No and Me Read online

  ‘I wanted to ask you something. Do you know which way your tongue goes round when you kiss a boy?’

  First she opens her eyes very, very wide. Then she laughs. I’ve never seen her laugh like that. Then I laugh too. If I had more money, I’d call the waiter and shout ‘champagne’. I’d clap my hands and order petits fours like at my big cousin’s wedding, lots of them. They’d turn up the music in the café and we’d dance on the tables. We’d invite everyone to our party. No would go and change in the toilets. She’d slip on a beautiful dress and pretty shoes. We’d close the doors to be undisturbed and make it dark and turn up the volume like in the songs.

  ‘The things you ask! There’s not a “right way round” for kissing. We’re not washing machines!’

  She laughs a bit more and then asks if I’ve got a Kleenex. I hand her the packet.

  She looks at the café clock and suddenly gets up. They have to be back at the centre by seven otherwise they’re not allowed in. I give her the money I’ve got left for her metro ticket. She doesn’t refuse.

  We go down to the metro together. At the bottom of the escalator we have to separate. I say, ‘I’d really like you to come back and see me if you can.’ It’s not so hard to say any more. She smiles.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Promise?’

  She gives my hair a quick ruffle, like you do with kids.

  .

  Chapter 19

  What if No came to stay with us? What if we decided not to do ‘the done thing’? If we decided that things can be different, even if that was really complicated and even more so than it seemed? That’s the solution. The only solution. At our house she’d have a bed, a place at the table, a cupboard to keep her things in, a shower so she could wash. She’d have an address. She could start looking for work again. Chloe’s room’s been empty all this time. My father eventually gave away the cot and the clothes and the chest of drawers. Later he put in a sofa and a table. He shuts himself away in there from time to time when he has work to finish. Or when he needs to be alone. My mother never goes in any more, or at least not when we’re around. She didn’t touch anything – my father took care of it all. When we talk about the room we don’t call it a bedroom any more, we call it the office. And the door stays shut.

  I wait a few days before I mention it. I wait for the right moment. There aren’t that many ways of presenting it. On the one hand there’s the truth. Unvarnished. On the other, there’s a presentation to make No seem something she’s not. I imagine different hypotheses: No’s the cousin of a classmate, up from the provinces. She’s looking for a job as an au pair so that she can continue her studies. No is a teaching assistant at school and is looking for a room. No’s just back from a long spell abroad. Her parents are friends of Mrs Rivery, my French teacher. No’s the assistant head’s daughter and he threw her out because she failed her exams. I look at it from every angle, and every time I bump up against the same problem: No’s incapable of playing a role. A hot bath and new clothes won’t be enough.

  One evening I take my courage in both hands. We’re at the table. For once my mother hasn’t gone to bed as soon as it gets dark and is eating with us. It’s now or never. I broach the subject: I have something important to ask them. They mustn’t interrupt. Not in any circumstances. They’ve got to let me get to the end. I’ve prepared an argument in three parts the way Mrs Rivery taught us, preceded by an introduction to announce the subject and followed by a two-level conclusion (you have to pose a question that opens on to a new debate, a new perspective).

  In broad terms, the outline goes like this:

  Introduction: I’ve met an eighteen-year-old girl who lives on the street and in hostels. She needs help (I get straight to the essential without additions or embellishments).

  Section I (thesis): she could come to live with us to give her time to get her strength back and find work (I’ve prepared concrete arguments and practical proposals). She could sleep in the office and help with the housework.

  Section II (antithesis: you put the counter-argument yourself so that you can dismantle it more easily): it’s true that there are specialist organisations and social security and that it’s not necessarily up to us to take responsibility for a person in a situation like this; it’s more complicated that it seems; we don’t know her, we don’t know what we’re dealing with.

  Section III (synthesis): there are over 200,000 homeless people in France and the social services can’t cope. Every night thousands of people sleep rough. It’s cold. Every winter people die in the street.

