Billie (3 page)

It was a long process and I think I succeeded, but all I ask for in return is to never see them again.

Never.

Not even when they're dead, incinerated, not even as a scrap of cloth in a grave.

And even there, you see, I'm going to be honest for once; if you were to say to me: “Okay, I'll send you two stretchers, a ham sandwich, and a case of San Pellegrino, but in exchange, you give a little wave to your stepmother or to any of those jerks,” well, I would say no.

No.

I would say no and I would find some other way to get us out of here.

 

* * *

 

So, there you have it, we went to the same junior high in a small town with less than three thousand inhabitants in what they call a rural region. But “rural” is too nice a way to put it. You'd expect to see hills and streams. The area where I'm from doesn't have much of that. It was, is, an area of France that hasn't been irrigated for a long time and is rotting as a result.

Yes, rotting . . . dying . . . A land where folks drink too much, smoke too much, put too much faith in the lottery, and pass down their poverty to their family and pets.

A world in which everyone commits suicide in the same way: by slowly burning out and dragging the weakest down with them.

When you hear about disaffected young people setting cars on fire, it's always in working-class suburbs, but in the countryside, my dear, life is not easy, you know!

For us to burn cars, some would have to pass by!

When you live in the countryside and are not like others, it's even worse.

 

Of course, there will always be people passing through, whether politicians, association types, organic foodies, or whatever sweet liars who will tell you I'm exaggerating, but I know them, these people . . . Yes, I know them . . . They're like the ones from social services: at the end of the day, they only see what we want to show them . . .

And I understand them.

I understand them because I've become like them, too.

Whenever I'm going to or coming back from the Rungis market, which is at least four times a week, I know exactly where I need to focus on what I'm doing. Yes, there are exactly two places where I completely stick to the road and where I am extremely careful to maintain a safe distance. And do you know why? Because in those spots, between Paris and Orly let's say, there are two little piles of garbage on the roadside, at street level.

Fine, it's true, they're ugly, but the problem is that they aren't really garbage in fact . . . No, they're houses. They're the bedrooms of little girls who are always on the defensive . . .

Okay, let's speed things along. As I said earlier, we all have our shit to deal with. I suffered so much that I became an arrogant monster, and my arrogance is what I can best offer to little Billie from Highway A6.

Look, little girls, look at me in my old delivery van all beat up and filled with flowers. I'm proof that it's possible to have a life someday . . .

S
o, yes, we noticed each other but avoided contact all that time because we were like the scourge of Jacques-Prévert Junior High.

Me, because I was from the Morels (no, that's not the name of a town in the sticks or an area with mushrooms, it's . . . I don't know . . . I never knew in fact . . . a junkyard . . . a sort of artisanal realm . . . a type of waste recycling center where nothing is ever sorted . . . everyone says “the Gypsies” but we weren't Gypsies, there was just my stepmother's family, her uncles, half-sisters, my half-brothers and all that . . . people from the Morels in other words) and I walked a mile and a half every morning and every evening to go to a different bus stop, the farthest possible from their mess and from my Home Sweet Mobile Home for fear that the other kids wouldn't let me sit next to them on the bus, and he, because he was too different from everyone else.

Because he didn't love girls, only liked them, because he was good at drawing but bad at sports, because he was slight and allergic to anything and everything, because he always hung out by himself and disappeared completely into his own world and because he waited to be last in line at the cafeteria to avoid the noise and the stampede to get through the turnstiles.

I know, little star, I know, it sounds like a crappy cliché, the way I'm telling it; the sickly little queer and his Cosette from the garbage dump, I admit, it lacks subtlety. But what would you like me to say instead? That I live in a regular house in the winter and add in a moped and two chain bracelets to make it sound less like I come from a lousy soap opera?

Well, no . . . I would like to but I can't . . . Because that's how we are. That's the story of our early lives. Neverland and Da doo ron ron. Rebels without a cause. But I'm going to force myself to pretty things up so that it won't sound so sad . . .

So, Beat It.

Just Beat It.

 

And so? It's not so bad, right? I'm not going to try to convince you I was groped or anything gross like that.

Luckily, that wasn't the thing at my house.

At our house, things were tough, but no one touched little girls' panties.

Phew, what a relief, right, little star?

 

And then, you know, I think it wasn't all that cliché. I think that in all the schools in France and elsewhere, whether in the countryside or in the towns, the study halls are full of people, like us.

People who struggle against invisibility, who are disconnected from themselves, who hold their breath from morning till night and who die sometimes, who finally give up one day if no one helps them out or if they don't manage on their own . . . Plus I think I'm telling the story quite delicately, in fact. Not to spare you discomfort or me any criticism, but because the evening of one of my birthdays, my twenty-second, I think, I pressed reset.

I rebooted in front of him and swore that I was done. That I would never hurt myself again.

And little Cosette, maybe she lacks imagination, but she does keep her promise.

We did such a good job avoiding each other, we nearly missed each other for good.

We were in the middle of the academic year. There were still a few months left to get through and then we would have to decide what to do next based on our strengths and weaknesses and what we'd done well at in school. I wanted to get a job as quickly as possible while he . . . I don't know . . . when I looked at him from afar, he made me think of the Little Prince, especially since he had the same yellow scarf. No one could tell what he was going to become.

 

Yes, there were still several weeks left for us to ignore one another before we would be done with the ghost of the other and all it represented forever.

Except that, lo and behold: we were owed a second act . . .

