by Alice Quinn
When we got to McDonald’s, my girls made a beeline for Véro’s older kid, Simon, and they all went off to play on the slides.
Véro had a face three feet long, and I could tell right away that something was up, but she didn’t want to tell me anything. For once in her life she wanted to listen to me do the talking. Her mind was elsewhere, but she listened anyway. She ended up saying, “If you’re short, I can lend you some money. I got an arrears payment through welfare. I’ll go to the bank tomorrow and give you some when I see you at Victor Hugo.”
Victor Hugo Elementary School is where my Sabrina goes. She’s in her third year, and Simon is in his second. They agreed to take Simon into the second level on the insistence of the shrink, even though his language skills are slightly delayed. Simon doesn’t like to talk. We’re not sure he really knows how. He stutters. Sometimes he busts out with a few snippets, and sometimes nothing. When he’s really tired, he won’t open up at all. Only Sabrina understands him all the time, even when he says nothing. She interprets for us.
Sitting outside McDonald’s, Véro seemed anxious. I asked her where Pierre, her younger son, was, and she burst into tears.
I was scared. When you ask a mother about her kid and she starts wailing, you immediately think about leukemia or something awful like that. Plus, Véro is so fragile and pretty, with her hair cut short and her big eyes, that you automatically feel the need to protect her. Seeing her cry like that made me upset.
“What’s the matter? Oh, Véro! Stop with the waterworks, please! Tell me! Has something happened to Pierre?”
“No, he’s fine. You know, it’s just that I’m so happy!”
Her answer left me speechless. “Happy? What do you mean, happy?”
When stuff like this happens, it makes you understand just how limited your vocabulary is. Take the word happy, for example. That day, I realized it was a word nobody around me ever used. Or words like happiness, joy, tranquility, bliss, peace, satisfaction, well-being, serenity, ease, lightness, and ecstasy. But as for anger, misfortune, unlucky, misery, trouble, tired, fed up, exhausted, crap, drab, garbage—we used them all. They were my daily life.
Yet Véro was happy: she’d met a man who was crazy about her. Some guy who’d been a teacher in the Haute-Savoie, but who’d grown sick of the snow and come south. He didn’t work as a teacher any more. He’d met Véro and fallen head over heels. She’d told him everything: that she had two kids; that her idiot ex, Michel, wouldn’t divorce her; that he’d torn the couch fabric into thin strips . . . everything. Well, this new guy—his name was Alexandre, like some emperor—was totally taken with her and the children, and today he was taking care of Pierre. They’d headed off on a bike ride together.
“Even all the shouting matches between Michel and me . . . well, I just don’t care about them anymore. I’m on a total high. I’m on top of the world.”
“Why? Have you seen that bastard again? Did he come back? What did he want? You fought, right?”
But she didn’t answer any of my questions. She just shooed me away. A lazy sweep of the hand.
With that, she stood to leave, smiling. I kissed her on both cheeks, and she walked away, taking Simon by the hand.
I returned home deep in thought. It’s not every day you bump into Happiness with a capital H. When the kiddos began rearranging anything and everything that could be moved in the Caravelair to build a fort in the middle of the living room, I didn’t have the heart to stop them. I put all three of them to bed right inside it.
Pastis had been hiding atop a cupboard through all the commotion, and as soon as the monkeys were asleep, he came down and set about rubbing against my calf. In other words, What about me? Do you have a bite to eat? I gave him the half a hamburger from lunch that I’d saved for him, but he didn’t want it. I told you he was odd. He sulked and meowed to go out—I think he was trying to catch a mouse. I opened the door reluctantly. He’s the only man in the family, and I like it better when he’s home with us at night.
I’m grateful Emma’s dad offered us this trailer. I know he only gave it to us because he couldn’t do anything else with it, given its condition, but he really did me a favor. I had just been evicted. I couldn’t risk going into one of those awful shelters for single moms. I’d rather starve.
