When Caroline looks at me, I feel like the best-looking guy in the world. We’re the same age, but she knows all there is to know about us boys. Maman Pauline says she’s very advanced. I don’t know what that means. Maybe it’s because Caroline acts like a real lady. Even at her age she wears lipstick and she braids almost every woman’s hair in our neighbourhood, including my mother’s. Caroline listens to what the fine ladies say about men, and she can’t wait to be like the women she goes shopping with in the Grand Marché. Maman Pauline says Caroline knows how to make a dish of beans and manioc leaves, which a lot of grown-up people still can’t do. She is really very advanced.
Caroline’s parents and mine are friends. They live at the far end of the Avenue of Independence, just before the road that leads to the Savon quartier, where Uncle René lives. It’s a short walk from their house to ours, ours is the one painted green and white halfway down the same avenue, opposite Yeza, the joiner, who makes loads of coffins and lines them up in front of his lot, so people can come and choose.
Caroline and I used to go to school together, at Trois-Martyrs, but now she’s at a different place, in the Chic quartier. The reason she’s not at the same school as me now is because her father had a row with the headmaster.
I really miss those days when she’d come strolling down the Avenue of Independence, and meet me outside our house. We avoided the tarmacked roads because our parents said it was too dangerous, because none of the cars had brakes and the drivers drank corn spirit before they set off. We specially avoided the crossroads at Block 55, where someone got knocked down by a car at least once a month. In our quartier people blamed Ousmane, a shopkeeper from Senegal, just opposite the crossroads. Apparently he had this magic mirror that fooled the poor pedestrians, so they thought the cars were a long way off, like a kilometre away, when in fact it was more like a few metres, and bam! they ran them over, just as they started crossing. It looked like Ousmane had loads of customers, more than the other shops, because people died right outside his shop. We’d go round behind his shop, without even looking at it. Because we were scared of Ousmane’s magic mirror. Sometimes I’d be behind Caroline and she’d turn round and take my hand and give me a shake and tell me to get a move on because the devils in the magic mirror always caught children who lagged behind.
‘Michel, don’t look in Ousmane’s shop! Close your eyes!’
I walked fast. I didn’t want to vanish while she wasn’t looking. Our school was an old building painted green, yellow and red. When we finally got to the playground we had to separate. Caroline went into Madame Diamoneka’s class, and I went into Monsieur Malonga’s. My hand was damp because Caroline had been holding it tight all the way.
Around five in the evening we’d come home together. She’d drop me outside our house, then carry on home. I’d stay outside, watching her go. Soon she’d be just a little shape way off in the crowd. And in I’d go, happy.
My best friend, Lounès – who’s Caroline’s brother – liked walking to school alone. Was that because he didn’t want to walk alongside his sister? I think it was to show he was older than us. That he was in class with the big kids. Now he’s at middle school where you learn even harder things than you do at primary. And since he’s at Trois-Glorieuses, that’s where I want to go after primary school. If I went anywhere else I’d have to make new friends. I like Lounès, and I think he likes me too.
Caroline and Lounès’s father limps with his left leg, and people snigger when he walks by. It’s not nice to laugh at Monsieur Mutombo, it’s not like he said to God: I’d like to have a limp all my life please. He was born like that, and when he was a little boy and he tried to walk, his left leg was shorter than his right, or maybe his right leg was longer than his left.
In a way, Monsieur Mutombo could get rid of his limp if he wanted, all he has to do is wear Salamander shoes, they have these heels that are so high, a pygmy could wear them and look like an American sky-scraper. But I don’t think that’s a solution, since the right leg would still go on up higher and the left leg, the sick one, couldn’t match it. Unless if he cut off a bit of the sole of the right shoe, but then everyone would laugh at him because his shoes wouldn’t be the same height. The only thing to do is to ask God on his dying day to send him back with normal legs, because once God’s made a human being and sends him down to our world, that’s it, he won’t go back on his decision, otherwise people would stop respecting him. Besides, that would mean God could get it wrong, like the rest of us. Which has never been known to happen.
