A Frozen Woman

by Annie Ernaux

  The lines of the body and the heart should not be confused; the latter line tends to be somewhat dotted. Was I really a little girl in love? Do the boys—those objects of curiosity and obligatory partners of my reveries—have names and faces? I invent many of them from my reading. Charles, rejected by Scarlett, becomes my fiance during the period of the sufficient and indispensable finger. In La Semaine de Suzette, a girls’ magazine, I find fourteen-year-old heroes, just the right age, whom I accompany in search of treasure hidden in country houses off in Brittany. There are some real-life “sweethearts.” My girlfriends pick out lots of them for me: you’ve got this one, and that Fouchet boy—I’m so proud, I sort through them and say which ones I like the best, swearing cross my heart that if I ever get the chance, I’ll go all the way with that one. What chance. We say “Hi,” that’s it. Don’t even dare use first names, that would be a sure giveaway. Can’t remember the names, now. Most important are the ones I don’t brag about. There’s that sweet altar boy with the pasty complexion who accompanies the old lady, the pew attendant on the right side of the church. He appears, with downcast eyes, between the reading of the gospel for the day and the elevation of the Host; he wears a pretty surplice of lace over his red gown, which is a bit short, so I can see his shoes. He holds out his slender, damp little hand, into which I place my twenty-franc piece. I hold out my hand for my ten francs of change. Every Sunday I wait for a look, something, but my conquest is always a flop, and God and the Virgin aren’t helping. I don’t yet understand that simply being there is not enough to attract attention, you have to turn on some charm, be a bit flirty and how dumb can you get, throwing yourself at the boys like that, they want to be the ones making the moves, etc. All the tactics I’ll learn about later on. Now for the guys I boast about. A tall boy who has just gotten his primary school certificate is over at my house, when suddenly he grabs me violently from behind with one arm, plants his lips on my neck, and dashes off. This confuses me. I have not felt faint at the touch of “his burning kiss,” delivered while I was watching our bunnies nibble the crackers I had brought them. Perhaps I was not prepared for this event. But anyway, that’s it, I can tell everyone I’ve been kissed. Then there’s the one whose name is sheer magic for years. Simon. Black eyes, white teeth, sparkling smile, it sounds like a soppy love song but that’s him, plus his white shorts set off his nice brown thighs. We roller-skate together one whole afternoon and he never falls once. Summertime. We say good-bye on the road into town. I wait for the bus with my father. I can see the beginning of the street where Simon lives from the bus stop. We wait a long time. I look at the asphalt on the road, the empty lots sporting rusty pieces of junk, and the factories in the distance, making a sound like the roar of the sea. I’m unaware that this is my first scene of parting. I think I’ll be coming back the following year. “Simon says raise your arm; Simon says take a step.” He’s the one speaking to me through that girl on the playground. I write his initials everywhere. And still the same thing, even further back. They’ve taken me to hear a military band on the place des Beiges: cloudy sky the color of smoke; a sea of backs huddled in rough woolen coats. Among all the heads I notice the nape of a soldier’s neck. He’s blowing away on a bugle, I think. Sometimes I see the hint of a profile, or he puts an arm down. I keep coming back to that skin between the razor-straight line of his hair and the khaki collar. I do not stand there endlessly scraping the toe of my shoe along the ground, or trying to see patterns in the gravel, or imagining a tiny house between people’s feet—all the things you do when you’re stuck in one place. That day, gazing at that neck, I understand what happens between a man and a woman, what all Brigitte’s descriptions never make me feel. Something luminous. Nothing to do with toilet talk. The first real presence of a man.

  On vacation, out in the courtyard under fluffy white clouds, I’m swinging, talking to myself. The cases of empty wine bottles give off a musty smell. A customer drops by the café; in her white smock, my mother busies herself over by the shelves. I hear a steady metallic pounding from a workshop, the piercing whine of a power saw, the rumble of trains on the tracks nearby. Men are the movers and shakers of the world around me: they build roads and repair motors, while women make only discreet noises inside houses—the knock of a broom against a baseboard or the murmur of a sewing machine. I am ten years old, and like all little girls, I have no idea of this. The surrounding hum of the city means nothing to me. Nestling inside it is my existence, precious to me and my parents. The world of boys doesn’t threaten me. Nothing but an intermittent dream, a promise of happiness. Neither bright light nor shadow, not yet.