You have to learn how to be grateful for what life offers you.
Thank you, Caravelair, my home sweet home.
Tuesday: A Cop Who’s Too Cute for His Own Good
4
It was Tuesday and school was back.
I woke up to the tune of “Love Me Do.” My mother had returned with her old favorites.
At first, I only had the tune, but on the way to school, the words came back to me and stayed for the rest of the day.
It was about love—a person who was looking for someone to love.
I couldn’t understand what message my mother wanted to send, except, like everyone who lives alone, maybe I needed a little love? My mother needed to explain herself better.
I didn’t see Véro at the school. I usually meet up with her when I take Sabrina to school, but I was so stressed for time. It’s often like that on a school day: I have to run with the double stroller, first to the school, and then to daycare. Getting the three little ones dressed in the morning is like running a marathon.
Lisa vomited all over her sweater just as we were leaving. So I was running and running and didn’t catch sight of anyone. I wished I had bumped into Véro. She’d promised to lend me some cash.
I spotted Simon at the playground and realized she’d already come and gone. Maybe she’d give me the money when we picked the kiddos up. I’d be sure to leave early so I wouldn’t miss her.
I went home and scrubbed the Caravelair from top to bottom, then went to EDF, the power company.
I waited ages on a plastic seat, two hours in total, hoping to see Benjamin, a buddy of mine who’d lent me some professional equipment to hook up a secret electric cable to my trailer. I wanted to borrow the equipment again to look at my hot-water hookups, which still weren’t working.
I could tell today wasn’t going to pan out, so I carted my ass off to see Tony and work for a couple of hours. I needed to buy Emma a lunchbox. She’s been carrying her food in her pockets. When I looked at my Swatch, I saw it was a quarter past four, or “mommy pick-up time,” as they call it at school.
As always, all the dumbass moms stood around in front of the school, waiting to pick up the apples of their eyes.
This is one of the reasons I never show up on time. I can’t stand this crowd. Poor Sabrina always ends up waiting for me with her teacher, who throws me dirty looks, or with the TA—the teacher’s aide—who helps out in class.
The teacher hasn’t said a word to me since the day she made a remark along the lines of, “How do you expect children to learn the rules when their mothers are incapable of respecting school hours?”
Between gritted teeth I replied, “Hey! Are you talking to me? Come here and say that again! I’ll beat the shit out of you!” I said it low enough that my daughter wouldn’t hear me. Just because her teacher is deficient in neurons doesn’t mean my girl won’t respect her.
As for the TA, she’s always on her high horse. Whenever I show up, if she’s the one waiting with Sabrina, she just can’t help herself. “Here you go! Just in time for the last metro!” I don’t know why she says that, given that we live in an area without a single metro line.
Or she shouts, “Oh, you’ve shown up? Too bad! Sabrina and I were just starting to have fun!” As soon as she says it, she leaves, so I can’t respond unless I’m prepared to shout. And I’m not. I don’t want Sabrina to hear.
But I swear, one of these days, I’m going to smack that goody-goody face of hers.
When I arrived, Véro wasn’t waiting at the gate. I still hadn’t seen her since yesterday.
Emma be
gan to cry in the stroller. She’d had a slight temperature that morning, and when she’s like that, spending time at daycare doesn’t help.
When I didn’t see any sign of Véro, I regretted having bought the lunchbox. I began listing everything I had left in the cupboards.
Pasta. Yes, there was always pasta. We didn’t have any butter, but I could put in some oil, and then . . . well, I didn’t think I had anything else. It pissed me off that I couldn’t give them something with a little calcium at least, or some protein. Not to mention fruits and vegetables. I still had the option of looking through the trash at the back of the mini-mart.
I cursed Lisa’s dad, who could at least occasionally send me some of the alimony he owes. After all, we were married once, and he was the one who made me go before the mayor and then the judge. But I don’t want to make too many waves, because with the slightest indication that he could get custody, he’d go for it in a heartbeat. A quick visit from social services and I wouldn’t stand a chance against his villa in the Var.
