We’ll only go elsewhere when she doesn’t have what we need and tells us to try the competition: “See if Ninita has it!”
I’m wearing out my eyes looking for pebbles (it’s Mama who’s always wearing out her eyes sifting through rice, lentils, and even red beans), when all of a sudden Émile reappears, running. “Mama, guess what?”
“Where were you?” She’s so formal, he’s caught up short.
He left without permission. If he can’t manage to think up an excuse, he’ll spend the whole day in the courtyard in his underpants because Mama will soak all his other clothes to keep him from going out again.
“You said we weren’t going to have dictation, so I went over to Gustarimac’s to do math.” Gustarimac is his best friend, the only thing he talks about.
Mama must not feel like wasting energy because neither Gustarimac nor my brother is known for his skills at math. She leaves him alone and goes off to fry fish.
Émile doesn’t know who to share the big news with, especially news no one wants to hear, so he sits down next to me, on the bench by the table. He starts to put his hands in the lentils, mixing the good lentils with the pebbles I’d already found and put to the side.
“Are you doing that on purpose?”
“I saw your favorite teacher’s husband.”
I don’t know Madame Ladal’s husband, so why would he? “You always know more than anybody else. How’d you know it was her husband?”
“They live in the same house and they walk side by side on the street.
Who do you think it is, her father?” “So just where did you see him?”
Émile tells me he wasn’t at Gustarimac’s. I of course already knew that. They were together, but out in the street. That’s what those two like to do: hang out in the streets, borrow bikes, and go to places Mama can’t even imagine, like Poucette, where they go swimming in the creek. I don’t even know where Poucette is. I hear about it, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s a non-place, as if Émile invented it just to make me jealous.
“Near the big post office. Rue Gambetta.”
“What’s there?”
“People screaming in front of the police station.”
“And my teacher’s there?”
“I told you—her husband!”
He can’t tell me why people are gathered in front of the police station. He didn’t really understand what was happening, and then Éric, Emmy’s fiancé—well, really her gentleman caller, who we call “orangutan” because he’s so hairy—stepped out of the crowd. He made straight for Émile and ordered him to go home.
“I almost told that guy off, but I felt sorry for him.”
Papa, I think he was scared that Éric would tell you that he’d seen him in his shorts and bare feet in downtown Pointe-à-Pitre. He always takes his shoes off to run around town. Did you know that?
The part of the day I hate the most is just before lunch. I don’t have enough to do then. I can’t go out because we’re going to eat soon, and I can’t read because somebody always finds a little job, something really insignificant, for me to do.
I try to finish my table runner. But to do this without Mama seeing, I hide in the armoire in the bedroom.
Once there, I know I’ll be left alone for a little while. But I have to leave the door ajar so I don’t suffocate, and I need a little light.
I’m stuffed between dresses and shoes. Every dress has a different smell; some of them smell a little like sweat. Mama tells us we shouldn’t wash our clothes too much or they’ll lose their color. We hang our dresses outdoors, in the wind, to air them out, but when they’re back in the closet, it seems like all the odors come back, especially the underarm ones.
I don’t care. The smell from the shoes doesn’t bother me either. I push everything towards the back of the armoire, even the dresses, and that gives me a nice little space.
I try not to make any noise, because if I do, one of my brothers will guess I’m hiding in the closet and lock me in.
I’m working on my plastic corks when Emmy and Émelie come into the bedroom to talk. They don’t realize I’m in the armoire. They probably think I’m in front of the mirror in the blue bathroom. I can hear everything they say.
“I wonder if the ‘patriarch’ is coming back.”
“It’s not the first time he hasn’t come home.”
“But this time Éric says it’s serious.”
“What’s serious?”
“The strike. Didn’t you notice that the workers didn’t come this morning?”
“You think they went after Papa?”
“Don’t you remember the one who came into the salon and threatened him?”
“That’s all been worked out.”
“Does it ever really get worked out?”
“I think Papa slept at his sisters’ place and he’s at some work site now.”
“But the work sites are all blocked. Éric told me there’d be work stoppages everywhere.”
“Éric this and Éric that. Are you going to marry him or what?”
“I just want to get out of this house.”
“At any cost? The guy’s a skirt chaser.”
“Can you prove it? No, right? So shut up!”
Papa, everybody in the family is wondering about you. Especially your daughters.
I know that Mama, too, is asking what’s so important that you haven’t come home, even if she’s still running the show, like any other day.
She serves us lunch—nine children around the table—then asks Émilie to take care of the dishes and goes off to rest.
Afterwards, I stretch out next to her, and she asks, “What will we have to eat tonight?”
She always asks that question right after our noon meal. What will we have to eat tonight? Sometimes she doesn’t even need to ask it. I ask before she does. We lie down side by side and I say, “What will we have to eat tonight?”
She laughs. I like to see her laugh.
But this time, she isn’t joking. She asks the usual question, but she’s thinking about something else. I can see in her eyes that she’s far, far, far away, and she murmurs, “What a strange day . . . So very strange.”
