Concrete Flowers

by Wilfried N'Sondé

  IN THE CONFUSION of trying to get away, Rosa Maria hangs on to Jason’s hand. He drags her into the maze of the complex. Along with others, they cross the square in front of the shopping center, in an all-­out race to survive, widespread panic, desperation, screaming, some crying.

  Jason and Rosa stop behind the supermarket. She’s pale, and her whole body is shaking from the chills. He tries his best to console her.

  —Calm down now, we’re out of danger. We’re going to go hang out at my aunt’s place. She lives opposite here and is still on vacation.

  —Jason, what’s happened is horrible. I’m afraid, I have a bad feeling about this. This is where they found my brother, we better go somewhere else.

  —Don’t worry, we’re going to leave.

  He smiles tenderly and holds her close to him, kisses her furtively on her forehead, and takes her with him:

  —Come, Rosa, we’re going to go get some air.

  Once they arrive at the apartment, calm and secure, their veins still pounding with adrenaline, wide-eyed and in a state of stupor, they collapse onto the sofa. Dumbfounded, their gazes cross in the middle of the modest living room.

  A big chandelier of false crystal weighs down the ceiling above, below it is unusual and tacky furniture. There are synthetic rugs on the floor to mask the holes and wear and tear of the old carpeting. A prayer stool has pride of place to the right of the television, and on the left side, a dusty Bible lies on the commode. The painted wallpaper is dull and peeling in places. On the wall, the annual calendar of the Parisian firemen is hanging by a nail. Next to it on the furniture made of plywood, the photo of two toothless little girls and a boy a little bit older, his face branded with a false smile. A sad universe, with no fantasy.

  Distraught, Rosa Maria and Jason watch each other, the movement of their chests slowly calm down, and they regain their breath. A stirring is rising in the air.

  —Holy shit, I can’t believe it . . . What a mess, shit, I shouldn’t have . . .

  He heads toward the window to assess the situation.

  —Holy shit, it’s complete panic out there. I think there’s gonna be trouble tonight . . .

  —Can I have a glass of water, Jason?

  Jason goes into the kitchen and returns with a carafe in his hand. He serves her and sits down.

  —Shit, it’s all my fault, I shouldn’t have thrown that bottle. I dunno what came over me, holy shit . . .

  Worried, Jason runs his hand over the top of his head several times. Rosa Maria slides over next to him.

  —It’s OK, Jason, you didn’t mean to hurt him. You were angry, that’s all, it happens to everybody, and plus I don’t think the policemen know that it was you. Gotta calm down now, relax!

  She caresses his forehead. Rosa Maria’s body temperature is rising. Jason is certainly present, so close. This is her chance. Her temples redden, a flow of saliva in her mouth, her pupils dilate, the palms of her hands wet, butterflies in her stomach. She moves closer to Jason, lost in his thoughts, gets up, lays her head on his torso, her eyelids close, she puts her arms around him and breathes more and more intensely. Rosa Maria is losing herself in the rhythm gathering momentum in her chest. The sweet smell of the young girl clings to Jason. Surprised by the desire that suddenly overcomes him, instinctively, he begins to caress her black curls.

  —Hey, Rosa, what’s going on with you?

  Rosa Maria places her mouth on his, let’s herself go. Her head spins a little, she sees light, the Sicilian light, the heat of summers, the scorching heat on the skin makes the heart gallop. She holds her lover even tighter, just enough to be able to feel his body pressing on hers as though he wants to melt into her. Rosa Maria smiles and exhales slowly, then she raises her head up gently, the dream has found its place in her arms, she’s tasting it. In one breath she can barely contain, her lips give way to:

  —You know, Jason . . . I love you . . . Since forever, you know when you first arrived from your country, you kept saying how it was always hot there, you seemed sad, I immediately fell for you! I think about you day and night. I dream about you, you know . . . it hurts me.

  Without really listening to Rosa but already feeling excited, Jason kisses her with a passionate intensity, tongues intertwine and suck each other, his hands quickly make their way under the young girl’s baggy clothing and discover her subtle curves. Lacking in a loving caress, his fingers press and slide on her moist skin. Jason quickly undresses her and discovers the underwear of a little girl.

