The Body Where I Was Born (12 page)

Shortly after hearing this story, and after my first visit to jail, I climbed to the roof and untied Betty. She didn’t waste her opportunity. She immediately ran away and was missing for over a week. Seven days of remorse passed in which I confessed my responsibility to no one. Finally, one morning we found her sitting in front of the house. She was waiting for us to let her in. The vet came to make sure she hadn’t caught mange or anything of the like during her jailbreak, but the only thing our dog had gotten was irrefutably pregnant.

After that summer we returned to Aix. The heat in France was still at its peak, making it impossible to sleep under a sheet at night. I was back in the same school and entering the
5ème
, which in Mexico would have been the second year of middle school, or seventh grade. That year, in filling out the registration form, my mother told us that our father’s professional occupation corresponded to the word
“psychoanalyst.” “Prisoner” wasn’t a job, to begin with,
and besides, it would have aroused all kinds of unfounded suspicions. What would we do if we were assigned to a social worker, “one of those witches,” as my mother called them, for a psychological evaluation? One had to think of everything. Although she never openly admitted it, I think Mom was scared, and rightfully so, that we wouldn’t pass such an exam.

In the
5ème
, I was still a withdrawn girl, borderline antisocial, but in my homeroom there appeared an individual similar to me in temperament and interests, and with whom, oddly enough, I immediately hit it off. His name was Blaise. He was blond and pretty short. Until this year—and since time immemorial—the boys had been shorter than the girls. But now, beginning with the grade above us, most of them were showing noticeable changes: upper lips started to cover in a dark fuzz; voices, once tinged with strange and incontrollable modulations, stabilized; and limbs, along with backs, in many cases took on more bulk. That’s why many of the girls my age arranged themselves at recess at strategic points in the yard from which they could watch the rugby or handball games whenever the competitors were the boys from the
3ème
and
4ème
(grades in France go down, not up). Those who made the biggest fuss over testosterone were the Reunionese Kathy and her friend Mireille, originally of Pontoise, whose skin, milky and covered in acne, made her look like one of those cheeses that have been aged too long and grown bulgy. Her blue eyes were the only truly human element in the shifting surface of her face. Both girls fervently admired the male gender of almost every generation, including the professors and other students’ fathers. Into their textbooks they would often slip gossip magazines targeted at girls our age that published advice on how to use makeup and weild accessories. I had a good relationship with them but not a close one. Sometimes, when class was particularly boring, or when I looked nervous about an exercise on the blackboard in algebra class, they would see to it that one of these magazines was passed from hand to hand to land on my desk. I remember in particular one notable article that discussed the right way to practice kissing with tongue, which in French we called “rolling a shovel.” The author advised practicing solo for a while with half a squeezed orange in order to develop the necessary dexterity and sensitivity in the lips. However, for the real thing, you couldn’t forget to stick your tongue out far enough to meet his tongue, but not so far that it would be uncomfortable for him. At that moment you would begin the spinning that in a French kiss seemed to be at the heart of the matter. It was important to find synchrony in spinning with his tongue, to strike the same speed, and to hit reverse. I remember that when I finished the article I lifted my head and looked at the entire class pretending to be absorbed in the equation. I looked at my classmates, trying to figure out how many of them, and especially
who
, had already been through this critical and defining ritual. It needs to be said that, had I done a survey, most of them would have lied; at that age, it was mortifying to confess a lack of experience. The words
pucelle
and
puceau
, which both referred to someone who was still a virgin, were the worst insults you could receive at my school. You could be a top
pucelle
or bottom
pucelle
: “top” meant you’d never kissed and “bottom” meant you’d never slept with anyone. Most of the girls, with the exception of the boldest, preferred to assign themselves to the latter category, almost none to the former, and never to both unless your family was extremely religious. Despite her deformed face, I was sure that Mireille had already kissed several boys. You saw it in the confidence she had talking to older boys, the very confidence the rest of us lacked; it was like she knew them inside and out. Kathy, for her part, was one of the sexiest girls in the whole school and there were rumors that for a few months she’d been dating a boy in the
4ème
, but from a different school. There was also Ahmed, a boy from Algiers who had been held back two years and ended up in our class, and who pursued my classmates like a rooster in a henhouse. Except for these three experts, it was hard to guess if anyone else had any significant experience with the opposite sex. To me, the idea alone was equal parts enticing and repulsive. I was dying to be in the arms of one of those
4ème
guys and to kiss like I was eating an orange in the sun, but the whole business with the tongue and spit, and the fragility and the exposure in the moment bordered on unbearable.

Blaise was not one of the boys who were all muscle, not at all. I didn’t like him in the least and it was clear that he felt something similar toward me. I guess that’s what made us close. Some swear that genuine friendship between men and women doesn’t exist. I’d like to know your opinion, Doctor, because it’s a notion I completely disagree with. Throughout my life I’ve succeeded in establishing a strong complicity with some men, almost as strong as what I now have with my best female friends. Blaise’s presence that year meant a way out of solipsism. By October, we were sitting together for almost every subject. We also sought each other out in the free time between lunch and class. Recess, however, I spent alone, walking from one end of the playground to the other, greeting the kids I knew but never feeling good enough with any group to stick with them for more than five minutes. I remember that on one of these restless mornings, Cello, the older boy with whom I shared my lunch table, came up to me out of nowhere oozing friendliness. After making small talk for a few minutes, he told me he had a confession: Sebastien, his best friend, wanted to meet me and had asked Cello to make it happen. The recess bell cut short what he was saying.

“Anyway, come over one of these days and I’ll introduce you,” he suggested before leaving.

