Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow (11 page)

So long story short, he wanted to clear his conscience because he felt guilty for kind of having dropped me, so he put this note in the mailbox along with twenty euros. He thinks money can fill a hole or what? He's got to stop reading the psychobabble cases in those women's magazines on Lila's coffee table. Even what he wrote was nonsense: "If you need me, you know where to find me..." Yeah, and, well, what I know, Hamoudi, is you're not over at number 32 anymore. You've dropped us, Rimbaud and me. You traitor. All the same in every way. Traitors.

And even Mme Burlaud. If she wasn't paid to see me at a set time once a week, I'm sure she'd have cut me loose by now.

Walking past the bar
in the center of town, I noticed a piece of paper stuck up in the window. It said: "
LOTTO WINNER HERE
: 65,000
EUROS
." They always write "
WINNER HERE
," but they never put who it is. The guys who work at the bar-tabac are good people. They aren't snitches. They'd never name names. Except this time, I know who it is, the lucky bastard to hit the jackpot. It's our very own international Shérif. He's definitely going to have to go on TV and become famous. That way, he'll get around the identity checks. Yeah, if he's a big shot, no one will need to ask for his name or I.D. anymore. Still, he deserved it. He's been gambling for so long. I'm kind of curious to know what he'll do with the money. Change his baseball cap? Jeans? Apartment? Neighborhood? Country? Maybe he'll buy a villa in Tunisia, settle down over there and find himself a wife who's a genius with couscous...

Hey, speaking of marriage, I grilled my mom on it. She's in love with the mayor of Paris. She likes, no, she kiffes, Bertrand Delanoë ever since she saw him on TV laying the memorial plaque at Saint-Michel. It was in honor of the Algerians thrown into the Seine during the demonstration on October 17, 1961. I borrowed books about it from the Livry-Gargan library.

Mom thought it was really good and big of Bertrand to do something in memory of the Algerian people. Very dignified, very classy. Now that she's single, I'm thinking of giving Bertrand Delanoë a call. A big poster campaign with Mom's photo (the black-and-white one in her passport) and below, the slogan: "I kiffe you for real, Monsieur Mayor, call me..." It'll drive Bertrand wild if he sees the poster. Plus, I think he's single too. It's true, you never see him out on the town with chicks. And Mom, she's like a trifecta: "You can win it all." She cooks, she cleans, and she even knits. I bet nobody's ever knitted a pair of wool boxers before for "M. the Mayor, I have the honor to inform you that..." He'll be way happy about those come winter.

The other night, I ran into Hamoudi by the recycling bins. He told me he was just looking for me. Pffffff. That's so not true. I could easily see he was headed for Lila's.

"Hamoudi, what a liar!"

No, actually, I didn't say that. I just said: "Oh, cool..." We talked for a little while. He told me he was sorry he's not around as much as he used to be ... Big picture is, he made me see he's got a new life now and I also got the message I wasn't really part of it anymore.

"Hamoudi, I liked you better when you were a ghetto thug and gave the finger to all the keepers of the peace."

No, I didn't really say that. I just said: "Yeah, OK."

Lila and Hamoudi are even making marriage plans. His mom must be happy. She'll have managed to marry off all her children. "Final level reached. Bonus. You're a winner." The old lady's completed her mission. And it came at just the right time. Twenty-eight's fine, it's right before his mom starts
asking questions..."Allah, my God, perhaps my son he iz a ... maggot?!
Hchouma...
"

Hamoudi had better invite me to his wedding. If he doesn't, I'll turn him over to the Five-o ... No, I'm joking. That's too far. There's this guy in the neighborhood who turned in his boys to the cops. Ever since, he's been persecuted and the guys in the projects call him "the harki," aka an Algerian who fought for France, a deserter. Me, I'm not that low. Poor guy, his turncoat rep is going to follow him as long as he's on the Paradise Estate. Here, you just have to do one thing that's not so cool and it's all over for you. You get pigeonholed until you die.