  Conclusion: What’s to stop us trying? What are we afraid of, why have we stopped struggling? (Mrs Rivery often says my conclusions are a bit strident, and she may be right, but sometimes the end justifies the means.)

  I wrote my plan in a notebook and underlined the main points in red. I rehearsed it in front of the bathroom mirror, my hands calm and my voice level.

  We’re at the table with a Picard pizza in front of us (I’ve kept the packaging), the curtains are drawn, the orange glow of the little lamp in the living room outlines our faces. We’re on the fifth floor of a Parisian apartment block, the windows are closed, we’re sheltered. I start talking and very quickly lose the thread, forget the plan, let myself get carried away by the desire to convince them, the desire to see No here with us, sitting on our chairs, on our sofa, drinking from our bowls and eating from our plates. I don’t know why I think of Goldilocks and the three bears when No has straight dark hair. I’m thinking of the picture in the book my mother used to read when I was little. Goldilocks broke everything, the bowl, the chair and the bed, and the picture keeps coming back to me. I’m afraid of losing my words, so I talk at top speed without following anything. I speak for a long time, telling them how I met No, what little I know about her. I talk about her face, her hands, her case rattling along, her rare smiles. They hear me out. Then there’s a silence. A long, long silence.

  And then my mother’s voice, which is even rarer than No’s smile, sudden and clear: ‘We should meet her.’

  My father looks up, stunned. The pizza’s cold in my mouth. I form it into a ball, moistened with saliva, and count to ten before I swallow.

  My father repeats after her, ‘OK, let’s meet her.’

  Which just goes to show that things can be different. The very small can become large.

  .

  Chapter 20

  I waited for No. I looked for her at the school gate every evening, delaying the moment when I’d catch the metro home. I looked for her off-balance silhouette, her dragging walk. I didn’t give up hope.

  This evening she’s there. She’d promised. January cold cuts right through you. She’s left the emergency hostel where she had been staying. They gave her other addresses to try, and a reference, but you have to wait till a place becomes available. She went back to her friend on the rue de Charenton, who took her in for a few nights, but other people pitched up alongside them with their tents, because it’s a well-sheltered spot, and then they started to cause trouble, listening to the radio at all hours and wanting to screw her. She explains all this to me at once on the pavement. She says ‘screw’ as if she was talking to an adult, and I’m proud that she’s not treating me like a kid because I know what that means and the difference there is between different words for the same thing, and that words have their own importance and shades of meaning too.

  I can’t take her home in this state. She needs a wash and a change of clothes. My mother will be at home and No must at least be presentable. Even if my parents have said yes, a bad first impression could spoil everything. Then everything happens very quickly, in spite of everything that usually keeps me at a distance when I have to act, because often images and words invade my head and paralyse me. But this time everything has to go in the same direction, without colliding or scattering. One foot must go in front of t
he other without taking time to wonder whether to start with the left or the right. (Mrs Cortanze the psychologist once told my father that intellectually precocious children have a great ability to conceptualise, to grasp the world, but that they can be helpless when they’re faced with relatively simple situations. That struck me as a serious ailment, a major handicap that I could never overcome.)

  I ask No to wait for me, not to move. I think it’s the first time I’ve spoken to her like that, no argument. She’s got no strength left. No strength to protest or say no. I cross the street again and grab Lucas’s arm. Normally I’d never be capable of doing something like that, but sometimes needs must. A few days ago he told me that he more or less lived alone in a five-room apartment. His father’s gone off to live in Brazil and sends money. His mother rarely sleeps there. She leaves him notes on yellow Post-its on the front door and ignores teachers’ requests for meetings. Once or twice a month she signs a cheque when the fridge is empty. The cleaning lady comes in once a week and worries about whether he’s eating properly.

  I explain the situation to him briefly. I need to be quick so it’s too bad if I splurt it out, too bad if red spots appear on my neck. There’s no time to lose. Then I understand why I chose him and him alone. He glances at No and says, ‘Follow me, girls.’

