A Woman's Story

by Annie Ernaux

  In 1945, they left the Valley, where the foggy climate made me cough and stunted my growth, and moved back to Yvetot. Life in the postwar period was more difficult than during the war. Food was still rationed and those who had “cashed in on the black market” were slowly emerging. While she was waiting to take over a new business, she would walk me round the streets of the town center, littered with debris, or would take me to pray in the chapel, set up in a concert hall to replace the church which had burned down. My father got a job filling in the holes left by the shells. They lived in two rooms without electricity, with the furniture dismantled and stacked up against the wall.

  Three months later she was a new woman, running a business in a semirural district that the war had passed by. As before, they had taken over a general store and a small café. All they had was a tiny kitchen, an upstairs bedroom, and two attic rooms, where one could eat and sleep in relative privacy. On the other hand, there was a large courtyard, a cider press, and several barns for storing firewood, straw and hay. The main advantage, however, was that most customers could afford to pay cash. Although my father ran the café, he managed to find time to look after the garden, keep a few rabbits and hens, and make apple cider, which we sold to the customers. After twenty years of being a worker, he returned to a semirural lifestyle. She was in charge of the store, the accounts, and the orders and reigned supreme overall money matters. Over the years they came to enjoy a higher standard of living than the other working-class people around them. They eventually succeeded in buying the premises, as well as the small adjoining house.

  During the first few years, former customers from Lillebonne came over to see them in the summer holidays. They arrived by coach, bringing their whole families with them. There was a lot of hugging and crying. At mealtimes, they set up the café tables in long rows, sang songs, and reminisced about the Occupation. They stopped coming in the early fifties. She said: “That’s all in the past, one must look to the future now.”

  Images of her, aged between forty and forty-six:

  – one winter morning, she has the nerve to enter the classroom and ask the schoolmistress to find the woolen scarf which I had lost in the lavatories and which had cost her a pretty penny (I remembered the price for a long time);

  – at the seaside one summer, she is fishing for mussels with a sister-in-law younger than herself. Her dress—black stripes on a mauve background—has been rolled up and knotted at the front. Several times during the day, they walk over to a café set up in a hut on the beach and order aperitifs and pastries, laughing all the time;

  – in church, she sang hymns to the Virgin in a loud, booming voice—“One day I shall meet her in heaven, up in heaven.” It made me want to cry and I hated her for it;

  – she wore brightly colored dresses and a black woolen suit. She read Confidences and La Mode du Jour, both popular women’s weeklies. She put her soiled sanitary towels in a corner of the attic until washing day—Tuesday;

  – when I stared at her, she got cross: “Why are you looking at me? Do you want to buy me or something?”;

  – on Sunday afternoons, she would lie down in her slip and stockings. She let me crawl into bed next to her. She fell asleep quickly while I read, huddled up against her back;

  – once, at a confirmation reception, she got drunk and was sick right in front of me. After that, every time there was a party, I eyed the arm resting on the table, and the hand holding the glass, and prayed with all my might that she wouldn’t raise it to her lips.

  She had put on a lot of weight; she was fifteen stone. She ate voraciously and stored sugar lumps in her apron pocket. Unknown to my father, she purchased some slimming pills from a chemist’s in Rouen to lose weight. She cut out bread, as well as butter, but lost only twenty pounds.

  She slammed doors. She banged the chairs when she stacked them on to the tables before sweeping the floor. Everything she did was done noisily. She didn’t put things down, she seemed to throw them.

  One could tell whether she was upset simply by looking at her face. In private she didn’t mince her words and told us straight out what she thought. She called me a beast, a slut, and a bitch, or told me I was “unpleasant.” She would often hit me, usually by slapping my face, or occasionally punching my shoulders (“I could have killed her!”). Five minutes later, she would take me into her arms and I was her “poppet.”

