Some Dream for Fools

by Faïza Guène

  That night I had gone down to the basement to lock up Foued's bike. I opened the bulletproof door, which got jammed a little as I pushed the front wheel, and it was there that I took those two scoundrels by surprise. They were planted on this old two-seater couch that's been in retirement in the basement for years, and since they had their backs to me, they didn't immediately see my intrusion on their privacy.

  Right in front of me, I discovered the ingenious contraption they had cooked up. Thanks to a pirated outlet, they had installed a little television, placed it on an upside-down cardboard box, and below it a game console served as their DVD player. It was some comic scene, I just saw what was happening on the couch, which was basically their little clammy necks and their right arms jiggling nervously.

  At the heart of this little staging, an official episode of the Young Olympics was playing. On the TV, a busty blond bimbo was carrying out a perilous performance of rhythmic gymnastics, supported a little too closely by these guys on the parallel bars. The basement had been transformed into a screening room of Cinema Blonde-Trash.

  O Puberty I write your name.

  On Concrete, I write your name.

  At this fateful moment, I decided not to laugh. I didn't want to take the risk of castrating these virile budding men and having the responsibility for all their future troubles. Then came the inevitable "ahem"—I had to interrupt this sketch in order to put the bike away.

  I will never forget the expression on their faces. They were caught red-handed, with no desire to play any awkward word games. I did serious violence to myself to lock down and keep my cool, using sadness to fight back this irresistible need to laugh that was pestering me.

  The villains didn't dare turn their heads in my direction, they put away their hardware, feverish with shame. I got out of that basement à la Ali Baba and His Forty Tools, leaving those two foxes with their remorse so I could finally let my wild laughter shake itself out on the elevator. I nearly went back down to thank them, it had been such a long time since I had laughed so wholeheartedly. And there it is, that's why they avoid me, those two disgusting little creeps.

  I make my way onto the field and already my little Zizou-in-training is blasting me a look. He wants my hide for coming into his territory.

  And respect for elders? I'm going to take him back to the house by the elastic in his underwear if I have to. Who does he think he is? I raised him, this kid, and even if his memory is short, I remember very well. He owes me obedience. Now that he's terminated his contract with Pampers he thinks he doesn't owe me any respect. That's the best shit yet.

  "Foued! Come home right now!"

  "One last little game and I'll be there. Go ahead, it's all right."

  "This isn't a discussion. Let's go," I said.

  "It's fine, okay! You're boring the shit out of me. I'll be home afterward."

  "Shut up! Listen to how you talk to me! You want to act like the big man in front of your boys, yeah, well, you failed at that my old man. Get over here!"

  He quits his leg tricks, ultra-pissed, and stays put. Suddenly there's a silence in the group. We're about sixty feet from each other, we're both standing straight up, and so begins a great battle of looks. It was like a Western of the this-town-isn't-big-enough-for-both-of-us variety.

  To my great shock, at this critical point in the movie, one of the Villovitch brothers had the balls to speak up.

  "Let him play one more game, please, it's not right!"

  "You, little shit, no one asked you anything as far as I know. It's not your place to tell me what is or isn't right..."

  Mr. Mini-glans lowers his head, humiliated. I confess, I hit him a little hard. But at the same time the dirty kids wanted to usurp power. I was the victim of a coup d'état, so I had to be firm.

  Foued follows me without saying anything, he's even too ashamed to say goodbye to his friends. If at this exact moment he had a gun in place of his eyes, I bet he would have already put a bullet in my back. I don't need to talk either, I know that he knows. Papa should never be alone in the house, that's rule number one. Sometimes I get the feeling that I was born to take care of other people. Foued is young, he isn't responsible for all of it, but he needs to understand that he can't just do what he wants. He's at the age where you start to build—and not on construction sites, like The Boss, who spent his whole life earning practically no francs an hour, coming home dirty and exhausted, hands ruined and back broken with the strain. I would be thrilled to read a little motivation on Foued's face when he decides to do his homework. This pisser never does shit.

