Silent Bird

by Reina Lisa Menasche

  Towelhead? He was calling the girl towelhead.

  “Her name is Fatima,” I said coldly. “As I am sure you know.”

  Benoit frowned. “Oh…you were in the street that day. With a camera. Now I remember!”

  “What are you saying?” Charles asked me, his voice rising. “What do you want with my son?”

  I don’t want anything, I thought.

  I want to do what’s right.

  “This little girl was walking down the street when he”—I nodded at Benoit—“yanked off her kerchief and stepped on it and made her cry. These other boys were laughing. I happened to get it on film.”

  “You—what? Why?” Charles looked genuinely baffled. “What is your point? These are kids. They were having some fun.”

  “‘Fun?’”

  Benoit said, “That souillon”—slut!—“was saying stuff to us too, you know. She is not as innocent as she looks.”

  Overhead a hawk swooped down for its kill. I watched the bird dive.

  “Right after that,” I continued, keeping my voice controlled before I yanked out Benoit’s scrawny Adam’s apple and shoved it down his throat, “this same little girl disappeared. Kidnapped. It was on the news.”

  Benoit said nothing. Uncle Charles simply glared.

  Somewhere in the back of my head I wondered why I was burning the last of my bridges with Jeannot. Why was I fighting this fight now, in his uncle’s house? So I disliked and distrusted most of the men in his family. Did I have to antagonize them, too?

  Yes. I had to…defend that poor exiled girl. For a kid who couldn’t defend herself. Hopefully Jeannot would understand.He was not like these other Courboismisogynists. I fixed my gaze on Benoit. “Do you know what happened to that child?”

  He didn’t answer. His eyes bore into mine, challenging me to do something about this, to call a spade a spade.

  If I could figure out how to call a spade a spade.

  “What are you suggesting?” Charles said in a much lower voice: a deadly low voice. “That my son had something to do with this? You come into our home and—”

  Someone laughed loudly in the distance. We all heard the clink of glass bottles and burble of radio music. Then footsteps approached, a pattering of bare feet, water dripping. And around the corner came the female I least wanted to see: Thérèse, in a polka-dot bikini.

  She stopped short, her oiled lean body glistening in the sunlight. “Pilar? What are you doing here?”

  II

  She didn’t say “When the hell are you going to leave us in peace?” but the thought bubble hung above her head like unpicked fruit.

  “Hello,” I said in my most polite tone of voice. “Nice to see you too.”

  Now six pairs of wary, unfriendly eyes were staring my way. Too bad I couldn’t vomit on demand…

  I turned back to Benoit. “Do you or do you not have any idea what happened to that child? It’s a simple question.”

  His face reddened. “No, how would I?” He glanced at his father. “I did not do anything, Papa. This is stupid! I do not know what she is talking about.”

  He was lying. I felt sure of it. And I hated liars.

  So did Jeannot. It was one of the things we had in common.

  III

  He once told me that even the kindest lie is a pretense that you are stuck with for the rest of your life. Lies erupt in your face, Jeannot stated confidently, citing a cute French fable about this foolish frog that aspired to being a cow.

  The fable goes like this: In order to become a cow, the frog inflates himself more and more until one day he is big enough. Except then he blows up—like most of the creatures in Jeannot's stories, I realized, recalling the sheep.

  As I looked at his slender cousin, his bloated uncle, his manipulative buddy from preschool, I thought: How could Jeannot not know all this: that his father is an ass, his uncle a bigot, his cousin at the very least your common, garden-variety adolescent bully? For the moment we’d leave Thérèse out of the equation.

  Where was Jeannot, anyway? Hiding? By now he had to know I was here.

  “What is stupid?” Thérèse asked Benoit. “I do not understand. What is happening?”

  No one paid her any attention.

  “You dare to accuse my son?” Uncle Charles said. He’d stopped chewing his cud.

  “No, I am only asking.”

  “Why? What does that girl mean to you?”

  “All little kids mean something!”

  He snorted. “You do not know what you are saying, Mademoiselle. You are confused, yes?”

  “No.” Yes.

