Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow (8 page)

Speaking of Aunt Zohra, she found the courage to tell her old crazy husband the whole story. Things got violent between them when he found out and the old wacko hit Aunt Zohra. He stopped after a minute because he'd had enough, his arms hurt too much, and he had heart palpitations. So he sat down and asked her for a glass of water to calm him. She went to get him his drink and that's how the whole thing ended...

She told us everything. Every day she prays to
God for her husband to go back to where he came from. And to think that only a little while ago, Mom was praying for that other man to come back.

These days I can see she's not so lost in her thoughts. She looks better. She's beginning to read a few words and she's so proud that she can write her first name without any mistakes. At first, she used to write
S
backward, like little kids do. It's true that from time to time I can see she's still anxious, like when she sits watching the turned-off TV. But it happens less often now. And also she's active and free to do anything she wants now while before that was definitely not the case. When Dad lived with us, there was no question about her working even though we were seriously broke. Because for Dad women weren't made for working in the outside world.

By the way, yesterday Hamoudi told me he'd found a job. He stumbled on this ad in that free paper
Paris Boum Boum.
This stereo-, video-, and computer-equipment rental company was looking for someone to do security. He called up right away, had an interview, and, bam, he was hired. Fine, he says it's kind of a pain because it's at night, but he's happy he's found real work, and it's better that way. He said he
also feels like he's been hired to act like their guard dog, but he doesn't give a shit...

It makes me think of some of those houses in the Rousseau development where they put a sign up with a photo of a massive, supermenacing Doberman and a bubble that says
BEWARE OF THE DOG!
, while everyone knows that in the house is a toy poodle named Gramps who gets panic attacks from children and flies.

Monday,
at Mme Burlaud's, it wasn't at all like normal. Right away when I got there, she told me to make myself comfortable and then she went out of the office saying: "I'll be right back!" like for the commercial breaks of variety shows. She didn't come back until twenty minutes later ... and I noticed she smelled like alcohol. Real strong. Well, that really was nothing ... During the session, I didn't have much to say so at one point she crossed her short little legs and went: "Maybe you've got a funny story to tell me?" At that moment I noticed she was wearing garters. I looked back and forth between her face and her garters and thought that this wasn't bad for a joke. Then she asked me thousands of questions about Mom, nosy stuff about her love life and everything ... I told her she didn't have one anymore since he left. Mme Burlaud, she wanted to know if I could see Mom making a new life with another man. Yeah, I can see that. To tell you the truth, I'm planning it...

I watched a show about singles and new ways to meet people. There's this thing called speed dating. That means something is really fast. I know because at Speed Burger, you order your hamburger and it's ready in two minutes, plus it's 100 percent halal. Basically, these speed dates, they're like arranged meetings. For seven minutes you sit facing somebody you don't know. Just long enough to say: "I don't like your face" or "Do you still live with your mom?" Only I can't see Mom in a place like that. I don't really believe she'll get together with someone again. I was saying it just because I'd like her to, that's all.

Unless someone came directly to the house to ask for her hand in marriage. Trouble is that now, she's hardly ever home, apart from this month because her training stops during summer vacation. I'm going to stick up her office hours on the door like at the doctor's, with our requirements listed.

Alcoholics, old men, cowards need not apply.
Thank you in advance.

Preferably: Hard worker, cultured, witty, charming,
good teeth, stamp collector, and lover of canned,
peeled tomatoes.

Yeah, OK, I was kind of overly harsh with the old men part, but definitely no alcoholics. I never again want to have to wait outside Constantinois, the bar in the town square, so some man can finish knocking it back and I can take him home because he doesn't remember the way when he's drunk. Or prostituting my pride at the Sidi Mohamed Market buying cases of beer during Ramadan and lugging the empty bottles down to the recycling bins afterward. When the bottles smashed inside the bins, it made so much noise that everybody in our building knew how many bottles Dad had downed. With all the glass that was recycled thanks to him, he could have earned a merit of honor medal or become a mascot for the Green Party. I'd have given anything to trade my father for Tony Danza in
Who's the Boss?
but he was already taken. I don't think it's even possible now, with nothing to trade.

