Paris Was Ours (16 page)

In addition, when it comes to Madiop, the father of my children, I don’t want people to think that he’s absent, negligent, or irresponsible. We are separated but we remain close and we respect each other a lot. He’s not able to help us financially at the moment, but whenever he can, he’s there for the children. I sometimes leave work late, and he’s the one who goes to pick up Jules at school and Orphée at preschool, and he cares for them regularly in the evening.

Finally, I want to answer the many people who advise me to leave Paris for the suburbs or the provinces. If I don’t do it, it’s not out of stubbornness. It’s that it’s out of the question: My whole life is here. My work is here, the father of my children is here, my brother is here, my friends are here, Jules’s school is here, all of his friends are here, Orphée’s preschool is here …
If I leave Paris, I’ll have nothing left. I want to stay in Paris because now it’s my home, that’s all. I don’t want it to be a luxury reserved for rich people. I think that everyone should be free to live where they want, no matter what their income might be.

I see that Mr. Vaillant left a comment on my blog on Thursday evening! I thank him a lot for this answer, which I read attentively. I have no doubt that he and his team are doing their best to solve the problem of housing in the eighteenth arrondissement. I want to assure him that I never thought that all this publicity would bring me subsidized housing right away. It would be too easy if you had only to be in a newspaper for everything to fall into place!

I’m not asking for favored treatment. I’m very conscious of how many urgent problems the mayor’s office must have, but there is a real problem here and I’m part of it.

If I can give my opinion, I find it depressing that politicians always answer with, “We can’t do any more …” I don’t know what politicians would have to do to solve the housing problem, but it’s up to them to know, not me! If they agree that it’s not right that dozens of families live in the street, if they agree that cases like ours aren’t isolated ones but add up to a real social problem, then it’s their job to find solutions, no?

Mr. Vaillant, you’re certainly right to remember that rules are rules and that they’re the same for everyone. I very much agree. But don’t forget that you’re the one who makes the rules! It’s your responsibility to decide to build more subsidized housing, to decide if it’s better to give it to the poorest people or to the middle class, to decide if people whose incomes are above the set limits should still be allowed to live in housing projects or if there should be more movement … I understand it when
my social worker tells me he can’t do anything more, because I know that his ability to act is limited by choices that have been made by elected officials. But you, you should not be able to say such a thing because, as a politician, it’s your job to find solutions to problems, no? It’s difficult, I’m sure, but it’s your job and you’ve chosen it.

My own job, at my low level, is to explain the situation to you so that you can better understand how homeless people live and you can better respond to their problems. That’s why I began this blog. Others react differently, they agitate or demonstrate; I do what I can with this blog. Even if it changes the politics of housing slightly, it won’t have served for nothing.

As for emergency accommodations, such as hotels, it’s true that I didn’t accept this help from social services. Mr. Kossi, to whom I was assigned, also insisted on this, but hotels are very expensive, even with financial assistance. You can’t live in one from day to day the way you can in an apartment (you can’t cook, the toilets are often in the hallway …). And I know so many families that have been in them for years …

For the moment, I’ve had no news about project housing, and life is continuing as it was.

On Monday, I finally found a free moment to go to the basement storage area where Jules’s outgrown clothes, which I’d like to use for Orphée, are stored. I was totally happy when I got there. I overcame my phobia of the dark to find the light at the end of the basement, then opened the door that I’d last closed several months before. I’d never been back since and didn’t remember how we had arranged things inside. It was a veritable Tetris in 3-D! Everything was piled up from floor to ceiling—I hadn’t imagined when I stored these things
that I might need to take just a few at once—with the result that I didn’t find anything. I closed the door, turned out the light, and left with some bitterness. That evening, when I told Emmanuelle of my disappointment, she immediately got up, went to a closet, and took out lots of clothes that had belonged to her daughters, were now too small, and could also work well for boys!

We didn’t have to move last weekend and, suddenly, we could enjoy our days. We went to the park to meet friends, and since our children are the same age, and since they’re little guys, they played soccer. It may seem boring, but these are just moments of joy.

We’re leaving Emmanuelle’s apartment in several days. I’m very grateful to her, not just for her welcoming attitude, but because we really got to know each other well. She and her daughters didn’t go away on vacation, finally. Léah was very sick and in no condition to travel. As a result, we spent a lot of time together. The advantage of living through difficult times is that it makes you stronger and you meet amazing people.

This time, I’m going to sublet an apartment for a month. We’re going to stay in the neighborhood one more time, between the jardin d’ Éole and rue Marx Dormoy. I hope that this will be the last, that afterward we’ll have an apartment of our own.

Translated from the French by Penelope Rowlands

Just Another American

I
NFRANCE,
I was liberated from the Vassar girl/project girl conflict. No one judged me on specifics, and I had nothing to prove. The French saw me as just another American, though I didn’t see myself that way at all. I viewed Americans as white patriots in “Love It or Leave It” T-shirts, with a flag on their lawns, who didn’t want me in school with their children. I was black, period. The French drew no such distinctions, which meant I no longer had to worry about making
African Americans
look good. Or bad. Whatever I did was attributed to Americanness, not blackness. What a switch—a black person with the power to make white people look bad. Given how negatively the American media routinely portrayed us, I was tempted. School began in October. I took language classes with foreigners at the Alliance française and literature courses with the French at the Sorbonne. The French system of instruction seemed rigid and formal after the fluidity of Vassar. At the Sorbonne, a professor lectured at a podium while students feverishly took notes. No first names, no class participation, no give-and-take. The weekly discussion groups held in smaller classrooms were slightly more relaxed, but I found the Gauloises-laden air toxic.

