The first French words I learn are un grand pain blanc, carré, coupé. They are seared in my memory from age four when I join my parents in Belgium, where they attend university. My parents teach me those words so I can buy bread in the morning. We live in a college town called Louvain-la-Neuve (LLN), where only bikes and mopeds are allowed. LLN sits on top of a railway and a network of parking lots that connect it to the world. My parents believe that the absence of cars means the absence of all danger. Nonetheless, the second phrase they teach me is our address: 47, Sentier du Luxembourg, 1348 Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgique. A square ID card listing that same address goes inside an orange sleeve that I wear around my neck. They tell me wearing it keeps me safe, but it reminds me that I am not safe. They say that I need to know my address in case I get lost, but I know it is in case I get kidnapped. I know kids get kidnapped. Learning French happens like learning English, from singing to albums. First, I imitate the sound of the words perfectly, even if I do not know what they mean. Then, I start to know what the words mean. This happens fast, like a magic trick, and I do not know how it happens.
My parents like to stay in bed late, naked, having long conversations that lizard up the walls of our small one-bedroom apartment. My bed is a single mattress at their feet, a little ship anchored to their island. On weekend mornings, I can crawl into their bed. My parents are beautiful, and the smartest and most fun people in the world, always warm to my touch, and smelling of green apple shampoo and, in my mom’s case, the faint smell of Marlboro reds. But they are not my good parents. My good parents are Manica and Papa Xande, who are actually my grandparents. They stayed back in Cabo Verde. I miss them every day.
The bakery I go to buy bread in the mornings has floor-to-ceiling dark wood shelves full of fresh loaves of bread of different sizes. Standing in line, I am brushed by leather bags, newspapers, and coats. My shoes are buffeted by shiny shoes. These are adult clothes that my parents never wear. The bakers with flour-coated forearms wear white aprons. I cannot see their faces because I am not at eye level. While I wait, I repeat my order like a mantra, under my breath: Un grand pain blanc carré coupé un grand pain blanc carré coupé un grand pain blanc carré coupé un grand pain blanc carré coupé. When it is finally my turn, my heart beating fast, I blurt the words without any pauses, lest one of them pull away and be lost: ungrandpainblancarrécoupé.
On Saturday mornings, I also have permission to buy a fresh pain au chocolat. I get it straight from the baker’s oven. I never wait long enough for it to cool before I bite into it, on my way home, and the chocolate filling is always too hot. The sandy feeling of my burned tongue makes me promise again that I will wait for the filling to cool next time. But I won’t. I can never do things better than the clumsy way that I do them. There is a list of things: burning my tongue with the pain au chocolat, picking the wrong school clothes for the weather, taking too long to pack my lunch, being late for school, not going to the bathroom before walking home from school. I do not ask to go to the bathroom in school because I do not know the French words for that, so I wait to do it at home. When I manage to make it home without peeing on myself, the moment our door closes behind me, my body gives in. The hot wetness makes the fabric of my pants cling to my legs. My embarrassment feels warm, then cold, then itchy. There are long orange curtains in front of our all-glass door, and I stand behind them, ashamed and defeated. It makes my father laugh, to see me standing there, just my feet peaking under the curtain, hiding. But it makes my mother angry:
“If you held it this long, why do you let it go the minute you walk in the house?! You’re doing it on purpose!”
I agree with my mother. I understand why she’s mad. I also have no idea why things I do not want to happen keep happening. I try very hard. I always try hard, and it confuses me that I cannot do better. Not even to avoid getting in trouble with my mother, and I want to avoid that more than anything.
When I look at them, I know that my mom and dad made me. I can see that I fit right in between them and make us a family. When we take the bus to the next town over because there is an Aldi supermarket there, the one we can afford to shop at, we each take a duffel bag to carry back our groceries. Mine is smaller and they pack it with lighter things like bread and toilet paper. My mom carries the green Puma bag that is big but not too big. My father carries the two bigger ones that will hold most of the heavy groceries. We make a good team. At dinner, my parents include me in their conversations. They argue about favorite Bruce Springsteen songs. My mom likes “The River,” but my father and I prefer “Point Blank.” This is because in “Point Blank,” the piano is more heartbreaking. At least, I think that is why. A lot of the conversations are about music and movies and politics. They talk about how the situation in Palestine is like our situation was in Cabo Verde before we won independence. They explain that Arafat is a freedom fighter, even though, like our own Amilcar Cabral, they call him a terrorist. At dinner I learn why Irish prisoners are on hunger strike and why Margaret Thatcher, who is mean just like Reagan, is letting them starve to death. Margaret Thatcher and Reagan are on the wrong side. Workers, prisoners on hunger strike, revolutionaries, those people who want fairness and justice are on the right side. I get to show them my schoolwork and drawings during dinner too. They hung two of my best drawings, the Carnaval and the mushroom one, above our dining table. I feel proud every time I see them.