Hamoudi was really liking that job.
And he was beginning to like living by the law. But they fired him because things were disappearing from the warehouse. At least six thousand euros worth of material and it was Hamoudi who got the blame. Not even his parents believed him when he denied it. They're convinced he's a good-for-nothing and keep telling him so.

Anyway, I believed him. "I don't give a shit, I'm clean, I've got nothing to be sorry for, I did a good job, and I didn't fall asleep once. Only thing they can hold against me is this filthy face..." He pointed to himself, eyes wide open. I didn't dare tell him he
was handsome. I was scared he'd think something. Hamoudi, he's got really dark brown hair, clear enough skin, and big hazel eyes ... A real Mediterranean man. He says that's why they unfairly accused him. I don't know if he's paranoid but, in any case, they had no right to accuse him without proof. That's no good.

Life is really full of disappointments. Coming home from the market this morning, I overheard two girls and a guy talking on the bus. The girls were twins, or nearly. They were dressed the same, had the same hairstyle, and they talked the same.

The guy was really little and he had his mouth open all the time. On the plus side, thank God, he didn't say anything. He just listened. The girls were chewing gum and blowing bubbles at the end of nearly every sentence.

"You know
The Pretender?
"

"Yeah sure!" (Bubble.)

"Do you watch it every day?" (Bubble.)

"Yeah!"

"You know the main character?"

"Right!" (Bubble.)

"His name is Jarod..." (Bubble.)

"Yeah! And he's seriously hot!"

"Well, I heard he's a homo!" (Bubble.)

"Serious? That's crazy! How do you know?" (Bubble.)

"My sister told me she saw it on the Internet."

"Oooh, that's so screwed up. I can't believe they're saying he's gay." (Bubble.)

Not Jarod. Someone could have said James Dean, Claude François, Michael Jackson, or Christian Morin, OK. But not Jarod. When I watched that series, I could never follow the story: He was the only reason I stayed crouched in front of the TV like an ass. Because he's really too hot. Those other gay guys out there are so lucky.

Mme Burlaud is always saying that all my life I'll get deceived and I've just got to get used to it. Yeah. But that wasn't written anywhere in my contract.

It's weird, but I can't stop thinking about that lameass Nabil and I still can't understand why he did that. Why he suddenly decided to glue his fat mouth to
mine. And he's got enormous lips, I was scared he'd inhale me and I'd be a prisoner inside him. Once I got out of there, all the TV channels in the world would interrupt regular programming to get my eyewitness report of my stay in Nabil the loser. And then I would write a book called
Journey to the Center of Nabil.
It would definitely be a bestseller.

I wonder when he's coming back. Just to know. Oh yeah, and to tell him he's got some debts to pay back—and he has acne and pisses everyone off.

Since Mom's still on vacation
until next week, we decided to hang around Paris together. It was actually the first time she'd seen the Eiffel Tower even though she's been living half an hour from it for almost twenty years. Before now, she only saw it on TV, on the one o'clock news on New Year's Day, when it's all lit up from top to bottom and people are partying, dancing, kissing, and getting wasted. Anyway, she was seriously impressed.

"It must be two or three times our building, yeah?"

I told her it had to be. But our building, and the projects in general, they don't get so much tourist interest. There aren't any Japanese hordes with their
cameras standing at the bottom of the towers in the neighborhood. The only ones interested in us are the parasite journalists with their nasty reports on violence in the suburbs.

