Tita (2 page)

On Thursday, as Mother serves coffee after lunch, I ask Grandmother, “Does a consecrated host, when it’s inside you, actually feel like the body of Jesus?” Grandmother shakes her head. Father raises his eyebrows.

“First communion on April seventh,” Mother says.

“Don’t they have it when they’re around twelve or thirteen?” he asks.

“That’s the
solemn
communion,” Mother explains. “With the long dress and veil and vows. At Sainte-Blandine they also have a private communion for the seven-year-olds.” Her words are a bit blurred, because she’s set a sugar lump under her tongue, which every sip of coffee infiltrates and slowly melts into her mouth.

“Two first communions!” Father says. “That doesn’t make sense. You’ll have to choose, Tita. If you have it now, that’ll be it.”

“Impossible,” Mother says, swallowing the last of her caffeinated sugar. “The solemn communion is the important one. It’s absolutely indispensable.”

“Then you’ll have to do without this one,” Father says. “One first communion is trouble enough.”

“But all the other girls…” I’m near to crying now. Which won’t help with Father. At all.

“You don’t have to do what the other girls do,” Father says.

“But... I’ve been so looking forward to it. I can’t wait five more years! We’ve learned all the hymns. Please.”

“I don’t think so,” Father says. Which for him is a pretty definitive statement.

If Mother chose to declare herself on my side she’d probably win, because Father always tries to please her. And this is not crucial for him. It just shocks his sense of logic: two first communions. In the eyes of God, I know the only one that counts is the private one, where you receive communion for the first time and celebrate this event with your family. The solemn one is just a social occasion, but nobody in town can do without it. Not even the communists. It’s one of the... stages. For my older sister Justine’s I went to the flower shop with Father. The florist said, “Solemn communion, eh? Wedding next time.”

You are born, baptized. You have your private communion, your solemn communion. You get married, you have kids, they get baptized, they have their private communion, their solemn communion. Then you die. More flowers.

If I don’t make my private communion, my teacher, mademoiselle Pélican, will be outraged. Not to mention the other parents and the
Dames de charité
. Every time I go to mass, I’ll stay in the pew with the younger kids while my schoolmates walk to the altar in a procession, with the grown-ups, to receive communion. I’ll be a martyr, my father a persecutor. He’s already a divorcé, so he’s barred from the sacraments.

In fact, most men in Cugnac don’t go to church anyway. There’s monsieur Lacrose, who owns the electrical store (his tenor voice resonates all over the nave), and monsieur Nourrigat, the undertaker. Those two come to mass every Sunday, but the other men turn up only on special occasions, and seldom bother to receive communion. So in spite of his divorce Father doesn’t draw much attention to himself.

But he will, if he doesn’t let me make my private communion. I need to act. He’s in his tasting room clearing away some bottles. I go and tell him again that it’s really important for me, and that it won’t cost any money — I already have a white dress from last year.

“What about you? Didn’t you have a private communion?” I ask.

He’s looking out the window, not moving at all. Trying to remember? He was born so long ago, in 1897. The nineteenth century! When he was seven, he was already in boarding school, with Dominican monks.

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.

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 just 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.