I love how my mother cuts up my tomato in the shape of a rose and puts a small drop of mayo in the center of it and how my father always asks her, in fake outrage, “But what about my tomato?” My father knows how to make life funny, and I want to learn to do that in the quick, smooth way that he does it. I am learning by watching him and because, when we watch Monty Python, Luis de Funés, or Chaplin movies, he makes sure to explain to me every small detail that makes up a joke.
When we are done with dinner, my mom usually goes to play her guitar or listen to music. I want to rush over and sit with her, but first, I must help my father with the dishes. The deal is that my mother cooks and we clean up. My father teaches me to scrub all the leftover food off the plates so they are easier to wash. He also teaches me to wash glasses first and the greasiest things--the pots, last. He mostly does the dishes, and I keep him company, but we say we do them together. Sometimes, he ties me on his back as Cabo Verdean women do with their babies, while he does the dishes. I am not a baby, he is not a woman, and it looks ridiculous and very funny.
My father likes to tell me stories that I know are not true. I know that the image and sound of television static are not, as he tells me, an overhead shot of millions of people cheering at a football match. I also know that I can’t see color on our black-and-white TV. But when my father asks, so very seriously, "But didn't you tell me yesterday that the woman had a green dress?" I seriously consider this. Then I am delighted to realize that, yes, I really do “see” colors on the black-and-white TV. It feels like finding a little magic in my life. Whenever my father and I go on like this for too long, my mother yells, “Stop this nonsense! Stop making her crazy!”
Many evenings, the mood changes in a moment, and I never see it coming. They start to talk to each other about their plans for later. First, it’s calm, and then their conversational drizzle builds to a thunderstorm.
“No, it’s your turn to stay home with her.”
“Come on, you do it. Nothing is going on tonight and it’s your turn anyway.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I’m not going to keep having this argument. What you get to do, I get to do!”
They both say each other is selfish. They both say each other is a liar. They both say they are sick of each other. They get louder. Scarier. I sit at the bottom of the staircase, braced.
“Well, if you’re not staying with her…”
I manage to keep from crying until one of them says those same terrible words:
"Then I’m not either! So, okay, fine, then she’s staying alone!”
With this, I burst into the most despairing cry, and without needing to be told, get up and go upstairs. Nothing is more terrifying than staying home alone at night. I think my mother is more at fault for leaving me alone at night. It doesn’t feel right for a mother to do that. To stop me crying, she says I can watch her get ready. A little mercy. A little more time. I put the top of the toilet down and sit, as my mother faces the mirror. Our bathroom is so tiny that my side is pressed up against the sink where all her makeup is laid out. It feels like we are hiding in a closet that smells like Guerlain perfume and is lit up hazy and gold. Her skin, a light caramel color back home in Cabo Verde, is the color of condensed milk in Belgium. It is the smoothest skin with perfectly placed beauty marks, like stars in the sky. My favorite is a constellation of 3 that sit on her raised cheekbone and cup her right eye.
“You always want to do a smokey eye. Honestly, I wish I could do a cat eye like my mother,” my mother narrates. “Your Mama Nica? She is the queen of the perfect cat eye!”
I nod and remember her mother, my grandmother Mama Nica, touching her dry black eyeliner to her tongue and gliding perfect black swoops over her lids. As she narrates how to do the smokey eye, my mother keeps her mouth open, to steady her eyes. It makes her sound garbled in a funny way.
“Make it a thick line. It’s fine if it’s messy because you’ll smudge it anyway.”
I ask, sounding as interested as possible, “Do you do one whole eye first before you go to the other one?” This is not a real question. I know the answer because I know this routine by heart. I ask questions because getting my mother to talk extends her time with me. I want her to stay forever.
“It’s easier if you do one after the other. You’re less likely to screw it up.”
