by Sasha Troyan
“Gabriel,” Juliet calls. She strides across the grass barefooted. Her hair blows this way and that. She looks angry, but I don’t care. She can spank me with two shoes. Now she’s standing at the bottom of my tree. If she’s not careful, I’ll pee on her.
“Come down at once,” she says, her hands on her hips.
“But I—”
“Don’t argue with me,” she says.
She’s always saying don’t argue so I never get to say what I want.
Slowly, I climb down the tree. She grabs my hand.
“Your hands are freezing,” she says. “You’re to take a hot bath at once.”
Perhaps I’ll get pneumonia. When I’m sick, Juliet’s very nice to me. She used to work as a nurse during the Second World War. I hope I get very ill and then she’ll bring me hot lemonade with honey. She’ll pat my pillows and sit beside me until I fall asleep.
“We’ve got to hurry,” she says. “Your father’s leaving and you’re to have breakfast with him.”
I like taking a bath in this tub because it has two levels. First, I sit with my knees bent on the bottom level, then when I get too hot, I sit on the top level. Juliet tells me about her family. How she has five brothers and how they all used to bully her. She says she used to try to impress them by falling onto her back without using her hands. Her brothers would call all their friends and then she would let herself drop onto her back. I can’t imagine Juliet being bossed by anyone.
“I’ve got a treat for you,” she says, pressing my hair down with one palm.
“What treat?” I ask.
“Well, this morning I weighed myself and I’ve lost two pounds. Now that calls for a celebration, don’t you think?”
“Are you going to buy a bikini?”
“Yes, as soon as I have you ready for breakfast, your granny and auntie and I are going into Malsherbes.”
“What color will it be?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“Will you do a belly dance?”
“Perhaps, and maybe a Scottish jig. Off you go,” she says.
I walk down the stairs counting each step, staring at the floor, first the wood then the white and black tiles then the gray flagstones in the dining room. I climb up onto my chair. Mummy and Al have already finished. There’re just crumbs on their plates. These chairs are so high my feet don’t touch the ground. I like brushing the velvet covering the seat.
The wind rustles the newspaper Daddy’s reading. He puts it down but I don’t look at him. I eat very carefully. I remember to use the butter knife. I put a piece of butter on my plate. I don’t dip my bread in the egg. I wipe my mouth after I’ve eaten.
“You’re very talkative,” Daddy says. “You know, I’m not going to be here for very long. Your Daddy has to go away again.”
I look down at my plate, and then I lean over the side of my chair and pretend to have dropped something. When I sit up, Daddy clears his throat. I look away from him through the window at the yellow flowers swaying in the wind.
I swing back on my chair, holding myself into place with my knees.
“Don’t swing on your chair,” Daddy says. “You could fall back and get paralyzed.”
“I won’t,” I say.
“I didn’t say you would necessarily. I’m just saying don’t do it because it could happen.”
“Are you going to Brussels?” I ask.
He passes his hand through his hair.
“Yes,” he says.
“Are you going for very long?” I ask
“Not so long,” he says.
“Did you bring us any presents?”
“No,” he says. “But I will next time. Now remember your Daddy loves you very very much and you must be very good while I’m away and look after your Mummy. Okay?”
He gets up. I follow him upstairs. First, he brushes his teeth, then he folds his pajamas and places them inside his shiny briefcase.
He stands in front of the mirror in his room and combs his hair. He tries several times to get a straight parting. “Shit,” he says. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me today.” I stand on tiptoes and stare over the mantelpiece into the mirror. I still can’t see whether we look alike. I press the tip of my nose.
“It hasn’t dropped yet,” I say.
“What?” Daddy says, looking down at me, as if he just realized I was there.
“My nose,” I say.
“You still have time,” he says. “Remember, I was thirteen.” He laughs and pats my head. “You look a little worried, Gabriel. Don’t you want to have a handsome nose like your father’s?”
“No,” I say.
