Billie

  If there were a shrink around, he would have surely given me a whole speech about how I was curled up there like in my mother’s belly or some other bullshit like that, but there were no shrinks. There were just Franck Mumu’s letters and they were even more effective.

  I felt good. I forgot my troubles and even slept a bit.

  After a while, I ended up opening them in the order in which they had arrived. The first was written on a single sheet and said:

  Hi Billie. I hope you’re doing well. I’m doing fine. You know, I don’t have a lot of time to go see my grandmother on weekends and I think she misses me so I’ve decided to write to you at her house each week so that you can go see her for me. Thanks for this favor. I hope it doesn’t put you out too much. Kisses, F.

  The second was an ugly postcard of his town, with the church, the château, and so on:

  Hi Billie. I hope you’re doing well, me I’m okay. Tell Claudine that I received her package. Kisses, F.

  I put them back in their envelopes and felt like crying with gratitude. Because, fine, I was a moron, everyone had let me know it ever since I was born, but now I saw quite clearly what was behind this clever trick. Franck had seen me dressed like a slut and he felt sorry for me so he invented something with his grandma so I wouldn’t completely forget myself.

  Yes, all that just to make me take off my makeup once a week and go have a glass of grenadine or Orangina in a little house where people really liked me.

  Sometimes I went several weeks without going to her house, but he never fell off his schedule. Every Wednesday, apart from school vacations and for almost three months, I could expect my ugly postcard with a “I hope you’re doing well, me I’m fine” written on the back each time. So I spent some time with a human who didn’t judge me every so often. I never stayed too long because I was too much in combat mode during that period to risk going soft, but just stopping by quickly like that, with my real face from that time, made it possible for me to hang in there until the next stage of my life.

  * * *

  One day, I remember, when I had just rung her bell, I heard her talking to I don’t know who on the phone (the kitchen window was open): “Wait, I’ve got to go, Billie has just arrived. C’mon you know, that poor kid I told you about the other day . . . ” It pierced my heart and I took off, half running.

  Shit, why did she talk about me like that? I was sixteen, I was having sex, I was managing without asking anyone for anything. I thought it was unfair. Crappy. Humiliating. And then I heard her calling me from afar: “Billiiiiiiie!” Go to hell, I thought, pretending to be deaf, go to hell. I took another step or two and then something tore inside of me, and I turned around.

  Yes, whether I liked it or not, I was a poor kid and I didn’t have the luxury of making myself believe otherwise . . .

  I retraced my steps, and she kissed me hello. I drank café au lait with her, took my letter, and kissed her good-bye.

  When I left again, I was still not doing well, but I really had the feeling I’d grown up a bit.

  With all the responsibility it entails.

  I didn’t just watch TV, give up on school, or minister to boys who couldn’t care less about where I came from at that time. I also took on tons of little jobs. I babysat, took care of old people, did housecleaning, and dug up stones or potatoes.

  The problem was always my age. People wanted me to do odd jobs for them, but they couldn’t hire me full-time. As they explained, it was against the law. Handling their grandfathers and cleaning their toilets was fine, of course, but as for paying me a real wage, their hands were tied.

  I didn’t see Franck at all. I knew he came back on certain weekends or during vacations, but he didn’t leave the house anymore. It was only much later that I understood that he needed me too during those years, and I’m still angry at myself that I wasn’t brave enough, or simply didn’t think, to knock on his door to get those morbid thoughts out of his head. But really, I was completely off base to think for a second that I could have had the . . . I don’t know . . . the legitimacy to come to someone’s aid.

  It was a time of survival as they say: “It was the time of my youth . . . ” Sorry, my Francky. Sorry. I couldn’t imagine that it was as hard for you as it was for me . . .

  I thought you were in your comfortable little bedroom, reading, listening to music, or doing your homework. I didn’t understand yet that normal people could also have problems.

  * * *

  And then one day things started to happen.

  One day and without doing it on purpose of course, my father did right by me: he died.

  He electrocuted himself stealing cables or something or other on a TGV line.

  He died and the mayor came to find me one morning precisely when I was picking potatoes with a whole band of real Gypsies, in fact.

  Even though my hands were super cruddy, he offered me his and then . . . then, I understood that the tide was turning perhaps . . . Yes, when he said good-bye, I turned back to my tub of vegetables, half smiling.

  Little star, little star, you’re beginning to tire of us, aren’t you?

  Raise your head, Franck and Billie! Raise your head!

  He shook my hand and asked me to come see him the following week. Once at his office, he explained, first, that my stepmother and my father were never married and that, second, the little piece of the Morels I had inherited was worth something. Why? Because it was located high up and interested a lot of people who wanted to install cell phone signal relays or some sort of antenna.

  Wow . . . that’s what all those letters were that they sent to us for years that we never even read?

  Wow . . . I was the sole heir of that pigsty and the mayor was offering to buy it from me?

  Wow . . .

  In the time it took for it to happen, I had my long-awaited eighteenth birthday, my stepmother and her little rug rats were moved to rent-controlled housing, I got my check for 11,452 euros, I listened to the spiel of the lawyer, who explained to me how much I should put aside for taxes, and I opened an account in my name.