And then she looks at me, ruffles my hair, and whispers, “You’re lucky to still be a child, my little fox. Take advantage of it. The best times in life are when you’re a child or in the army . . . youth . . .”
I want to take advantage of the moment by asking her why we aren’t going to look for you, wherever you are. But I remember Emmy forbade me to ask that question. (“Stop asking where Papa is . . .”)
So I ask something else, “Why do I have to take catechism from Madame Jabol? My teacher also gives catechism lessons.”
“You know, Madame Ladal is a devout Christian, but her husband’s a communist. It doesn’t look good.” She adds, “Your father doesn’t know this, but I have nothing against communists. In fact, I always vote for them.”
I don’t understand why she’s telling me this and why, if she votes communist, she doesn’t want me to take catechism from Madame Ladal. But I don’t say anything. I understand that in these matters you’re the one who decides, Papa.
8.
It was plenty hard being a pansy in this world. A real trial, believe me.
Having a big mouth and being arrogant didn’t help at all either. You had to be strong, act as though nothing could get to you. That would do it. But it was like being crucified. Everything was a crucifixion: the way people looked at you, the way you thought they looked at you, the questions on their lips, the hesitant glances.
“Tell me it’s not what I think it is!”
Some of them would start shaking uncontrollably from disgust. You know how some panic—there’s no other word for it—when they come face to face with a queer. Maybe they panic because, when you get down to it, they’re actually attracted. It’s tempting to let yourself plunge into the realm of the forbidden, to give in to the tiny suggestion that’s been sleeping in your gu
t. Even me, who always knew I wanted to be with men, I’ve been shaken up by a woman who propositioned me, naively offering herself up, not getting who I was. All it takes is a smell, the softness of skin, a moment of abandon where you’re, you know, near another person and your blood starts to rage; you hear their body calling you and your legs get weak—all of that, you know. So of course you feel like letting yourself go because it’s been too long, really too long since you had someone show you a little tenderness, someone to put your arms around. It’s like that: nobody to put your arms around, or hold next to you, so you feel your body actually exists, to sense your blood running through your veins, to know you’re really alive, still kicking.
I’m not lying when I say it was difficult for me, but I never gave in. I always waited for the man who was gonna share my life to show up.
How I’ve been going on! When you’re human, you just can’t stop yourself from telling your own story. I’ve already sidestepped the topic at hand to launch into an analysis of my own little life, even when nobody gives a shit, really not a shit! Why isn’t anybody stopping me? Why isn’t the kid herself saying, “Listen, Mademoiselle Pansy, you’re nice and all, but tonight I’m waiting for my father and what he has to say about why my teacher disappeared. If you don’t have anything to share to help us out, just shut up!”
But there she is, sitting like a good little girl on her bench, a little stiff, yeah, as tight as a soul singer’s shirt. Even I, passed over to the other side as I am, look more alive than she does. I bet she’s tense like that because she’s afraid of wild animals and insects. And boy do I understand that. I won’t treat you to the meltdowns I’ve had when I’ve seen those battalions of cockroaches all exiting my plumbing at once. And the way their feet scrape the walls and the wood floors . . . Maybe we should talk about something else.
So just what important information can I share tonight?
For one thing, you should know that being a homo sexual in this country forces you to suffer the mysteries of snitching, without being a participant.
I mean as a victim, of course.
You learn pretty quick how to recognize the signs in how others look and act. Having been a schoolteacher myself, I bet I can guide the kid to the man or woman, and I think it probably was a woman, who informed on her teacher and delivered her to the authorities.
My guess is it started with a forbidden book. Of course there are forbidden books! Just because Madame Ladal passed on her passion for reading, you shouldn’t think everybody shared her devotion, and especially not for every book.
Literature. Nobody has sniffed around that question yet! How important it is, what its role might be, how dangerous it can feel. The few poems her students learned were already a little subversive, not to mention how she taught African authors and stories when they were just supposed to stick with “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves,” and “Monsieur Seguin’s Goat.” Madame Ladal marched to the beat of her own drum, that’s for sure, not like those other teachers.
And I heard she had the odd tendency of explaining to her students the bigger meaning behind the stories of Ti-Jean, Brer Rabbit, and Big Zamba, relating all their adventures to the organization of plantation society. Can you imagine: speaking about the struggles between workers and bosses, slaves and plantation owners, when reading a simple folktale. Well, I doubt that contributed to her colleagues liking her any, or made the school principal willing to stick her neck out.
9.
As I’m preparing to leave for catechism, Mama is singing Gluck: “J’ai perdu mon Eurydice. Rien n’égale mon malheur.” (I can’t stand it when she sings that!) “Quelle souffrance! Quel tourment déchirent mon coeur!”
She’s already preparing the vegetables for our soup tonight. She’s cutting up squash, carrots, and celery into smaller and smaller cubes, and the smaller the cubes, the sadder she sings. She sounds so sad I almost feel like staying to comfort her. But I have to go do something I can’t tell her about. “Mama, I’m leaving.”
“Going where? Oh yes, to catechism. Are your sisters walking with you? Émilie!”