  —I love you, I love you!

  Rosa Maria whispers this to him once his mouth has liberated hers before enveloping a breast. Jason removes her bra and panties. Rosa Maria is now completely naked. Drunk, she offers him her slender late-adolescent body whose femininity is slowly surfacing. Convulsive movements traverse her shoulders, her belly, and her thighs. She closes her eyes. Jason lets his pants fall to his ankle, he undresses quickly by hopping out of them and then lays Rosa Maria on the sofa. He opens her legs and takes her forcibly. She shivers, her fingers tense, and she plants her nails into his back. Rosa Maria moans and bites her lip. The pain stings and burns her intimate parts, but she endures it, because the miracle is inside her!

  Jason embraces her roughly, groans with pleasure, sweats, and brings her more intensely toward him. Rosa Maria screams her love. The hot abrupt tide comes and goes, then everything rises up right in her chest, a wave that sublimates the carnal tear. She finally remembers the taste of happiness, cries, laughs, her eyes travel far away, head toward Italy, to the region of Naples that continues on to Sicily, to the left, the sunny cliffs, below to the right, the immensity of the blue sea of incomparable beauty, images from her childhood that convinced her a long time ago that God really exists.

  She closes her eyelids, glides above the island overwhelmed by sunlight, and rushes into the narrow strip of land between the church and the Mediterranean Sea. Antonio is stretched out on the sand, his elbows holding up his torso, his eyes behind dark sunglasses, looking on at the infinite blue, he is gorgeous in his black pants, short hair pulled back, barefoot. He only has eyes for his little sister, mischievous and joyful, splashing in the water.

  So many images and memories revived as Jason sighs and comes inside of her. Majestic, she is the princess of the skies, her lover by her side. Rosa Maria radiates, sumptuous, adorned in the dress whose photo she had ripped out of a magazine in the dentist’s office. A magnificent creation, flesh-colored dress in jersey and draped chiffon worked into layers and decorated with ruche. Jason loves her and is making her dance above the calm sea, zero gravity, far from the village and the hills. Their skin scintillates in beautiful layers of brown and milky white, together they break free.

  Exhausted, empty, Jason lay on the timid curves, still panting, absent. Rosa Maria ignores the pain. These few minutes are like an eternity of completeness, a volley of intense and infinite sensations. Love between her lips for a few minutes and she has reconnected with azure, the beauty of the days, joy.

  Coming back from ecstasy, Jason rises up and observes her, surprised, almost disappointed, as though he has just come down from a mirage. Once he is standing, he looks around him, gathers up his belongings, and starts to get dressed.

  —Oh no, not that, goddamn it. Why didn’t you say something, Rosa? We would have been careful! Look at this shit, you got blood everywhere, even on the carpet. Hey, wake up, shit, are you dreaming or what? Gotta clean up all of this area here before it dries, my aunt is super neurotic about sex, God, and all that shit. If there’s a single trace at all when she comes home, she’s going to kill me! Hey, Rosa, you hear me or what? You gotta get a move on it, hey, oh!

  A torrid and sticky fever all over her skin, childhood lullabies fill her ears, Rosa Maria is nothing but sweetness, she’s gliding, levitating, and taking off. She has distanced herself from the world, a satellite on a gentle, steady course, inaccessible, untouchable. She’s holding on to her happiness and does not intend to let it go; pleas
ure has rooted itself deep within, well anchored in her belly. Rosa Maria’s heart is racing. She opens her eyes and directs the incandescence of the sensations of the moment at Jason. The young man only understands that she’s not able to grasp what he’s saying. He goes off into the kitchen:

  —Goddamn it, seriously, sometimes you are completely out of it, Rosa!

  He comes back, a sponge and a bucket in his hand, and washes the bloodstains. While getting dressed, Rosa Maria takes in the last images of that long-awaited moment, making love with Jason. Once she is dressed, she quietly waits for him to finish cleaning. Jason finds her a bit stupid, the girl is starting to annoy him.

  —What else do you want, Rosa?

  —Do you want to kiss me?