  She bought me toys and books under any pretext, a party, a trip into town, or a slight temperature. She took me to the dentist’s, the lung specialist, and made sure I had good shoes, warm clothes, and all the right stationery I needed for class (she had enrolled me at a private establishment run by nuns, and not at the local primary school). If I mentioned that one of the other girls had an unbreakable slate, she would immediately ask me if I wanted one: “I wouldn’t want them to think you’re not as good as the others.” Her overriding concern was to give me everything she hadn’t had. But this involved so much work, so much worrying about money, and an approach to children’s happiness so radically different from her own education, that she couldn’t help saying: “You know, we spend a lot of money on you” or “Look at everything you’ve got, and you’re still not happy!”

  When I think of my mother’s violent temper, outbursts of affection, and reproachful attitude, I try not to see them as facets of her personality but to relate them to her own story and social background. This way of writing, which seems to bring me closer to the truth, relieves me of the dark, heavy burden of personal remembrance by establishing a more objective approach. And yet something deep down inside refuses to yield and wants me to remember my mother purely in emotional terms—affection or tears—without searching for an explanation.

  She was a working mother, which meant that her first duty lay with the customers who were our livelihood. I wasn’t allowed to interrupt her when she was serving in the shop. (I can remember standing behind the kitchen door, waiting for a few strands of embroidery silk, permission to go and play, and so on.) If I made too much noise, she would burst into the room, slap my face and go back to the counter without uttering a single word. I learnt at an early age how to behave with the customers: “Say hallo in a nice, clear voice,” “Don’t eat or quarrel in front of them,” “Don’t criticize anybody.” I was also taught to view them with distrust: “Never believe what they say,” “Keep an eye on them when they’re alone in the shop.” She had two expressions, one for the customers and one for us. When the bell rang, she went in and played her part, her face beaming, a paragon of patience, asking people the ritual questions about their health, the children, and the garden. Back in the kitchen, she flopped into a chair and the smile faded. She remained speechless for a few moments, exhausted by the role she had taken on. She felt both excited and depressed by the idea that she worked so hard for people who, she was sure, would stop coming to her as soon as they “found somewhere cheaper.”

  She was a mother everyone knew, a sort of public figure. At school, when I was sent to the blackboard, they would say: “Suppose your mother sells ten packets of coffee each at …” (Naturally, they never mentioned the other possibility, which was equally likely: “Suppose your mother sells three aperitifs each at …”)

  She was always in a rush. She never had time to do the cooking and look after the house “properly,” sewing on a button seconds before I left for school, or ironing her blouse on a corner of the kitchen table before slipping it on. After five o’clock in the morning, she scrubbed the floor and unpacked the cardboard boxes. In summer she weeded the rose beds before opening the shop. She was a quick, energetic worker and the chores that gave her the most satisfaction were, strangely enough, the most strenuous ones, the ones she cursed, like washing the sheets and scouring the bedroom floor with steel wool. She found it impossible to lie down or read a book without giving an excuse, for instance, “I think I deserve a little rest now.” (And even then, if she was interrupted by a customer, she would hide her novel under a pile of clothes tha
t needed darning.) The arguments she had with my father always centered on the same subject: the amount of work they carried out respectively. She used to complain: “I’m the one who does everything around here.”

  My father would read only the local newspaper. He didn’t go to places where he didn’t feel “at home” and said of many things that they were not for him. He liked gardening, playing cards and dominoes, and doing odd jobs around the house. He didn’t care about speaking properly and continued to use expressions in the local dialect. She, on the other hand, tried to avoid making grammatical mistakes and chose her words carefully. For instance, she no longer said “serviette” but “napkin.” Occasionally, in the course of the conversation, she would throw in an unfamiliar expression she had read somewhere or picked up from “educated people.” She would speak hesitantly, her face flushed with embarrassment, afraid of making a mistake, while my father laughed and poked fun at her “highfalutin words.” Once she felt confident, she took pleasure in repeating them several times. If she felt they were metaphors—“He wore his heart on his sleeve” or “We’re only birds of passage”—she would smile as she said them, hoping maybe they would sound less pretentious. She loved “style,” anything “dressy,” and the Printemps department store, more chic, she thought, than the Nouvelles Galeries. Naturally, she was just as impressed as he was by the carpets and paintings that adorned the eye specialist’s surgery, but she always tried to conceal her embarrassment. One of her favorite expressions was “I had the cheek” to do this or that. When my father remarked on a new dress or her careful makeup before she left the house, she would reply sharply: “After all, one must keep up one’s position!”