  She falls in step without having to be begged. When we get to Lucas’s, she throws up in the bathroom. She says she took some medicine. I don’t dare ask what. He takes a big towel from a cupboard. It’s perfectly ironed and folded, like the ones in that advert for fabric softener with the stupid soft toy that tells its life story. She can’t have seen one that thick in ages. She doesn’t protest when I push her into the corridor. I run the bath. Everything’s still going at top speed in my head, everything’s joined up perfectly, decisions are followed by actions. I call my mother to let her know I’ll be arriving with No in an hour and hang up without waiting for her reply in case she’s changed her mind. I ask Lucas if he can find something that will suit No among his mother’s things. He lights a cigarette, adopts a gangster pose and makes a gesture that means, I’m on to it. The bath’s ready. I help No undress, breathing through my mouth so as not to smell her smell. I watch her get into the hot water. She has the body of a boy, narrow hips, thin arms, tiny breasts. Her hair floats like brown seaweed. You can see her ribs, in her back and on her chest. With the heat of the bath her cheeks have got some colour. Her skin’s so fine you can see the veins. I stay with her because I’m afraid she’ll sink. I take a glove and wash her shoulders, neck, legs and feet with lots of soap. I ask her to get up, sit down again, to give me her one foot and then the other. She does as she’s told without saying anything. I give her the glove for what remains to be done and turn round. I hear her get up again and then plunge back into the water. I hand her the big towel and she leans on me to get out. On the surface, mixed in with the soap residue, float a thousand particles of dirt.

  Lucas has laid out the clothes on his bed and gone off to watch TV. I help No get dressed, then go back to the bathroom to clean the bath with Mr Clean pine fresh, the same one we’ve got at home. It sparkles almost as much as on the label. The jeans and pullover suit her perfectly. I wonder how such a small woman could have brought such a big thing as Lucas into the world. He suggests we have a drink. He doesn’t dare look at No. I say thank you for helping us. I don’t know what she’s taken – she’s here but not here. She still doesn’t protest when I tell her we’re going to my place, that my parents have agreed and are waiting for us. She looks at me for a few seconds, as though it takes that long for the information to reach her brain, and then she follows me. While we’re waiting for the lift she turns to thank Lucas and he says, ‘Come back whenever you like.’ In the street I pull along No’s case. The wheels don’t work any more. It makes an incredible noise, but I don’t care.

  We walk to my building. In the lobby I look at her one last time. The pink has disappeared from her cheeks, and her hair’s still wet.

  I ring the bell before going in. I know that I could lose her.

  .

  Chapter 21

  My father and mother came out of the kitchen to greet us. I did the introductions. Inside my socks my toes were tightly clenched. My father hesitated and almost shook her hand, but then he moved towards her to kiss her cheek. No backed away. She was trying to smile, but you could tell that it wasn’t easy.

  All four of us sat down to dinner. My mother had prepared a courgette gratin. For the first time in ages she wasn’t in her dressing gown, she’d put on her multicoloured stripy pullover and black trousers. They didn’t ask questions. They behaved as if all this was the most natural thing in the world. My mother stayed till the end of the meal. For the first time in ages it felt as though she was really there, that she didn’t just have a walk-on part, she was entirely there. We talked about everything and nothing. My father talked about the business trip to China he had coming up and told us he’d watched a TV programme about how Shanghai was developing. It probably didn’t mean much to No – not Shanghai, or the caretaker’s dog which spends its time digging up imaginary bones in the middle of our building’s courtyard, or the electricity meter reading, but that didn’t matter. The important thing was to make her feel at ease, and that she wasn’t being observed. And for once it seemed to be working, like in the family meals you see in ready-meal adverts where the conversation keeps going without jarring notes or gaps. There’s always someone ready to chip in at the right moment, no one looks tired or weighed down with worries, there are no silences.

