by Marie Ndiaye
Because, unaware that Richard or Ladivine even existed, what would she now get out of seeing their pictures, two adults, two strangers who knew nothing of her?
Would those smiling faces, those faces open to life, perfectly ignorant of Malinka’s mother’s existence, and happy in that unawareness, would those faces not have seemed to her hostile, hurtful in their obvious contentment?
Her mother would pour the coffee, then say, “I’ll get dressed,” which meant she was going off to change from the jeans and sweatshirt she wore at home to the beige polyester slacks and checked or floral blouse she wore only to go out, transforming the young woman she still seemed to be, her limbs straight and slender beneath the tight, faded cotton, into a homely, modest, proletarian lady of middle age.
And the more the years went by, it seemed, the deeper the gulf between her youthful appearance at home, which never changed, and the outmoded, humble look she put on as she readied herself to go out, as if the truth of age and anxiety had to come out somewhere, if not, thought Clarisse Rivière, the most essential truth, the truth of her very life.
Then they set out on a walk through the streets of Sainte-Croix, their itinerary always the same.
On running into an acquaintance, Malinka’s mother would pause, slightly stiff, slightly solemn, like a very mildly put-upon queen, just long enough to swap a few inconsequential words with the other woman, who, though not unused to the sight, couldn’t help casting furtive, curious glances at the cold, still Clarisse Rivière, that neighbor or belote partner knowing this was the daughter though she’d never been introduced, and by instinct obeying the unspoken rule against asking questions, and even against visibly noting that standing by the mother was an unspeaking woman with a white face.
Malinka’s mother thus led her daughter through the streets like the object of her dishonor, a dishonor too great even to be looked on, and Clarisse Rivière alone knew that, on the contrary, her mother had always taken an unstinting pride in her, and that it was she, Clarisse Rivière, who was walking arm in arm with the object of her shame.
They headed back to the little apartment, already abandoned by the sunlight in midafternoon.
There Malinka’s mother set about making some complicated treat, a pie, a batch of petits fours, sweets, impossible to finish before Clarisse Rivière had to be off, as she knew perfectly well, pretending to think that her daughter would be delighted to take that dessert with her, pretending to believe her daughter would like nothing more than to take it home, where there lived, in all likelihood (and she, the mother, no doubt guessing at this, because she knew nothing, because she had no idea who and how many shared her daughter’s life), people who never imagined she existed, to whom her daughter would have to lie about the origin of the pastries and pretend to believe it nonetheless.
Clarisse Rivière had long since stopped resisting.
She sat down in the velvet armchair and watched, quiet, indifferent, almost apathetic, as her mother fretfully bustled around her little kitchen, rummaging through the cabinets for dishes and ingredients.
And she, Clarisse Rivière, looked at her without seeing her, quiet, indifferent, sitting motionless in the velvet armchair as if she were the old woman here, and cold, impersonal thoughts fluttered through her untroubled mind.
She mused that she could easily bring home a cake made by her mother, for neither Richard nor Ladivine, not untrusting or curious by nature, would think anything of it.
But she never would, she thought.
She would sooner drop the cake into a trash can at the station.
Malinka’s mother was not to insert herself into Clarisse Rivière’s life in any way, and she alone, Clarisse Rivière, was permitted to eat the food she prepared, the cake of tears, the anger-laced cookies.
She alone, Clarisse Rivière, for the bitterness passed through her without swelling inside her.
And so she let her hard little thoughts wheel through her mind like shrieking birds, and her mother couldn’t hear them. She was busy, and never heard a sound.
Her mother would mutter under her breath, narrating what she was doing, and as the minutes went by and the time neared for her daughter to be going, she would launch mechanically into an unvarying speech whose purpose was once to inspire her daughter Malinka’s pity for her lot, and the pity never came but the words stayed the same, recited without passion or hope, as if out of fidelity to that long-ago woman, that Malinka’s mother who thought herself capable of moving her daughter, and whose memory had to be preserved and respected.
Oh, but the pity had come, thought Clarisse Rivière, and it was still there, still throbbing and hurting the instant she saw her mother again.
But there was nothing that pity could do, because her will was stronger.
She would leap to her feet, making her mother start in surprise.
She would snatch up her purse and rush out as always, scarcely embracing her, leaving her mother there with her hands covered in butter or flour, and nothing could stop Clarisse Rivière from leaving, but she thoughtfully acted as if a surge of affection might still stop her, as if she had to fight back that surge, when in fact once out of that suffocating room she felt only relief, she felt almost happy, brought back to life by a rough, impatient pleasure.
The next visit, a month away, seemed so distant as to be hypothetical, and, although in reality never seeing her mother again would have tormented her cruelly, it was a delectable dream, and it filled her with a savage, dizzying joy.
Because she could easily choose never to come back, she could unburden her life of her mother’s clandestine existence without anyone knowing or condemning her.
She fled down the street, half running, giddy, she might almost have let out a whoop, and the blood pounded in her temples.
