A/N: The quotes from books mentioned in this chapter and the preceding ones (The Little Prince, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Cinderella, and whatever else I'm forgetting to mention...) did not come from my brain -- obviously they came from Lewis Carroll and Charles Perrault and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, etc... I'm not stealing them and pretending they're mine, nor am I playing a quotes game with you. =] Just wanted to clear that up before I got into any trouble...

Onward.

CHAPTER FOUR
CinderEllea

"He had likewise, by another wife, a young daughter, but of unparalleled goodness and sweetness of temper, which she took from her mother, who was the best creature in the world."

I was four years old the first time ma mère read me Cendrillon, ou la petite pantoufle de verre by Charles Perrault. I was swept up in the old fairytale, with its magic and ball gowns and the handsome prince who saved the lovely heroine. I was little, and therefore had no real concept of romantic love, or what it felt like to be held by a man; but I knew, as I lay bundled beneath my warm covers, that ma mère must have her own handsome prince, because a princess must always have her one true love.

Le mari avait, de son côté, une jeune fille, mais d'une douceur et d'une bonté sans exemple: elle tenait cela de sa mère, qui était la meilleure personne du monde.

"Qui est-ce?" I asked innocently, my eyes wide with the naïve curiosity of a lonely little girl.

"Qui?" Mère was tucking my fairytale book into place on my little bookshelf. I watched her graceful hands as her long fingers slid lovingly down its embossed golden spine, which read Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités: Contes de ma mère l'Oye. It was my favorite book, then, before Le Petit Prince or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or even The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which I became partial to at the age of nine. (I even went so far as to beg my mother for a little black dog I could name Toto, but that is another story for another time.)

"Le prince," I answered, picturing mère twirling around a ballroom in a luxurious white gown with a large bow. "Ton prince."

Her eyes became silent at my innocent inquiry. Her beautiful hands looked strained as she tucked my blankets tight around my shoulders, and her lips were pursed quite firmly when she granted me my goodnight kiss. Her answer was a mumbled, "Je ne sais pas," before she pulled the string on my lamp and bade me goodnight.

I saw the same silence in her eyes when I asked "Who is Chuck Bass?" I watched the smile melt from her lips, and when I looked back to her chocolate brown eyes, they were as silent as my school library during study time.

Sometimes, on the rare days when I felt I knew my mother's mind completely, I would pretend that I could see the cogs whirling and spinning her brain. It made me feel like I could predict her thoughts before she thought them, because her thoughts were my own thoughts – we were mother and daughter, after all, shouldn't we think alike? But as I sat there and truly felt the utter stillness in the eyes I had not inherited, I knew I did not understand her at all.

"Où-est mon papa?" I had asked her once, before the diary, before the photograph, before the lies and the thinly veiled fairytales. All of my friends at the park had daddies to pick them up and swing them around; I had ma mère, who didn't like to get her clothes dirty, and Dorota, who preferred to put ribbons in my hair and dress me up like a doll. Papère liked to swing me around and tickle me mercilessly until I cried with laughter and begged him to stop, and grand-père would hoist me onto his shoulders so I could see the chateau from the perspective of a giant grown up.

But none of them were my papa. So, I asked where he was.

And mère looked up from her book, tilted her head down to me, and said "Je ne sais pas."

"Qui est mon papa?"

"Je ne sais pas."

"Does he love me?"

"I don't know."

"Will he ever visit me?"

"I don't know."

I learned, very quickly, to stop asking about my papa. The answer was always "Je ne sais pas."

I don't know.

"Who is Chuck Bass?"

The silence in her eyes told me her answer. I laid my head back against my feathery pillow, closed my eyes, and tried to imagine ma mère in a cloudy white ball gown, with shimmering silver details and a large bow, decorated only with the diamond necklace she kept locked in papère's safe at Chateau Waldorf. I could no longer picture it as clearly as I once had, and the loss of the make-believe memory made me clench my eyes together to dam my tears.

My bedroom door clicked shut after she left, and I heard the unspoken answer in my ear.

"Who is Chuck Bass?"

Je ne sais pas.

Breakfast was a quiet affair the following morning.

I donned my school clothes and a beret to shield my hair from the wind, and then let Dorota shine my patent leather shoes before I slid them on over pristinely white socks. She curled the ends of my hair in feathery whisps so that the style would seem as natural as possible, then fastened a strand of cultured pearls under my collar. I looked at myself in the mirror and felt like an old woman.

Mother was sitting at her usual seat in front of the French windows, which overlooked our garden. I sat down across from her, crossed my legs at their ankles, and gently unfolded my napkin and placed it in my lap. Dorota brought me my plate, and I stared thoughtfully at the delicious selections before choosing a grape from the center of the table and chewing on it instead. My stomach could not support the hot scrambled eggs or fluffy, buttered crêpes, so I filled up on fruit and water and hoped it would sustain me until lunchtime.

