Billie Read online

  Who would be the first to bed and the first to wake up. Who was going to be out every night. Who had been partying for trillions of years and who always had that much flair.

  Hey, was I wrong?

  Hey, was it you?

  Oh, excuse my bad manners. Was it you, Mademoiselle?

  Hey . . . can I talk to you for a minute?

  Can I tell you again who we are, Franck and me, so you will love us this time for eternity?

  I took her silence for a sigh of resignation, as in, hey, you’re wearing me out, you losers; but fine . . . you’re lucky, it’s a slow dance and I don’t have a date. So go ahead, I’m listening. Sell me on your story quickly so I can go back to munching my Milky Way.

  I sought Franck’s hand, squeezed it with all my might, and took a minute to get us in order.

  Yes, I got us all spruced up, all polished and combed, in order to show you our best side, and after that I launched into our story.

  Like Buzz Lightyear.

  To infinity and beyond . . .

  His name is Franck because his mother and grandmother adored the singer Frank Alamo (Biche, oh ma biche, Da doo ron ron, Allô Maillot 38-37, and all that. Yes, there really are songs with those titles) and my name is Billie because my mother was crazy about Michael Jackson (Billie Jean is not my lover / She’s just a girl, et cetera).

  In other words, we didn’t start out in life with the same namesake and we weren’t necessarily destined to hang out together one day.

  His mom and his grandma took such great care of him when he was little that to show his appreciation he bought them a Return of the Yéyés CD, tickets to Frank Alamo’s Yéyé revival concert as well as to a musical, a Blu-ray DVD, and even the cruise that went with all that.

  And when Dadooron Frank kicked the bucket, Franck asked for a day off, went looking for them on the train to the funeral, moved them up to first class, and accompanied them to the front of I don’t remember what church.

  All that so he could support them in their grief as they hummed Alamo’s Sur un dernier signe de la main while his coffin was being loaded into the hearse . . .

  As for my story, I don’t know if my mother had other kids after me whom she called Bad or Thriller nor if she cried when Bambi disappeared into the void since she took off when I was a year old. (I have to admit I was quite a pain in the ass . . . ) (That’s what my father told me one day: “Your mother took off because you were too much of a pain in the ass. It’s true, you did nothing but bawl all the time . . . ”) (Hey, I don’t know how many shrinks it would take to get over such an explanation, but loads of them, if you want my opinion!)

  Yes, one morning, she left and we never heard from her again.

  My stepmother never liked my first name. She said it sounded like a guy’s name—a guy with a bad reputation—I never had the guts to contradict her. Anyway, don’t count on me to badmouth her. It’s true she’s a bitch but it’s not really her fault. Plus this evening, I’m not here to talk about her. We all have our shit to deal with.

  So, voilà, little star, that’s it for childhood.

  Franck rarely speaks about his and when he does, it’s only to distance himself from it. And as for me, I didn’t have a childhood.

  The fact that I still like my first name, given the circumstances, is quite an achievement, I think.

  Only the brilliant Michael Jackson could perform such a feat . . .

  * * *

  Franck and I went to the same junior high. But it wasn’t until our last year there, the only year we were in the same class, that we spoke to each other. Since then we’ve admitted that we noticed each other the morning of the first day of our first year. Yes, we picked each other out immediately, but unconsciously we avoided each other all those years because both of us sensed that the other was in such a sorry state and we didn’t want to suffer even one ounce more than we were already.

  It’s true, too, that I specifically sought out the company of girls who dressed like Polly Pocket. All cutesy with long hair, their own bedrooms, packs of fancy cookies, and a mom who happily signed the correspondence that came home from school. I did everything I could so they would like me and invite me home with them as often as possible.

  Alas, there were times when I was a bit less popular . . . in the winter especially . . . I didn’t really understand it until much later, but it was a matter of . . . of a hot-water tank . . . and also of . . . uh . . . odor . . . of . . . fuck . . . but hey, I’m thinking about it so much that I’m starting to get embarrassed again. Okay, let’s move on.

  All this time, I lied so much about my story that I had to write down the main points in order not to mix up one school year with another.

  At my place, I behaved like a hungry animal who smelled bacon next door but couldn’t have any since no one was bringing it home, but at school, I was always calm. At any rate, I wouldn’t have had the necessary energy to be on the defensive twenty-four hours a day. You have to have experienced it to understand, but those who have, they know exactly what I’m talking about: on the defensive . . . always, always . . . And especially when things were calm. Calm moments, they were the worst, they . . . no, never mind . . . nobody gives a damn.

  One day, in my social studies class, the teacher, Monsieur Dumont, without realizing it, taught me something about my life. The underclass, he said. The teacher said it just like that, like exportation of wealth or the silting of Mont Saint Michel, but I remember, my face turned bright red with embarrassment. I didn’t know there was a word in the dictionary invented specifically to indicate where I came from. Because I was well placed to know it, this milieu; it’s not necessarily apparent to the naked eye. The proof is in the fact that social workers have never shown up . . . If you don’t stick out and you go to school every day, that safe haven of childhood, you get by easily, and my stepmother, I won’t say that she looked bourgeois, but really, people would treat her with respect when she went to the supermarket, they said hello, how are the kids? And so on.