“That’s not very nice,” he says. “I think my nose would look great on your face.”
He picks up his briefcase and hurries out of the room, glancing over his shoulder and brushing off his shoulder pad. “Where’s your hat?” I ask.
“Which hat?” he asks.
“Your brown felt hat,” I say.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“Will you get it back?”
“I hope so,” he says.
Al and Mum are waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Daddy hugs Al and me and we watch Mum walk Dad to the car. We stare out the window of the front door. Mummy stands on tiptoes. She puts her arms around my father’s neck and he lifts her up and up until her feet no longer touch the ground. He kisses her, then puts her down, and gets into his car. Mummy leans in. Perhaps she says, come back soon, or drive carefully. The car makes a loud vroom noise; goes through the white gate, up the hill before disappearing around the curve. Mummy stands for a moment longer, as if she could see further than us, beyond the bend where the car has disappeared.
Five
We’re walking through the forest, down a narrow path that’s like a green tunnel. The wind blows rustling leaves. White butterflies float from bush to bush. A rabbit shoots across the pathway. Max runs after it, disappearing into the bushes. Granny leads the way. She’s holding the brim of her mauve hat with one hand. Al and I run up to her, then circle back to Mummy. She’s wearing dark glasses that reflect the leaves and the branches and my face, but I don’t recognize myself. My face looks big and my body tiny, like a genie. Luis is getting annoyed with us because we keep making him stop for bread. He’s carrying the baskets. They’re very heavy because we brought two baguettes, one pain de campagne, two bottles of apple cider, apples and pears and three different kinds of cheese: Granny’s favorite boursin, brie and tallegio. We tread on Ethel’s and Juliet’s shadows as we go by.
We pass by caves where tramps are supposed to live. Mummy and Daddy used to take us for walks through here. Dad used to hold our hands and we would skip as high as we could. Once when Al and I went on a walk on our own I heard strange noises I thought belonged to a wild boar or a bear but later I found out that it was Daddy trying to scare us. Daddy has been gone for seven days and four hours and five minutes. I wish I had asked him whether his lady has boys. I’m sure she does. Twins. I hope they’re ugly and stupid, but in my imagination they look just like him. Their hair is perfectly parted and they’re first in their class.
Al and I are twins today. I’m wearing one of her special shirts with the pocket in the front. It’s too small for me so I had to wear a T-shirt underneath. She lent me one of her hearing aids and I’m pretending I’m deaf. If Juliet asks me anything or Aunt Ethel I say, “I beg your pardon. I can’t hear what you said.” Then they talk louder and I tell them not to yell. They need to articulate. It makes Al laugh, but it really aggravates Ethel.
Each time we reach a fork in the path, Granny knows which way to go. She has the best sense of direction. She leads us to a clearing where trees and brambles and blackberry bushes form a circle. Over us, hidden behind clouds, the sun is like the moon.
Juliet and Aunt Ethel spread the blanket out, while Mummy helps Al and me blow up our canoe and Granny finds a bush of blackberries. She says she’s going to make some jam. We sit down, but there’s a
terrible smell from the river. We’re next to a stagnant part, so we have to move everything to the other side of the clearing where the river is clear and you can see stones and weeds fluoresce like green hair.
Al and I lie down beside Mummy in the sun. I run my fingers through her hair like a comb. I ask her to tell me about when she was a little girl. She tells us about the time she found a cat with ringworm. How a doctor came and she hid under the bed because she didn’t want him to examine her.
“Did you ever come out?” Al asks.
“Eventually,” she says. “They had to cut my hair.”
“How come?” I ask.
“Because of the ringworm,” she says.
“Did you ever get really, really ill and almost die?” I ask.
“When I got pneumonia,” she says. “I remember drinking through a teapot.”
“I’m hot,” Al says. “Let’s go for a swim.”
“I’m going to lie here for a bit,” Mummy says, closing her eyes. “Until I’m really roasting.”
