Tita (8 page)

This morning, for once, Mother doesn’t pounce on my hair or Coralie’s when Loli takes us to our parents’ room. She hardly seems to notice us. She’s reading a letter.

“Good news?” Father asks.

Mother nods, munching her bread and butter, and goes on reading. “Michel is opening a new store in Villeurbanne,” she finally says. “He’s there all the time, and Yvette is very bored. But she shouldn’t complain, she got a mink coat for her birthday!”

So the letter is from Yvette, Mother’s niece and goddaughter, who lives in Lyon.

“Maybe minks aren’t the best possible company?” Father says.

Mother doesn’t even smile. Has she changed her mind about mink coats? I’ve often heard her say to her friends, “Mink is not as indispensable as people think. Anyway I’m too young, and I’m perfectly happy with my three-quarter-length mouton coat. More my style. It’s a bit too sporty for Paris, but Caroline, my sister-in-law, has so many fur coats, I can always borrow one.”

I’m sitting behind Father on Mother’s dressing-table stool. Coralie has sneaked into the bathroom, from which various rolling and tumbling noises emanate. But mother doesn’t seem to hear, she’s so absorbed in Yvette’s letter.

“Yvette loves me so much!” she exclaims. “Listen to this:
I’ve met some people down here but I don’t think I’ll make any friends. Why did I let Michel persuade me to abandon my dear hill of Fourvière? Do I need a ten-room house, a pool, a garden, far from the city and everything I like? Every time I see these suburban women I wish you were with me. We’d have such a great time making fun of their frumpy outfits and their quenelle recipes. And we’d go to the opera! Michel is always too tired. Please come soon, I literally can’t live without you!
”

“She doesn’t sound very happy,” Father says. “Or very patient with her new neighbors.”

“She misses me too much,” Mother says. “But I can’t go right now. Maybe she could join me when I stay in Paris with Caroline. It would take her mind off her husband! Lucky for him he makes so much money, else he wouldn’t stand a chance of keeping her.”

Father frowns, and goes back to his newspaper. He doesn’t like Michel very much either, and I can see why — the man is such a show-off, always going on about how well his business is doing, and what a clever deal he just made, and his new house, and the fancy car he’s going to buy for Yvette. He keeps checking his appearance in mirrors, straightening his tie and his hair, simpering to himself. But Father never disparages anybody.

When Yvette brought Michel here last summer before they got married, Mother was thrilled because he had a sewing-machine store in the center of Lyon. Yvette’s first husband, whom she’d married when she was sixteen (and he eighteen) had been a construction worker. We liked him very much, all of us except Mother. He and Yvette looked like they were in love, they had a beautiful baby daughter, and they took me around on their motorbike. But she divorced him last year to marry Michel. Now the little girl lives with her father and her father’s parents, so we never see her.

When we met Michel, Mother wanted Father to share her enthusiasm. He said, “Not exactly my type, and I wouldn’t have thought Yvette’s type either, but what do I know?” That’s about as far as he’ll go when he objects to someone.

Father is
good
— everyone says so, even people who hardly know him. It’s his reputation, and I often hear the same kind of praise for my grandfather,
his
father, who died long before I was born. I think Coralie takes after them. Mother wouldn’t agree about that. She often says, “What a terrible child!” and “I don’t know what to do with her!” Father will answer, “Well, she’s full of life!” And yes, Coralie doesn’t always do as she’s told, but that’s because she knows what she likes, and wants to be left alone to pursue her projects. She can be fierce, but only if crossed. Like the comtesse de Ségur’s Sophie, she misbehaves, but deep down in her heart she’s good.

Do I know any children who are bad? Mother says that Eléonore is spoiled, because she has so many dresses and such a large collection of dolls from the French provinces. And it’s true that her mother spends many evenings making clothes for her after working all day in her office downstairs. But Eléonore is the opposite of demanding. Her mother just loves sewing. Once I asked her, “Do you ever make dresses for yourself?” and she laughed. “Look at me!” she said. So, I did. And I blushed.