  She longed to learn the rules of good behavior and was always worrying about social conventions, fearful of doing the wrong thing. She longed to know what was in fashion, what was new, the names of famous writers, the recent films on release—although she didn’t go to the cinema, she hadn’t time—and the names of the flowers in gardens. She listened attentively when people spoke of something she didn’t know, out of curiosity, and also because she wanted to show that she was eager to learn. In her opinion, self-improvement was first and foremost a question of learning and nothing was more precious than knowledge. (She would often say: “One must occupy one’s mind.”) Books were the only things she handled with care. She washed her hands before touching them.

  Through me, she continued to satisfy her thirst for knowledge. In the evening, over dinner, she would make me talk about school, the teachers, and the subjects I was taught. She liked using the same expressions as me, such as “break,” “PE,” and “prep.” She expected me to correct her when she had used the wrong word. She no longer asked me if I wanted my “tea” but if I wanted my “dinner.” She took me to Rouen, to see the museum and the other historical monuments, and to Villequier, to visit the graves of Victor Hugo’s family. She was full of admiration for everything. She read the same books I read, the ones recommended by the local bookshop. Sometimes she browsed through Le Hérisson,† left behind by one of the customers, exclaiming in light-hearted tones: “It’s silly but one reads it just the same!” (When she took me to the museum, it wasn’t so much for the pleasure of admiring Egyptian vases, but for the satisfaction of helping me acquire the knowledge and the tastes that she attributed to cultivated people. Sacrificing Confidences and spending the day with Dickens, Daudet, and the recumbent statues in the cathedral was no doubt more for my benefit than for hers.)

  I thought her a cut above my father because she seemed closer to the schoolmistresses and teachers than he did. Everything about my mother—her authority, her hopes, and her ambitions—was geared to the very concept of education. We shared an intimacy centered on books, the poetry I read to her, and the pastries in the teashop at Rouen, from which he was excluded. He took me to the funfair, to the circus, and to see Fernandel’s films. He taught me how to ride a bicycle and recognize the garden vegetables. With him I had fun, with her I had “conversations.” Of the two, she was the dominating figure, the one who represented authority.

  The images I have of her as she approached her fifties are those of a tense, irritable woman. Still the same personality—lively, energetic, and generous, still the blonde or reddish hair, but often a strained expression on her face when she didn’t have to smile at customers. The slightest incident or remark would be an excuse for her to pick a quarrel with her brothers and sisters, or release her anger against their living conditions (small local businesses were threatened by the shops in the new town center). After my grandmother died, she continued to wear mourning for a long time and took to attending early-morning mass. Something “Romanesque” in her died.

  1952. Her forty-sixth summer. We have come over by coach to spend the day in Étretat. She is climbing up the cliff, moving through the long grass in her blue crêpe dress, the one with the big flowers, which she slipped into behind the rocks. She left home in her mourning suit because of the neighbors. She reaches the top after me, breathless, the beads of sweat glistening through her makeup. She hasn’t had her period for two months.

  During my adolescence I broke away from her and there remained only the struggle between us. In the world where she grew up, the very idea that young girls could enjoy sexual freedom was unthinkable. Those who did were doomed for life. Sex was either presented as a saucy business unfit for “virgin ears” or else it served to dictate moral standards—people behaved “properly” or “improperly.” She told me nothing about the facts of life and I would never have dreamed of asking her. In those days, curiosity carried the seeds of vice. I can remember the feeling of panic when I had to confess that I had my period and say the word in front of her for the first time. I can also remember her acute embarrassment as she handed me a sanitary towel, without explaining what to do with it.