  I never knew where she bought the oil for the furnace.

  The oil was there, maybe it was little mice or Santa’s reindeer, but for me, the great mystery of my childhood would remain those fucking empty bottles of oil. Where did they come from? Where?

  The great, great mystery . . .

  * * *

  It wasn’t public school that got me out of there. It wasn’t the teachers or the sweet Mademoiselle Gisèle who prepared us for communion or the students’ parents who were always shocked by the weight of our backpacks or those sophisticated girlfriends of mine who listened to public radio and read books and all that. No, it was him (and I was pointing to him in the darkness). It was Franck Muller.

  Yes, him there . . . that weakling Franck Mumu, who was six months younger than me and six inches shorter, who lost his balance every time you tapped him on the shoulder and who was always acting like a pain in the ass at the bus stop. He was the one who saved me.

  Him alone.

  Honestly, I’m not angry at anyone and even now, you see, I’m telling you all this and it’s okay, I’m doing well these days. That was a long time ago. Such a long time ago that it isn’t really even me, in fact . . .

  Fine, I admit, I always feel a bit anxious when I have to fill out paperwork. Family name, place of birth, and all that. Right away my stomach drops, but it’s okay, it passes. It passes quickly.

  The only thing is that I never want to see them again. Never, never, never . . . I never want to go back there, never. Not for anyone’s marriage, not for anyone’s funeral, not for anything. Also, whenever I pass a car with a license plate from my region, I immediately look elsewhere to regain my composure.

  At one point—and as I don’t think I’ll have time to tell you about it in detail tonight I’ll just give you a summary—during one period of my life when I kept screwing up, when my childhood came
back to haunt me too often, and when I got into the habit of hitting the bottle, as they say, to hide from the world, I listened to Franck and hit the reset button.

  I completely wiped out my hard drive in order to restart in safe mode.

  It was a long process and I think I succeeded, but all I ask for in return is to never see them again.

  Never.

  Not even when they’re dead, incinerated, not even as a scrap of cloth in a grave.

  And even there, you see, I’m going to be honest for once; if you were to say to me: “Okay, I’ll send you two stretchers, a ham sandwich, and a case of San Pellegrino, but in exchange, you give a little wave to your stepmother or to any of those jerks,” well, I would say no.

  No.

  I would say no and I would find some other way to get us out of here.

  * * *

  So, there you have it, we went to the same junior high in a small town with less than three thousand inhabitants in what they call a rural region. But “rural” is too nice a way to put it. You’d expect to see hills and streams. The area where I’m from doesn’t have much of that. It was, is, an area of France that hasn’t been irrigated for a long time and is rotting as a result.

  Yes, rotting . . . dying . . . A land where folks drink too much, smoke too much, put too much faith in the lottery, and pass down their poverty to their family and pets.

  A world in which everyone commits suicide in the same way: by slowly burning out and dragging the weakest down with them.

  When you hear about disaffected young people setting cars on fire, it’s always in working-class suburbs, but in the countryside, my dear, life is not easy, you know!

  For us to burn cars, some would have to pass by!

  When you live in the countryside and are not like others, it’s even worse.

  Of course, there will always be people passing through, whether politicians, association types, organic foodies, or whatever sweet liars who will tell you I’m exaggerating, but I know them, these people . . . Yes, I know them . . . They’re like the ones from social services: at the end of the day, they only see what we want to show them . . .

  And I understand them.

  I understand them because I’ve become like them, too.

  Whenever I’m going to or coming back from the Rungis market, which is at least four times a week, I know exactly where I need to focus on what I’m doing. Yes, there are exactly two places where I completely stick to the road and where I am extremely careful to maintain a safe distance. And do you know why? Because in those spots, between Paris and Orly let’s say, there are two little piles of garbage on the roadside, at street level.

  Fine, it’s true, they’re ugly, but the problem is that they aren’t really garbage in fact . . . No, they’re houses. They’re the bedrooms of little girls who are always on the defensive . . .

  Okay, let’s speed things along. As I said earlier, we all have our shit to deal with. I suffered so much that I became an arrogant monster, and my arrogance is what I can best offer to little Billie from Highway A6.

  Look, little girls, look at me in my old delivery van all beat up and filled with flowers. I’m proof that it’s possible to have a life someday . . .

  So, yes, we noticed each other but avoided contact all that time because we were like the scourge of Jacques-Prévert Junior High.

  Me, because I was from the Morels (no, that’s not the name of a town in the sticks or an area with mushrooms, it’s . . . I don’t know . . . I never knew in fact . . . a junkyard . . . a sort of artisanal realm . . . a type of waste recycling center where nothing is ever sorted . . . everyone says “the Gypsies” but we weren’t Gypsies, there was just my stepmother’s family, her uncles, half-sisters, my half-brothers and all that . . . people from the Morels in other words) and I walked a mile and a half every morning and every evening to go to a different bus stop, the farthest possible from their mess and from my Home Sweet Mobile Home for fear that the other kids wouldn’t let me sit next to them on the bus, and he, because he was too different from everyone else.