  The Cat with Nine Lives

  From now on, I'll think twice before using the expression "That's not even worth a nail." Today I know better than anyone the exact value of a nail, this little object that seems without importance at first but which is in reality the source of all things. We don't think about them enough.

  The night before my stock job started, I got a phone call from that dear Johanna, the girl from my temp agency. It's already an accomplishment to understand what she's talking about when you're in front of her, but on the phone it's practically a miracle. You almost want to give her speech therapy for her birthday.

  So she called me to give me instructions for the "inventory" mission.

  "Be a volunteer, be motivated, show your supervisor that you deserve the opportunity that you've been given in being hired, wear the employment agency's name with conviction."

  Of course they don't send just anyone to their client businesses. Especially to spend an evening counting nails in an empty store.

  I arrived at Leroy Merlin very early—I always do that just to be sure. Punctuality is like a sickness for me. I don't like people who always arrive late, especially the ones who don't think it's a big deal. When someone makes me wait a long time, I take off and that's that. The Boss often says: "If you wait for someone once, you'll be waiting for him your whole life."

  Once on the premises, I had to talk to a certain Sonia, a thin, dry woman around thirty years old.

  When the crew was finally at the meeting spot, she turned to explaining how our crazy evening would unfold.

  One break—pee or cigarette—for a maximum of ten minutes, so it's impossible to smoke and piss, you have to choose, unless you do both at the same time. Then a formal prohibition against leaving the store with your bag or jacket during inventory. What are they afraid of? That someone will discreetly steal a sink?

  So all the people are for the most part in their twenties, the majority are students, and it's a group composed mostly of boys.

  Sonia assigns us to departments with partners.

  With my luck, I end up in the hardware department with a little guy named Raphaël Vignon who didn't leak a single word the whole evening. Wonderful! There I am stuck in the festival of nails, screws, and bolts with a kid suffering from verbal constipation. Sometimes I feel his disturbing gaze on me, but I continue to count my nails as if nothing is happening, even though really I am a little creeped out—empty stores, like underground parking garages, call to mind murder scenes. At certain points in the evening, I nearly forgot he was there, but at that exact moment he starts whistling or hacking out a cough or something like that.

  What a life! I could have ended up with another partner, the big brunet in the back for example, the cute one with the good body who I saw giving me little interested glances. But no, I had to be inflicted with this Vignon, with his domestic-animal-assassin demeanor. It's always like this anyway, I don't know why I'm still surprised to find myself in these kinds of situations. It's my destiny, I should get used to it.

  Plus my back and my legs hurt. In the process of becoming glued to the stepladder, I had these ugly marks on both of my knees, and all for a payoff of 65 euros. With this pile of cash I can only go to the market twice.

  I think I've been stuck with the stupidest little jobs imaginable. Except for maybe playing Santa Claus at the Galeries Lafayette.

  I was a counselor for little
kids at a vacation camp. I know all about pissed-in pants, untied shoelaces, boogers hanging out of noses, tantrums and fits of tears. And being paid in peanuts of course.

  I've passed out balloons shaped like hearts on Valentine's Day at the Thiais shopping mall. I met the most wild-in-love couples in the entire Val-de-Marne that day, I remember, and it hit me hard because I'd been dumped the night before.

  Then there was the wave of stints in restaurant work, McDonald's, Quick, Paul, KFC. I remember gaining at least five pounds that I lost right away when I was a waitress at the Nut House, the bar that makes you nuts.

  I even worked for a phone chat line. It paid well and I worked under the charming pseudonym Samantha. I cracked quick enough though because it was too shady. I put a stop to it the night that a guy, one who called pretty regularly, asked me to imitate a hen.

  I also went door-to-door selling prepaid cell phones. I can't count the times someone slammed the door in my face screaming: "I don't believe in God, I'm not interested."

