“Entre, entre! There are no hidden traps.”

Sophie opened the door to her box-sized dorm room, crammed with books and smelling of cigarettes. It wasn’t a bad smell, exactly. Deborah had long since gotten used to it after the girls at school had led her into smoking.

She always tried to do it outside so the scent wouldn’t cling to her clothes—or better yet, she’d go to Sophie’s place. That was the next level of strategy because Sophie smoked all the time.

If Deborah came home smelling like cigarettes, her parents wouldn’t suspect anything. That was one small victory.

This visit was another. It was the first time she had been allowed to go somewhere on her own after three months in France. Sure, Sophie had picked her up at the apartment in Neuilly and there had been strict instructions about when to be home, but still—it was progress.

She was fifteen, almost sixteen, and she had feared the worst when they moved to France. That she’d be confined to the small church community, kept under constant watch. Her father was here to counsel the mission president, after all, and her mother was only returning to France after fifteen years in the U.S.

The worst part of the move had been coming to such a huge, foreign city only to be boxed into such a tiny space, with strict rules for everything—when she went to school, who she was supposed to be with, who she wasn’t supposed to be with.

But her parents trusted Sophie. She might not be from the Church, but she was a proper Catholic. And a worldly 18-year old. That was enough.

Sophie shut the door. “Sit down, sit down. Tu veux une clope?”

“Yes, please,” Deborah said. Sophie took out her pack of Gauloises and lit one for Deborah.

For a while, they sat together and just enjoyed the taste of the acrid smoke.

It had only been a few months since Deborah had learned to smoke, in secret at school, but it felt quite natural for her now.

Perhaps too natural. Some evenings at home were bad because she couldn’t do anything about her cravings until school the next day.

It was late afternoon. The brutalist concrete buildings outside didn’t look any better in this light: huge soulless squares of gray. Deborah was still surprised by how small everything was inside, though. And how much control there was. They had barely entered when a supervisor in the hallway checked where they had been.

“There are a lot of rules here,” Sophie said, sounding both amused and irritated as if she had predicted what Deborah was thinking. “It gets old.”

“Yes, well, I suppose it’s just the way things are,” Deborah said. “I mean, in Salt Lake City, it would’ve been the same. But I wouldn’t know.”

They sat down on the small couch that doubled as Sophie’s bed. Deborah noticed that Sophie’s tiny desk bore the scratches of countless midnight manifestos—slogans or something. Or bits of poetry? She wasn’t quite sure. A Serge Gainsbourg record leaned against the wall. 

“You don’t think you’ll go to university?” Sophie asked.

“I don’t know.”

“But your father made sure you went to the international school. That’s a really good education.”

“I don’t know if we’re even staying in France,” Deborah admitted. “For now, it’s two years, but after that… I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Of course,” Sophie said. “Then what should we talk about? Your homework?”

“No!”

Sophie grinned and they chatted on in slow, deliberate French. Occasionally Sophie threw in some explanation or other in her weirdly accented English, she had learned from the fishermen from Dover or Portsmouth coming into her childhood home of Honfleur for repairs, unloading or just a break.

Deborah envied her cousin’s fluency. She was a lot better at English than Deb was at French.

Sophie had been helping Deborah for a while now, ever since it became clear that her father’s plan—throwing her straight into French classes at the international school without any introductory transition—had been too ambitious.

Speaking a little French with her mother back home was one thing. Being dumped in the middle of a semester into a classroom where she was expected to keep up with native French students or just those from, say, Denmark og Germany whose families had lived here for years? That was something else entirely …

Yes, the international school softened the landing a little—at least she had classes in English—but it was still a struggle. But with Sophie’s tutoring it had to get easier soon.

Soon …

“So,” Sophie said, “now that you’ve finally escaped your cage, what should we do? Want to borrow something from my book collection? It’s easier if you pick something yourself.”

“Yes … ” Deborah didn’t move. 