  Years that I thought were full ones. Illusion. Undermined, no doubt, by second thoughts, the sly smiles of prudes, religion, the discovery of other role models. My spinster schoolteachers never make as deep an impression as my mother does, but they, too, are strong, active women, all-powerful, with hands that write difficult things on the blackboard, and a way of waiting with that set look on their faces, arms crossed: “Be seated and be quiet.” They know everything, and even though I don’t love them because they seem so strange to me, with their words and their refined manners, I admire them. It doesn’t bother me at all that women are more knowledgeable than men. The men I see at school wear long black dresses like my grandmother: the chaplain and the priest. The headmistress drags this last through the classrooms each trimester to hand out grades. He beams moistly at us, just a touch gaga, in contrast to the flushed and furious principal who is always ready to explode at our laziness and stupidity. Of course she’s the one who counts. I’ve no reason to fear her as far as grades go. A good reputation, the truly narcissistic high opinion of oneself that this provides, scholastic success. Freedom, self-confidence. A taste of power, obviously. The teachers overlook my rambunctiousness, which stays with me for a long time—an only child so thrilled to find twenty playmates to chatter with, even if half of them are show-offs and crybabies who wail at the slightest bump. The other half, neither as well dressed nor as well mannered—they’re enough to make me happy. Our dear ladies couldn’t make ends meet with just the upper­crusters, so they have to take on the daughters of farmers because it pays good money, and then they round out the list with girls from working-class families with big ideas. Elisabeth, who comes to class in winter with her mother’s stockings sewn to her panties, and Chantal, who is such good company downtown after school. Together we buy Raymond Radiguet’s The Devil in the Flesh because of the cover. Bernadette, a champion at giving the teacher impudent looks from under her bangs—don’t you be rude young lady! Unfazed. My pals. They don’t often win the cross, the handsome copper medal awarded on Saturdays to the most deserving, the diligent, the obedient, the fakers who can smell the teacher coming a hundred meters away and snap into angelic poses. The headmistress awards the medal in person, with a kiss. You should see them glow, the winners. On Monday they wear it to school pinned to their blouses with a superb bow with two, even four fat loops of ribbon, a real flower. Some of them must polish the thing with Twinkle. I have a terrible knack for it. They keep on giving it to me, “although you certainly don’t deserve it, my dear, for your behavior. Or for neatness. Remember,” says the head, fixing me with a stern eye, “one may receive tens in everything and yet not please the Good Lord. Once there was an extremely gifted little girl—not one of you could have held a candle to her—who passed all her exams brilliantly, every one of them. Do you know what she is now?” Deep silence. I’m still standing there waiting to get the cross. “They push her around in a wheelchair. She has the mind of a two-year-old. Because of a disease sent to her by God.” For one moment—no more—I wish I were at the very bottom of the class. Even if God obviously doesn’t care about grammar or arithmetic, my mother does, while marks for good conduct and pretty drawings in our notebooks, in her opinion, are cat piss. The cross? Stuff and nonsense. Besides, I keep losing it, and my mother hates having to hunt through the cupboard drawers and find it wedged between so
me cookie boxes. No pretty ribbon bow. “I haven’t time for that! Study hard, that’s the main thing.” Under these conditions, it’s difficult to believe everything the headmistress says.