“It’s not necessary, Mama. It’s right next door. I always go by myself.”
“But today, oh today . . . All right, go ahead.”
I don’t want anyone to go with me because I’m planning to stop by my teacher’s house to ask if she’ll be back at school tomorrow.
Madame Jabol won’t see me in class today. That’s my idea when I leave the house. Madame Jabol can just wait.
I pass by her door pretty proud of myself. The other children are reciting their catechism. Luckily the shades are drawn because of the sun, so no one sees me stroll by.
I walk down rue Commandant Mortenol, cross rue Alexandre Isaac, and reach La Place de la Victoire, where I find myself in front of my teacher’s house.
All the doors are closed. All the shutters too. All of them.
So, she’s already left? She didn’t even teach catechism today? She stopped everything? She’s really disappeared?
I don’t know what to do. I can’t tell anybody at home that my teacher’s doors are shut, that she’s abandoned everything, left it all behind. They’ll ask me how I know.
Nobody’s at La Place; the gates of the government offices are closed, so the subprefecture looks deserted; my school’s empty. It looks like everyone has left town.
So I walk back to Madame Jabol’s.
After catechism, Annie stops to talk to me.
She’s not really my friend; she’s my rival. She does everything she can to steal first place from me, and I have to put up with her sitting next to me because of the teacher’s funny idea: that whoever is in first place always sits next to second place and so on.
Sometimes I wish she were last so we wouldn’t be at the same table.
But this month I’m in last place. Well, next to last, but it’s basically the same thing. That means I have to sit at the desk at the back of the class, near the window facing the street. I bet Madame Jabol would tell me, “God is punishing you because you hope for bad things to happen to your fellow men.”
I was afraid Annie would run to tell her she was first this month, since I was next to last, and that if I hadn’t come to catechism it was probably because my parents were punishing me.
But Annie kept her big mouth shut.
Madame Jabol, who’s also Émile’s godmother, didn’t say anything either and, oddly, Annie is waiting for me after class. “Can I walk home with you?”
“But you don’t live in that direction.”
“I don’t feel like going home right away.”
I don’t answer and start to walk, in silence. We make our way side by side, still not talking. Finally, I have to say something; I need to talk to someone too much.
“I think she’s really gone.”
“Our teacher?”
“Yeah, I walked by her house. Everything is closed up.”
I’m not expecting at all what happens next. Annie starts to cry.
10.
Hilaire again. I’m not going to mince words about snitching.
Everybody betrays everybody else! It’s essential to hold on to that at all costs. It’s key to understanding this story and could also be a major factor behind the schoolteacher’s disappearance. To better illustrate what I’ve just said, I’m going to tell you a couple of things about myself.
Now, I’ve already mentioned that people called me ma-commère. That’s to say man-woman, a man dressed up in a feminine pronoun. Not to mention that the word commère means a terrible gossip.
It couldn’t be any clearer than that, could it? But, you know, I didn’t get stuck with that name until after hanging myself. The neighbors and all the others ran around the streets yelling, “Ma-commère has hanged himself!”
They were an army of black ants surging right up to my cottage: they pushed each other out of the way, giving free reign to their thoughts. Obviously the shit, the piss, the bizarre-loo
king head I had on top of my swollen neck, all this had people talking, their tongues wagging. But mine sure wasn’t, by God, not that it was anything anybody should have seen. Already dead and gone to the ancestors, I wondered, with eyebrows raised, why the inhabitants of my neighborhood, of my town, were acting so vulgarly.
The news spread in the streets and everyone was invited to come gape at my miserable fate—abandoning any task at hand to greedily feed on the death of one poor soul, watching him swivel like a trapeze artist in his blue leotard, that shiny blue you see in circuses and carnivals. Except I didn’t hold the rope between my teeth the way a trapeze artist might, as though it were a simple piece of cloth. My black and blue tongue lolled out of my mouth, my eyes rolled back in their sockets, and let’s not forget the putrid stains on the darkened and dirty wood floor. Their curiosity appalled and offended me. How excessively gross and uncalled for! Didn’t they realize they were just teaching their children to be coarse and brutish?
You have to think about how much this kind of experience forges character, especially a budding adolescent’s. When you entertain a ten-year-old—and some children weren’t even that old—by mocking how a man uses the most intimate part of his anatomy, when your ridicule is neither elegant nor elevated, when your dirty jokes about him make your whole family burst into sick laughter, you have to see that you’re living like a beast.
And furthermore, if you’re taught that it’s natural to judge and denounce the “perversions” of such a person to the civil and religious authorities, you’ll acquire a taste for snitching from very early on, in addition to a strong taste for crudeness.
11.
Annie’s crying and I’m the one consoling her. Usually she’s the tough, strong one. We’ve always been in the same class and she’s always been mean. She must have changed.
I didn’t notice it, but it seems like since we’ve had Madame Ladal as our teacher, Annie’s stopped calling me an “aristocrat.” She didn’t once say that my papa, my mama, and all my family, myself included, must think we’re pretty special. And she usually dragged out the “special.”
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