Eléonore’s mother is fat, and her dresses are like sacks, but I hadn’t noticed this before, because she always wears large colorful shawls over her shoulders. “It’s so much fun to dress Eléonore,” she said. “And so easy. Anything you put on her will look good!” Which is not exactly true, and sounds silly, but who cares? I don’t agree that Eléonore is spoiled. She’s exceptionally obedient, and she loves her parents. We make fun of her because she’s obsessed with ballet, and it takes her a while to get our jokes, but she’s not
bad
.

Father puts down
L’Indépendant,
looks around, and fetches Coralie from the bathroom. “You’re going to be late for school!” he says. “Run down to Loli, and ask her to do your hair.”

So we both go down, and Coralie’s hair is perfect in three seconds — she keeps very quiet today, because it’s time for her bread and butter
tartines
. Who is bad? I wonder as I pretend to bring spoonfuls of porridge to my mouth while Loli does my plaits. Not even Michel, probably. I don’t know him well, and I don’t feel like knowing him better, but that doesn’t mean he’s bad. I still have to meet someone who’s bad, in real life. Someone who’s sure to go to hell. But if parents are responsible for their children being bad, shouldn’t they be the ones who go to hell? The comtesse doesn’t say.

What about me? I don’t think anybody (except maybe, at times, mademoiselle Pélican) would call me
bad
. At home, I’m supposed to be extremely good. But I don’t
feel
good. It’s just an appearance. I’m certainly not like Sophie — I’m not sure I
have
a heart. There is no “deep down” in me. I wonder if I even exist.

Friday. Our parents are going to the cinema: the Idéal, hardly a ten-minute walk from our house. Coralie and I are in bed in our nightgowns, waiting for Mother to come and kiss us good night.

But I can hear her and Father in the hall, putting on their coats. I call. The wooden door to the vestibule creaks open. Soon they will be gone. And we haven’t been kissed.

I run to the landing. Lean out over the balustrade. Call again. The front door rumbles open, metal and glass resonate into my body. I call. Call again, as loud as I can. Listen, on tiptoe, my head thrust forward over the bannister, my shoulders. Call. Listen. Call.

I’m hanging on the other side of the balustrade, in the void. How did I get here? I stop calling, try to send all my strength into my hands. The front door bangs shut. 

When I wake up, my whole left side is black: foot, leg, thigh, hip, arm, back. They say I was lucky: I fell onto the wicker table before hitting the stone floor of the hall. I don’t remember falling, and they say of course not: I fainted, then was out for more than thirty hours. Father brings me a book,
Petite Princesse
, but I’m too stunned to read. I look at my skin slowly becoming blue, purple, red. Bruises. Nothing is broken. I wonder if our parents ever went to the Idéal.

Back at Sainte-Blandine after nine days in bed. As usual, first thing in the morning, we’re reading the mass aloud in our classroom, one verse for each of us, round and round. When it’s my turn, we’ve got to
Quare tristis es, anima mea, et quare conturbas me?
“My soul, why are you sad, and why do you trouble me?” Exactly what I often ask myself. What’s wrong with you, why can’t you be like everybody else?

When I’m done reading, I look back at verse 3:
Emitte lucem tuam,
“Send me your light and your truth: they will lead me to your holy mountain, and to your tabernacle.” But do I want to be led to some mountain? And what’s a tabernacle doing there? Isn’t that the box on the altar, where the hosts are kept?

Meanwhile I’ve lost my place, but I hear Elisabeth in the
Confiteor
: she confesses to almighty God, to Mary ever virgin, to Michael the archangel, John the Baptist, Peter and Paul, etc. that she has sinned exceedingly in thought, word, deed, and omission. It’s her fault, her fault, her most grievous fault. And it goes on: have mercy on me, grant us pardon, take away our iniquities. I often wonder what this is all about. All this sin, fault, and iniquity.

Could falling over the banister count as a sin? I didn’t deliberately throw myself onto the stone floor, so I didn’t sin
cogitatione
. But
opere
? And
omissione
, too — I could have been more careful, could have kept from leaning forward. Actually, I should have stayed in my room, in bed, as Coralie did. And I shouldn’t have called out: I sinned
verbo
.

