Tita

by Marie Houzelle

  He shakes his head. “We had only one first communion,” he says. Quietly, as if to himself.

  “But for us it’s different! Please, may I? You don’t even need to come to church if you don’t want to!”

  He sighs, and I can see he’s irritated, but not at me exactly: at Sainte-Blandine, Cugnac, the whole world maybe. He opens the glass door and goes into the garden.

  I run after him and catch the hem of his jacket from behind. “Please, please.” And I don’t know where the inspiration comes from, but I actually kneel on the gravel. It hurts, this layer of tiny stones my mother spread all over our garden because she so dislikes dirt and weeds. There I am, kneeling in front of Father, my face bathed in tears (the stones help), embarrassingly like the bad girl in the comtesse de Ségur’s Caprices de Giselle, who always cries and carries on to make her parents do what she wants. Father takes one tired look at me. “Do what you like,” he says, and strides away into the back street.

  I run to tell Mother, who’s sitting at the kitchen table with a fork in her hand. She holds a petit four, spreads a spoonful of almondy-smelling paste over it, puts it down on a rack and goes on to the next one. “Good,” she says. “You were a baby at the time, but I remember your father having to pay for Justine’s private communion party at her mother’s in Paris. So there’s no reason...” She finishes her frosting, washes her hands, takes off her glasses, wipes them with the special beige cloth she keeps in a small box above the sink, puts the glasses back on.

  Upstairs she makes me try on my white dress, decides that it won’t do, and drives to town to buy organdy for a new one. We’ll borrow a crown of tiny flowers from my friend Anne-Claude Espeluque, who made her private communion three years ago.

  “Maxime, Etienne and Justine will be here for Easter vacation,” Mother says as she marks and cuts the organdy on the dining-room table. “We’ll have a party at the Cabarrou, in the sun.” My older sister and brothers are not her children, but they’re all fond of her and she’s proud of being nothing like the classic stepmother. They spend all the school vacations with us, but their mother and their schools are in Paris.

  We’re careful not to mention any of our preparations in front of Father: we don’t want to aggravate him.

  Cucumber

  Mother isn’t at home when we come back from school. Where is she? Father doesn’t know. When will she be back? Grandmother shrugs. Coralie couldn’t care less; she’s just wolfed down her third hunk of gros pain and, with her mouth full, is asking for another chocolate bar. Mother is shopping in Narbonne, or having tea with friends. She’ll be back for dinner. No need to worry. I don’t worry, I’d just like to know.

  Our friends join us, our neighbors. Eléonore’s house is just across the back street, Roseline’s father runs the garage next to the railway station, Monique and her little sister Nicole live at the top of the townhouse around the corner on the avenue. We play together every evening after school. Not the same school. They all go to the state school (école laïque), whereas we go to what’s called the free school (école libre), which is a joke because at the state school the students are about twenty times freer than we are at our private “free” school. Father explained that our school is libre insofar as it doesn’t have to follow the national curricula and schedules. But our teacher is also free, every time we forget a book or open our mouths, to make us write a hundred lines for the next day. A kind of punishment they haven’t even heard of at the other school.

  Eléonore has brought a collection of old tutus, two pink, one white, one yellow, and our friends slip into them while Coralie pulls on a leotard and I look at my play. “Let’s work on Act II, Scene 2,” I say.

  Coralie cries, “Yay! That’s where I fight with the ghost! Let me get my sword!”

  Roseline is moaning, “This is too tight for me! What shall I do?”

  “You don’t need a tutu, you’re the baker’s daughter,” I say. Actually, nobody needs a tutu, but Eléonore brings them, and they’re happy to wear them. “Let’s find you a dress in the trunk,” I say. That’s where we keep the treasures we bring back from our explorations into the attics. One of them has mostly magazines, papers and broken filing cabinets, but the other two are full of sideboards, chests of drawers, wardrobes, with inexhaustible stores of clothes, fabrics and knickknacks. “Do you like this one, with the purple flowers?”

  But I hear the front door shutting. Could it be Mother? I have to go and see. No, it’s Loli, coming back from the corner grocery with lemons and bananas in her basket.