 

Was it God who was too embarrassed by what he'd let happen until then and wanted to make amends to sooth his heartburn, or was it you, Mademoi—? Okay, enough with the formalities, was it you? I feel like I'm presenting my case to an officer at the unemployment office. I don't know who did it nor why, but in any case, it was exactly like Charlie and his gold ticket in Willy Wonka's chocolate bar. It was . . . really lucky.

Ah shit, I'm starting to cry again and I'm turning again toward my broken bolster so no one will see.

 

* * *

 

We were introduced to Alfred de Musset, and when I said earlier that it wasn't school or the teachers who had gotten me out of the Morels, I wasn't being fair. Because . . . well, given that my teachers didn't like me, it really hurts me to praise them, but there you have it, it's true . . . I owe them more than a few moments of rest during the school year.

Without my French teacher Madame Guillet, and without her mania for theater and
live performance
, as she called it, I would surely be some sort of zombie today.

 

Don't Fool with Love

Don't Fool with Love

Don't

Fool

with

Love

 

Oh . . . How I love to say it, that title . . .

O
ur mother hen of a teacher arrived one morning with three little rattan baskets from her kitchen. In the first were folded pieces of paper—the scenes we were to perform; in the second were the names of the girls in the class to decide the role of Camille, and in the last basket, the names of the boys to decide the role of Perdican.

When I heard that fate had chosen Franck Mumu for my performance partner, not only did I not know that the play in question was not about animals (I had understood “Pelican”) but also, I remember, I completely lost my composure . . .

The lottery was held on purpose the day before Easter break, so that we would have time to learn our dialogue, but for me it was a disaster. How was I supposed to concentrate on learning the least little thing by heart during the fucking vacation? It was over before it started. I had to refuse. And there was no way he could be my partner because then it would be my fault that he got a bad grade. Vacations for me were synonymous with . . . the opposite of learning anything. Thus all this lace-frilled-shirt bullshit written in small type, it wasn't even worth thinking about.

So when he came up to me at the end of class, I didn't see him because I had already tied myself up in knots.

“If you want, we can go to my grandmother's house to practice . . . ”

It was the first time I was hearing his voice and . . . Oh . . . Oh my God . . . that really did me good . . . that loosened me up right away. It stopped me from stressing out.

Why? Because it let me avoid having to
ask
something of a teacher . . .

 

As he thought I was hesitating (no, actually, it was just, wow, the prospect of spending two weeks there), he added timidly:

“She's a seamstress . . . Maybe she could make us costumes.”

I
went to this lady's house every day and each time stayed a little longer than the day before. I even slept there one night because the film version of Guy de Maupassant's
The Necklace
was playing on TV and Franck invited me to watch it with him.

 

As for the Morels, for once, they didn't bother me too much. It's awful to say, but in our world, you get respect if you spend the night with someone early on.

I had a boyfriend, I was dating. At fifteen years old, I was finally screwing, so I wasn't such a loser after all.

Of course, I couldn't help having such totally humiliating and dirty thoughts; first of all, I was used to it, second, as soon as they let me run off, I no longer gave a damn.

My stepmother even paid for me to get new clothes for the occasion. A boyfriend, that was impressive, more so than good grades.

If I had known, I said to myself while looking at my first pair of passably stylish jeans, if I had known, I would have invented tons of “pelicans” before this . . .

 

Without knowing it and in countless ways that were impossible to analyze at the moment, Franck's simple existence—not even “in my life,” no, just his existence—changed the situation.

Mine at least.

 

It was the only vacation of my childhood and the most beautiful one of my life.

 

Ah . . . what a pain in the ass . . .

My little bolster.

W
hat really bothered me in the beginning was how calm it was. Since Franck's grandmother left us alone and because he spoke so quietly, I felt as though there were a corpse in the next room. He wouldn't stop asking, “How are you doing? How are you doing?”—because he saw quite clearly that I wasn't doing well at all. I answered fine, fine, but really, I was super uncomfortable.

And then I got used to it . . .

Just like at school, I let my guard down and changed my attitude.

 

The first time I visited, we went into the dining room where it was so clean that no meal could ever have been served there. It smelled strange . . . like old people . . . sadness . . . We sat facing each other, and he suggested that we begin by re-reading our scene together once through before figuring out how we would rehearse.

I was embarrassed. I didn't understand a thing.

I understood so little that I read the text like an idiot. As if I were deciphering Chinese.

Finally he asked if I had even read the play or at least our section, and when I didn't respond right away, he closed his book and looked at me without saying anything.

 

I felt my fangs coming out again. I didn't want him to beat me over the head with that bullshit from the fourteenth century. I wanted to learn my required lines like gobbledygook from earlier times, you know, sounding it out but without regard for the meaning, but I didn't want him to act like a teacher with me. I was fed up with people who put me in my place all the time by making me feel like a piece of shit. Already at school, I kept my trap shut to avoid any extra trouble, but not there, not in that room that reeked of Polident. He had to stop looking at me like that or I would leave. I could no longer stand anyone staring at me all the time. I just couldn't.

 

“I love your first name . . . ”

It made me happy even if I thought to myself: well, for sure, it's a boy's name . . . but right away he set me straight:

“It's the name of a marvelous singer . . . Do you know Billie Holiday?”

I shook my head.

No, of course not . . . I didn't know anything.

He told me he would play her music for me someday and asked me to follow him.

“Come, sit on the couch . . . There . . . I'm going to read to you . . . Here, take a cushion . . . Make yourself comfortable . . . Like you're in a movie theater . . . ”