The room has turned sideways. It takes her a moment to understand why, until she pins down the source of her pain: her ear, her left ear, is inside her father’s fist. He’s pulling it, dragging that tender scrap of flesh until she’s sure all the tiny bones inside must be squeezed to a useless mush, like the pottage she’s spilled. If ever he lets her go, she will probably be deaf on the one side, which she wouldn’t mind, not so much, because he is always shouting and usually at her.

From this position, as her father is trying to separate her ear from her head and she is nearly weeping with pain, she can see the rest of her family at the table: her three brothers, Jacquemin, Jean, and Pierre; her sister, Catherine; her mother, Isabelle Romée. She knows, from experience, that she won’t get any help from them. Standing up to Jacques d’Arc and saying, “It’s just a bowl and a bit of stew and your daughter a child,” throwing yourself between his fists and the small person he is beating, these will only prolong the episode. And there will be more black-and-blue eyes to go around, more swollen heads and bruised hips to rub and moan over the next morning. Let no one say the family of Jacques d’Arc does not learn from its mistakes. Better to sit still and pretend the beating is happening somewhere far, far away, to just wait it out and hum a pleasant song in your head to drown out the cries while you finish your supper—and keep your bowl on the table.

When he releases her, the room spins about Joan’s head, and she trips, arms flapping, into the closest wall. Her ear is hot to the touch; it feels as if he’s set the whole side of her head on fire with a candle. She can’t tell if that ear is still working, but she can hear her father’s shouting. He’s taken a page from the Maxey captain’s book of insults and is calling her names: little bitch, mangy cur, thankless, whining pup that should be put in a sack and drowned in the nearest stream, if only he had a sack big enough to stuff her body in. Why are all of these images about dogs, she wonders. Doesn’t he know that dogs are God’s best gift to man? Her own dog, a muddy stray she found shaking and wet under a bush one morning, is her closest friend. She’s named the dog Salaud, or “Bastard.” It isn’t meant to be an insult. To her, the name signals their closeness, that the two of them are of the same stock: unwanted, the wretches of the world, easy to kick around.