It reminds me of the story of a girl who lived around here a few years back. They even wrote about her in the newspaper. She was a good student in school, everybody in the neighborhood respected her family, and the kids from the center of town, known to be real tough crews, would even help her dad with his shopping bags when he came back from the market on Sunday mornings. This girl was in a theater group funded by the Livry-Gargan town council and
her parents let her follow her passion no problem. Sometimes they even went to see her performing in the end-of-year show. So, basically, things weren't going too badly for her, even if her parents did think these activities were just a hobby, like painting on Wednesday afternoons at the rec center when you're in nursery school. But this girl, she really loved to act and wanted to make a career out of it. When she was eighteen, she even performed in different towns across France with her company.

Then one day her parents found an anonymous letter in their mailbox. The whole thing was published in that antiracist city paper
Friend to Friend,
together with a first-person account by this girl:

Your daughter keeps the wrong kind of company. She goes out a lot and is often seen walking with boys. We've heard things about her that dirty your name and your good reputation. The whole neighborhood knows that **** hangs around with young men and that she is forgetting the right path. God says that you are responsible for the path of your children. You must be strict with her so that she fears her family and the religion of Islam. Now people and men see
that your daughter is from the street and that she is not afraid. The French are taking her on the road to evil. We have noticed that she wears makeup, that she dyes her hair. This means she likes to please men and that she is tempting Satan. If something shameful happens, God will see you have been too free with her and you are as much to blame as she is.

God offers mercy and clemency. She can return to the family and to our customs if you apply harsh measures. Prayer can be a hand from God for those who turn away from the path.

Your family is one that we respect and it must continue that way. A girl can be put on the right path by her father. You must believe in the power God entrusts you with to be a good family.

After the letter, everything changed for this girl. The anonymous bastard who wrote all that stupid stuff managed to convince her parents. They felt guilty for giving their daughter "too much" freedom. So, all of a sudden, she wasn't allowed to do theater anymore. Or go out, not even to buy bread. Most of all, she started hearing talk of marriage. The
last resort when parents feel their daughters slipping through their fingers.

Then in
Friend to Friend,
she wrote in about how she decided to run away from home. Today, she lives on her own and hardly has any contact with her parents. But she's with the Comédie-Française and she's earning a living doing what she loves. She won after all.

There you have it.
I'm sixteen. Sixteen springs, as they say in the movies. Nobody remembered. Not even Mom. No one wished me a happy birthday this year. Same thing happened last year ... Oh wait. Last year I got a gift certificate from Agnès B. with a special free gift if I sent back the "Agnès B. wishes you a happy birthday" voucher within ten days. But this year I got nothing. Even Agnès B. hates me. She's got a grudge because I didn't send her crappy voucher back last time. Fool. I don't give a shit. Anyway, their gifts are always bigger in the photo than in real life.

If no one remembered my birthday this year, too bad.

And to be honest, I kind of understand. I'm no one special. Some people, everyone remembers their birthdays. Some are even on the calendar in the paper. But me, I'm nobody. And I don't know how to do anything big. Well, yeah, I can do a few things, but nothing special, really: I can crack my toes, send a string of saliva out of my mouth and suck it back in again, do an Italian accent in front of the bathroom mirror in the morning ... Yeah, I can get by without much trouble in the end. But if I was a boy, maybe it would be different ... It would definitely be different.

For a start, my father would still be here. He wouldn't have gone back to Morocco. And for Christmas 1994, I would have definitely gotten Fisher-Price Rollerblades and a reply to the letter I sent Santa Claus. Yeah, it would all have gone better if I'd been a guy. I would have lots of photos of me as a little kid, like little Sarah. My dad would have taught me to chew tobacco. He'd have told me plenty of scandalous stories he'd picked up on building sites and plus, from time to time, he'd even have patted me on the shoulder, a sort of bonding, conspiracy thing, like: "You're a good guy!" Yeah, yeah. I would even have had fun scratching myself between the legs a lot to prove my virility. I would have really liked to have been a boy. But fine, I'm a girl. A broad. A chick. A babe, even. I'll get used to it eventually.

The other day Mom and me,
we went to the Taxiphone in the square to call Aunt Zohra. More and more of these Taxiphones are popping up everywhere. With their wooden booths, glass doors, and phone numbers on the handsets, they remind me of Morocco. Basically, the whole Taxiphone idea is made in the
BLED
. The one in the square is like having a little bit of Oujda in Livry-Gargan.