She felt as though she’d eluded the threat, as though Clarisse Rivière had once again slipped free of Malinka’s mother before she could change her place and, exploiting a lapse in her daughter’s vigilance, turn into the mother of Clarisse Rivière.
Malinka’s mother was still just what she was supposed to be, and all was well.
She could forget that old woman, the Sainte-Croix neighborhood, the dim ground-floor apartment; oh, she could forget that crazy old woman.
Once, lost in that bliss, she’d fainted at the end of the street, one of her shoes coming off and tumbling into the wet, filthy gutter.
She was helped up and accompanied to the nearest pharmacy.
And there, as they sat her down in a chair, pressed a damp cloth to her forehead, and asked various questions concerning her health, her identity, as a gentle hand slipped her shoe back onto her foot and a shudder of disgust ran through her at the feel of the damp grit on her bare skin, she vowed never to let this happen again, so close by her mother’s, strangers talking to Clarisse Rivière, trying to get something out of her, wanting to call someone to come take her home, and her merely shaking her head in reply.
She had to overcome that frenzy she always fell into when she walked out on Malinka’s mother, able, at its peak, to knock her unconscious.
She had deep, inexhaustible reserves of coldness inside her.
She would dig deep into those reserves as she walked out the door, she told herself.
But her excitement always won out, and she couldn’t help skipping like a child on the way to the station, her skin warming, flushed with the repressed fervor consuming her, the joy and the sorrow of freedom.
—
She vaguely remembered the days when her name was Malinka, a memory in black and white, with a fleeting impression of static faces, as if from some obscure old movie in which Malinka and her mother were not the leads but supporting actors for another, more interesting girl and her mother.
It seemed to her that she’d known from the start, before she could even speak or understand, that Malinka and her mother meant nothing to anyone, that this was how it was and there were no grounds for complaint, that they were lowly flowers, their exi
stence unjustified, lowly flowers.
Clarisse Rivière had forgotten the name of the city she grew up in, as she’d forgotten virtually everything having to do with the life of that girl named Malinka.
She remembered only that it was outside of Paris, and that at the far end of a cobblestoned courtyard near the railroad tracks were two very clean little rooms, and one was hers, its window just above the ground, portulaca growing between the paving stones, and her mother slept in the other, on a foldout couch crammed in next to the stove.
That girl Malinka had a room to herself, because she was a pathetic flower but also a sort of princess, oh, so alone, so unrecognized.
She was a princess to her mother, who often called her just that, Malinka’s mother who was a queen to no one but only a servant, and came to seem one in that girl Malinka’s eyes.
“My princess,” the servant called her, more than she did “my daughter,” and in this that outwardly unremarkable Malinka surely found cause for vanity, thought Clarisse Rivière, although or because she was so very alone.
Her mother served and cleaned in the city, in offices or spacious apartments, sometimes bringing Malinka along, warning her not to touch anything, and she served and cleaned at home, in those two rooms occupied by an unsung princess.
Her deep shyness vying with her self-importance, that girl Malinka followed the train tracks to school, and nothing distinguished her from the children she joined in the school yard, except that she had neither friends nor enemies and never spoke to the others.
She was better dressed than most, because her mother sometimes brought home beautiful skirts with scarcely a sign of wear or elegant little dresses given her by the women who employed her.
Her mother, who was a servant, didn’t look like she should be her mother, she who was a princess.
And so one day, when her mother came to pick her up at school and one of the other girls, addressing her for the first time, asked with a frown of surprise and disgust who that woman might be, Malinka replied, “My servant,” and felt she was speaking a very great truth.
All trace of repulsion vanished from the girl’s face, and she let out a satisfied and admiring little “Oh!”
And Malinka realized that disgust would have spread to this girl’s very body, she would have trembled and recoiled in a sort of horror, if Malinka had answered, My mother, and that would have been what’s called a lie, since lies were ugly and repellent things.
Even alone, even colorless, a princess must never lie, Malinka must have thought.
That was how Clarisse Rivière imagined it.
That girl Malinka was already a lost cause as a child.
But Clarisse Rivière also knew it was true, as Malinka had come to suspect early on, that their existence meant nothing to anyone in this world, not because those two, the servant and the beloved daughter, inspired any dislike, but simply because no bond linked them to anyone.
Malinka’s mother had no parents or brothers or sisters, although she’d never said so and never brought up the subject, although, Malinka later told herself, there might well be, in that hazy province she came from, people who claimed to be her parents, her brothers, her sisters.
But since Malinka’s mother never spoke of them, she and Malinka were embraced by no one’s affection and solicitude, and when the door of the tiny house at the far end of the courtyard closed behind them, after dark, with the rain pounding and rattling the windows, Malinka felt they were as alone as if the whole world around them were dead, since in that world there was no love sent their way, since no tender or anxious words were ever exchanged about them, the servant with her thin face and long, restless limbs, and the girl she called her daughter, all appearances to the contrary.
When she thought about it, which she rarely did, that was how Clarisse Rivière imagined it: no doubt that girl Malinka scarcely knew how to talk, words too rarely had a reason to come out of her mouth, and as if that weren’t enough she feared they might come out with the servant’s slight accent, which she would have found mortifying.