  “We know this girl you talk about, yes. Her name is Fatima Bazzi. So what? They live at the end of those houses with the other Arab families. That is all we know.”

  “What is this?” Thérèse said more petulantly.

  Her bikini had an old-fashioned look: a pin-up, pushed-up getup from the 1950s. Except her flesh looked very modern, deeply tanned, arms displaying thick silver bracelets that I’d glimpsed on sale in the most chic Montpellier shops.

  “You are obviously misinformed,” Uncle Charles said, staring hard into my eyes.

  Thérèse’s bracelets emitted a silvery chorus as she crossed her arms. “I am surprised to see you after last night, Pilar,” she said. When Uncle Charles glanced at her, one eyebrow raised, she added, “She was very ill at the restaurant. She vomited on me.”

  “It’s a custom of Americans to vomit on people they don’t trust,” I said.

  She gasped. “Well! How dare you speak to me like this?”

  “I didn’t do anything to Fatima,” Benoit told no one in particular. “Maybe I teased her a little, but that is all.”

  “Then do you know who did? Who left her half-naked in a graveyard?”

  “That is enough.” Charles’ eyes could have chipped stone. “Listen to me, young lady. You do not know what it is like here. You come from a different world. The Arabs have been causing trouble in France for centuries. We used to fight them and drive them back to their own useless lands; now we invite them in, give them homes and jobs. It is not my son who needs to be afraid. If you try to cause any more trouble, if you say anything else inflammatory to Benoit—then you will be sorry. I promise you that.”

  The hawk cried overhead. On its way to the belfry or to eat another one of its cousins? Looking up, my head felt like it would split in two. The sunshine dizzied me.

  “Now,” Uncle Charles went on in a calmer, deader voice. “Since you have already shown your face in Villefranche sur Lez and Jeannot must hear of it, I suggest you behave in a civilized fashion. You can manage that, yes?”

  Our eyes met again, both hard, both cold. Yet he held out his arm again as if to escort me.

  I recoiled.

  IV

  More footsteps sounded. And into the fray marched not my fiancé, but his father…in another Speedo that would put Greek Gods to shame.

  I looked away.

  “What is going on here?” asked Monsieur Courbois. “Is there a problem?”

  Eight pairs of eyes zeroed in on the intruder. Me. Waiting for an explanation.

  My voice trembled as I said I’d come to see Jeannot. No one answered. So then I started walking in the direction of the pool, sidestepping the three Courbois men and the pinup in the polka-dot bikini. I had gone only partway around the house when I realized I was being followed.

  “Does my son know what ugly thing his lovely fiancée is doing now?” a voice said just behind me.

  Jeannot’s father. I spun around, my heart hammering again.

  “I hear you have been rude to my brother and nephew,” he said. “So I ask you: What else is it you want, young lady? Can you tell me that?”

  “I want to find Jeannot,” I said, backing away.

  He took a step closer. A few fallen flower petals shuffled out of his way. His voice became softer: a hiss.

  “I know what you are like, you see, what people like you have always been like. You do not fool
me or the rest of my family, Mademoiselle, and I am afraid that includes Jeannot.”

  Stunned, I couldn’t speak.

  Then I found my tongue. “Which ‘people’ are you talking about? Americans? Jews? Or foreigners of any kind?”

  He paused. Then a shrug. “What is America after all, but a land of undesirables? You are used to your country being filled with people cast off from their own kind. Perhaps, to you, this is normal. How can you understand that the Courbois family has lived in Villefranche sur Lez for generations? Hundreds of years! Longer than your United States has existed. Oh, the intruders change here, but not the results. Since you mention Jews, I will tell you this. My grandparents did not appreciate the Jews taking over their businesses, their interests and reputations. Then the Nazis came and—” another shrug “—it took some time, but we got rid of the Nazis, too. Now the Arabs arrive by the dozens looking for cheap places to live. They are a worse lot than the Jews, to be frank about it. Dirty and ignorant and still living in the Middle Ages. At least the Jews were educated. I will give them that. The Arabs, they reproduce like rats. They will outnumber the French in no time.”

  A great wall of anger rose inside me. I felt blind and invincible—a strange combination.