I stand and shift my weight from one foot to the other, but Mummy says, “Go on, darling. I’ll only be a minute.”
We swim for a long time with the sunlight glinting on the water. After, we climb up a tree and I see Granny placing her mauve hat on Mummy’s head so that it shades her face while she’s sleeping.
“A beautiful wedding,” Granny says.
“Married awfully quickly,” Ethel says.
We drop leaves but nobody notices.
“What about you, Juliet?” Granny asks.
I think she’s going to tell Granny about her fiancé from the Second World War, but she talks about another man, a married man whose wife committed suicide. She had an affair with him. I think most grownups have affairs because I heard Mummy say that Granny had an affair too. Our grandfather was married when Granny met him. His wife committed suicide too. Suicide is when you kill yourself for love.
Juliet ends her story by saying, “He didn’t marry me because I wasn’t high class enough for him.” She wanders off to pee. We see her squatting. We watch her fold a tiny piece of toilet paper. She’s always scolding me for using too much toilet paper.
“Juliet’s making pee pee,” I say, but nobody listens. We watch her pull up her panties and pull down her skirt. She wanders off into the woods with her straw handbag over one arm.
“He’ll be back,” Ethel says.
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” Granny says.
“Like a bad penny,” Ethel says.
I turn up the volume of Al’s hearing aid. Now all the sounds are amplified and the grownups’ voices are garbled and I can’t understand a thing. No wonder Al is tired by the end of the day. I turn the volume down.
Juliet sits back down in her chair. I wonder where she put the piece of toilet paper.
“Can we go down the river?” I ask.
They all look up.
“Well,” Juliet says, “It’s almost lunchtime.”
“Please, please,” I say.
In the end, the grownups agree and Granny says she’ll come with us even though Ethel disapproves.
“Don’t forget to give me your hearing aids,” Juliet says. She wraps them in a white handkerchief and places them in her handbag.
There’s plenty of room for the three of us. Al and I just have to scrunch up our knees.
As Juliet pushes the canoe from the bank, a gust of wind blows the clouds aside and the sun appears, turning the river silver. Ethel’s beige dress melts into the trees almost at once and soon Juliet and Mum are splashes of blue and orange.
The river moves lazily here as if tired of having to twist in and out of curves. In some places the river is clear and shallow and we can see through the water to the stones lying on the floor of the river and the weeds look like long curly green hair. In other places, the river, sometimes quite suddenly around a bend, becomes murky and very deep and filled with mud and in these places the river smells. Perhaps that’s why they call it l’oeuf, the egg, instead of its real name, L’Essone.
We drift by old mansions with lawns that stretch all the way to the river. An old woman all dressed in black runs alongside the river. She shouts, “L’année dernière deux enfants se sont noyés.”
“Lulululu,” Granny replies, imitating the woman’s intonation in French. She waves her hand in the air, her gold bracelets jangling. We laugh, then both imitate Granny. I don’t translate what the woman said, but I picture the two children drowned. In my imagination they are boys with dark hair and dark eyes.
We drift by silver willows. Our boat floats through their reflections. Granny leans back and slips her hand down her bodice, pulls out a cigarette, and lights it. “This is perfect,” she says. She lets one hand trail through the water.
Her hair is so white.
“Look,” Al says. “Look at the rabbit.”
It stares at us without moving, as if fixed in place. Mummy once told us a story about people who looked over their shoulders and were turned to stone. I look ahead. I see another rabbit and another. They all sit in the same position as if rooted to the ground. I clap my hands but they do not move, their glassy eyes don’t even flicker. I pass so close to one I could reach out and touch its ears.
“The rabbits are sick this year,” Granny says.
I clap my hands and my claps echo. I’m glad Granny’s with us or it would be spooky.