He’s actually a decent father. He sometimes takes her during school vacation, which is a start, right? He shacked up with some chick, and it looks like things are going pretty well for them. But I think she’s taken a bit of a shine to my Lisa. I’m better off not asking him for anything.
It was while we moms waited so obediently outside the school gates that the cops showed up.
There were two of them. In civilian clothes. Brakes screeching, lights flashing, doors slamming, the whole shebang. They rushed toward the gates and started shaking them. What a couple of cowboys. Pointless—the gates were locked. They’d have to wait like everyone else. They asked to see our IDs as if we were common criminals, or maybe they hoped to catch a few illegal immigrants. I was livid and refused to show them my card.
The younger cop clearly felt like a schmuck. He blushed. It weirded me out because I thought he’d go nuts or bawl me out or at least insist a little. You’d have thought it would perk me up to scream at a cop like that, but it didn’t. He was totally taken aback and returned to his car, sat down inside, and didn’t move.
His boss followed, looking pissed, and they began what looked like a lively discussion. It sounded like the young one was getting a lecture. That’s when I noticed he was pretty cute.
Some trashy-looking girl next to me said, “That dude’s doing his military service. He’s not a real cop. He has green trim on his hat.”
I pretended not to hear her because I couldn’t stand talking to these airheads. Since my dear friend Yasmina died in childbirth, I’ve had a total of two friends—Véro and Mimi—and two is more than enough for me. What on earth was this girl talking about, anyway? There’s been no such thing as military service for decades.
And he wasn’t even in uniform. He was wearing a Titanic cap. With green trim. This girl was not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Hey, keep it up, sweetheart. I thought it, but I didn’t say anything.
5
As soon as the gates were opened, the cops forced their way into the playground, pushing everyone out of the way. I stepped aside to let them pass. I didn’t want to end up with a ticket and become yet another statistic at the Ministry of the Interior.
I was just making my way toward the gates to collect Sabrina when I heard a teacher say to the cops with an exasperated tone, “Wait! You can’t take him down to the station! He hasn’t done anything! He won’t understand!”
“But ma’am, we’re looking for his mother, and she’s not home. He has to go somewhere.”
“Wait a minute. The principal should have a list of people to contact if his mother doesn’t show up. Let me go look.”
That’s when I saw that it was Simon standing between the cops and the teacher, holding back tears.
I took a couple of steps forward. “No need to look. It’s me.”
“Um, what’s you?” stammered the young cop, his face reddening.
Honestly, he was drop-dead gorgeous. However, experience has taught me to be wary of the ones who look cute and act shy in the beginning. When they finally let go, they’re worse than the rest. And to top it off, this one was a cop. That had to be a bad sign.
“It’s me,” I said. “I’m on the list of people to contact if his mother doesn’t show up. And the same goes for my nippers. Véro is my best friend, and she’s the only one I’d trust with my children if anything happened to me.”
He looked down. “Oh! I get it. In that case . . .”
His boss looked me up and down, then stared at the children.
Emma and Lisa were pulling each other’s hair in the stroller, while Sabrina, sensible as ever, stood at my side, observing the scene. That scamp doesn’t miss a trick.
The boss looked toward me again with an air of contempt. No need to draw me a picture, I understood. Yet another adult who disapproved. Sabrina has coffee-colored skin. I often sing to her about it. “Kahawa coffee, pure robusta!” Just like I drink it: no milk in my coffee. Sabrina’s father is from Cape Verde. He moved in with me shortly after landing in France. By the time I gave birth, he’d managed to bring his family over from Cape Verde. That was a pretty gutsy thing to do at the time.
He moved into a housing project with his wife and their four kiddos. Since then, he’s had two more.