  Of course, at that time, my stepmother looked at me with puppy dog eyes and used emotional blackmail to get me to give her some of the money . . . At least half, otherwise I was really an ungrateful piece of shit given all that she had done for me, and how she had raised me like one of her own and all that even though I was the daughter of a slut.

  I thought I’d learned to take her insults about my shitty childhood, but even then, even in those circumstances, that word “slut” really got to me . . . Why? Even when you’re a little rich, you don’t have as much armor as people think . . . I listened to her spit out her venom and perhaps should have felt sorry for her, but my entire childhood, I heard her complain about my presence, going on and on about how I had ruined her life, and how she dreamed of having a massage chair, so I paid for her fucking massage chair, had it delivered to her new shack, and escaped once and for all.

  Everyone made puppy dog eyes at me at that time, everyone. My inheritance was common knowledge in the villages; rumor had it that I had gotten a fortune, like, millions and all that, and I let them say it.

  Sure, now everyone said hello to me in the street, but I continued to work as before, and now that the age of glorious legal employment had finally arrived, I became a cashier at the Inter supermarket.

  At the time, I was living with a boy named Manu, who also became much nicer of course. In the end, he even succeeded in getting yours truly to pay for his car repairs and the hunting rifle of his dreams, and in getting yours truly to believe that she loved him. In short, things were going well. It’s a wonder we didn’t speak about getting married.

  I thought about Camille’s friends who cried in their convent because they didn’t have a dowry and I thought about how everything on Earth was measured in cash.

  Yes, I really wanted t
o pretend I was happy, but to go from there to asking myself to believe it, that was a big leap.

  So I got 11,452 euros.

  Okay, I took what came: I had work, a little dough on the side, a guy who didn’t beat me, and electric radiators in the little house we had fixed up together; as far as happiness goes, I knew I couldn’t do any better.

  So, everything basically fell into place, but you little star, you were feeling useless, so one Saturday evening in winter, the Manu in question came back from hunting and drinking (or rather from drinking, hunting, and drinking) half drunk, and he couldn’t keep from laughing idiotically because he had something really good to tell me: “Hey, the little queer . . . You know who I mean, the little queer from the village nearby . . . The one who never says hello and dresses like a fairy . . . Yeah, well, they nabbed him, you know . . . yeah, they nabbed him while he was walking alone in Les Charmettes and then they tried to provoke him a bit, that moron, and since he didn’t say anything and acted all haughty, well, they took him with them, you know . . . Christ, in Mimiche’s van, you wanna know what they did to him there? They sprayed him with the urine of a female boar in heat . . . Yes, you know . . . that thing . . . the bait . . . the product that you put on the trunks of trees that attracts males in heat . . . Yeah . . . they used the entire bottle . . . Hahaha! . . . Man, he was completely soaked . . . And then they dumped him in the middle of the woods . . . Like that, man, there’s no way he didn’t get it up the ass, the damn queer! Just what he’s been dreaming about for so long! Hahaha! Damn, how they were roaring with laughter . . . Oh, the moron . . . Oh, the little queer . . . Boy was he going to have a nice night; he could thank them tomorrow morning . . . Hey, but to do that, he would have to be able to walk, right? Hahaha!”

  I remember, I was in the middle of doing the ironing and it was already dark. Fuck, electroshock. There, in the blink of an eye, just like the Incredible Hulk, my true nature came back.

  There, my veneer cracked and, in a second, I was no longer the nice girl but once again the angry little outsider from the Morels.

  There, I again thanked my father and all those assholes who had taught me how to load whatever weapon was at hand and who had forced me to fire on all those poor little creatures who rummaged around amidst the decaying car chassis because seeing me cry made them laugh.

  There, yes.

  There, thank you.

  There, I felt my true inheritance.

  And there, Manu, he didn’t understand a thing.

  I said nothing. I unplugged my iron, collapsed my ironing board, and put it away in the basement. I was in our bedroom, I put the clothes in his sports bag, I gathered up my ID and other documents, I put on my jacket and grabbed my handbag and then, aiming his beautiful hunting rifle right at the door, I waited for him to finish pissing his beer and finally come out of the crapper.

  He didn’t seem to believe me, the moron, so I shot off the door, taking a piece of his ear along with it. And after that, go figure, he believed me.

  With one hand on his ear, he led me to the spot where they had abandoned Franck. “If you don’t find him for me, I’ll kill you,” I warned him in a voice that was not my own. “If the least little thing has happened to him, I’ll mess up your windshield.”

  We honked the horn and flashed the headlights, and spotted him going along a bridle path.

  Seeing the rifle, my expression, and the asshole who was half-deaf and completely terrorized at the steering wheel, Franck connected the dots. He got in the back of the car with me and our obliging chauffeur drove us to Franck’s parents’ house.

  “Do as I have,” I told him. “Grab a bag of clothes. And make it quick.”

  During the ten minutes he was gone, the asshole didn’t stop repeating, “But, you know him? But, you know him? But, you know him?”

