M and me, we did our best to fall in with everyone else, into the place that was natural for us. We took a tourist train up to the mountains and breathed in air that made us feel like we’d never been alive before right then. When we took the tools to the park we cleaned each one at the pump before we went home. We dusted and polished them, ferreting out every individual grain of sand, rubbing the red paint with the soft ends of our shirts until it shone.

It was true that the apartment was small. On that point too, Mother was right and there was no denying it. But, I told E, small is wonderful! When we are packed up tight inside it, I told her, the apartment is small like a treasure chest, and that means we turn into gems when we step inside. What are you today? I’d ask her, when we squeezed through the front door with our shopping, and she would always say a diamond and I would pick something different every time so she would learn the names of the different stones. Emeralds are green, Sapphires are blue, Rubies are red and I love you. See? We could make anything wonderful, anything fun.

A lady from the relocation agency provided by M’s new office had shown us the apartment on a tour of possible living spaces. Pick one, the memo from M’s office had read and so we did. All we had to do was put our finger on the one we wanted.

The lady had been sent to us by the agency because of her excellent English.

Oh my god! she said whenever we walked into a new room in one of the apartments on our tour. She liked also to raise a hand to her mouth.

I liked the way her heels clicked on the parquet floors when she walked into a room ahead of us, and the way she said, Zis way, and, Oh my god! as if she were still speaking French. But I didn’t like the way she only asked me to open the drawers in the kitchens or to peek inside the washing machines to see how big they were. Zee? she would say, For you! And I supposed that really they were for me, weren’t they? The kitchen drawers and the washing machines. Well, they certainly weren’t for the lady from the agency in her jacket and pencil skirt and clicking shoes. My clothes and E’s clothes and B’s were the only clothes that could be crumpled up into a washing machine. M’s clothes and her clothes, the clothes of working people, would of course have to be seen to at the dry cleaners. It seemed I hadn’t realized this until we all stood together, M and me and her and E and B, in front of the washing machine in one of the apartments and she had said, ceremoniously, ’Ere, zis is for you. But of course I must have seen that from the beginning. What was for me I mean.