  The pleasure of being thoroughly myself when I recite a poem, conjugate a verb, or solve a math problem without a single mistake. Strength. Support and comfort in the face of the fact that the teachers clearly prefer certain students, the ones I call show-offs, daintily dressed, with curls, a little barrette here, a white collar there, mother’s little darlings. My braids are pinned on top of my head, no hair in my eyes, it gets in the way—one of my mother’s unshakable principles. The sweetie pies, the cute pixies, they’re just naturally charming, that’s what I figure. The ones the teacher in charge of school plays, pageants, and all the other festive hopping-around put on to entertain the families inevitably picks when she shows up in the classroom to muster her troops. “I need six daisies for ‘The Waltz of the Flowers,’ stand up, girls, let’s see—you there, you’ll do nicely.” Usually it’s the same ones. I have hopes, at first. Too bad, maybe next year. Once I was picked and sent back two minutes later. I’m always too big, no matter what class I’m in, too clumsy, paralyzed at the idea of moving my arms and legs around while people are watching. Rejected. The chosen ones enjoy their special status for weeks; they are fetched for rehearsals right in the middle of class and receive mysterious messages: “At one o’clock in the assembly hall.” Finally, they appear one evening under the lights, in spotless tutus, revealing their secret identities as living dolls. If I’m not a doll, then what am I?

  Quick, come to me, my make-believe appearance, the one I invent for myself when I’m bored in school, taking Roseline’s long blond hair (“It would be a crime to cut it,” the teacher says), Françoise’s round, rosy cheeks, the slim figure of Jeanne, a young Greek goddess (I’d read that somewhere). The only thing of mine I keep is my eyes: they’re nothing special, but I’m attached to them. Secretly I’m already busy with the next installment of the outlandish story I tell myself to replace the real girl with a paragon of grace and delicate beauty. Before the bell at half past one, the big girls of twelve and older are talking, laughing; one of them wears red ankle-boots and a blue blouse. I adore her because I’m going to be like her, and I’ll press the back of my hand to my forehead the way she does and exclaim, “Algebra, what a drag!” I possess nothing like her round face and slender limbs, but I’ll get there, at the same time as I get to the algebra. I love looking at her, which isn’t easy; the others flock around her, hiding her from view, but she reappears, unaware of my existence, because big kids don’t give a damn about little ones. I never identify with tall, sturdy girls or ones who have boyish features, who don’t conform to the standard image of the pretty little girl. Rolande, my deskmate for one whole year, resembles a shepherd out of a book of Bible history. Her pale mouth whispering next to my ear repulses me. Vague and awful suspicion: sometimes there’s not a great deal of difference between boys and girls, physically. Yet many of my classmates fall into this blurred category—why does it upset me? I must already have it firmly in my head that girls are supposed to be all gentleness and soft curves. All these faces among which I seek my own . . . No, at ten years old, I am not yet as complete a person as I would have liked to be.

  Although they aren’t brutal about it, our teachers do their bit—under a sugarcoating of religion—to erode our will and self-confidence, as though they were denying us the same favor they had themselves been granted, to teach and make their own ways in life. I remember everything: my astonishment and disbelief, and the teacher—Sylvestre is her name, she can’t stand me, always reprimanding and making fun of me. She looks like Saint Therese of Lisieux, with her hair caught up in a barrette and hanging down her back. All bubbly, that day: “Tell me, girls, what would you like to be when you grow up? A farmer, yes; a secretary, that’s very good.” And she asks us why, helping us with our answers. She cuts me off short: “You’ll run a grocery store like your mother, surely!” I can’t get over it; I’d been going to say, “Teacher.” Well, she must know better. Too bad. Now it’s Marie­Paule’s turn: she’s calmly grinning from ear to ear. “And you?” “Me, I’m going to be a mama.” Howls of laughter from everyone, even the little prigs; we are all collapsing on our desks, looking around at one another, because that makes it twice as much fun when you laugh. A furious Mlle Sylvestre barks at us, “Be quiet, you little imbeciles!” She begins to speak softly, slowly sweeping her stern gaze across our upturned faces. “Being a mama, for your information, is the most wonderful job in the world!” No one bats an eye. Farmer, doctor, we’ve even had a nun, grocer—all that goes out the window. I still remember my total incomprehension. Perhaps because this is the first time anyone has ever thrown all my convictions into confusion. She has a real gift, Saint Sylvestre de Lisieux—two truths for the price of one: a grocer’s daughter I am, so a grocer’s daughter I will always be, besides which, there is no destiny more glorious than pushing brats around in a baby carriage.