  “Is that why you don’t care that an innocent child got hurt?” I asked quietly. “Because she was a foreigner, an Arab? Thank God Jeannot isn’t like you. He is kind and—”

  “Tais toi!”

  The command worked, even in French. I shut up.

  His face had gone an unhealthy tomato red. In two steps he reached me and extended a working man’s scarred, veined paw.

  But I moved even faster, again toward the pool.

  Just then Madame Courbois darted around the corner, nearly bumping into me. She wore a sundress, her hair up, hand clutching a spatula dripping oil. It was only then that I smelled the barbequed meat, that I noticed a pillar of smoke rising over the roof.

  “Mademoiselle,” she said curiously. Her face carefully neutral, she moved forward to kiss me then stopped again. Her startled eyes took in the circle of animosity gathering on the flagstone path. “What is this? Is everything all right?”

  More scurrying footsteps, lighter ones, and the twins I’d already met clamored in. Carole and her boyfriend Henri followed close behind. Carole also wore a bikini and shook water off her long blond hair. To my relief, Henri had had the decency to wrap a towel around his waist.

  “Oh, hello!” Carole cried warmly. But she stopped in her tracks, too.

  The twins smiled. Then they glanced around at the other faces and stopped.

  I felt like the sacrifice in a Roman arena. Keeping my gaze pinned on Carole and her freckle-faced children, I said, “Nice to see you.” You have no idea how nice!

  No one answered. Insects hummed in the heat like the whine of an air conditioner.

  “Where is Jeannot?” I managed to ask. “I came to see him.”

  “He went to the shower,” Carole said. “Is there a problem?”

  “Oui,” said Uncle Charles.

  “Oui,” said Thérèse.

  “Non,” said Madame Courbois, looking terribly anxious, like her party was about to be ruined. “We were about to invite Pilar to join us.” She offered me a tentative smile. “Jeannot will be out in a minute.”

  One of the twins said, “We are making barbequed chicken and horsemeat! Do you eat horsemeat in America?”

  Just the idea of dining on horsemeat à table with this family should have been enough to make me up-chuck my coffee, too. Strangely, though, the nausea really had disappeared. “Thank you, but I can’t stay,” I said.

  “Too bad,” Carole said.

  “Why is everybody mad?” the other twin asked, the one with the missing front tooth.

  “Please, come to the pool,” Madame Courbois said gracefully. “Do you swim? The water is very warm.”

  “No thank you,” I said. Though I did follow her back along the path toward the pool. Sweat was trickling down my brow and down the back of my arms, but I didn’t even look to see who else was tagging along.

  V

  At the pool area, the radio was airing a heated discussion on futbol—meaning soccer, of course. Would Montpellier stay “the most sportive city in France” as it had been voted the year before by the French sports daily, L'Équipe? Would the local soccer club, Montpellier-Herault SC, keep satisfying its supporters?

  Collapsing on a shaded lounge chair near one of the yard exits, I kept my face composed while Madame Courbois served coffee, Carole chatted on a phone extension at the bar, and I waited for my fiancé to get out of the damn shower. Thank goodness the two Courbois men and Benoit and Thérèse kept themselves far away. I had no idea where they were or what they were doing and didn’t want to know. I only hoped that Jeannot would materialize before the rest of the gang did.

  “Excuse me, I was just checking on my dog,” Carole said after she hung up.

  “She has a cocker spaniel,” Henri explained. His smile was not creepy, I was relieved to note, just a little too bright, like he’d lost control of it. “Name is Miaou.”

  “Miaou?” I repeated blankly.

  Carole said, “You know the sound that cats make? Miaou. This is what we have named our dog.”

  Oh. Right. In France, even the cats speak French. And pigs say “groin, groin” rather than “oink, oink.” Go figure.

  “Because our dog thinks she is a cat,” Henri said with a laugh. “She plays with the neighborhood cats like it is the joy of her life.”

  Carole helped herself to some grapes from a bowl. A bottle of the Courbois wine stood next to it. She said, “You see, my neighbor Janine is always spoiling Miaou with leftovers. She has three cats herself. But she is bringing the petit monstre back now so you will get to meet my little ‘cat.’ We have another treat for her in the kitchen, yes, Henri?”