The current becomes swifter and we go faster and faster. Then around one bend the river flows slowly as if glad to rest. We lean over the sides of the boat and peer through the clear water. On the floor of the river we see blue bottles. At first we think they contain secret messages, but then we notice that the bottles are open. They have been placed so that their necks are facing the current. Through the blue glass we can see tiny trapped fish.
When we reach the clearing, we find Ethel asleep with her mouth wide open.
“There you are,” Ethel says, waking up. “I thought you would never get here. It’s past two o’clock.”
“Have they really been gone that long?” Mummy says.
“You look like you had a nice rest,” Granny says.
We sit on the blue blanket next to Mummy and Granny and eat baguette with cheese. For dessert, we have our favorite: baguette with butter and powdered chocolate.
In the distance, we can hear Juliet and Luis laughing.
Suddenly, Juliet appears from behind the bushes on the other side of the clearing. She’s wearing her new bikini. “Gabriel, Al,” she shouts.
I look at Granny and she smiles and it seems like all her wrinkles disappear. “Go on, you two. I’ll wait for you here.”
We run across the grass towards Juliet. Her new bikini is all different colors. It reminds me of one of Al’s drawings. “So what do you think?” she asks.
We stare at Juliet. We’re not sure what to say. Her bikini is very different from Mummy’s. The waist comes almost to her belly button and the top part is very pointy. It makes her breasts look enormous but I like the material. “Ooh Juliet,” I say. “Can I touch it?”
It feels like the scales of a fish.
Luis stands by a tree smoking. He whistles, but Juliet ignores him and continues to walk through the grass on her tiptoes.
“Will you do your belly dance?” I ask. “You promised.” She tiptoes a bit further so that we’re out of sight.
She stands with her hands on her hips, and her face becomes calm. For a moment, she looks like she did in the photograph she showed me once where she was lying on a grassy bank with two men. She stretches her arms out and curls her fingers. It looks as if she’s holding an invisible petticoat. She moves only the bottom part of her body, keeping the top completely still. She moves her hips from side to side, then from back to front. We giggle and roll on the grass. We laugh and laugh so hard I have to cross my legs to stop myself from peeing.
Then she says, “Did you know that I can faint on command?”
“Show us,” Al says.
Ju
liet closes her eyes and drops on the grass. We giggle. I lift her arm. It falls back. We tickle her but she doesn’t even twitch. We try to drag her across the grass but we can’t because she’s so heavy. “Luis,” I say. “Come and help us.”
Luis walks over. He drags her a little way and we giggle even more. “Juliet and Luis,” we shout. “Juliet and Luis.” We don’t notice that it has started to rain until Ethel calls us. We leave Juliet lying on the grass with Luis holding her arms by the wrists.
Everyone hurries beneath a large tree. Aunt Ethel pulls out of her pocket a plastic hat for the ram. She offers it to Granny but Granny refuses. “Didn’t I tell you it would rain?” Aunt Ethel says.
“What’s a little rain?” Granny says.
“And where’s Luis?” Ethel asks. “He always seems to disappear when you need him.”
“He’s with Juliet,” I say, as Luis appears from behind a bush.
A few minutes later, Juliet reappears. She’s pulled her clothes on over her bathing suit. But there’s a leaf caught in her hair. I stare at the leaf, brown with a tiny bit of red along the edge, and she says, “What are you staring at?” and I say, “Nothing,” because I can tell she’s in one of her moods.
The rain comes down slowly but in big drops. I like the sound on the leaves and the ground. Al and I keep running from underneath the tree. Then Mum holds our hands and we dance round and round, with our faces tilted towards the sky. We sing and shout until we’re soaked through. When it rains in Africa, Mummy says it sounds like thousands of people pounding their fists on the roof.
Ethel wants to stand for a bit longer under the tree, but Granny says there’s no point because it’s not going to stop raining so we start to walk. The tunnel of trees is dark now, filled with mist. Large snails appear and I stop to watch a pale pink one glide up a leaf. Luis says he would be happy to collect snails to cook for Granny, but she says not to mention the idea.