  Before that, I worked for a telemarketing company that sold surveillance cameras. We pulled our numbers primarily from stores in the super-luxe sixteenth, eighth, and seventh arrondissements. Every morning a guy the employees nicknamed Cocaine came to brief us in the office. He tried to put little disks in our heads, like: "You're winners, believe it! Today will be great!" And of course he always slid in there that the one who sold the most should get a bonus of half their salary. I was fired at the end of a week because I didn't secure a single contract. It was too hard, I felt like I was working for the minister of the interior. And no lie, the work we did helped the police. In any case, it was the only time in my life when I was thrilled to be laid off.

  My last job was as a substitute at Pizza Hut. Even today this phrase resonates in my head like a Machiavellian echo: "Thank you for choosing Pizza Hut, goodbye and we'll see you again soon."

  Obviously I aspired to better, but a person has to live. People who get to fill their refrigerators by doing what they love are very lucky. If that were the case for me, I would give thanks to God more than five times a day, it would deserve at least that much.

  Sometimes I write things down in a little spiral notebook I lifted from Leclerc down on the avenue. In it I tell something about my life, what makes me happy and what really messes with my head. I tell myself that if one day I go crazy like my father, at least my story will be partially written, my children will be able to read what I dreamed. I'm kind of like a cat, it's as if I've already lived several lives. I'm twenty-five years old and feel like I'm forty.

  A Person Needs Two Hands to Clap

  It's late now and I'm on my way home. They're sleeping like big babies, no doubt, I heard The Boss's snores all the way from the lobby. So now I'm stuck with a situation I don't much like: open the door without making any noise, something that's not so simple with the kind of key we have, keys with CAREFREE marked on them. They're ENORMOUS, twelve inches long, eight wide, all for a weight of about thirty pounds, they look like the keys to the dungeon from the time of the Roman Empire. Sure I exaggerate but that's pretty much the idea. Next, I undress in the dark so I don't wake anyone and I slide under my cold comforter. There, if I fall asleep right away, it's good.

  To tell the truth I just barely avoided an ambush. My dear and unpredictable friends, Linda and Nawel, suggested we see a movie tonight. I knew that boys would be in the picture but I didn't imagine that they had a plan B and that the plan B was a setup. You know, the friend of a friend of a girlfriend. The guy in question, a certain Hakim, was supposed to serve as my partner for the evening. On seeing the girls arrive early, I suspected they were getting ready for something, I noticed that there was the smell of fish in the air. Usually with this sort of thing I see them coming with my naked eye, I should have caught that they were arranging a Love Boat evening for me behind my back. As soon as I saw the individual in the hat get out of his car to join us, I got the whole thing and I tried to do an about-face because I don't like surprises too much. Then seeing that, on the surface, the young man had some selling points, I stayed. Unfortunately, as usual, the barrels for this vintage knock hollow.

  I had the honor of choosing the film; to the great despair of the rest of the group I then chose a Belgian art film that lasted two hours (which turned out to be excellent anyway). During the whole screening I had the privilege of hearing the intensely stupid commentary of this scam artist Hakim, I was ready to choke him just to shut him up. I could see perfectly well that the film basically didn't interest anyone but me and two old folks (if you're good at mental math you'll note that there were only eight of us in the darkened room) but at least the others kept themselves busy. They were playing a game of "oral exploration," a pastime that simultaneously develops the senses of taste, touch, hearing, and eventually smell. Bizarrely, on leaving the theater, everyone was really hungry, so we went to get something to eat, and this time, it's funny, but no one asked me to choose the place. Mouss, Nawel's boyfriend, a man of good taste, had the hype idea of taking us to a trendy restaurant near Montparnasse, decorated '70s-style: the Space Shuttle. Everything was perfect, but Hakim the Scammer's manners clashed so much with the classiness of the place ... one word came to mind and that word is "wrong."

  The highlight of the evening came as we placed our order. Of course, Hakim put himself in charge. He called to the waiter, a tall, skinny, distinguished blond who held himself straight up like you learn at hotel-restaurant management school.