Eyeliner right, eyeliner left. On cue, I hand her the tool for the next step, a Q-tip. She uses it to smudge the upper eyelash lines.
“See?” She turns to me, triumphant. “Perfect smokey eye.”
Next, comes my least favorite part. The horrifying contraption is called an eyelash curler. But what it is, really, is clearly an eyeball snatcher. She jokingly glares at me with her one eye through the metal. Looking like the guy in that “A Clockwork Orange” poster. I shriek and run out of the bathroom until she’s done curling her lashes. She laughs.
“You’re so silly! I told you so many times, it doesn’t get in the eye. Come back!”
I return for the best part, done with one tool, the red lipstick. First, she dabs it below each brow and blends the color with her fingers to meet the smokey lash line. Then she puts mascara on.
Suddenly my mother looks like she belongs on TV, like she is someone mysterious, someone who maybe doesn’t want to be my mom. I remember these eyes belong to someone who is going out tonight, and my heart tightens. My mother then makes a duck face and dabs her cheeks.
“You have to suck your face in like this,” she says, “so you know where to blend. That’s what gives you cheekbones.”
“Why do you always say that?” I ask.
“Say what?”
“Gives you cheekbones when you already have cheekbones.”
She stops. Turns to look at me and laughs, a belly laugh. I am proud to have landed a joke but I was not joking.
Now we are almost done. She puts lipstick on her bottom lip and then slows to get the top lip. She traces the two peaks and one valley smoothly.
“Now you to do this,” (she puts her index finger halfway in her mouth and pulls it out), “to make sure you don’t get it on your teeth.”
Then seamlessly, without looking at me, my mother places two fingers on either side of her face, where the cheeks meet the temples, and pulls her skin back. Her face tightens.
“See? This is the surgery I would get if I could. Because these laugh lines will only get worse, you know? Look, they would pull like this, a tiny bit, and poof, they’re gone. See?”
I can see the difference, but I do not understand what the difference is about.
“How do they do the… surgery?” I ask.
“They put some stitches, like, staples? In your skin here.” She lines her temple where the imaginary staples would go.
“That’s horrible!” I’m nauseated by the idea of my mother’s face stapled, like Frankenstein’s monster.
“Not actual staples!” she eye rolls. “Just tiny stitches under the hairline, where people can’t see them. It’s surgery.”
“You would do that?”
“Oh, I would do that! That and my tits. I would do both if I could afford it.”
I will grow up remembering this, wondering who taught my mother to pinch and prod and pounce on herself in the mirror like that.
“Nothing is going to happen to you, and you know this,” my mother tells me impatiently as I start to cry quietly again, realizing our time is up. My crying is embarrassing, inevitable, and out of my control. It irritates my mother and turns her into a monster. “What do you want me to do? Never have any fun while your father has all the fun? It’s his turn to watch you. Cry to him! You have two parents!” And with that, she stomps down the stairs, after giving me a disgusted look.
I cry without end. I get out of breath, catch it, and start crying again. I sit on the bed, hugging my doll Sissa like armor in front of me, and bury my back into the cold walls to protect my back. I cry so hard that I get exhausted and fall asleep. When I wake up startled a few hours later, the house is completely silent, completely dark.
I know I have to run away to Tia Ninucha’s house across the street. I don’t take my coat or put on shoes because if I pause to do that, I will lose my nerve. I open the door and the warmth rushes out of my flannel pajamas. It feels like I am dreaming. Then, the vein-like ridges on the old wooden steps in front of our house pinch my toes, and I know I am not dreaming. I bolt across the slippery cobblestone street. Tia Ninucha’s door has wood framing and two glass panels. I am tall enough that my curly hair reaches the top panel but short enough that I knock on the bottom one. Tia Ninucha smiles down at me when she comes to the door in her nightgown. She opens the door. She does not yell at me because it is late, dark and freezing. She does not yell at me because I am barefoot and without a coat. She does not yell at me for doing this again. Tia Ninucha just puts me to bed on her sofa and kisses me goodnight. In the morning, Tia Ninucha and Tio Memei will make me a delicious breakfast. The bread they like is dark and round, un petit pain gris. Then my mother will barge in, angry, to pick me up. Tia Ninucha will try to reason with her but it will not work. My mother will yell at me, maybe ground me. But tonight, I am safe and happy.
Beautiful
This is wonderfully written and very evocative. How much have you written? Will you share more?