But I’m not going to discuss this with monsieur le curé. Our priest is a gracious, respectable man, but I can’t imagine having an actual conversation with him. He’s very old, and he has the whole parish to take care of. He’s on a different plane, but on our side, somehow; so we children, among ourselves, call him by his first name, Olivier.

When my friends and I prepare for confession every week, we look at the list of sins in our catechism and select a few: I didn’t say my prayers, I disobeyed my parents, I lied, I swore, I cheated, I hit my sister. Practically all of mine are fiction. I don’t even mention my “insolence” to Pélican, because I’m proud of it. I guess it’s a sin to invent sins for confession, but what can we do? We have to say
something
.

Once I was kneeling in the chapel in front of the confessional awaiting my turn when I heard a girl from the
école laïque
address the priest in a loud, vehement voice. She seemed to have so much to tell, I assumed she was a great sinner, which made me envious. But when I listened more closely I realised she was just describing in detail her quarrels with her brothers, then giving elaborate explanations for a few perfunctory lies to her teacher. She was making it all sound intensely dramatic and rather fun, which I hadn’t imagined you were supposed to do in confession. Such a contrast to my bland lists.             

Careful: it’s my turn again, and I am the
indignus famulus
, the unworthy servant, with
innumerabilibus peccatis, et offensionibus, et negligentiis.
But in the Sanctus I get to say
Sabaoth
and
Hosanna!

Now we have to copy a map of the Garonne and its tributaries. I look at the shape of the river in my geography book and try to understand its twists and turns. Coming down from the Pyrenees, a right angle of nearly 90°, then left at... 120°? The river I draw is totally different from the model, but Noëlle’s looks perfect. Anne-Claude is already writing the names of towns along the Gers, the Tarn and the Lot: Auch, Cahors, Albi. I have to erase everything and start again, knowing that I won’t do much better.

After the break (hopscotch), Group One is at the blackboard to recite their lesson on the plural of nouns ending in
ou
, while our group gets a conjugation test.
Choir, gésir, coudre, falloir, faillir, mourir
, in the past anterior, future perfect, past subjunctive, pluperfect subjunctive, and the two forms of conditional perfect. After a while I hear Anne-Claude, flushed and dishevelled, whispering on my left. “Tita! Your feet!” Between our desks lies a folded piece of paper. I pick it up while Pélican corrects the first set of exercises. It says, “Noëlle and I are stumped on
gésir
. Save us and you can choose one each of our pictures.”

Pictures are the main currency at Sainte-Blandine. There are several ways of getting them. Pélican gives you one for ten
bons points
(small pieces of cardboard with the Sainte-Blandine stamp on them that you get for good marks or good conduct). You also get pictures for your friends’ or siblings’ solemn communion, to commemorate the event. All these are holy pictures, but we also collect scented perfume ads. Anne-Claude has quite a few because her grandmother owns a perfume store.

“
Gésir
has no past participle,” I answer on the other side of Anne-Claude’s note in my best handwriting (which is still pretty bad). “So no compound tenses.” I fold the paper, drop it on the floor when Pélican isn’t looking, and give it a push with my foot. Everything’s fine so far: I’m trying to choose mentally among Anne-Claude’s sweet-smelling pictures. I know! I want
Soir de Paris
, with a couple sitting in the back of a cab. The woman wears a long pinkish dress, a fur stole, and dark-red gloves. She looks dreamily into the distance while the man, in a top hat, white gloves and a white scarf, concentrates on her face, as if waiting for an answer.

And from Noëlle’s collection? I’ll have the one where Jesus, outside the stable, naked in a wicker basket, lifts his arms to his kneeling mother. Her keen eye, in profile, is intent on the child, her whole body straining towards him while her arms remain crossed on her chest in gratitude and amazement. Joseph has a white beard and a red robe; he too bends toward the child with his palms pressed together in prayer. Three naked angels fly above the family, with something in their hands that looks like sheet music. There’s a crucifix on the left and, in the background, a clear sky with trees and hills. I already have quite a few Holy Family pictures.