And so she said nothing or, now and then, answered her mother, who asked her about school only on principle and had no idea what kind of reply to expect, so foreign was that world to her.
Malinka’s mother was a naturally, inexplicably cheerful woman, Clarisse Rivière remembered.
She used to come home weighed down with shopping bags, bedraggled by rain and exhaustion, then turn on the gas under a nice piece of meat, with a side dish of vegetables she’d peeled and diced before work that morning, and her cooking always filled the air with a gentle, healthy, delicious aroma, as cheery as she, Malinka’s mother, who hummed, did a few little steps of a sliding dance on the tile floor, never complained, never grumbled.
And so Malinka, unable to compare her life with other children’s, never having been invited to anyone’s house, long believed that her mother held no grudge against life or any living soul, not even the man whose face she looked for in crowds, whose figure or walk she relentlessly sought to discover in every man she saw, but that irrational hope lay hidden behind words of lucidity and patience and so never appeared as what it was.
“Your father’s got to be somewhere,” Malinka’s mother would say in her calm, melodious voice. “We’ll run into him someday.”
And this seemed so indisputable that Malinka never waited for her mother to come home without thinking she might appear on the arm of the man who’d been waiting close by, calm and patient as she, waiting for her to find him at last, and that man, with a melodious voice and no trace of an accent, that man who couldn’t show himself until his face had been spotted in the street, would be her father, her glorious father.
He was the only person Malinka’s mother ever spoke of, and she did so profusely, worshipfully, even if, Malinka came to realize, her descriptions were never particularly precise, and she seemed to know little of this eminent man’s life, past or present.
And so Malinka never felt his goodwill watching over them.
Unlike the naïve servant, she knew that man’s thoughts never turned to the two of them, that he might well know nothing of their existence, for they were only two lowly flowers.
“Your father’s a fine man,” Malinka’s mother often told her. “You know, he’s really, really nice. He has beautiful chestnut hair, and always wears it neatly combed back. He has a car. He might have a new one by now. I’ll bet he’s found a terrific job, too.”
Malinka felt no contempt for those hopes.
She felt no contempt for the servant, her peculiar mother.
But she couldn’t help believing that her mother might indeed one day come home with her grocery bags, her rain-soaked overcoat, and the lush-haired man who had jubilantly allowed her to see his face in the street.
And were that man ever to come pick her up at school, she knew, she wouldn’t be afraid to call him her father.
No disbelief or disgust would curl the other girls’ lips on hearing that truth or that lie, she wasn’t sure which, but maybe if it was a lie her own lips would stay pressed tight in a bitter crease.
Her face would be like her father’s, that man who until now had let his love rain down on heads other than hers, leaving her and her mother in their vulnerable aloneness.
But, she understood, her face would be like her father’s.
And another realization hit her at the same time, with the violence of a thing long known but never quite grasped, now abruptly revealed in all its simplicity: being that woman’s daughter filled her with a horrible shame and fear.
Oh, she was also ashamed of her shame and her fear, particularly because she was painfully aware of her mother’s fragility, she who had no protector to rely on and was nonetheless wary of no one.
But stronger still was her repugnance at the thought of letting it be seen, even simply in the street, on the bus, before strangers, that she was the daughter of a woman of no consequence.
From her earliest childhood, Clarisse Rivièr
e would realize, she’d done nothing but spurn her mother, and her mother had pretended not to notice, and perhaps hadn’t noticed, in a way, having found another explanation for her daughter’s coldness than the simple scandal of her own appearance, her own face.
Because that was a truth Malinka’s mother would never be able to bear.
And Malinka knew it, in her despairing, furious love, because she could read the servant’s emotions better than the servant herself.
She pulled away from her mother, renounced her before the world, seeing no other way.
She always took care to walk at some distance from her, and she was delighted to see that the people around them never included them both in the same knowing glance, the impenetrable woman and the beautiful teenager with the thick, wavy hair, inherited, the marveling servant assured her, from her many-splendored father.
—
At fifteen Malinka heightened the natural pallor of her face with wan makeup.
She felt a boundless, remorseful, stifling tenderness for the servant.
She secretly watched her in the evening, studying her face, looking for any flaw in her good cheer, any decline in her confidence that she would one day bring about the appearance of the man who, the servant was sure, had once loved her, and loved her still, but didn’t know where to find her.
It was up to her, Malinka’s mother, not only to recognize him in the street, but also, in some mysterious way, to make him appear, and for that small miracle the force of her own assurance might be enough.
Her good cheer never faltered, but over time it turned slightly abstract, as if her habitual happiness and optimism were making her forget she had fewer reasons for those emotions than when, as a very young woman, newly arrived here with the child in her belly, she founded her hope and her joy on the enchanted sense that every single day this land worked miracles more unlikely than a longed-for face’s sudden appearance in the midst of a crowd.
Her good cheer was waning and weakening, but not her will to be cheerful, and the servant’s gaze turned a little unfocused, very quietly unhinged.