  Carole had spoken so fast I wasn’t sure I followed. Who had a treat, Janine or the dog? And was there a real cat in the story somewhere? I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if Janine was the “little monster.”

  Suddenly I felt very, very tired. All I wanted to do was grab Jeannot and go home. Then I heard a new noise. Doggy toenails skittering on concrete, and a shiny cocker spaniel decked out in bright red ribbon tore onto the deck yipping and skidding into a circle before scrabbling inside the house again. Carole laughed and got up to follow.

  I kept drinking my coffee and composing my face like my life depended on it. So the dog was real, at least. Not much else seemed to be. I didn’t feel real myself.

  “Would you like more coffee?” Carole asked when she returned, dog trotting behind. The dog had something in its mouth. Something orange.

  Curious, I leaned closer. It was some kind of...foot. A clawed orange foot.

  Finally the light came on. This was Miaou’s treat. A dismembered chicken foot. With wagging tail, the dog dropped its treat at my foot. Everyone laughed except me. I rose, ready to find the bathroom myself, when he appeared at the patio doors.

  “Pilar,” he said, voice surprised but pleased. He didn’t glance around, didn’t try to find Thérèse. He looked only at me. “You came!”

  VI

  I’d never been so happy to see anybody in my life.

  I kissed Jeannot hello in front of everyone: family, dog, chicken foot, and God, if He felt like watching. And Jeannot smelled yummy again: like chlorine and sunshine instead of cough medicine. Though he was still pale and vaguely rumpled, he looked great, too. Yes, he wore one of those embarrassing Speedos. But he looked hot.

  “I cannot believe you are here,” he said, lips grazing my cheek. “How…?”

  “Monique’s car—and we need to talk,” I said. “Now, please. Could we take a walk and look at the vines?”

  “You are interested in vines? Yes, of course, let’s go.”

  He told his family what we were doing and didn’t seem to notice their various expressions. And I couldn’t help noticing that this had been the probl
em all along: Jeannot Courbois was simply too nice, too well-meaning, and too damn oblivious to see what took place right under his nose.

  Like Mom, a voice in my head whispered.

  We left the backyard through a low wooden gate and entered one of the furrowed rows. My mouth felt drier than the air. I planted both feet on the hard earth, stared into the golden light, and said, “First, your family.”

  Jeannot turned to me, perplexed. “What about my family?”

  There was no nice way to say this. No nice, civilized way to break someone’s heart. “I don’t want you to move back to this village, Jeannot. Please. I don’t want you to work alongside your father. I can’t let you be here and do this.”

  He frowned.

  “Because…I don’t trust them,” I said. An understatement.

  His frown deepened. “But you do not know them—”

  “I know them better than you think! Your father is a…bigot. I’m sorry, but it’s true. And your uncle is, if anything, worse.”

  “Stop.” It was a command. Kind of like “Shut up.”

  I disobeyed.

  “Your father grabbed my arm, Jeannot.”

  “He…what?”

  “And he said terrible things, not fifteen minutes ago.”

  Jeannot winced, eyes still unconvinced.

  “Your uncle…I don’t know what bothers him more. That I’m foreign or that I caught his son harassing the little girl who ended up on TV—and got a picture of it.”

  He snorted: an angry sound.

  “That again? Pilar, what makes you say these things; and obsess about this girl? What makes you think you know about my family? You barely understand French!”

  That stung. “I understand enough,” I said.

  “Then what about me? Do you think I am terrible, too? I am part of this family!”

  Gazing at his face, I recognized the kind of bewildered pain that I’ve known myself. But I stood my ground. I had to. On that warm day in the South of France, I didn’t bow my head to avoid what was ugly. I didn’t turn away.

  “Of course I don’t think you’re terrible. And I know you love your father, your uncle…your cousin. But loving someone doesn’t always mean you…know them. People…aren’t always what they seem. Please. Listen to me. I know. Sometimes they aren’t anything like what you think, or want, or have a right to expect. They have secret selves—”