Billie (12 page)

Really, really sad.

Because I was clear-headed, I . . . I saw myself.

Yes. I saw myself doing it.

Each time I pulled the tab, hisssss, I saw it, a piece of me disappearing.

No matter how much I tried to tell myself what we all tell ourselves: that it's just beer, it's just to quench my thirst, that tomorrow, I'll drink less, that tomorrow, I'll stop, that in any case, I can stop whenever I want to, and so on, I knew exactly what was happening.

Exactly.

It was the education I'd received.

In practically one gulp, I recognized it, that shipwreck about to happen . . . that crappy inheritance . . . My head, my arms, my legs, my heart, my nerves, the entire terrycloth body that had been passed down to me . . .

 

And what does alcohol do to an idle little country girl lost in a sea of traffic?

It takes her back to her origins.

It makes her start stealing again from the stores at the mall in order to pay for her alcohol without raiding the cookie jar at home.

It makes the security guards notice her.

It forces her to be a cheap whore, so they won't make trouble for her.

It forces her to be a cheap whore, so they won't make trouble for her
and
so they'll have a soft spot for her.

It gains her a reputation.

It makes her hang out with those cowboys from the supermarket in their synthetic uniforms who are convinced they have a little power in their hands and a bit lower down as well.

It gains her friends.

A certain type of friends . . .

Boys who are more welcoming to her than the two she feeds in the evenings, who never take their noses out of their books.

Who make her forget the sulky face of Franck Muller, who, not liking what he studies to obey a father he likes even less, has returned to his solitary mode.

Who distract her from always being the least intelligent one at the table.

And then it makes her start dressing up again in short skirts.

A lot shorter.

And more conspicuous.

In other words, it turns her back into a slut . . .

 

One afternoon as I was on the way out to see my new friends, I ran into Franck on the stairs.

Shit, I must have had his new schedule wrong.

I was wearing a skirt that barely covered my private parts, a pair of stolen boots, each boot a different size (thanks to the antitheft devices), and my fake Louis Vuitton bag that I held up in front of me immediately like a sort of shield between the two of us.

I don't know why I did that. He didn't even say anything mean . . . Just the opposite.

“Well, little Bill! It's chilly outside, you know? You shouldn't go out like that; you're going to catch a cold!”

I replied with some stupid remark in order to get away from his badly timed kindness, but a few hours later, while I was shut in with a security guard on his break in a trash storage area so that he could screw me standing up against the paper-towel rolls, the sweetness of Franck's voice reverberated with all the rest
 
of it and I suffered in silence.

The guy was nice, we had a good time, that wasn't the problem. I just couldn't go back in the other direction.

I couldn't. I knew too well where it led . . . Especially at the end.

It was then, in those situations, when it would be great to have a mom . . . A mean mom who gives you a harsh look or a nice one who helps you gather up all the paper-towel rolls and the brooms before pushing you toward the exit.

 

That was what I was thinking about on the way back. That I had to be my own mother. At least for one day in my life. That I had to do for myself what I would have done if I had been my daughter. Even if she were a pain in the ass. A crybaby. Even if Michael had abandoned me in the meantime.

But I could try at least . . .

I'd done many things that were a lot harder.

 

I walked with my head down, I made screeching sounds on the sidewalk with my pointy high-heeled shoes, I took turns playing the role of mother and daughter, getting all worked up by myself.

I was agitated. In a really bad mood. Cursing internally.

I wasn't used to authority. And damn, what could morality do for me at this stage? After all the suffering it had caused me? All those pieces of kittens I had to bury in secret; all those Mother's Day gifts that I had to skip since giving something pretty to my stepmother would have devastated me; all those schoolteachers who had believed for years that I was inept and who looked at me like I was a half-wit. All those bitches who had mistaken my tenderness for weakness.

All those sorrows . . . All those little sorrows lined up in single file.

Shit, now it was too easy to explain life.

Get lost, you slut!

Disappear.

That you know how to do.

 

I frowned and looked at myself viciously in the shop windows.

I said to myself no, no, no, and yes, yes, yes.

No.

Yes.

No.

 

If I was acting out, it wasn't a teen rebellion, it was because to do what I was asking of myself was too hard for me. Much, much too hard . . . I wanted all the rest, but not that.

Not that.

I had proved that I was capable of risking jail for Franck, but what Dame Pluche was demanding of me today, it was worse, more dangerous than prison.

It was worse than anything.

Because I had and would forever have only that in the world between the underclass and me.

It was my only shield. My only protection. I didn't want to touch it. Never. I wanted to keep it intact until I died to be absolutely sure I would never go back to the humiliation of hair that itched and layers of skin that begin to smell like dead hamster.

 

You, star, you can't understand. You must think I'm inventing ornate sentences to make it sound like a book.

That I'm acting like Camille. All alone and ripped apart in front of the whole world.

 

No one can understand. No one. Only I can. Billie from her cemetery with the little kittens . . .

To hell with you, little star.

To hell with you all.

The answer is
nyet
.

I will never jeopardize my life insurance.

I
got home, I still avoided Franck—he was studying in our room—and I changed my clothes.

I was watching a stupid TV show when His Royal Highness came home from business school with his tennis racket strapped to his back.

Trying to sound, like, a little too friendly, he spat out:

“So? What's on the menu for tonight?”

“Nothing,” I said, continuing to repolish my fingernails with a slightly classier color. “Tonight, I'm taking my friend Franck to a restaurant.”

“Reeeeeeeeeally?” He said, in that upper-crusty way he always spoke, as though he had marbles in his mouth. “And why does he deserve that honor?”

“We have something to celebrate.”

“Do you? And might I ask whaaaaat, if it's not too nosy?”