Mom, she would have been happy to stay there for hours looking at it. Me, I think it's ugly, but you can't deny it makes an impression because it's powerful: the Eiffel Tower. I'd like to have gone up in the red and yellow elevators that look like ketchup and mustard, but it was too expensive. And plus, we would have had to get in line behind the Germans, the Italians, the English, and piles of other tourists who aren't scared of heights and even less scared of spending their dough. We didn't have enough money to buy a miniature Eiffel Tower either, even uglier than the original, but still it's classy to have one on top of your TV. Tourist-trap stalls are crazy expensive. Plus, what those guys sell is total crap. Later, a pigeon took a shit on my shoulder. I tried wiping it off discreetly against a statue of Gustave Eiffel, 1832–1923, but the bird shit had gone hard and wouldn't come off. In the RER, people were staring at the stain and I felt serious
hchouma.
I felt kind of sick because it's the only jacket I have that doesn't
look too ratty. If I wear any of the others, everybody calls me "Cosette" from
Les Misérables.
Anyway, I don't give a shit; whether it shows or not, I'll still be poor. Later, when my breasts are bigger and I'm a little bit more intelligent, like when I'm an adult, I'll join up with a group that helps people...

Knowing there are people who need you and you can be useful to them, it's really too cool.

One of these days, if I don't need my blood or one of my kidneys, I could donate them to the sick people who've had their names on the lists for forever. But, still, I wouldn't just do it for a clear conscience or so I could look at myself in the mirror when I'm taking off my makeup after work, but because I really wanted to do it.

Lila and Sarah are back from Toulouse and they brought me some little cakes. No doubt there's no connection between Toulouse and those cakes but it was a nice gesture I thought. Lila told me about how it went at her sister's. And then she talked a lot about herself, what her life was like before coming to the Paradise Estate, with Sarah's dad and everything...

Lila's from Algeria, like Aunt Zohra. She left her family early on to live the way she wanted, like in the novels she was reading at sixteen. She and Sarah's dad met very young and fell in love right away. Their story began like in those Sunday afternoon movies, with "I love you" every ten feet and never-ending walks on beautiful July days...

The problem was both families were against their being together. Sarah's dad's family, they're from Brittany since ... I don't know ... eighteen generations, while Lila's people, they're more the traditional Algerian family worried about preserving customs and religion. So they were all worked up about it from the start and then her ex-husband's family, they weren't so thrilled with her tan, if you know what I mean. The two of them decided to get married anyway, even though their relationship was already starting to fall apart. Lila says, looking back on it, she realizes they did it more out of rebellion than love. Plus, her wedding day is still a nightmare of a bad memory. Atmosphere like death, hardly any guests on her side, and, as if by chance, lots of pork in the meal her father-in-law cooked. And who knew if he put it in the wedding cake too, just to screw with her.
He was always dying of laughter from his own tasteless jokes about religion. At every family meal—at least the ones she was invited to—at 7:45 out came the atheist joke. And Lila already felt out of place...

And then one day she'd had enough—of her father-in-law's jokes, of cured sausage for an appetizer, and of her permanently unemployed husband who spent all his time slumped on the couch gawking at repeats on the TV and drinking cheap beer. So she asked for a divorce and it hasn't been easy. These days she's bringing up her little girl all by herself, but she's still hoping to meet someone who "fits" her perfectly. It made me think of an article about single moms I read in a magazine lying on the coffee table at the doctor's. In any case, I've figured out that behind that front of a supermarket cashier who cuts out trendy articles from
Mademoiselle,
Lila's a big dreamer.

And maybe there's something to what women's magazines say about the perfect man, after all. They have these three-page articles explaining how the right guy, meaning the one for you, is never far away, but often you don't realize it right away. There was the first-person account from Simone, thirty-nine,
telling how her ex-neighbor from across the hall, Raymond, fell in love with her from day one. At first she didn't look at him at all, and now he's the man of her life. They're married and have two kids. That's how the story goes. They're happy because they've got a normal life and only have to go out once a week—to the supermarket.

For all I know, the perfect man I'm not even seeing and who I'll have two kids with later is Nabil ... Before, I gave him a hard time, said the guy was a stain and stuff like that. But when I analyze the situation, I can see he helped me for months without getting anything in return, and most of all that he had the guts to kiss me by surprise and risk getting kneed right where it hurts. I'm sure if I asked Mme Burlaud her opinion, she'd tell me to give Nabil a chance. It's true he's not as bad as all that in the end. He's maybe even a good guy. And acne doesn't usually last your whole life.