I can’t say he’s not a nice guy, because he is. He often takes Sabrina on Sundays, with his others. What’s weird is Sabrina is darker than his other children. The mysteries of Mendel’s law.
Emma has more of an Arabic look to her. You can’t miss it. Her father, Béchir, had her with his wife, Yasmina, my good friend at the time. But she died in childbirth.
It seems incredible in this day and age, but women do still die in childbirth. She was on the bus when her water broke. By the time an ambulance was called, Emma had been born. Mother and infant were transported to the hospital, where the doctors realized there was a problem with Yasmina. She was nineteen years old. She didn’t make it. She had my number in her notebook, so they called me.
At the time, Béchir was working for a group of builders out in the sticks. He only came home on weekends. I had no way of contacting him. I searched their place, but I didn’t find his number.
When he returned, Emma was with me. I was the one who registered her birth at city hall. Luckily, I knew Yasmina had wanted to call her Emma. I’d asked her why and she told me it was the name of the heroine in Madame Bovary.
Yasmina didn’t just read books, she devoured them. She told me, “I’m going to name my daughter after this woman in a book. She married a doctor, but when she was bored off her tits, she whored around.”
“You’re so weird, Yasmina. You’re going to name your little girl after a hooker?”
“You don’t get it, Cricri,” she said. “It’s a question of liberty.”
Béchir had never read this novel. It’s a good thing, too, because I don’t think he’d have cared for it.
Emma has lived with me almost since that day. Béchir tried at first, but he found it hard to care for a baby, what with his job and everything. I accepted because I was already attached to the girl. Eventually, he remarried and went to live in Lyon. If Emma had been a boy, I’d have had more trouble, because Béchir would have found a way to make it work, but I struck gold—this one was pink flavored.
Lisa was a totally different story: her hair is as blonde as wheat. Next to the others, she looks like an albino. I always worry that she’s sick. The backstory on her father . . . well, it’s even more complicated than the others. Given that he was my husband. I’ll have to tell you about it some other time. Just know that I met him when he came to repair the overflowing road gully outside the Social Security office. We were married a month later. I hadn’t even had time to tell him I was pregnant before he left. He’d met a woman who owned a real-estate agency, and he quickly realized that selling houses was more fun than unclogg
ing crappers.
So anyway, the boss cop was scrutinizing my multicultural kids.
I couldn’t hold back. “Do you want to take their picture or something? Do they have something that belongs to you?”
Infuriated, he strode off, barking over his shoulder, “If you see your friend, tell her we’re looking for her. We’ll be waiting for her down at the station.”
“What about Pierre?” I asked. “Is someone going to get him from daycare?”
That stopped him. He turned around and looked at me, then said, “Don’t you worry about Pierre. We’ll take care of him.” He marched off again, but less briskly this time.
The young cop stepped toward me. “I’m Jérôme. Jérôme Gallo.” He held out his hand for me to shake, but I didn’t take it.
I started sizing him up. “What makes you think I give a damn?”
Ah yes, just as Sabrina always says: “That’th life, wight!” It’s always the good guys who take the rap for the bad guys. The boss tried to humiliate me with his holier-than-thou attitude, so I had to take my revenge on the younger, cuter one. Ridiculous, I know. We can be so stupid at times. So stupid.
When I saw his face, I regretted my harsh words. I held out my hand to him. “They call me Cricri, but my name is Rose.” I laughed. “Don’t ask me why, it’s a long story.”
“Maybe one day you’ll tell me the story,” he said playfully.
I laughed again, stupidly. “Don’t go trying to pick me up. I’m a complex girl. Let’s not get into all that.”
His boss yelled over from the van. “Gallo, are you getting a move on?”
The gorgeous Jérôme walked away with a thoughtful look in his eyes. I told Simon to hold onto the stroller bar, just like Sabrina was doing on the other side, and all five of us set off at a fair pace. I kept my fingers crossed that we had enough pasta back home.