  No must weigh forty kilos. She’s eighteen but looks barely fifteen. Her hands shake when she raises her glass to her lips, her nails are bitten and bloody, her hair is falling in her eyes, her movements are clumsy. It’s an effort for her to stay upright. To stay sitting. Just to stay together. How long has it been since she ate in a home without having to rush or make way for the next people? How long since she spread a cloth napkin on her knees and ate fresh vegetables? That’s all that matters. The rest can wait.

  After dinner my father opened out the sofa bed in the office. He went to look for sheets and a thick blanket in the cupboard in the hall. He came back finally and told No that her bed was ready.

  She said thanks without looking up.

  I know full well that sometimes it’s best to stay like that, shut away within yourself. Sometimes a glance is all it takes to make you waver, someone holding out their hand can make you realise all of a sudden how fragile and vulnerable you are, that everything is collapsing like a matchstick pyramid.

  There was no interrogation, no suspicion, no doubt, no back-pedalling. I’m proud of my parents. They weren’t afraid. They did what they had to do.

  No’s in bed. I close the door of the office, turn out her light. A new life is starting for her, I’m sure of it, a real life where she’s safe. And I’ll always be there beside her. I don’t want her ever to feel alone again. I want her to feel that she’s with me.

  .

  Chapter 22

  She stays in her room with the door closed. My mother’s lent her some clothes and my father’s cleared the office so that she can arrange her things. She only comes out when I’m there and sleeps practically all day. She leaves the curtains open, lies down on top of the sheets with all her clothes on, her arms by her sides and her palms open. I knock softly on her door, go in on tiptoe, and find her in this strange position. Every time she makes me think of Sleeping Beauty in her glass coffin, sleeping for a hundred years, her blue dress spread out on her bed without a crease and her smooth hair surrounding her face. But No does wake up, her eyes bright from sleep, with this incredulous smile on her face. She stretches, asks me what’s new at school and in my class. I tell her and then go off to do my homework, closing the door behind me.

  Later I come to fetch her for dinner. She bolts her food down, helps clear up, ventures into the apartment for a fe
w minutes and then goes back to lie down.

  She’s recuperating.

  To look at her you’d think that she’s returned from a long journey, that she’s crossed oceans and deserts, walked barefoot along mountain tracks and along miles of main roads, that her feet have taken her to unknown places. She’s come back from far away.

  She’s returned from a land that’s invisible, and yet so close to us.

  For weeks she stood in queues waiting for her turn to eat, to wash her clothes, to get a bed somewhere. For weeks she slept with her shoes stuffed under her pillow, her bags jammed between her and the wall, her money and ID card in her pants so they didn’t get stolen. She slept on the alert on paper sheets under makeshift blankets or with her jacket as her only protection. For weeks she found herself on the street in the early morning, with no plan and no prospects. She spent whole days wandering in this parallel world, which is ours all the same. All she was looking for was a place that wouldn’t turn her away, somewhere she could sit down or sleep.

  She tries to take up as little space and make as little noise as possible. She has her shower quickly in the morning, finishes off the coffee left on the stove by my father, doesn’t put the light on in the kitchen, walks as softly as possible, keeping close to the walls. She answers with a yes or a no, accepts just about everything she’s offered and lowers her eyes except when she looks at me. Once when I was sitting beside her on her bed, she turned to me and said, ‘We’re together now, the two of us, aren’t we?’ I said yes without really knowing what she meant by being together. It’s something she often asks: ‘We’re together, eh, Lou?’ Now I know. It means that nothing can ever separate us, it’s like a pact between us, a pact that doesn’t need words. She gets up in the night and roams around the apartment, turns on the water. Sometimes I think she stays awake for hours. I hear the door to the corridor and her light footsteps on the carpet. One night I surprised her with her face against the window in the living room contemplating the whole of the city from the fifth floor, the impossible darkness, the course of the cars’ red and white lights, the halos round the street lights and other smaller bright points, turning in the distance.