“The prospect of no longer seeing your filthy hypocritical face, you little asshole.”

“Oh! What luuuuuuck!”

(Okay, fine, as I was too chicken, instead I said: “It's a surprise.”)

 

Shit . . . the sky is getting lighter and lighter . . . I really need to hurry instead of making you snicker idiotically along with that other idiot.

So buckle your seat belt, my Taurus in the sky, because I'm going to turbocharge now . . .

I don't have any more time to mess around so I'll give you the end of season 3 at suuuuuuuper speeeeeed!

I
took Franck to a Chinese-run pizza place, and while he dug into the crust of his calzone, I took charge of our life for the second time.

 

I told him the secret promise I had made to myself when we were still kids, standing on the walkway of the Pont des Arts.

I told him how I hadn't dared say it to him out loud, but that it was still there in my head and that it was time to seize the moment.

 

I told him we were going to get out of here. That it was too ugly, that his cousin was too stupid, and that we didn't come all this way to face more ugliness and to deal with yet another idiot. Better dressed, perhaps, but as much of a moron as the guys from school.

I told him he should find us a place to live, but in Paris proper. Even a tiny place. That we would manage. That our room here was small, too, and that we'd already proven to each other that we could respect each other's privacy. That I had always lived in trailers and that it didn't scare me to live in a cramped space again. That I could handle it. That when it came to a place to live, I could deal with anything.

 

I told him that my favorite time of day was evening, when I watched him from behind, when he was drawing instead of studying lousy laws that no one respected anyway.

Yes, that it was the only beautiful thing I had seen since we had come here: his drawings. And, especially the way his face finally relaxed when he was bent over them. That Little Prince face that I had loved so much when I was a kid and that I had glimpsed from afar in the schoolyard. His disheveled hair and his light-colored scarf that set me dreaming so much at a time when I really needed it . . .

I told him he needed to prove to me that he was brave, and that he couldn't keep giving me advice, asking me to cut ties with my family, and then doing exactly the opposite with his.

 

I told him that he loved boys and he was right to do so because it's good to love whom you love, but that he had to get it into his head once and for all that his relationship with his father was dead forever.

That it wasn't worth driving himself crazy becoming a lawyer to be forgiven for his sexual orientation since it wouldn't change a thing. That his father would never understand him, would never accept him, would never forgive him, and would never allow himself to love him.

And that he could trust me on that point because I was living proof that parents could do it: they could wash their hands of you.

And that I was also living proof that one survived. That it was possible to figure out an alternative, to find other solutions along the way. That he, for example, was my father, my mother, my brother, and my sister, and that worked just fine for me. That I was very happy with my new host family.

Then I think I cried a little and his calzone was almost cold, but I continued, because that's how I am: submissive slut or sturdy support beam.

 

I told him he was going to quit his useless studies and sign up for the internship to get into his jewelry school. That if he didn't try it, he would regret it until the day he died, and also that he was sure to succeed at it because he was talented.

Because, yes, life was as unfair in this as in everything else, that the people who were born with more talent than others had more opportunity than others. That it sucked but that's life: only the rich get loans.

Yes, he would succeed brilliantly, but on the sole condition that he was brave and worked hard.

That at the moment, he wasn't being very brave, but as I was his mother, his father, his brother, and his sister, I was going to chuck all his law books into the dumpster and drive him crazy until he gave in.

That while he was going to school, I would look for a real job and find one easily. Not because I was more clever than everyone else looking for a job but because I was white and legally allowed to work. That I wasn't going to make a fuss. That the only thing I didn't want to do was weigh potatoes, but presumably, in Paris, I didn't have anything to worry about in that regard.

(That was the funny sequence, but it didn't work. He didn't laugh and I didn't want him to since his jaw was stuck in his pizza.)

 

I told him we had nothing to worry about. That everything would work out for us. That he didn't need to be afraid of Paris, even less of Parisians because they were all dull and all slight, that a flick of the finger was enough to knock them over. That people capable of paying €3.20 for a small coffee would never pose a danger for us. So he shouldn't worry. The fact that the land we came from was rotting in shit had at least one advantage for us: we were sturdier than they were. Much, much sturdier. And braver. And we were going to whip them all.

So that was it, I summed up: his job was to find us a place to live and mine was to mind the shop while he learned the only profession that he should be learning.

 

And then, there was, like, such a long and paranormal silence that the server came by to ask us if there was a problem with the food.

And even then, Franck didn't hear.

But I did, fortunately. So I asked the server if he could put our pizzas back in the oven for two minutes.

“Suh ting,” he said, nodding.

 

All this time, Franck continued to look at me as though I reminded him of someone whose name escaped him and it was starting to bother him.

Still, after a few minutes, he said, piling it on a little too thick:

“You're making such a great speech, my dear Billie . . . It's you who should pursue law, you know . . . you would cause a sensation in a courtroom . . . Do you want me to sign you up?”

How arrogant . . . It was stupid of him to speak to me like that . . . Me who had quit school as soon as he'd left town . . .

That was really dumber than dumb and quite shameful of him.

 

The pizzas came back and we dug into them in silence, and since the mood was tense and he started to feel bad about having hurt my feelings, he gave me a light kick in the shin to make me laugh.

And then he said, smiling:

“I know you're right . . . I know . . . But what am I supposed to do? Call my father and tell him ‘Hello, daddy? Listen, I don't think I ever told you, but I'm a homo, and your precious law, you can shove it up your ass, because I want to design earrings and pearl necklaces instead. Hello? Are you still there? So . . . so . . . uh . . . could you kindly deposit money into my bank account tomorrow, please, so that I no longer seem like a moron in Mama Billie's eyes?' ”