  —No, seriously, Rosa, that’s it, you’re starting to annoy me. We had a good time, you and me, you wanted it, me too, we did it nice and easy, that’s it! Don’t go imagining stuff like because we slept together, you’re now my girlfriend or something like that! Plus, you gotta get out of here now. I got stuff to do, I have to go see what’s going on outside, I don’t wanna leave the guys all alone. Come on, bye, we’ll catch up sometime, Rosa.

  Rosa Maria opens the door and takes off. She heads down the stairs, ignoring the clamor mounting louder and louder. On her way home, she crosses some of the young people from the neighborhood, overexcited, the disturbances have started, the sounds of breakage are announcing a riot.

  The young girl holds on ever so tightly to her daydreaming and looks up to the sky. Her circular gaze touches the horizon; there are gray buildings, the dark roofs, and way down in the bottom, the fervor of violence intensifies and is already burning on the empty lot, the waltz of police vehicles is blocking the national highway in a concert of sirens and cop lights. Pandemonium.

  A COUPLE OF hours after the gunshots, project 6000 turns into chaos, a news item, screams, pain, panic . . . Riot.

  Bitterness invading hearts, anger intensifying in the corridors of the buildings and avenues of the neighborhood. Rage is brewing, disturbing, looks for a rhythm and finds destructive madness, longing to exist and change everything. It’s accelerating. Sneakers hit the pavement, uneven thumps, mad rush. The asphalt is shaking up its sons. It has placed a metal bar in their brains. Hemoglobin is pumping and rushing to temples. Pockets of brutality are exploding in loud crashes. The damage is about to begin! With his fingers knotted up deep into the pockets of his synthetic sweatpants, Mouloud huffs and puffs between his clenched teeth:

  —Tired of it, there’s gonna be trouble, you’re gonna see. Tonight, the shit’s gonna hit the fan!

  Blood and tears are going to flow in the streets, the vigor of young pissed-off boys, determined to take down everything in their path! Their mouths howl and become the mouths of wolves with jaws wide open, ready to bite. They empty the trash containers on the sidewalks, the collective hysteria is propelling them violently into the windows of supermarkets; some are being splashed with gasoline and then burned, a blaze, apocalyptic thunder, applause. The crowd dances while jumping in the air, a disturbing commotion rises up from within the heart of the concrete. Stones, aggressively thrown, crash against windshields.

  The daily frustrations and despair have gotten into the pores of the skin, obstructing the neurons and wreaking havoc on the brain. Rage is brewing and transforming into hate. Anger explodes, bloodshot razor-sharp eyes like blades. This is the last straw, the resentment of the outcasts, forever the losers, it all spills over onto the asphalt.

  Jason is also there, his gaze injected with fire. He makes his way through the crowd and uses his hands around his mouth to be heard. His voice travels far:

  —Yeah, we’re gonna unleash tonight, we don’t give a damn, we’ve had enough! Shit’s gonna go down, we’re going to break everything!

  The deafening noise of a tide rising dangerously, rolling, getting bigger, rushing, dressed as a storm, a devastating blow right into the main artery of the projects. A frightening, uncontrollable crowd. Mouths going astray in death threats, spewing obscenities, fueling each other in nervous laughter. In the chaos, the school and day care center have been trashed by groups of kids barely out of kindergarten. They were breastfed on concrete long before they even learned to walk. Feet and fists strike and wind up destroying the one bus shelter they have. The broken glass partially hides the ad with the woman still smiling. In the image on the ground, bare feet bathe in turquoise water. She is dressed in a discreet bathing suit that she wears low on her hips. Her brown skin is decorated with a necklace that barely hides her chest. Her hair is shining, flowing down in thick, full waves. Her smile inspires the women and men of project 6000 to dream of freedom and warmth; it’s a mirage of escape that’s been planted in the heart of the projects for all of them to see. Above her, an inscription in gold letters, in a dazzling blue sky. The advertisement lingers on the ground, a chimera for the poor, forgotten.