My bewilderment was such that when the lines started forming in front of the door, I remained in the same spot in the middle of the playground. I had to struggle to piece together the fragments of my awareness to make it back to homeroom. I had seen Cello’s friend many times and could easily place him. He was, in my opinion, one of the most attractive boys in school, which made the supposed confession seem unlikely. Why would this boy, who had his choice among the different African and blond queens of the school, have his eye on one of the untouchables who surreptitiously prowled the playground? I couldn’t believe it, so I decided to seek counsel. Mireille and Kathy looked at each other in astonishment. They too easily placed the candidate.

“It doesn’t makes sense,” I said, trying to be realistic.

“But neither does love,” responded Mireille, in a decidedly optimistic tone. “Even if you don’t know it,” her cheese-mouth added, “you’re a very pretty girl.”

“Maybe he’s interested in Mexico,” remarked the less enthusiastic Reunionese girl.

It had never occurred to me that being Mexican could make me interesting to a boy in the
4ème
.

Then I remembered the dialogue with Marcela in Villa Olímpica, in front of Oscar’s building, a few years before. I didn’t want the same thing to happen again and to make Sebastien feel rejected without giving him a chance.

“Why don’t you write him a letter?” Kathy suggested. Her friend agreed.

“A letter! Why?” I asked, taken aback.

“To tell him that you like him too, but that you’ve never gone out with a guy and don’t have a lot of experience.”

I had never mentioned my experiences with boys to those two. I told myself that if it was so obvious to them that I was a stupid
pucelle
, it would be to him too. Why add insult to injury?

“That way you break the ice,” assured Kathy. “If you want we can help you, but not with spelling.”

That same afternoon, at lunchtime, instead of meeting up with Blaise in the study hall, I sat down on a bench to draft the famous letter. The girls reviewed it later and changed a few irrelevant phrases. I finished cleaning it up after dinner, while pretending to focus on my homework. I decorated the page with butterfly stickers that I had in my desk drawer to symbolize what I was feeling inside. That night, when the lights were turned off in our living room, I told my brother what had happened. We weren’t very close in those days, but we always had the unspoken rule that for things serious and imponderable we could count on each other. He patiently listened to the details of my account and to a summary of the letter.

“You don’t have a chance,” he said emphatically. “Sebastien has never taken you seriously.”

“How do you know?” I asked, trying to hide how offended I was.

“He’s in the
4ème
, he’s the best rugby player in the school, all the girls are after him. You’re in the
5ème
, you’re a
pucelle
, and besides, you’re pretty ugly.”

“You’re a
minot
in the
6ème
with a pea-brain,” I retorted, “who doesn’t know anything about love and how illogical it is.”

I couldn’t sleep that night. With a light beneath the quilt, I spent almost eight hours reading
The Ice People
by René Barjaval, a novel Blaise had recommended to me. Even though it was science fiction and took place at the North Pole in a future era with great advances in space technology, the story could not have been more romantic. It only heightened my level of expectation about the encounter I believed to be in the making.

I gave Cello the letter the next day, in the cafeteria, and he looked at me with a complicit smile.

“How about you come over and I’ll introduce you right now?” he suggested. I didn’t have the nerve for that; the letter had used up all the bravery at my disposal.

Three days went by before I had any word from the boys. As a precaution, I spent those recesses with my council. I was with them when we saw Cello pass the letter to his friend. After all that time he hadn’t done it yet! Sebastien read it out loud, and from afar I recognized some of my carefully chosen words on his lips. By the time he finished, both of the boys were bent over in laughter next to the playground gate. I didn’t know where to hide.

“Couple of idiots,” said Kathy, indignant.

My bad advisors made me turn away without saying a word about what had just happened and, worst of all, without explaining to me how I was supposed to sit at the same table as Cello at lunch, that afternoon and all afternoons to come. How was I supposed to keep coming to school?

From what I have been able to observe, it seems that when an event hurts us there are two general tendencies in confronting it: the first being to go over it an infinite number of times, like a video we project again and again on a screen in our minds. The second is to tear apart the filmstrip and forget indefinitely the painful event. Some of us employ both techniques in the editing of our memories. I know that at first the episode of the letter to Sebastien obsessively occupied my thoughts and now, when I try to conjure it up, the details escape me. I know, for example, that I avoided the cafeteria for several days. I preferred fasting to the humiliation of another encounter. I even asked the principal to assign me to another lunch table, but since I didn’t dare explain the real reasons for my request, it was refused as insubstantial. Sooner or later I had to return and somehow, with all the strength in the world, keep my head held high. Luckily, Cello never held it against me, and the only time he brought it up I pretended that it wasn’t the least bit important to me. The art of craftiness has always been one of the trilobite’s greatest weapons. As far as I know, Blaise never knew anything about the letter. If he did, he kept it to himself in friendly silence.

Blaise was the son of a famous French cartoon artist who lived in Paris and had lived there for years. Blaise and his mother lived in Aix, but in a much cleaner and nicer neighborhood than ours. Blaise liked reading graphic novels and was well informed about the new works as well as the classics of the genre. He was also interested in literature, but not to the same degree. Now and then we’d exchange reading recommendations, always thinking of the other’s interests and tastes. I suggested he read Émile Ajar’s
The Life Before Us
and
The Portrait of Dorian Gray
, but would never have lent him
The Four Daughters of Doctor March
, as I knew perfectly well that it would have disgusted him to the point of nausea. He recommended
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley and the book by René Barjaval, but never suggested
The Hobbit
, which he kept beside his bed. My trust in Blaise was also selective. I abstained from telling him about the letter affair, but I revealed to him aspects of my life I’d never told anyone, such as how much I liked writing. I told him about how I’d earned the respect of my classmates in elementary school in Mexico by writing horror stories about them. I even read him a fragment of my diary.