“I think you should pick that one over there,” Sophie said.

Deborah stretched out her legs. “You know, I’d love to, but maybe I’ll pick some books later. I don’t want to think too much of books now. It’s still holidays!”

“As you wish,” Sophie said. “But I really recommend La société du spectacle.”

“‘Spectacle’?”

“Yes. A great book. Just the thing for an inquisitive Mormon girl like you.”

Deborah rolled her eyes. “Maybe it’s too difficult.”

“Probably,” Sophie admitted. “But we can look at it later.”

“I don’t even know what it’s about.”

“Well, you don’t need to know,” Sophie smirked. “Not before you read it, anyway.”

Deborah looked around. “ … It’s a bit gloomy in here.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Sophie sighed. “I wish we could go somewhere else. But it’s not like my parents can afford that.”

“But it’s still good, isn’t it?” Deborah asked.

Sophie raised an eyebrow. “What is?”

“Well… having your own space. Your own place to be.”

Sophie glanced around the room. “This?” She gestured at the tiny, bunker-like cubicle. “This isn’t a place. It’s a box.”

“I’d still rather live here than where I live,” Deborah said. “Even if it smells like smoke and… something.”

Sophie smirked. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know …” Deborah said. “Perhaps something I am not used to.”. 

“When I first came here,” Sophie said. “I’d lived in Honfleur my whole life. It was so provincial. So I guess this is better.”

Deborah snickered. “All of Utah is provincial.”  

They both laughed.

“I suppose I should be grateful,” Sophie said, “that my parents scraped together the money for université. Even if we live in the asshole of Paris.”

“Sophie!” Deborah snickered again and had to put her hands over her mouth. When she had gathered herself, she said, “Well, at least we’re alone. We can say things like that now. Isn’t that the whole point of having your own place?”

Sophie looked at her closely. “You want your own?”

“Of course,” Deborah said. “But I’m not old enough.”

“Well, I suppose you’ll have your own place when you have a family. When you get married. Isn’t that how it works in your community?”

“That’s what my mother says.” Deborah didn’t sound particularly happy about it.

Sophie nudged her shoulder. “You don’t have to stay in your community, you know. You don’t have to stay in the Church.”

Deborah pulled away. “What do you mean?”

Sophie sighed. “I just mean… look at this.” She pulled out a small crucifix from her desk drawer. “I wear this when I go home to my parents. But here?” She tossed it back inside. “Bof–mostly, it stays in the drawer. And believe me, I don’t tell my parents everything.”

“But that would be lying.”

“No, no, no. Just… omission.”

“Sophie, don’t say things like that.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t,” Sophie said lightly. “I just mean—if you really want your own place, you should know that it’s possible. You could live on your own, write your poetry, and no one would bother you.”

“I’d still have my family.”

“Of course. You’d just have more freedom.”

“But what would I live on? If I don’t have a husband?”

Sophie groaned. “So old-fashioned. You’d have a job, obviously.”

“A job. Doing what?”

“For starters, you could try selling some of your poetry.”

“I can’t do that,” Deborah scoffed. “It’s not good enough.”

“Mais non!” Sophie said firmly. “It has promise. We should find some magazines to submit it to.”

Deborah didn’t answer. She just let her cigarette burn out in the ashtray.

“I would like my own place,” she finally admitted. “But it’s difficult. And I don’t know how.”

“That’s all right,” Sophie said. “Don’t worry about it. I’m just saying… wouldn’t it be nice?”

“Yes,” Deborah said quietly. “It would.”

Sophie smiled. “Well, for now, you can pretend this is your place.”

“Really?”

“Of course. This is your hideout. You can do whatever you want here.”

Deborah liked the sound of that. And just then, even with the brutalist concrete outside, the light in the room seemed a little softer.

DEBORAH and SOPHIE, 1 Jan 1968.

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Cover photo by Valentin Capp on Unsplash

Video from INA Histoire on YouTube