Monsieur Mutombo’s a very honest man. Papa Roger says so, and he’s his friend. He looks after Lounès and Caroline really well. He takes them to the Rex, where they’ve already seen films like Demolition Man, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Ten Commandments, Samson and Delilah, Jaws, Star Wars and lots of Indian films.
When Monsieur Mutombo comes to visit my father on Sundays, they go out to a bar in the Avenue of Independence. They drink palm wine, they talk in our ethnic language, bembé. If they stay too long at the bar Maman Pauline says to me: ‘Michel, look at you, sitting around like an idiot while your father and Monsieur Mutombo are out at a bar! You get up now, and go and see if they’re buying drinks for the local girls, and kissing them on the lips!’
I set off like a rocket, and arrive, panting, at the bar. I find Monsieur Mutombo and my father drinking, and playing draughts.
Papa Roger’s surprised to see me. ‘What are you doing here, Michel? Children aren’t allowed in bars!’
‘Maman told me to come and see if you were buying drinks for the local girls and putting your lips on theirs…’
And the two men part, laughing. I go home with my father, who’s a bit drunk. I hold his hand and he tells me things I don’t understand. Maybe when you’ve had a few drinks you can talk to invisible people who’ve been trapped inside the bottle by the people who brew it, that people who never drink can’t see.
Another Sunday, my father goes to see Monsieur Mutombo, and again they go off to drink in one of the local bars, to talk in bembé, and chat with the invisible people in the bottles, and this time it’s Lounès who goes to tell them that Madame Mutombo has asked her to come and check if they’re buying drinks for girls, and kissing them on the mouth.
Monsieur Mutombo is the best tailor in the whole town. He makes school uniforms for almost all the children round here. Some parents from other quartiers bring material for him to make up into uniforms for their children. He’s not short of customers in his workshop, particularly after the summer holidays, when he’s always behind because people wait till the last minute – often just three days before school starts – then come with their fabric and tell him to do it fast.
I like going to his workshop, with some fabric for my father over my shoulder, and watching him work with it, because he knows my father’s not just anybody, that he’s someone you can sit down and have a glass of palm wine or red wine with in a bar in the Avenue of Independence.
And you’d be amazed, if you saw the suit Monsieur Mutombo made, you’d think it was straight off the peg from Europe, except it’s not cut from a single piece and there isn’t that nice smell you get from Europe, and the Whites are so clever, they won’t tell us their secret so that we’ll carry on liking their clothes and wanting to wear them here, even though they’re more expensive.
The day I said to my mother that Madame Mutombo was a great fat woman, like a pregnant female hippopotamus, she boxed my ears and told me that if a woman’s big it means she has a big heart, and that the heart of someone who loves other people is always big. That made me think of Jeremy’s mother, he’s in my class, and I don’t like him because he’s too clever, he always comes second, after Adriano, the Angolan. Jeremy’s mother is very fat and very horrid, and she’s rude about all the other mothers in the neighbourhood.
My mother knew what I was thinking. She said, ‘True, not all big women have a heart as big as Madame Mutombo’s. I know you’re thinking of Jeremy�
��s mother, but that’s different.’
When Madame Mutombo comes to see Maman Pauline, she brings us doughnuts and ginger root juice. I don’t like her doughnuts, they’re too oily. I don’t like her ginger root juice because it burns the back of your throat and you end up in the toilet, pushing for an hour, with nothing coming out.
But Maman Pauline scolds me. ‘Michel, you just eat those doughnuts, now, and drink your ginger root juice. If someone gives you a goat, you don’t complain that it’s got a hole in its tooth!’
Madame Mutombo and my mother go shopping together. They buy peanuts in bulk and sell them on at the Grand Marché. I see them at our house, or at the Mutombos’, counting the money they’ve earned and splitting the profits fifty/fifty. You won’t find a capitalist doing that.
I often think about the day Caroline and I decided we were married. It was a Sunday afternoon, my parents were out. Caroline arrived when I wasn’t expecting her, with a little blue plastic bag with lots of things in. ‘Michel, I’m sick of waiting till we’re grown up, let’s get married today.’
We went round the back of our house and built a little tent with mango tree branches and cloths my mother had washed and left out to dry in the sun. It was our house, just for the two of us.
