THE MEANING OF HOME
It had been a fine June day, the sapphire skies dotted with brilliant white clouds that floated lazily along the Seine. As the sun began to dip below the horizon, four year old Porthos' gaze never wavered from the little patch of sky visible in the congested alley where he and his mother lived.
"Mama? Do you think the dancing stars will be out tonight?"
"I hope so, my love," replied Celine with a smile. She was a tall, striking woman, whose beauty was clearly not native to France. However, all traces of her past, including her African name, had long since been buried. She might be a slave, but she was determined that her son would be viewed as a native son of France. He was curious and intelligent, and if God continued to bless him, he would do great things.
His dark eyes shone up at her, full of excitement. "Can we climb the ladder behind the old tannery and look for them?!"
Celine cupped her son's small chin in her hand, his enthusiasm dulling the pain her joints that seemed to haunt her day and night. "If you promise to mind me when I say we have to go home, yes, we can."
An hour later, the two of them lay on the roof of the abandoned tannery. Porthos, as was his habit, was snuggled up to his mother, his little hand securely nestled in hers.
"While we're waiting," he whispered. "Let's imagine our house. You have to finish from last time, Mama."
The hovel they lived in had a dirt floor and a canvas roof. Food was scarce, and furniture was only a dream. Mother and son slept on a thin layer of burlap sacks that faintly smelled of rotten potatoes, with only a thin, moth-eaten blanket to protect them from the cold. A rat or two would often skirt the sacks in the dead of night, only to be disappointed by the lack of food scraps. Porthos had been terrified by the rats when he was a toddler, but had learned to accept them as part of the landscape of the Court of Miracles. Their world was one of squalor, illness, and hunger. In order to distract her son from their grim surroundings, Celine had invented a game that Porthos never tired of.
They would build their dream house through words, each night inventing another room in that magical structure. Tonight it was Celine's turn. "Okay. I think we left off at the kitchen."
"You said you were almost done except for one last thing."
"So I did. I have one last touch to add….the curtains at the windows."
"Curtains?" Porthos' fingers wriggled in her hand, tapping out the rhythm of a tune they had heard a street musician playing earlier. "But why? Not everyone has curtains. Lots of people don't."
"I know, honey. But curtains make a house a home," she said softly. "I remember the first time I saw a curtain. I was just a little girl, only a few years older than you. Remember I told you I was a slave when I came from Africa? Well, one of my tasks was to wash and hang the curtains in my mistress' house."
"That must have been hard! A lot of the houses we see on the way to the market have so many windows, I can barely count them!"
Celine laughed, and kissed the top of her son's curly head. "You notice everything, Porthos! Many of those houses do have several dozen windows. But the house where I lived had 15 windows, each graced by a white lace curtain that fluttered in the breeze. Even the tiny window in my room had a curtain, although it wasn't made of lace."
"So-would you want white curtains like that in our house?" he asked, his voice growing sleepy.
She shook her head slightly. "No. I know exactly what I want. Our kitchen will have green curtains."
"Green?" he mumbled, "Why green?"
"Because green is the color of freedom, Porthos. It's the color I remember when I think of the village where I grew up. The grass, the trees, the plants…even the small parakeet I had as a pet when I was little….they were all green. Sometimes when I dream at night, I see myself running through the grass, with my bird flying around me. I am singing one of the songs I learned from my grandmother, and my hair is streaming in the breeze. It almost seems real."
From that time on, Porthos had been unable to imagine a home without curtains. But after his mother's death, he had taken to sleeping in an abandoned shack with some other orphans from the Court. It had no windows, and was dark and dreary. When he had joined the army as a foot soldier, he had slept either in the field or in the barracks.
The day he had been given his pauldron had been the proudest day of his life. The months of training that had led up to it had been some of the hardest, yet most exhilarating, of his life. His friendship with Athos and Aramis had been the biggest surprise. He had expected the muttered comments and slights he had received from several of the men. What he had not expected was to find the two brothers he had never had-one a seminary dropout, the other a broken son of the nobility.
When the Captain handed him the key to his room at the garrison, Porthos realized that for the first time in his life, he would have a space all his own. A place to call home. So when he opened the door to his quarters, the first thing his eyes searched for were the windows. There were two, and they were bereft of curtains.
One of the windows looked out on the courtyard. Rooms with a view of the courtyard were coveted, as they afforded an opportunity to keep tabs on the comings and goings of Captain Treville, as well as one's comrades. The other window faced the east side of the city. If Porthos squinted towards the horizon, he could almost see the boundary of the Court of Miracles.
Within a week, he had scouted out the nearest draper's shop, which happened to be run by none other than Jacques Bonacieux and his charming wife, Constance. When he had expressed an interest in material for curtains in his quarters, Jacques had quickly lost interest, as there was little money to be made from such a small order. Constance, however, had been kind and gracious, and had not even batted an eye when he had glanced over the white lace and cotton that was typically seen in Parisian windows, then asked to see bolts of green fabric.
Six days later, he had hung an iron rod over both windows, and slid the curtains Constance had made for him into place. They were a rich, soft, green, and he instinctively knew that they were just the color that his mother had had in her mind's eye that night on the rooftop.
As soon as the material was in place, a breeze blew up from the east, causing fabric to billow and dance in the wind. In an instant, he saw a dark skinned girl, singing as she ran barefoot through the tall grass of Africa, a small bird darting through the air next to her. His eyes filled with tears, and he knew that he was finally home.
THE END