  "Hey! Hey there, chief! Come over here would you? Can you take our order please, cuz?"

  You would have thought we were at the fish stand in the outdoor market. In another context I would have definitely laughed, but then, I wanted to hide. At that precise moment if someone had offered I would have said okay to a burka. I swallowed my meal like it was a day of mourning then I faked a surprise migraine so they'd drop me off at home. So then I drank some coffee with Auntie Mariatou and told her the unwinding of the whole crazy evening, and instead of sympathizing she clucked like a turkey during my whole tale. Then she concluded with one of those magic phrases that have the ability to unravel the most serious situations and defuse the most charged atmospheres.

  "Man is a jackal but what woman can do without him? A person needs two hands to clap..."

  Auntie's husband, Papa Demba, still looks at her with eyes filled with admiration and love, he's one adorable person, solid and gentle, the ideal spouse. Their story, the one he told me anyway, is mad extraordinary. Of all the young women in the village, she was the one he noticed. One morning, when he was passing by in a wagon, he saw her crossing a field. The view from that day never left him—I think he was making a subtle reference to her unforgettable backside—and then he swore to himself that she would be his beloved. He belonged to the blacksmith caste and she belonged to the noble caste so the union was impossible, but Papa Demba's strength and determination won out over everything else.

  I love that Auntie tells me these coupling stories, they make you laugh so hard you piss yourself. She always says that it's the woman who makes the couple a success and the man will be its downfall. Maybe that's a little extreme but it's about right. She also says that love is like hair, you have to take care of it.

  Since I was thirteen or fourteen, I have entrusted all my stories to her. She's a woman who gives very good advice. She always consoled me when I had heartaches, encouraged me to have confidence in myself, and pushed me to become more feminine, which was no small task because I was a true little tomboy. Auntie's horrified by my big sweatshirts, long shorts, and tracksuits, so when I have the misfortune of wearing a cap, we don't even speak of it, I exasperate her. She introduced me to women's magazines, high heels, and makeup. It's taking me a while to stick to it.

  At sixteen or seventeen, when boys started to get interested in me because I finally resembled a young woman more than a thug, I thought they weren't sincere, that they were making fun of me. Auntie was reassuring, telling me: "You are ver
y pretty and very intelligent, let the boys drool over you. Watch the other girls a little and you'll see how much you're worth. As they say, you have to watch a lot of empty plates go by before you can appreciate your dinner."

  I must have been ten or eleven when I lost Mama and left Algeria with Foued in my arms. Over there, it was the complete reverse, I never saw men. I was glued to my mother's underskirts, and all the other women in the village too, who stuck together and were responsible for the education of the children. I could get fifteen different smacks for one single mistake. I lived among a crew of women who spent their lives hiding themselves from men. I worked whole days sorting through beads and ribbons for Mama, who was the village seamstress. I stayed shut up in the hut. Luckily there was school, where I could talk to the other kids, and the little garden in the back of the house. I passed my free time at the foot of our little orange tree and watched the street on the other side of the chain-link fence, inventing stories about the people passing by. For example, I thought it was loads of fun to try to recognize through their djellabas the fat women I had seen at the hammam the day before. Once I saw the one who had the misfortune of scrubbing my back with a bristly glove that ripped up my skin, so I took devilish pleasure in throwing some stones at her.

  Settled in Ivry with The Boss, I was shocked by the immense liberty, the fresh air. He always left me alone to play outside and often took me to the OTB bar. I remember, while he filled out his trifecta tickets, he let me play some rounds of pinball. Afterward, if I won, I was entitled to one big cup of hot chocolate. If I lost, I was entitled to one anyway. This is why I'm still unbeatable today. I played ball with the boys in the neighborhood and, like them, I pulled the girls' hair and stole their jump ropes to whip them. I went nonstop, no layover from an exclusively feminine universe to a world of men.