Monsieur Mutombo always makes pretty dolls for his daughter, so she had two of them with her that day. She said the dolls were our children. And we put them on a plank, to play together. Caroline started to get the food ready, with pretend plates and spoons: empty margarine tubs and little sticks.
After a few minutes, she announced that the food was ready. ‘Come, husband, let’s sit down to eat.’
Then she said that first of all we had to feed our babies because they were very hungry and were crying all the time. But first they had to have a bath. I washed the boy. Caroline washed the girl because when a boy’s naked he looks like me, and when a girl’s naked she looks like Caroline, so it was right that she should wash the girl and I should wash the boy. After their bath we put their bibs on so the food wouldn’t get on their clothes and then we fed them.
A few minutes later Caroline turned to me and said, ‘There now, they’ve had a good meal, they even burped!’
We rocked them, put them into bed, then we pretended to eat too. We had a conversation, trying to do it like grown ups. I touched Caroline’s hair and she touched my chin. She was the one who talked most. I listened, and nodded. We laughed a lot, and if I didn’t laugh she got cross. So I laughed, anyway, even when I wasn’t meant to.
I noticed she was sad, all of a sudden.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘Michel, I’m worried.’
‘What about?’
‘Our children. We must put some money in the bank for when they’re older, or they’ll be unhappy.’
‘You’re right, we should.’
‘You know, if they’re unhappy, the state will take them away and put them in a place for orphans, and they’ll end up like the thugs at the Grand Marché.’
‘Well, they mustn’t do that. We don’t want them ending up thugs at the Grand Marché. They’ll get sent to prison and we’ll be unhappy all our lives.’
‘And we must buy a nice red, five-seater car, and get even richer than the President of the Republic.’
‘You can count on me. We’ll buy our red five-seater from my uncle’s company, he’ll give us a family discount. I’m his nephew!’
‘And how much d’you think a red car like that costs, with five seats?’
‘I’ll ask my uncle.’
She passed me a stick, and a little empty glass: ‘Here, smoke your pipe, and drink up your glass of corn spirit.’
I pretended to smoke the pipe and drink my glass of corn spirit.
She took my hand. ‘Michel, you know I love you, don’t you?’
I didn’t answer. It was the first time I’d heard someone tell me ‘I love you’. And her voice was different, and she was looking at me, waiting for me to say something to her. What could I say? In the end I said nothing, I felt so light I thought I might just float up into the sky. My ears were hot. And my heart was beating so loud I thought Caroline must be able to hear it.
She was disappointed and let go of my hand: ‘Honestly, you’re hopeless! When a woman says “I love you”, you have to say “I love you too”, that’s what grown-ups do.’
So, like a grown up, I said, ‘I love you too.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’
‘Swear!’
‘I swear!’
‘How do you love me, then?’
‘I have to tell you how I love you?’
‘Yes, Michel, if you don’t tell me how you love me, what am I supposed to think? I’m going to think you don’t love me at all, and I’m going to be sad the whole time. And I don’t want to be sad because my mother says it makes women look old, that’s why my mother looks old because my father’s never told her how he loves her. I really don’t want to grow old. If I grow old then one day you’re going to tell me I’m not beautiful, and you’ll go and find another wife…’
Suddenly a plane flew over head. So then I said: ‘I love you like the plane that just went overhead.’
‘No, no, you’re not meant to say that! I want you to love me more than the plane because the plane’s everybody’s; it’s for people going to France, who never come back.’
I thought we were just playing, but then she started really crying. I felt like crying too, then. But Lounès had already told me men mustn’t cry in front of women, or they’ll think you’re weak. So I cried inside.
‘You still don’t get it, Michel! I want you to love me like the red car with five seats, our very own car, and our children’s and our little white dog’s.’
‘Yes, I love you like a red five-seater car.’
At last, she was happy, she touched my chin again, and I touched her hair, and dried her tears. When she tried to kiss me on the lips, I shrank back as though I’d been bitten by a snake.
‘Are you afraid of me?’
‘No.’
‘You are!’
‘No…’
‘Well why do you back off when I tried to kiss you on the mouth like in white people’s films?’
‘Mouths, that’s for when we’re really married, with witnesses, chosen by our parents.’