  Yes, asshole. I know him.

  And now, shut up. That’s what I want and here my wishes are respected.

  Our kind and friendly chauffeur then drove us to the city where Franck had gone to high school (I’m not saying the name on purpose but you, little star, of course, you know where) and he parked in front of the police station. I asked Franck to go look for an armed cop and, when they both came out, I surrendered to Manu the rifle I had bought him as a gift. Ah, yes, Mr. Policeman . . . because to keep it now would be stealing . . .

  The pig didn’t understand a thing. In any case, as he watched Manu’s car pulling away, we escaped to the other side of the road. The cop bawled me out for appearance’s sake and then hurried back to his pigsty.

  I should mention that it was freezing that evening . . .

  We went to a crappy hotel near the train station and I requested a room with a bath. Franck was blue. Blue with cold, blue about me, blue about everything. Yes, I think he was afraid of me at that moment. No doubt, when twenty years in the Morels suddenly bursts out of you, it must not be a very pretty sight . . .

  I ran him a superhot bath and undressed him like a little boy, and yes, I saw his cock, but no, I didn’t look at it, and I plunged him into the tub.

  When he emerged, I was checking out a film on TV. He put on briefs and a clean T-shirt and he got into bed next to me.

  We didn’t say anything to each other, we watched the end of the film, we shut off the lamp and, in the dark, each of us waited for the other to speak.

  I couldn’t say anything because I was silently crying, so he was the one who had to do it. He caressed my hair very gently and after a long moment, he whispered:

  “It’s over, Billie . . . It’s over . . . We’ll never go back there . . . Shhhh . . . It’s over . . . I’m telling you . . . ”

  But I was still crying.

  So he hugged me.

  So I cried even more.

  So he laughed.

  So I laughed too.

  And I got snot all over us.

  I cried for hours and hours.

  It was like a plug had been pulled. It was a purge. Or an emptying out. For the first time in my life since I was born, I was no longer on the defensive.

  For the first time . . .

  For the first time, I felt that finally, everything would be okay. That finally I was safe. And everything came out at once. Everything . . . the abandonment, the hunger, the cold, the filth, the lice, my odor, the cigarette butts, the muck, the empty bottles, the shouts, the slaps, the scars, the ugliness everywhere, the bad grades, the lies, the violence, the fear, the thefts; Jason Gibaud’s parents who had prohibited me from taking a shit in their house, eating their scraps; my ass, my tits, and my mouth that had served so well as a form of currency in recent times; all those guys who had profited so much from my situation, and so badly; all those crappy jobs, and Manu who had made me believe that he really loved me a little and that I would have my own house and . . .

  And I vomited it all in tears.

  And the more I emptied myself, the more Franck seemed to fill me up. I don’t know how to really explain it but that was the impression he gave me. The more I cried, the more he relaxed. His face became softer. He twisted a strand of my hair around my ear. He gently made fun of me. He called me Calamity Jane, or Camille the Nutcase, or Billie the Kid, and he smiled.

  He told me about my unrecognizable face, the way I had beat the neck of that poor guy with the barrel of my rifle while he was driving. He described to me Manu’s torn earlobe, dangling at the corners. He imitated the tone of my voice when I had ordered him to round up a cop and how I had swung my weapon in Manu’s face while saying, “Your gift,” and he almost laughed at certain moments. Yes, he almost laughed.

  I didn’t understand until long after, until many secrets later, when he too began to tell me a bit about his solitary war before me, before us, that on that night, if he was so happy to see me so miserable, it was because during the time that I sobbed in his arms nonstop and on the verge of an anxiety atta
ck, he was discovering the first good reason not to die.

  My tears, they were his fuel to keep going, and his teasing, that was just to reassure me. To prove to me that we could laugh at it all and that, besides, we were going to laugh at it all from now on since, “Look, Billie . . . look, our lives, as rotten as they are, we’re finally here in this rotten little bed . . . Hey . . . Stop crying, my darling . . . Stop crying . . . Thanks to you, we’ve gotten through the hardest part. Thanks to you we’ve escaped. Oh and then if—cry, go ahead cry . . . That will help you sleep . . . Cry, but never forget: of course, our troubles are only just beginning, but when we’re on the edge of death, we can look back and say to ourselves: It’s me who has suffered and not some false being created by fear and the feeling of terror that some ignorant asshole inspired in me . . . ”

  In reality, he said only “Shhh” but that’s what those “shhhs” said.

  Without Franck’s kindness during our rehearsals; without Billie Holiday’s childhood, which he had told me about while looking elsewhere, well beyond my headrest; and without his minuscule postcards sent to Claudine’s house during my “convent” years, I would never have reacted like such a nutcase. And if I hadn’t behaved like a nutcase, he wouldn’t have survived either.

  So that’s it, little star . . . And now, I ask you: Is there any point in continuing? Wasn’t that last sentence enough to let us skip the rest?

  No?

  Why not?

  You also want me to recount how it was me who got us into this shitty situation so you can weigh it all up before delivering your verdict?

  Okay, okay, I’ll continue . . .