Pélican has been busy writing on the blackboard:
chou, caillou, fou, pou, sou, genou
. All of a sudden, as if she had eyes in the back of her head, she turns around and says in a creaky voice, “Anne-Claude, give me that immediately.”

Pélican is coming towards us, and Anne-Claude hands her the piece of paper that tells the whole story. “Zero for both of you!” Pélican announces. “Shame on you! You’ll spend the rest of the afternoon kneeling in front of the Sacred Heart, and if I hear another word out of you, you’ll also be there all day tomorrow. Now go.” She hasn’t looked at the other side of the
paper, so Noëlle has escaped. Pélican turns to me: “You especially, Euphémie, should know better. The more gifts God has bestowed upon us, the more careful we should be in using them properly. You will write a hundred lines for tomorrow morning: “I won’t connive with dunces and betray my teacher’s trust.”

When I get home I write those stupid lines in the dining room, listening on the phonograph to
La Belle de Cadix
— a Luis Mariano song about a woman who has many suitors but doesn’t love any of them. She finally enters a convent. Then I go to Father’s study to look up
tabernacula
in the Gaffiot. I only find
tabernaculum
. Oh,
tabernacula
is the plural. And the word means “hut”, or “tent”. Do I want to be led to God’s hut? I already have a hard time sharing a room with Coralie. I’d like to live in a hut, but I’d rather have it all to myself.

I reach up for another book,
Le Bon Usage
. It’s about the French language, and all that can be done with its words and phrases. Every time Pélican makes a dubious assertion about French, that’s where I go for clarification. I also use it when I read something in a book that doesn’t feel right.

Pélican counted as an error my “Les rois qui se sont succédé sur le trône,” which is the only solution according to
Le Bon Usage
, since there’s no direct object. Pélican used the general rule about “être”, which doesn’t apply to pronominal verbs. I’ll keep quiet about this. You can’t just say, “But there’s a special rule about pronominal verbs”. You have to wait. Until the right time comes for an innocent-sounding question that won’t sound like an objection but will bring her whole house down.

Now I’m checking the plural of compound nouns, and here’s a surprise: I hadn’t realised that the “nouveau” in “nouveau-né” (newborn) is an adverb, not an adjective. Therefore invariable. So you should write “des nouveau-nés”, not “des nouveaux-nés”. Nice. But what about the feminine? “Une nouveau-née”?

I’m trying to remember what it felt like being a
nouveau-née
when Father walks into the room. I’m sitting in his chair, so I stand up. He takes me in his arms, seats me on the desk in front of him and gently strokes the long smudge on my right shoulder and arm, which is now yellow mostly, and light brown at the edges. Whereas my hip is dark green, with some blue. “Does it still hurt?” he asks.

“No,” I say. “But this side of my body feels different. Lighter.”

Father sees
Le Bon Usage
next to me. He frowns. “What do you want with that book?”

“I just... like it,” I say.

“You do? It’s a very good book, but you probably have something simpler, written for children.”

“Our grammar book is much too vague,” I say. “For instance, about the agreement of past participles, it only gives the main rules, but there are lots of exceptions.”

Father is shaking his head. “Why on earth do you care so much about past participles?” he finally says. 

“Don’t you care about words? This book looks like it has been used a lot.”

“Too much, maybe. You can have it.”

I jump up to kiss him. “Oh, thank you! But are you sure you won’t need it?”

He smiles. “If I need it, I’ll tell you. But I haven’t used it in years.”

I like rules, and I like to catch Pélican’s blunders, but what I like best is just to think about words.
Le Bon Usage
is special: it doesn’t tell you, “Do this, do that,” like our grammar book at school. In each case, it describes what many writers do, and others don’t; what various grammarians think, what was more usual in the seventeenth century, what’s happening to the language now. You can see that the author, monsieur Grevisse, would like precision and common sense to prevail, but he never says, “This is right, that is wrong”. He gives quotations that illustrate one usage, and quotations for a different usage, and he tells you what he thinks. Then you can make up your own mind. I’m in love with him.

“Enjoy yourself,” Father goes on. “And if you have trouble finding something, ask me. The index is so detailed you might not always know where to look.”