cottage for us to rent.

It's in her parents' village of La Basse Claveliere.

This village is only a few miles away, but it takes two hours to walk there.

The path is narrow.

It winds over rocky hillsides.

Mama goes there first.

She cleans the cottage and makes it cozy for us.

When everything is ready, she comes back for me.

I have all my treasures packed: my rosary and the holy pictures I have begun to collect.

There's one of the Virgin Mary in her blue dress, one of the gentle Saint Joseph with his carpentry tools, one of Saint Francis speaking to birds.

I also bring the photograph of my father in his soldier's uniform, but Mama hides it in the linen closet.

Madame Marie will still send us his letters, but now we must keep him a secret.

He wasn't a secret in my old village, but here he will be.

"Don't talk about him," Mama warns me.

"Not ever!