by Faïza Guène
But fine, I'll give Nabil credit for extenuating circumstances because it can't be easy dealing with his mom every day. She's always on his case. At first I thought Nabil's name was "Myzon" because that's what she kept calling him and all the time she'd be petting his head. Word is, she watches over him like her life depends on it, wants to know everything about his girlfriends, his private life, etc. Yeah, OK, so he hasn't got a private life, but, still, it's kind of unfair. Even when he was little, she'd show up at break to hand him sugar cookies through the school railings. Everyone in the neighborhood says at their house the mom is the dad, and the kids never stop giving him shit.
"Hey, Nabil! Your dad does the dishes, right! And your mom wears the boxers!"
See, I'm making like those attorneys in American films who defend a client who's a serial killer, rapist, and cannibal by telling you the whole horrible story of his terribly unhappy childhood. That way the jury feels sorry for him and they kind of forget the fact that sixteen-year-old Olivia's thigh is still in his freezer...
But the way I see it, Nabil should be even nicer to other people. Especially since his mom messed up his life big time and made him read Jesus's biography when he was eleven.
Me, I don't know if I'll want kids later. Anyway, I'd never make them read Jesus's bio, or say hello to old people if they didn't want to, or clean their plates...
And then again, maybe I've already had enough of kids, because in eighth grade our bio teacher showed us a birth, full-frontal, and it seriously turned me off to procreation.
I talked about it with Mme Burlaud last Monday, but that session she was kind of acting weird. She wasn't listening to me too well. I guess she looked preoccupied. I wonder if she sees a shrink. She should, it'd be good for her...
Lately, she's really losing it. She makes me play with Play-Doh. The shapes I make, they don't look like anything, but she smiles:
"Yes, OK, that's interesting!"
"That's interesting" doesn't mean anything. Something trashy can be interesting for its trashiness. This whole exercise is just for show, too. On the other hand, that's what I like about Mme Burlaud: She never judges. She always takes you seriously, even when you're making an apartment tower out of lilac Play-Doh.
Then we talked about something new that's happened to me. I've got my period. To tell the truth, I was kind of behind the other girls. The school nurse told me it was hereditary. Hereditary means it's your mom's fault. Mom got hers when she was about fifteen too. That must have been too cool for her because back in the bled they didn't even have sanitary pads. Before, I used to think periods were blue, like in the Always ad, the one where they talk about menstrual flow and liquids and stuff, the one that always comes on while we're eating dinner.
Mme Burlaud asked me tons of questions. It's like she's completely obsessed with periods. Has she ever had her own or what?
She told me lots of girls are freaked out the first time they start bleeding. And then she explained how periods are only the beginning, I'm going to get chest pains because of my breasts growing, and I'll definitely get zits on my face too. Nice. Why not greasy hair, a gawky body, and glassy eyes like every other teenager? I'd rather throw myself out the window of my low-income housing.
I've noticed people always make themselves feel better by looking at other people worse off than they are. So that evening I cheered myself up by thinking about poor Nabil.
Every year people start preparing way in advance for the Livry-Gargan summer fair. Parents, kids, and especially the neighborhood gossips, because at the street fair, you can get your gossip fix for sure.
This year there were plenty of games for the kids, food stands with mint tea and sweet Middle Eastern pastries, Elie's barbecued merguez sausages and fries (Elie's like our neighborhood social planner), plus a stage with bands playing one right after the other. Local kids from the projects stepped up to rap. They even had some girls singing with them. Yeah, OK, so the girls just joined in for two pathetic chorus lines and the rest of the time, they were kind of stuck there making fools of themselves, just waddling around waving their hands in the air. But it wasn't so bad really. One more step toward equality...
Mom made me play the fishing game. I did it just to make her happy, but it was way out of hand. Average age of the other players: 7.3 years. And the only prize I could even catch was a one-eyed rag doll with freckles. I was too embarrassed.
Afterward, Mom and me headed over to see Cheb Momo. He's been singing at the Livry-Gargan summer fair every year since 1987, with the same musician, same synthesizer, and, of course, same songs. It's not too bad because everybody ends up knowing all the words by heart, even the people who don't speak a word of Arabic. Plus, what's good about Cheb Momo is that everything's real vintage, like his black jacket with gold sequins. He makes himself out like a real dreamboat and it works! Every year, it's the same ooh-la-la frenzy with all the neighborhood ladies.
I ran into Hamoudi at the fair. When I went over to say hey to him, I noticed he was with a girl. I smiled at her the way girls are supposed to, like I was actually happy to meet her, except I wasn't at all. Hamoudi grinned at me with his slightly rotten teeth and said:
"Doria, uh ... this is Karine ... and, um ... Karine, this is Doria..." He said it like an idiot, and like he was suddenly thirty years older. Plus, he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt that was way too ugly.
It felt like we were in a scene out of a Sunday night made-for-TV movie on that cable channel M6. I was all upset. So I looked at the girl and made like:
"See ya, Karim..."
I didn't even realize what I was saying. They stared at me all big-eyed and shocked. Both of them looked like Pokémon.
