Enchantments Read Online Free PDF Page A

friendship, total intimacy.
    We're in the car. As always my mother has come to pick us up at school. In a rush I tell herabout the new girl who's called Anna and who lives in our building, and I point her out with a trembling finger—there she is walking along the sidewalk with her mother and sister. “Mama, can't we take them with us?” I beg feverishly. My mother looks at me intently, weighing the urgency, the seriousness of my plea, and then throws open the door and jumps out of the car and there she is running—running! How my heart is leaping with each stride she takes, a lioness running down her prey for her famished cubs, and I'm thankful, so thankful that my mother is running toward those distant figures on the sidewalk to ask them to come home with us. From then on my mother takes all of us to school and picks us up every day (Anna and Gabriella's father picks us up only after the Saturday half-day). And from then on we play together every afternoon, Mondays at their house and all the other days (except Saturday and Sunday, which are reserved for our family alone) at our house. There was no special reason I could see for this lopsided arrangement, but it suited me because at their house they weren't allowed to play with Barbie dolls.
    One day I dared to ask Anna's mother why not.
    “Because Barbie has breasts,” she replied. And that was that. I didn't dare tell all this to my mother, but that evening I regarded her with suspicion, wondering if it was something to be ashamed of that I had a mother who let me play with a doll with breasts.
    Sunday mornings my father would drive Clara and me to the drugstore to buy a new dress for our Barbie dolls. The three of us in the car— Papa at the wheel, one of us in front, maybe both of us. On the radio—sometimes French songs with a mournful accordion, sometimes the races at Longchamp. The quays a gray ribbon running past us, solemn buildings with the windows always shut, cold as mirrors. But I feel cheerful, floating as lightly as our birdlike chatter in the little paradise of our car. “I want Barbie's Christmas dress.” “I like Barbie's riding habit.”
    “And what about Barbie's boyfriend?” my father says. “Doesn't anyone want Ken?”
    “No, not Ken,” I answer decisively. “We don't like men.”
    “Not even your old dad?”
    “Yes, Papa,” I murmur, lowering my head. “Yes.” But I'm not telling the whole truth. Because even though I'm very fond of him, I would like him better if he were a woman.
    There was one Barbie dress that I adored more than all the others: the Barbie queen's gown. Full-length, billowing, immense, in gold brocade. And then a glittering cape trimmed with ermine. Shoes with gold stiletto heels, a diamond crown, an emerald necklace, and a scepter like a torch holder with a circlet at the top and on it the insignia of the royal family—a big Gothic
B,
blue on a field of yellow. There is a reason that I remember it so well.
    One time my parents were invited to a ball at the palace at Versailles.
    That evening Clara and I are in our pajamas after our bath. We're sitting in our parents’ bedroom on Mama's twin bed. They're getting ready, going in and out of the pink marble bathroom. They're excited, they're talking about this and that, laughing a little. Then Mama takes something out of the closet, some sort of cumbersome bag. She says, “Don't look, children, don't look,” and she awkwardly carries whatever it is into the bathroom and closes the door. And I wait endlessly. At last my mother reappears, my mother in the Barbie queen's gown—perhaps not as billowing but full-length, and yes, in gold brocade, and even the shoes are gold. On her face there's a timid smile, but she's very, veryhappy—I can tell. And my father is smiling and there's a sly gleam in his eyes. He says, “Look under the pillow … “And Mama comes over to the bed where we're sitting and slips her hand under the pillow. And in her hand there is a case