  She didn’t like to see me grow up. When she saw me undressed, my body seemed to repel her. No doubt she saw my breasts and hips as a threat and was afraid I would start running after boys and lose interest in my studies. She wanted me to stay a child, saying I was thirteen a week before my fourteenth birthday and making me wear pleated skirts, ankle socks, and low-heeled shoes. Until I was eighteen practically all our arguments revolved around my choice of clothes and her forbidding me to go out. For instance, she insisted on my wearing a girdle when I left the house: “That way, you’ll be dressed properly.” She would fly into a terrible rage—“You’re not going out like that!”—for apparently no reason (a dress, a new hairstyle) and although these outbursts were excessive, they seemed perfectly normal to me. We both knew what to expect from each other: she knew I longed to seduce the boys, I knew she was terrified I would “have an accident,” in other words, that I would start to sleep around and get pregnant.

  Sometimes I imagined her death would have meant nothing to me.

  As I write, I see her sometimes as a “good,” sometimes as a “bad” mother. To get away from these contrasting views, which come from my earliest childhood, I try to describe and explain her life as if I were writing about someone else’s mother and a daughter who wasn’t me. Although I try to be as objective as possible, certain expressions, such as “If you ever have an accident …” will always strike a sensitive chord in me, while others remain totally abstract, for instance, “the denial of one’s own body and sexuality.” When I remember these expressions, I experience the same feeling of disillusion I had when I was sixteen. Fleetingly, I confuse the woman who influenced me most with an African mother pinning her daughter’s arms behind her back while the village midwife slices off the girl’s clitoris.

  I stopped trying to copy her. I felt drawn to the feminine ideal portrayed in L’Echo de la Mode. The women one read about were slim and discreet; they were good cooks and called their little girls “darling.” They reminded me of the middle-class mothers whose daughters were my companions at school. I found my own mother’s attitude brash. I averted my eyes when she uncorked a bottle, holding it locked between
her knees. I was ashamed of her brusque manners and speech, especially when I realized how alike we were. I blamed her for being someone who I, by moving into new circles, no longer wanted to be. I discovered there was a world of difference between wanting to be educated and actually acquiring that knowledge. My mother needed an encyclopedia to say who Van Gogh was. She knew the classics only by name. My school curriculum was a mystery to her. Because of my strong admiration for her, I couldn’t help feeling that she—much more than my father—had let me down, by not being able to lend me her support and by leaving me defenseless in a strange, new world, where the other girls’ drawing-rooms were lined with books. All she had to offer me were her anxiety and her suspicion: “Who were you with?” “Are you getting your work done?”

  We spoke to each other in quarrelsome tones. Her efforts to revive our former intimacy—“you know you can tell your mother everything”—were met by silence because I realized this was no longer possible. If I showed enthusiasm for subjects other than school (sports, travel, parties) or if I discussed politics (it was during the Algerian war), at first she would listen attentively, flattered to be my confidante, then would snap angrily: “Stop worrying about all that, you know school comes first.”

  I began to scorn social conventions, religious practices, and money. I copied out poems by Rimbaud and Prévert, stuck photographs of James Dean on the front of my exercise books, and played La Mauvaise Réputation by Georges Brassens. I identified with anonymous artists. In short, I was bored. My teenage crisis smacked of romanticism, as if my parents had come from a bourgeois background. For my mother, rebellion meant only one thing—the denial of poverty—and called for only one possible course of action: get a job, earn money, and work one’s way up the social ladder. As a result, she criticized me bitterly, an attitude which was as incomprehensible to me as my behavior was to her: “If we’d packed you off to a factory at the age of twelve, it’d be a different story. You don’t know how lucky you are.” She would often say of me in bitter tones: “Look at her! She goes to a convent school and yet she’s no better than the rest of them.”