  In the playroom (which we call “the pantry” because that’s what it used to be) my friends are all in costume now. Monique, who is tall and thin, plays the ghost, in a white tutu, with a white sheet over her head. Little Nicole, in the pink tutu (much too large for her), is lying under the ping-pong table on a blanket. She’s an orphan, dying of consumption. I didn’t give her much to say, for she is shy. Eléonore never wants to learn a part: she dances around, changing tutus between scenes.

  As we start rehearsal, I can hear Mother’s high, mellow voice; she’s talking on the telephone in the hall. She must have come in through the front door. Normally she uses the back door after leaving her car in our garage. Did she park it in the railway station’s forecourt? This would mean she’s going out tonight. But she can’t be going out tonight, on a Wednesday.

  Roseline, in her flowery gown, singing softly, is looking out the window, knitting her brows. Her fiancé is late. Actually, he’s fighting with the ghost under the bridge, but she can’t see him. End of scene. Maybe I should add dialogue before the ghost and the lover start their fight. But first I’ll work on the song with Roseline, while Coralie and Monique practise fighting.

  Mother calls us for our bath. Eléonore decides to leave the tutus in our closet. We say good-bye, à demain.

  In the bathtub Coralie and I play with our boats and stones. Our brother Maxime used to have what he called a rock collection, but now he’s taken up photography so he’s lost interest in the stones and said we could have them. We throw Maxime’s beautiful stones at the boats to sink them. Coralie is good at this, I am not.

  That’s when Mother puts on a plastic apron and attacks us with a flannel. Coralie wants to go on playing. Mother says, “Don’t wiggle like an eel!” I don’t resist: I like the rose-scented soap, and to be clean. Mother holds out a large white towel, warm from the radiator, and takes me in her lap to dry me off. Coralie doesn’t want to get out of the water, but as soon as I’m dry, she has to.

  While she runs around the bathroom, Mother cleans my ears with cotton wool she’s rolled around the tail end of a match. When the match scrapes my left ear, I cough. “Your coughing ear,” Mother says. She pours cologne on a ball of cotton wool and dabs the skin around my hair. She helps me with my nightgown and robe, then tries to get Coralie into her lap, which is never easy.

  Mother’s not taking a bath now, which means she’ll have it later. Which means she’s not going out. Then why did she come in through the front door?

  On Wednesdays we never have guests, and we dine early, around half past seven. After dinner, Father gets ready to drive to his club. The club, where he plays bridge twice a week, is on the upper floor of the Café du Commerce, on the promenade. “Will you give me the keys to the 4CV?” he asks Mother. That’s it then. He’s taking Mother’s car. That’s why she parked it outside.

  “Is there anything wrong with the 402?” I ask Father as he puts on his overcoat.

  He tousles my hair. “I hope not. I left it at the Peugeot garage for an oil change. And your mother had mentioned a noise, so I asked Perez to take a look at the engine. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  The 402 is fifteen years old, older than my sister Justine. Father says it’s in good condition. It’s light brown, stable and strong, big enough for the whole family, reassuring. It’s the only one of its kind around here, but it doesn’t stand out.

  Mother says it’s too old. Eléonore’s parents have jus
t bought a Vedette, and they’re all excited about it. Mother thinks we should get one too. I’m glad for Eléonore, but I don’t like the Vedette. It’s light blue, and ridiculously long, like an American car. Kind of flashy. I like the 402, I hope it lives for ever.

  Every Wednesday and Saturday, as soon as Father is gone, we all retire to Mother’s bedroom and bathroom. These are Mother’s beauty evenings, and we’re allowed to spend them with her. Mother gets into her bubble bath (tonight, gardenia) and I scrub her back with a sponge. Then I peel the cucumber she’s left in a bowl on the table near the basin and cut it up into tiny pieces. I add almond oil and crush the mixture into a paste with a fork. When Mother comes out of the bath, she puts on her light-green bathrobe; she sits in a wicker chair in the middle of the bathroom, and I dry her hair with a towel. I comb it, shake the bottle of Pétrole Hahn and sprinkle the lotion onto Mother’s hair then massage it into every part of her scalp until she says it’s enough. I have mixed feelings about Pétrole Hahn, the way it smells: nice and fresh on the surface, bergamot, I think, and lemon; but a pungent fetor underneath, which Mother says is what makes it effective. Against dandruff, and for sparkle.