  “Don’t bother your head with that, just study.” My mother sets me straight again. Coercive, but reassuring. Yet they must have had some effect on me, those twelve years of listening to my teachers harp on and on in praise of sacrifice and selflessness. The body is a cesspool, intelligence a sin. The prayers aren’t the worst of it, but oh, the lives of the saints: Agnes, that white lamb, whipped, tortured, fed to the lions; Blandine, the same scenario; Maria Goretti, a knife plunged right in the heart, and I weep in class over Joan of Arc. Bernadette was almost illiterate, girls, but do you know, that poor, modest shepherdess was chosen by the Good Lord, even though He could certainly have picked someone much more educated, and the three children of Fatima, and the two humble shepherds who saw the Virgin at La Salette, blah blah. Fascinating. Simplicity, innocence, the mortification of the body, and even the ne plus ultra, martyrdom, like the scrofula afflicting Saint Germaine. These women sacrificed their lives, and nothing, girls, could ever be more pleasing to God than that. Sucking blissfully on caramel lollipops, tackling the climbing rope, whispering in line—all that is vaguely sinful. The leitmotif is making sacrifices: for example, not talking even though you’d like to; going without dessert; doing the dishes for your mama. Whenever you don’t want to do something, do it. Keep a notebook and write your sacrifices down. Some girls fill their notebooks with numbered lists. Emulation in renunciation. Maybe it’s the same song and dance in the religious dumps for boys, the same regime of purity and fear, but they can’t be kept down as much as we are—they’re allowed to fight, encouraged to become leaders, and the good fathers don’t despise balls, duas habet. l become convinced early on that women are more pious than men: they pack the church on Sundays, while my father waits for Low Sunday to go to confession and take the sacrament at Easter time. He hates the whole business and only goes at all to avoid a huge scene at home. Women have to be more pious. If a man isn’t religious, it doesn’t matter, because we girls are here to save the world through our prayers and exemplary behavior. Luckily I feel overwhelmed, utterly unworthy despite all my efforts, and my sacrifices do not fill me with the anticipated happiness. I’m careful to hide my infamy: the joy I feel at racking up those good grades, seeing things I’m not supposed to, pinching candies from my mother. My natural naughtiness. My sloppiness, simply impossible to hide: smudges on my notebooks (how can I explain that I do my homework on the kitchen table?), fingerprints on my sewing squares. “Cleanliness is next to godliness, mademoiselle!” I am exposed. Stain—that troubling word. The stainless virtue of Mary. How can I ever conceal all the violence and longing I trundle about inside myself? It’s so hard, with a guardian angel at one’s back and God everywhere, and one’s conscience, that big staring eye floating up in a corner of the ceiling, the first lesson in the ethics book. During our catechism sessions in the freezing chapel, I try vainly to hide in the back rows with all the gigglers, but the headmistress makes sure I do not escape the attention of the b
espectacled chaplain. And the Friday confession slips, an awful custom. We write our names on pieces of paper that the teacher collects and sends to the priest. Later, when we are plumb in the middle of a geometry problem, a student will enter and hand a slip to the teacher, who stops the class to read the name out loud. So that we all know who is scrupulous enough to wish to be pure and spotless in the eyes of God. How proud they are, getting up to leave the classroom, returning twenty minutes later with another piece of paper and another name. The daisy chain of good little girls. The secret shame of staying seated, noticed immediately by one’s teacher and classmates. Once a month, crawling with revulsion, I join the chain. But resistance is best, and silence. All in all, I prefer the guilt of hidden transgressions to that atrocious, flaccid moment after confession. Kneeling between the statues of Saint Cecilia and Saint Lawrence, I hate having admitted to the priest that I have committed the sin of pride, that I have stolen plums and sung dirty songs. That nervous tongue wetting thick lips, that fetid curiosity—I just hate myself. Little girls must be transparent to be happy. That’s too bad. Me, I feel I’m better off in hiding. Convinced that this attitude will carry me through, I protect myself from within, with a solid dark core of wickedness and desires. This same defense mechanism also means that I am scared witless that the Virgin will appear to me, and then I’ll have to become a saint, which doesn’t appeal to me one bit. I want to travel, to eat papayas and rice with chopsticks, and use what gifts I have to become a doctor or a teacher. So whenever they lecture us, I use some and leave the rest behind.