I went back to see Mom and, for the first time, we stayed through to the end of the festival. All the other years, Dad would always find us and take us back to the apartment. He never liked us just hanging around. I always had to watch the close of the fair from our living room window.
The Hamoudi story has got me sad. I'd been all worried because it had been a long time since I'd seen him. I'd even talked about it with Mme Burlaud. And then he goes and turns up at the fair with a girl named Karim on his arm, some trashy blond perched on fifteen-inch heels. When I went to bed, my head was full of all this sad music, like in those life insurance ads. And you know, Hamoudi had shaved so smooth, he smelled like lavender air freshener, and his eyes weren't even bloodshot. He didn't look like himself at all. This chick Karim's totally transformed him. Who knows, maybe she's worked black magic on him. I get a weird feeling about her. She even looks shady, if you ask me, with all that off-tone pancake foundation smeared on her face.
My mom's told me crazy scary stories about witchcraft back in Morocco. When she was young, one of her neighbors had a curse put on her at the souk, like a month before she was supposed to get married. Next thing you know, she goes bald and the wedding's canceled. Gotta watch your back. It can happen to anybody. Now that I think about it, we've all got someone who might want to do us wrong ... Maybe Mme Burlaud's put a spell on her felt-tip pens and Play-Doh so I'll be in the same shit all my life, and that way I have to keep coming to see her Mondays at 4:30 until the day I die.
That reminds me of something. Last year I collected those marabout flyers that the Hindus hand you at the top of the exit escalator on the metro. Normal people collect stamps, postcards, or corks. I collect witch-doctor propaganda.
MONSIEUR KABA
International experience and reputation.
Thoughtful, efficient, fast, discreet.
He solves every kind of problem, strengthens and
encourages feelings of affection, love, consideration,
fidelity between spouses, social status, driver's
licenses, luck, success...
Open every day from 8 A.M. to 9 P.M.
*Results are not guaranteed—
first consultation: 35 euros
I figure if this actually worked, we'd all be happy, and people like Mme Burlaud o
r Mme DuGizmo, the social worker from city hall, they'd all be unemployed.
I bet Karim the Blond goes to see people like this guy Kaba. Hamoudi doesn't need a girl like her, because now he looks like those guys—their hair all straight, perfectly plastered with gel—who go door to door selling encyclopedias. I know Hamoudi. It's not like him to be all clean-cut.
When I went to bed, I took out one of the books I found in a box dumped outside our building. These were trashy books I'd never read normally. Romance-style Barbara Cartland-ish books but the worst kind, with a pitiful cover: a couple all sweetly interlocked, planted like two jerks against a dreamscape, just like in the catalog photos for Tati Vacations. If you want to read this kind of pulp on the metro, you'd best cover it with brown paper, or else fat-man Francis who's reading Le Figaro, all smug, his mouth pursed with this too-good-for-you pout, might just take the chance to call you out.
The book I picked up was called Saharan Love at First Sight and I have to admit I kept reading until I finished, late that night. The story's about this desert nomad called Steve—so already, this early on, you know it's total fiction—and Steve, he rescues a young red-haired teacher who's on vacation and gets all bloodied up in an accident with a camel. The guy is built like mule-head Rachid and his name is Steve, but this lady, that doesn't bother her one bit. So she falls in love with this guy she doesn't even know, someone she's just met between sand dunes. It's so ridiculous, you can't believe it for a second, and it's full of clichés, but even so, you fall for it full on. You even end up identifying with this total mental patient who's running a fever and keeps hallucinating, all because she fell off her camel.
Yesterday, when I went to pay the rent for Mom, the super's wife—the one who's still sporting the perm she got at the hairdresser's in 1974—told me about a new tenant in the neighborhood who's looking for someone to babysit her daughter. She said if I was interested, I should go see her and offer my services.
"Wouldn't you like to earn some cash?"
I thought it was nice of her to think of me; seriously, she could have suggested it to any of the girls in the neighborhood, but no, she thought of me. I take back everything I said about her, the perm and all the rest...
"That way, you'll be able to dress like the other kids your age, right?"
At the time, I didn't really know how to take that. It almost gave me a nosebleed. Even the fossil who works as the building custodian is mocking me. If I'd wanted to, I could have given that comment right back to her in the teeth. But, like a chump, I just said:
"Yeah, thank you, I'll go see her, bye!"
"Wait a minute, you're six centimes short, I can't stamp your rent book."
Stupid old cow. I just keep telling myself it would be too cool to make a little money. I'll never be six centimes short on the rent again.
Lila is the name of the woman who is looking for someone to watch her daughter. She's thirty. I don't know why, but I imagined her older. I figured she must work at a department store like Galeries Lafayette, and her freezer, it would be stocked full of frozen meals. Turns out she's a cashier at the Continent supermarket in Bondy and she knows how to cook. She wears this thin, even stripe of eyeliner on her eyelids, she has pretty brown hair that sticks up, a beautiful smile, and a southern accent because she grew up in Marseille. Oh, and she reads a whole mess of women's magazines with bullshit tests like: "Are You Possessive?" or "What Kind of Seductress Are You?"