  I hold the hair dryer with one hand while, with the other, I comb Mother’s hair. It’s auburn, shoulder-length, and slightly curly. I have to brush it from underneath, to give it what Mother calls “volume”. Mother’s hair is completely different from ours. It never tangles up, and lends itself painlessly to comb and brush. A beautiful, docile possession, which changes color with the light, and shape with her movements or the wind.

  When I’m done, Mother covers her hair with a pink scarf. She moves to the easy chair near the window, and I spread the cucumber cream on her face and neck. There’s some left, and Mother wants me to smear it on my face, but I won’t. I rub my hands with it, then rinse them.

  Time to join Coralie, who all this time has been sitting in the bedroom in Father’s armchair, with her feet on the coffee table next to a heap of Pieds Nickelés. She loves these comic books about three lazy crooks who play tricks on the pompous and the rich. But we need to go on with our little soirée. In the alcove, Mother settles against a large pillow on the outside of the bed, next to the lamp, with a few issues of Jardin des Modes. I climb into the middle to share the magazines, and Coralie joins us on the inside with her Pieds Nickelés.

  Once in a while, she has a question for me. “What is Ribouldingue saying to the lady with the hat?” “Why does the policeman have to let Filochard go?” There’s a lot of text in these stories, a whole narrative, not just dialogue. Mostly she can make it out for herself, from the drawings. I find this amazing. I’m exactly the opposite: I read only the text, forgetting that these are comics, and after a while I don’t understand what’s happening. Sometimes I try to go back and look at the drawings, but usually I just give up.

  Mother studies the latest fashions and critiques the models as well as the dresses and coats. One has horrifyingly thick ankles, another practically no waist, yet another a microscopic nose. “Just look at this!” she says. I look. But I can’t get too interested in these women’s physiques, or their outlandish costumes. Amid the fragrance of cucumber and almond, I read the descriptions: alpaga, zibeline, dentelle rebrodée de ruche, mousseline de soie, georgette de laine. Mysterious words, which I’ll look up tomorrow.

  By the time Mother gets up from the bed and goes to the bathroom to take off the cucumber paste, Coralie is asleep. Mother, when she comes back, takes her in her arms and carries her to our room, but I’m allowed to stay. And stay. Mother critiques, I read, it could go on for ever. She won’t need to carry me to my bed, because I won’t fall asleep.

  When she decides to turn off the light, I kiss her and go to our room, black and filled with Coralie’s rhythmic breathing. In my bed, I try to hang on to the bergamot, the cucumber, the quiet of the alcove. But I can’t help looking towards the future: the days to come, the weeks, their arcs of relief and disquiet.

  Tomorrow evening, at least, our parents will play Pharaoh with the Pujols. In our house.

  Champagne

  Today I’m tasting the host. Anne-Claude compares it to paper, Justine says it feels more like cotton wool. Intriguing.

  I get to church half an hour before the ten o’clock mass because we have to rehearse our hymns and movements one last time. When the congregation comes in, we stand at the back of the church; then we all walk very slowly in procession from side chapel to side chapel, between the parts of the mass, and we sing. In front of saint Régis, I do my solo, Au ciel dans ma patrie, about the bliss of joining the Virgin Mary in heaven. I’d love to die and be forever ecstatic, but I don’t feel any special attraction to the Virgin. Except I’d like to give birth in a stable, like her. Not to the son of God, though. I want daughters. Four, like in Les Quatre Filles du docteur March.

  Mother is pleased because I look good in my new white dress, white ankle socks, white patent-leather shoes, crown of tiny white roses on my dark ringlets (her work of the morning, with a curling iron). Father has come too, and he doesn’t look disgruntled. The host is fine. You feel something smooth and quiet on your tongue, but solid, not slippery. It sticks a bit, and after a while it dissolves. Hardly any taste at all. I wish I could live on hosts.