‘Who’ll be your witness?’
‘Your brother.’
‘Mine’ll be Léontine, she’s my best friend.’
She was so pleased, she poured me another glass of corn spirit. I said nothing, so she added: ‘I understand why you’re not talking, you’re tired, like men are when they come home from work. I’ll just wash the plates, then we’ll go to sleep.’
She turned her back to me, and pretended to wash the plates, by rubbing the margarine pots. She told me to carry on drinking my glass of corn spirit and smoking my pipe.
She counted up to twenty. ‘There, that’s done, I’ve washed everything! I’m going to shut the door, and put out the light, come to bed with me, don’t be afraid.’
To switch out the light, she pressed an imaginary button.
‘There you are, the light’s off!’
She lay down in the middle of the tent on her back, and closed her eyes. I said to myself, ‘She’s going to go to sleep for real, I don’t want to go to sleep in broad daylight. Besides, if my parents find us sleeping, I don’t know what they’ll think. I’d better get going, yeah, I’d better get out of here.’
Just as I was about to get up and leave the tent, she caught my hand. ‘Come on, lie down on top of me, close your eyes. That’s what grown-ups do.’
Maman Pauline goes into the bedroom. I follow her. She comes back into the living room, I come back too. She’s in front of the mirror, I’m just behind her. She puts on lipstick and powder, I make the same gestures, though I don’t put anything on because that kind of thing’s only for women, and apparently if boys put on makeup it means they’re done for, there’s
something not right in their brain.
She’s wound a pagne round her head, for a scarf. I’m wearing a hat in the colours of our football team: green, yellow and red. She picks up her handbag, looks everywhere for the house keys. I can see them from here, but she just goes on and on looking, and finds them in the end behind the wardrobe.
I don’t like this at all. I don’t want Maman Pauline to go out when Papa Roger’s not here. It’s true my father didn’t come home last night. He sleeps at our house one night, at Maman Martine’s the next. On Monday he’s with us, on Tuesday at Maman Martine’s, she lives in the Savon quartier, quite near my uncle’s. Papa Roger goes back and forth between the two women all week long, he’s like the postman you see in the streets of Trois-Cents. Now, there are only seven days in a week, not eight, so Papa Roger can’t divide the week in two, however good he is at arithmetic. He’s found a solution: one Sunday he sleeps at our house, the next at Maman Martine’s. That’s why he’s not at home today.
.....
I’m never in a good mood when Maman Pauline’s making herself pretty. I glance again at her hair, which Caroline’s braided. She’s put on her orange high-heels, a camisole wrap the same colour as her headscarf, and a pair of orange trousers. I don’t like it when she puts on the shiny orange trousers that are too tight round her legs and butt. Whenever she wears them, men stare at her walking, and whistle as she goes by. It makes me wonder what goes on in their heads, why they only have eyes for Maman Pauline, when there are other women walking around in shiny orange pants that are too tight round the legs and butt. Sometimes I even pick up a stone and aim it at one of the guys whistling at my mother. She stops walking, turns round and shouts: ‘Are you crazy? If that’s the way it’s gonna be, you’re not coming out walking with me again! I don’t like wild boys! Opium of the masses!’
But why didn’t she tell me she was going out before lunch? I don’t know where she’s going. The people out there might trap her at the end of the Avenue of Independence, for all I know, or in a bar. Lounès says some of the men in our quartier are really bad, they hang around at the corner of the Avenue of Independence and when a woman goes by they shout rude things at her or force her to drink a beer in a bar where it’s all dark inside, and then dance the rumba of Tabu Ley or Franco Luamb-Makiadi, and then end up in a room where they have to do all this stuff. I can’t imagine Maman Pauline dancing with anyone but Papa Roger. I can’t imagine Maman Pauline going to a room and doing stuff with any man except Papa Roger. I’m not having that. No. Besides, once, I remember, I gave a man who was talking too much with my mother what he deserved. Lounès told me about this secret way he had of protecting Madame Mutombo from bad men who look at women like that and whistle when they’ve gone by, like someone hailing a bush taxi in the street.
Tomorrow I'll Be Twenty Page 2