Aunt Zohra's doing well. She promised to come and visit us soon. And she said that Youssef gets out in May. It sounded definite because she didn't even say "inshallah." It seems that, bit by bit, with each visit she recognizes him less and less. She told Mom
he's starting to rant in this really extreme way, even worse than his dad. With that comparison, I'm thinking it must be bad.

He must have met some weird people in the slammer. Youssef was always easygoing before and way more open than most guys his age ... These days, he talks about grave sins and divine punishments. Before, he didn't really give a shit about all that. He even bought bacon-flavored chips on the sly just to find out what they tasted like. I think it's shady, this kind of supersudden change. Someone must have taken advantage of him being vulnerable in prison and inserted some big fat disks into his brain. Thank God he gets out in May.

For good news, I landed on this regional news report on France 3 the other evening and who do I see on the screen all styling in her pink
boubou,
Miss Africa dress? Fatouma Konaré, my mom's ex-coworker from the Formula 1 in Bagnolet. Her name was up on the screen with, underneath it: "Union delegate." The commentary said the girls had won their battle. Their
demands would be met shortly. Even the employees who got fired during the strike as well as those who left without any compensation are going to see reparations for their losses. Does that mean Mom'll see some money too, even if she didn't go on strike? Right away, I started thinking about that fat jerk M. Winner. He must have been left sitting there scratching himself! Ha! Well done.

And so there you go, that'll do for my birthday present, knowing there is some justice in this world after all. I was starting to seriously doubt it. I was fed up with always hearing: "The wheel will come around." I don't see what wheel they're talking about and, well, it's a stupid expression.

With all the events of this year, I was thinking that, frankly, life's too unfair. But now just recently, I've changed my mind a bit ... Lots of things have happened that have changed my point of view. Like that guy who was wrongly imprisoned, Patrick Dils, appearing on that show
Everybody's Talking About It.
And the cleaners' situation at the Formula 1 in Bagnolet. And Hamoudi and Lila getting married next April. And one last thing, the way Mom's changed in a year. Seeing her getting better every day, fighting for both of us to live, has started me thinking it'll all work out and maybe I'll be lucky and be like her.

At work, I'm taking after her because going for a hairdressing certificate gives no rest. Drying, styling, and when you're finished, well, start all over again. No break. Even God had a rest on the seventh day. It's not normal. The one thing that comforts me is that I'm coping all right with school this year. Note: If I'd been useless in a hairdressing class, then I really would be worried.

Mme Burlaud told me
my therapy was finished. I asked if she was sure. She laughed. That means I'm doing well. Or else she's had enough of my stories. She must be flipping her lid with all the stuff I tell her.

I'm glad it's stopping because there were some things that bugged me about her. Her name, for starters ... Burlaud, I mean seriously, that name doesn't go with anything, plus it sounds ugly. Then there's her perfume that stinks like RID and those crazy tests to find out stuff about me ... And, also, she's old. She comes from another time. I see it when
I'm talking to her, I have to pay attention to everything I'm saying. Can't say a single word in street slang or anything casual, even if it's the best way of getting her to understand how I'm feeling ... When I can't find the right phrase and I say something like "trippin'" or "shady," she takes it to mean something else or she does her spesh face. Doing her spesh face means looking like a total idiot, because spesh (special-ed) classes at elementary school were for the slowest kids, the ones with the biggest problems. So you say spesh for someone who's kind of stupid, you know...

Mme Burlaud and me weren't always on the same wavelength. That said, I know it's thanks to all this I'm doing better. I don't deny she helped me big time. Hey, I even said thank you to Mme Burlaud. A real thank you.

But as she was leaving she said something that seemed strange to me: "Good luck!" I'm used to hearing: "See you next Monday!" But this time she says: "Good luck." It reminded me of the first time I rode a bike without training wheels.

Once, Youssef lent me his bike. He had told me he'd push me while I was pedaling, and then at one
point, when I wasn't expecting it, he said: "I let go!" His voice was far away. He'd let go a while back. And I kept on pedaling. Mme Burlaud's "good luck" had the same effect on me as Youssef's "I let go!" So it goes. She's let me go.