  Because he didn’t love girls, only liked them, because he was good at drawing but bad at sports, because he was slight and allergic to anything and everything, because he always hung out by himself and disappeared completely into his own world and because he waited to be last in line at the cafeteria to avoid the noise and the stampede to get through the turnstiles.

  I know, little star, I know, it sounds like a crappy cliché, the way I’m telling it; the sickly little queer and his Cosette from the garbage dump, I admit, it lacks subtlety. But what would you like me to say instead? That I live in a regular house in the winter and add in a moped and two chain bracelets to make it sound less like I come from a lousy soap opera?

  Well, no . . . I would like to but I can’t . . . Because that’s how we are. That’s the story of our early lives. Neverland and Da doo ron ron. Rebels without a cause. But I’m going to force myself to pretty things up so that it won’t sound so sad . . .

  So, Beat It.

  Just Beat It.

  And so? It’s not so bad, right? I’m not going to try to convince you I was groped or anything gross like that.

  Luckily, that wasn’t the thing at my house.

  At our house, things were tough, but no one touched little girls’ panties.

  Phew, what a relief, right, little star?

  And then, you know, I think it wasn’t all that cliché. I think that in all the schools in France and elsewhere, whether in the countryside or in the towns, the study halls are full of people, like us.

  People who struggle against invisibility, who are disconnected from themselves, who hold their breath from morning till night and who die sometimes, who finally give up one day if no one helps them out or if they don’t manage on their own . . . Plus I think I’m telling the story quite delicately, in fact. Not to spare you discomfort or me any criticism, but because the evening of one of my birthdays, my twenty-second, I think, I pressed reset.

  I rebooted in front of him and swore that I was done. That I would never hurt myself again.

  And little Cosette, maybe she lacks imagination, but she does keep her promise.

  We did such a good job avoiding each other, we nearly missed each other for good.

  We were in the middle of the academic year. There were still a few months left to get through and then we would have to decide what to do next based on our strengths and weaknesses and what we’d done well at in school. I wanted to get a job as quickly as possible while he . . . I don’t know . . . when I looked at him from afar, he made me think of the Little Prince, especially since he had the same yellow scarf. No one could tell what he was going to become.

  Yes, there were still several weeks left for us to ignore one another before we would be done with the ghost of the other and all it represented forever.

  Except that, lo and behold: we were owed a second act . . .

  Was it God who was too embarrassed by what he’d let happen until then and wanted to make amends to sooth his heartburn, or was it you, Mademoi—? Okay, enough with the formalities, was it you? I feel like I’m presenting my case to an officer at the unemployment office. I don’t know who did it nor why, but in any case, it was exactly like Charlie and his gold ticket in Willy Wonka’s chocolate bar. It was . . . really lucky.

  Ah shit, I’m starting to cry again and I’m turning again toward my broken bolster so no one will see.

  * * *

  We were introduced to Alfred de Musset, and when I said earlier that it wasn’t school or the teachers who had gotten me out of the Morels, I wasn’t being fair. Because . . . well, given that my teachers didn’t like me, it really hurts me to praise them, but there you have it, it’s true . . . I owe them more than a few moments of rest during the school year.

  Without my French teacher Madame Guillet, and without her
mania for theater and live performance, as she called it, I would surely be some sort of zombie today.

  Don’t Fool with Love

  Don’t Fool with Love

  Don’t

  Fool

  with

  Love

  Oh . . . How I love to say it, that title . . .

  Our mother hen of a teacher arrived one morning with three little rattan baskets from her kitchen. In the first were folded pieces of paper—the scenes we were to perform; in the second were the names of the girls in the class to decide the role of Camille, and in the last basket, the names of the boys to decide the role of Perdican.

  When I heard that fate had chosen Franck Mumu for my performance partner, not only did I not know that the play in question was not about animals (I had understood “Pelican”) but also, I remember, I completely lost my composure . . .

  The lottery was held on purpose the day before Easter break, so that we would have time to learn our dialogue, but for me it was a disaster. How was I supposed to concentrate on learning the least little thing by heart during the fucking vacation? It was over before it started. I had to refuse. And there was no way he could be my partner because then it would be my fault that he got a bad grade. Vacations for me were synonymous with . . . the opposite of learning anything. Thus all this lace-frilled-shirt bullshit written in small type, it wasn’t even worth thinking about.

  So when he came up to me at the end of class, I didn’t see him because I had already tied myself up in knots.

  “If you want, we can go to my grandmother’s house to practice . . . ”

  It was the first time I was hearing his voice and . . . Oh . . . Oh my God . . . that really did me good . . . that loosened me up right away. It stopped me from stressing out.