  Rage is still brewing, more and more intensely. A sinister temperature warms the atmosphere among all the rectangular towers, a disorderly movement fed by nerves on edge. Adolescent palms, firm and moist, brandish iron bars, shards of bottles, and stones. A convulsion in the air that unhinges the children and frightens the mothers barricaded in their homes. Fear knots their guts, powerless before the drama, they lose themselves in prayers and supplications, that it all comes to an end quickly, that the boys return home, why is there always tragedy? Their stubby fingers nervously twist the edges of aprons, anxiety, violence, all over again. The unbearable anguish of silence settling in, just before the huge shock. The vicious circle of chaos swells dangerously, spreading, fed by a deleterious feeling, sadness, a lot of misunderstanding, and the thirst for revenge.

  —They’re shooting at us like rabbits. No, we’re not going to accept that, my word, tonight there’s going to be shit!

  Infuriated, they’ve come to claim their piece of the pie, reach for the zenith, beyond the misery, by breaking whatever they have to. Locked up in an enclosure of concrete towers like in a vault, the brain reaches the limit of implosion, an engine that gets carried away and winds up exploding. The overwhelming injustice in the maze of the neighborhood, racial profiling by police, vacation in front of the television, cheap, tasteless food, washed down with sodas of improbable colors. Bitterness slips into the parking lots, bursts onto the avenues, and screams justice for everyone! The heckling, a cacophony of profanity, threatening, because they’re shooting at them like animals.

  The backup requested by Captain Moussa Traoré took the maniac in for questioning. Once he’d returned from his moment of insanity, Lucien Marchand regretted terribly his action and turned himself in voluntarily to the police. Protected by the officers who came to arrest him in his home, the sexagenarian left his building in handcuffs, dazed, he rolled his wild eyes like a hangdog. He seemed to not have a clue about what was happening and was very frightened before the hostile crowd, insulting and threatening.

  Overwhelmed by what was happening, Moussa and Laurence tried in vain to restore order and to reason with the young people, who persisted and blocked the road:

  —We’re staying right here. He’s ours, we’re going to skin him, we’re gonna finish him! He shot at us like we were in a fair. We’re gonna give him a dose of his own medicine! This time, we’re not gonna let it slide, too bad for him, he came looking for it!

  The tormented clamor of the growing number of adolescents forced the civil servants to take refuge in their van.

  The young people kept a good distance. They hesitated before crossing the line. Rage was brewing but had yet to explode. Laurence feared the worst. She was not trained for this kind of scenario; there were no known procedures to follow. She watched Moussa, who was by now having a meltdown, his expression betrayed profound doubt, he no longer looked at all like the upright proud man who so often impressed her. The commotion was becoming oppressive and contrasted with the silence that reigned in the passenger compartment. The windows to the vehicle were up, the doors locke
d; the other police officers were preparing for conflict. Moussa fell silent and let the catastrophic scenario unfold before his eyes. Drops of sweat traced the fine lines on his temples. He was aware that he’d been completely wrong because the situation was now out of control. A frightened old man was sobbing like a child close to him, his pants soiled, and now here they were, surrounded by a hysterical crowd ready to attack. The fear of failure nailed the young officer to his seat. His self-esteem at half-mast, he didn’t dare make eye contact with his colleague. These losers outside, ready to trash everything, disgusted him.

  After a good fifteen minutes of nerve-racking status quo, the navy blue vans started to arrive in the housing project and the crowd dispersed for a while. But they gathered again in the middle of the principal artery, far from Moussa Traoré, Laurence da Silva, and their colleagues, who escorted Lucien Marchand to the police station.

  In the neighborhood, the face-to-faces began, the imminent confrontation weighed heavily, attempts at mutual intimidation, the point of no return.

  On one side, the riot police special force with all its crowd-control gear, all highly trained men, with their shields and coercive weapons firmly attached to their belts!

  Sneakers against rangers. About one hundred yards away, a crowd of hooded adolescents, scarves beneath the eyes, rage in their gazes, ready to fight. One of them has made up his mind; it’s Mouloud, drunk on testosterone. He moves up to about ten yards, jaw clenched, mouth open, a scream slips out:

  —We can’t take it anymore! Tonight, we’re gonna burn everything, tonight, shit’s gonna hit the fan!