I enjoyed moving about in a big city, and the bustle and energy of Paris reminded me of Manhattan. The similarity stopped there. The beauty of the City of Light’s gently curved wrought-iron balconies and sculpture-studded gardens far surpassed New York’s glass-and-steel chaos. Over time, I began feeling more comfortable exploring my own and nearby arrondissements but didn’t dare venture much farther for fear of encounters of the French kind. Such as the newspaper vendor who flew into a rage when I politely asked directions. All I understood from the stream of invective he spewed my way was: “They come here and can’t even speak the language.” Or the charming
pâtissière
who tried to sell me seven croissants when I’d only asked for one. She wrapped one as I was pulling out my francs. Then she wrapped another, and then another. “Non, non! Un! Un suh!!” She sneered, “Vous avez dit sept, mademoiselle!” then mumbled to herself, “Ah, mais ça, alors … ça, c’est chiant.” Exuding contempt as only the French can, she shoved one croissant across the counter and overcharged me.

Rather than interact with the French, I preferred wandering the wide, shaded walkways of the Luxembourg Gardens, following the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter, and climbing the stone steps inside Notre-Dame to take in, alongside ancient gargoyles, the low aerial view of Paris.

After classes, we did the French thing and hung out in cafés over cups of
chocolat chaud
and
croque-monsieur
sandwiches. Before departing New York, the program director lectured us about our status as “honorary ambassadors of goodwill for the United States.” She had the wrong diplomats. Our gang was always true to stereotype: haughty Americans with appalling accents and boisterous behavior. Outlandish in purple plastic
sunglasses and her grandmother’s fake fur, Nikki was a scourge on the French, and the rest of us loved her for it. “Garçon! Garçon!” she commanded, waving impatiently. “Doo chocolaz, see voo pleeze.” Her French accent usually evoked a look of incomprehension in the garçon ranks. “The French are so backward—they don’t even understand their own language!
Doo, misshur, doo. Comprende? Un, doo, twa? Doo
.” Exasperated, she’d hold up two fingers. She forbade tipping. “Don’t leave that bastard anything. Look how long it took us to get service. He sees niggers sitting at a table and walks the other way. Tip, my ass!”

Travel was rarely without incident. If Nikki was sitting in their special designated area, the elderly, disabled, and war veterans would just have to stand. “My ancestors already made the necessary sacrifices,” she said. She was fearless, daring even to tangle with that most daunting class of Parisians: old Frenchwomen. One elderly madame made the mistake of snarling when Nikki refused to give up her seat on a crowded bus. Hunched under a black shawl, the woman let loose a flood of French insults. Nikki was nonplussed.

“Do you be-
lieve
this shit! She’s gonna
make
me get up and give her my seat.
Madame
, you need to take your
derrière
elsewhere, and
vite
!” They stared each other down, Nikki seated, Madame standing, until our stop arrived. The cantankerous old Frenchwoman was a sacrificial lamb made to pay for all the daily slights and insults inflicted on American students. Our friends cheered Nikki’s American diplomacy. As for school, Nikki was notorious, a wild woman among hardworking drones. Despite cutting classes whenever she wanted and taking off a month to spend with her boyfriend, she aced her
“Sciences-Po” exams, graduated from Yale, earned a master’s at Johns Hopkins, and became a banker.

I also met Francesca, the daughter of an Egyptian father and an Italian mother, who had been raised in upper-class London. Francesca resembled a light-skinned black American and was tormented by her yearning to have blond hair and blue eyes. “All the boys I liked in boarding school preferred the blond girls,” Francesca complained in her very English accent. “I wish they could see that inside I
am
a blue-eyed blond.” I knew few mixed-race people and was moved by her candor and obvious suffering. My sympathetic words failed to console, however, and Francesca agonized all year about her “cruel fate.”

She was much more helpful to me than I was to her. Her father had come to Paris on business and wanted to take Francesca and a couple of her friends to dinner. I panicked when she invited me. The only “restaurants” I’d been in up to that point were pizza shops and Chinese fast-food places. A wealthy businessman, Mr. Rahkla had made reservations in a fancy seventh arrondissement restaurant. “Suppose I mess up,” I asked, “or use the wrong silverware?” “Just do everything I do,” she said. At dinner, I concentrated on Francesca’s every move as she worked her way from the outside in, through a row of shiny cutlery. Intimidated by everything, from the way the garçon leaned toward me to take my order to the enormous cloth napkin bunched up on my lap, I participated little in the conversation. But other than momentarily forgetting myself and asking in English, “Do you have soda?” I did all right that evening, although I barely remember the food. Francesca’s simple lesson would serve me well years later as I made the rounds, as a Paris resident, of innumerable French restaurants, fancy and otherwise.

Winter brought gray clouds and wrapped the city in cold. It took that long for me to learn, after being scolded in first class by a Métro agent glaring at my second-class ticket, that there were two classes in the Paris subway cars. And that, no matter how hard you stared, the car door would not open automatically. Language progress was just as slow. I had made some improvement, but my questionable grammar, child’s vocabulary, and ringing American accent still caused the natives to flinch. My American friends were fun, but they weren’t going to help me learn to speak French. Only the French could do that, but the French girls in the
foyer
limited conversation to a polite “Bonjour” as they rushed down the corridor. I had the impression that we
américaines
were considered vaguely corrupt and certainly corrupting, a little too independent and tomboyish by French standards of femininity. Or maybe they avoided us because struggling through the awful noise of our butchered French was simply too painful. For whatever reason, by the end of the year not one of the four Americans living in the residence had developed a friendship with a French European. Francophones who were not European were much more open.