What I really wanted was for mère to catch me and tease me about my pithy appetite.

"Enjoy all of your food, while you can," she would say, smirking at some private joke as she spread jam onto her toast.

She was always smirking at a private joke, and she never clued me into the punch line.

But mère did not comment on my eating habits, or ask me about any interesting dreams I might have had the night before, or even ask about the school project I had been working on the day before. Instead, she read her favorite sections of the morning paper, sipped her café au lait, then cut her grapefruit and stared thoughtfully into the music room at our white grand piano.

I thought she might lecture me about me neglecting my musical studies. Instead, she finished the last of her grapefruit, dabbed at her ruby red mouth with her napkin, and left me alone to stare forlornly at the breakfast table. I pushed my plate away and looked into the garden through the French doors. Spring had caused white tulips, pink roses, and lavender carnations to sprout and bloom, but they were not doing well in the unseasonably cold weather. I toyed with the idea of walking in the garden before school (maybe I could find a pretty carnation to pin to my shirt?), but soon drifted into the adjoining music room instead.

I was drawn to the white piano.

It was exquisite in the sunlight that streamed through the sheer ivory curtains. I traced the familiar keys and played a little tune before sliding onto the bench and experimentally pumping the pedals to see that they were still in working order. Of course mère still had the tuner come by to check up on it, even though I hardly ever looked at it anymore and much preferred to pluck the strings of my beautiful pedal harp. Of course she maintained it. When I was very young, and had just learned my first few clumsy renditions of Frere Jacques and Savez-vous Planter Les Choux, she would have friends over so she could show me off and prove that I was better than their little girls.

Of course, I was. I smiled a little wider.

"Because you're a Waldorf," she would say. And I was, of course.

I let my finger fall on E-flat and frowned at the golden letters that spelled YAMAHA above the piano's ivory keys.

"But, mama. I am not a Waldorf, en vérité, am I? I am really another name that I do not know, non?"

On my very first day of primary school, after mère was satisfied with my hair and shoes and bag, she had hugged me close to her and kissed the top of my head with so much love that I could feel it seeping into my skin and filling me with warmth. I squeezed her hard until she pulled away and smiled at me with a watery expression that made me feel very ashamed – I wondered if I had done something wrong.

But she produced a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her own eyes, then mine. Then, she took my hand, straightened my little tie, and led me to the front doors so I could join my new classmates. I remember crying even harder when I realized I could never go back to nursery school or my grand section schoolmates ever again, and I missed my kind teacher with her dark red hair and friendly smile, and I didn't like my shoes because they were uncomfortable, and I didn't like the curls in my hair, and I wanted to go home and hug my teddy bears and cry where no one could see me. Mère dabbed my eyes once more and sent me up the steps.

"Tu êtes une dame maintenant."

I stopped crying immediately, because ladies did not cry on the school steps so everyone could look at them. I turned up my nose at a bawling little girl (she seemed so very childish to me then), stormed up the steps and into the school with all the authority I could muster, and took a seat in the very front row with all of my supplies packed neatly into my pale pink Prada bag.

The teacher made me move to the back because my surname began with a W, and I was sitting where the B's were meant to sit.

YAMAHA blurred into one indistinct blob as I recalled that memory, and the letters stayed blurred until Dorota came to prod me about getting to school on time. I had my perfect record to maintain, after all, and didn't I want to attend université? So I left the piano, found my brand new Louis Vuitton carrier, and ran to my white limo before my chauffer drove to my school without me.

When we entered the city and the rush of people and automobiles increased along rue Saint-Jacques, I stared at the beautiful buildings and the beautiful people without really seeing them or realizing they were real –I felt that it was my limousine, not those tall buildings, that sat still and proud with the expertise of a thing that had been doing it for centuries. The world was moving around me at a startling pace, and I was caught in the middle with no father, no name, no curls, and no answers to my questions.

Qui étais-je? Who was I?

Je ne le savais pas. I did not know.

Translations:
Cendrillon, ou la petite pantoufle de verre - Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper
Histoires ou contes du temps passé, avec des moralités: Contes de ma mère l'Oye - Tales from Times Past; or, Tales of Mother Goose
Le mari avait, de son côté, une jeune fille, mais d'une douceur et d'une bonté sans exemple: elle tenait cela de sa mère, qui était la meilleure personne du monde. - The English translation is provided in the story, at the very beginning of the chapter
Qui est-ce? - Who is he?
Qui? - Who?
Le prince/Ton prince - The prince/Your prince
Où-est mon papa? - Where is my daddy?
Je ne sais pas - I do not know
Tu êtes une dame maintenant - You are a lady now