  After mass, we all drive to the Cabarrou with Grandmother, my two brothers and two sisters, a few friends of my parents’, and my friend Eléonore. The Cabarrou is our park, but it isn’t attached to our townhouse, or even very near. To get there, you have to walk for ten minutes to the other side of the railway tracks, into the vineyards.

  Today, as soon as we open the gate, a foul smell attacks me. Barbecue. I run all the way to the other end of the park, but I can’t find a cranny that’s free of the reek. Behind the pine trees it isn’t so bad, but once in a while you get hit by a wave of burning flesh. My brothers are the ones who instigated the barbecue. They said they’d take care of it.

  The only good thing about a barbecue, especially when there are people coming, going and jostling around, is that nobody pays any attention to what I eat. Or don’t eat. Except for my brother Etienne, but he’s not going to rat on me. “You should taste this lamb chop,” he says. “It’s perfect.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “If you had a choice between eating this and having your eyes gouged out,” he asks, “what would you do?”

  “Try to find a quicker way to die?”

  Etienne shakes his head. “You know, you must be a Cathar.”

  “A Cathar?”

  “From the Middle Ages. Simon de Montfort massacred them. They didn’t eat any meat or cheese. For them, Matter was a prison. They were vanquished, but they survive in you!” He takes my waist between his large hands, throws me up, catches me and sets me back on the ground. Then he runs to tend the barbecue.

  I try a tiny radish, and it hurts the whole inside of my mouth. People seem to gobble them as if they were figs, or cherries. Many are sticking wedges of butter on them. I ask Justine why anybody would want to do this, and she says, hoping her vocabulary will dazzle me, “It assuages the pungency.” As if people had to eat something that stings their taste buds in the first place.

  At the end of the meal Father starts pouring Champagne. Eléonore drinks hers in one gulp, and shivers. I taste mine slowly. After every sip, my tongue keeps on tingling. Then someone gives us more, and I drink it up although I already feel dizzy. I’m not sure what happens after that. I climb some trees with Eléonore and Coralie. A branch snaps. Coralie slides into the pond and gets her blue dress all muddy. Justine rescues her. “You’re lucky I happened to be around. I wonder how you all manage to stay alive when I’m in Paris.” Right, Coralie was going to drown in two feet of slime.

  Eléonore wants to play ballerinas, and my sisters agree. Justine suggests a corny choreography inspired by the film Violettes Impériales, and Coralie says she’ll provide acrobatics. I roll my eyes, and leave — they’re so busy plotting their entrechats, they don’t even not
ice. As I walk about the park trying to think of something to do, I bump into my oldest brother Maxime, hard at work taking photos of lilac blossoms. I can only see his back, all bent and awry as he concentrates on his task. Next to playing ballerinas, taking photos of lilac blossoms must be the most stupid occupation in the whole universe.

  Maxime got a state-of-the-art camera for his twenty-first birthday in February, and he’s been obsessed ever since. He used to take lots of photos before, but normal ones: of the family, friends, some neighbor’s new car, his rugby team, the cats. Now, with this new equipment, he’s become an artist, so he’s no longer interested in the kinds of photos anybody could take. If you see a human being in a photo of his, it’ll only be their wrist. Or a bit of their ankle. An earhole, a strand of hair. That’s what artists do; he’s explained it all to me.

  “Please, Maxime,” I say. “When you’re done with this, could you please take a photo of me with the parents.” I have a very clear idea in mind: me in the middle, with a parent on each side. A Jesus-in-the-crib configuration.

  “No, I can’t,” he says, pressing buttons and turning knobs as he peers into his camera. “I’m not even sure I’ll have enough film for what I want to do.”

  “Maxime!” I wail. I sound like a baby. “This is my private communion, there should be a photo of it, don’t you think?”

  He’s still busy with his focus and his flowers. Can’t even spare me a glance. “There must have been a photographer at the church door, when you came out,” he says.

  “It will be everybody coming out of the church, a jumble of people. What I’d like is a photo of just the parents and me. Please.”

  I want this very much all of a sudden. I don’t know why, but I can’t do without it. Who needs all these lilacs? I hate him. I decide to look for Father. Perhaps he could ask Maxime in a way that would make him do it.