We saw each other for less than half an hour. She asked me a few questions, then she said that in any case it was written all over my face that I was a good person. She introduced me to her daughter, Sarah. She's only four but she seems alert, intelligent, and very irresistible, while usually I think kids...
Lila separated from Sarah's dad just recently. So that's why she came to live in this development. She told me a little bit about what happened. Her eyes were all full of bitterness. He must have taken everything from her. Even her Daniel Guichard and Frank Michaël compilations that were in her dresser drawer.
"If I pay you three euros an hour, will that work?"
She just came out with it, without me expecting it or anything. Thing is, she was all worked up because she didn't think three euros was very much, but it was all she could do right now. She had no idea that for me, three euros an hour, it's a real fortune. So then I just said:
"Yeah, that works. Thank you."
And it was a real thank you, the kind you say when you really mean it, when you're happy and you practically have tears stinging at the corners of your eyes.
I've got to pick up Sarah from the rec center at 5:30 and keep her at my house until Lila comes to take her home. I'm happy to do that. I would have liked to have talked it over with Hamoudi, but I don't see him anymore. He must be with that twit Karine playing Clue in her little made-in-Ikea living room.
When I told Mom I was going to do some baby-sitting, she wasn't happy. She told me that she was capable of taking care of us all by herself, that she could provide ... She was on the verge of tears. At dinner, neither of us said a word. And it wasn't like it always seems in the movies, but like real life. And even if in the end she said it was OK, I knew she was still pissed.
Right now at the Formula 1 Motel in Bagnolet, everything's gone to shit. Lots of Mom's coworkers are on strike. They've managed to work something out with the unions so their demands get heard.
The woman in charge of the strike at the Formula 1 is Fatouma Konaré, a coworker Mom gets along with well. She told me that at the beginning she thought "Fatoumakonaré" was just her first name and it seemed kind of long for a first name ... Fatouma started working at the Bagnolet motel in 1991. Back then, I didn't even know how to tie my shoelaces by myself. It was Fatouma who started making noise about women workers being exploited at the motel. Mom told me she'd like to go on strike with the other girls, but she can't. Fatouma and the others, they've got their husbands to help them, but us, we're all alone. Result: With most of the other maids on strike, Mom has a thousand times more work.
M. Winner, the dumbass who plays at being their boss, this must really piss him off. Serves him right. Mom told me he's already laid off some of the maids who are on strike, even though he's got no right. He fired this Vietnamese woman who works the same hours as Mom, for a false cause. It's really disgusting. He's going straight to hell and he's going to be hurting, he'll be making every kind of bodily gesture while shouting: "It's hot! It burns!" But who knows, in his private life M. Winner could be a nice guy who spends his time smiling, giving to charity, and chasing after people who park in handicapped spaces.
Maybe Mme Burlaud has it right when she says I can't stand it when someone passes judgment on me but that I do it all the time to other people. Except with M. Winner it's not so bad, because when I call him a bastard I have a minuscule margin of error.
***
There's a strike at school too. It's like everything around me has stopped. It's only been going on a few days but I feel like it's lasted forever. M. Loiseau, the principal, was mugged in the hall by a student from somewhere else. I wasn't there, but word is, this guy gassed M. Loiseau in the face with some teargas. That man has no luck at all. The one time he actually leaves his office to make sure the building is still standing, he gets gassed.
Ever since, it's total misery at school. Three quarters of the teachers no longer bother teaching class. Mme Benbarchiche's even been sticking up posters everywhere that say: NO MORE VIOLENCE! or some other pseudo-shock-value slogans, all worthy of a road-safety campaign. It's funny because since the start of the strike, she's been super active. It would be kind of nice if she put as much energy into her classes as she does into her posters. Could be that she's a secret militant. Hard core. A woman with a real political conscience. From time to time she might even send the occasional check to Chirac's UMP party, even if she doesn't look like she'd be the type, with her crow black dyed hair and her fuchsia lipstick.
***
The only one who isn
't on strike is Monsieur Lefèvre, the one who talks like Pierre Bellemare, that presenter from the old home shopping channel. For him, this strike is all a sham, and the attack on M. Loiseau is just an easy excuse for all these deadbeat teachers to be even lazier.
Me, I think what's happened is serious. I'm not saying M. Loiseau is the nicest guy in the zip code, but, still, things shouldn't have gone down like that. And even before he was gassed, it's wrong that Loiseau only really felt safe in his office.
Whatever, not many students support the strike. It's like most of them think it won't make any difference and that we're hopelessly screwed anyhow...
Last week, Mme DuThingy, the social worker from city hall, came back to the house. This woman, she's really a shit-stirrer. Mom had hardly opened the door when she flashed her perfect white teeth and started up:
"Oh dear, you don't look so good ... oooh la la."
Bet the reason she's all busting out is because she just finished that course of twelve free tanning sessions she got for being such a good customer at that health-and-beauty salon Pretty Kisser. Oh and then she went around our apartment at least ten times like she was visiting the catacombs or something.
"You really should think about changing the joint on the kitchen faucet."
She said it with that superior air she knows how to take on way too easily. I wonder if she didn't choose this career because it makes her feel better to busy herself with other people's misery. Mom went to all the effort of making mint tea for her, but she barely took a sip.
