The Body Where I Was Born (14 page)

V.

Colonie de Vacances
. Together those three words evoke for many French children the best times of their lives. Basically, it’s summer camp organized for children of a certain age to experience community living and a little more independence than typically found at home. Many of the camps are focused on a particular interest, such as music, painting, kayaking, waterskiing, or some other outdoor activity. My brother and I had heard about these wonderful places from several of our classmates, so when Mom came to us with the idea, it didn’t occur to either one of us to say no. It has to be said that most of the girls at my school had been kissed for the first time in such circumstances, which was a point in favor of my mom’s plan. Even though the camps were organized by the city council, they didn’t cost as little as you might think. Signing us up was a considerable investment for my mother. She also had to pay for all the accessories we needed: a single sleeping mat, a sleeping bag, a backpack for the three nights we’d be sleeping under the stars, hiking boots, a flashlight, and I can’t remember how many other things. In exchange, my brother and I were promised two weeks of nonstop adventure and fun, and my mother was promised the chance to make progress on her thesis. However, I didn’t know that the city council made up the camp groups according to the zones we lived in. Rather than encouraging an exchange between social classes, they preferred to keep neighbors together—as if discord among neighbors wasn’t something universal, almost inherent in any given culture. That’s how, one morning, my brother and I found ourselves on a bus with all the kids from our neighborhood, the ones we had been trying to avoid on the streets and in the stairwells of our building for over three years. Not in my worst nightmare had I imagined this situation. I recognized some of my classmates, including Rachida and her sister—the two girls Nathalie and I had fought years earlier—who where there with excited smiles and enormous backpacks. The bus brought us to a spot I didn’t know, whose beauty I’d heard mentioned more than once, but whose name only increased my unease that morning: the Gorges of the Luberon. As the bus labored its way along the right lane of the highway, I imagined myself ambushed by several of those kids in dark caves like the throats of wolves. Luckily I wasn’t traveling alone; whatever happened, my brother would be by my side. As I was thinking all this over, I looked at him in the seat next to me, his expression hopeful and calm. The poor thing was still contemplating the possibility of a dream vacation.

I can’t say it was a peaceful ride. Everyone around us shouted and laughed at high decibels, including the eighteen-year-old counselor who was trying to keep them under control. Only a few kids stared out the window. I thought they must be memorizing the route, in case they’d soon have to make their escape. Nonetheless, at least on the bus, the kids didn’t mess with any of us
.
They seemed to be concentrating on acting rowdy and socializing with their friends. There were three long weeks ahead for them to get to know—and to bully—the new kids. During the entire ride I was praying for my bunkmate to be one of the prudent and quiet girls. But when we finally arrived at the campsite, it was announced that we would sleep in groups of twenty in teepees: impressively large tents that were already set up and waiting for us in the middle of nowhere.

“When you know which tent you’re in, you can put your sleeping mat and things in whatever spot you like,” announced the counselor, who then started reading a list of everyone’s names and the tent numbers they were assigned to. My brother and I weren’t in the same tent. Things were getting worse by the minute. But he didn’t seem the least bit fazed by our imminent separation. I was, however, with Rachida and Besma. I found them eagerly marking off their territory a few feet from where I had put my things. They weren’t particularly hostile toward me, nor did they seem to be holding any grudges. Accustomed as they were to fighting in the street, it’s likely the event occupied a very different place in their memories than it did in mine. I smiled at them to be cautious and test the waters, and to my relief they both happily returned the gesture.

“We’re neighbors here too!” the older girl said.

It was a calm afternoon. When it got dark, at around ten at night, the counselors started a bonfire and we all sat around it for a few hours. I watched all the boys interacting and tried to fight off my apprehension and mistrust. I wondered if one of them might be suitable for a first kiss. Was it possible that I could grow to like someone? We would find out by the end of camp.

The kids all gradually went into their tents to curl up on their inflatable mattresses. Only a few of us silently stayed until the end. I remember that when I finally went back to my spot, I fell into a deep and peaceful sleep. I did not, however, wake the same way. Before opening my eyes I heard a short someone yelling in his underpants nearby.

“I’m so horny, you feel me? And I’m looking to screw a
meuf
even if I have to rape her!”

I heard laughter around me. Maybe because I was one of the only girls still lying down by that time, the boy moved in my direction, making suggestive movements with his pelvis. Others started to shout:

“
Z’yas va
, Pierre! Give it to her!”

It wasn’t a decision. It was more like my body started acting by itself without consulting my brain: I leapt out of bed and started kicking my attacker until he was down. I only stopped when I saw his nose was bleeding. I had no idea who the boy was or what kind of a reputation he had among the others. I didn’t find out until later that he was feared in our neighborhood for his brutality. Taking him down turned me into a force to be reckoned with and, at the same time, given that no one knew me, someone not to be trusted. At breakfast, kids from my tent and a neighboring tent came over to offer their friendship and share their respect.

“Honestly, we never would have guessed. Girls with glasses are usually such wusses.”

“It was good you defended yourself. Next time break his nose for me.”

When I didn’t think anyone else was coming over, my brother came to ask if what he’d heard was true. Unlike him, not one of the counselors came to corroborate the story. They preferred to pretend nothing had happened and to go ahead with their plans.

This was followed by several uneventful days, at least where I was concerned. An altercation would suddenly break out in the middle of the constant ruckus of our voices. Whenever there was a fight, or the threat of one, a small circle of spectators would form. But things would almost immediately go back to being normal—tense but cheerful—for the group. With time, my brother learned all the names of the forty kids at camp. He took part in almost every athletic activity, such as mountain climbing and the occasional kayaking competition. I, on the other hand, carried on without adapting. Whenever invited to do something physical, I said I had a headache. I lied to the counselor and said I had my period and preferred to remain lying down for as long as possible. I’d brought three fairly long novels with me and hoped to finish them before going back to Aix. Truthfully, I was bored. A few miles from the campsite there was a pay phone, which was the destination of the impromptu walks I made several times a day. I’d call my mother, usually without reaching her, and when I finally did I would relate to her in a very dramatic voice everything repulsive about the place, including my fight in the tent with the maniac. When I was finished, she would always ask, “But you’re OK, right?”

What I wanted to happen never did: to hear her say that she was coming to get me as soon as she could.

Bastille Day arrived. Before that, the camp kids had organized a few nights of dancing and cigarettes (unlike booze, smokes were allowed), during which I avoided company of any kind, despite knowing the main objective for these social gatherings was to end up going out with someone. But this time was different; it was a joint party with the camp and town, which promised more activities, greater freedom, and new people. The dance started at seven p.m., when the heat was still suffocatingly intense, and went on until after midnight. I spent more time on the dance floor than I had at any other party, dancing with anyone who asked. Two of my dance partners suggested that we get out of there and get something to drink. One of them was French and a high school student, the other was a bit older and also more handsome, a Ceuta-born Tunisian who had come to the town to work at laying bricks. I was pleasantly surprised to see them fight over me. I went with the bricklayer. We sat in the bar that was farthest from the center of town. It had a dark terrace and open tables, and there I let him kiss me until there wasn’t the smallest trace of inexperience left on my lips. When the bar closed, we continued walking through the empty alleys of white cobblestone. He—whose name I don’t have the courtesy to remember—was admirably decent. He never tried to force me to do something I didn’t want to do. Several times he invited me to the room he was renting, but I preferred the streets and their half-lit corners. I let him touch my breasts, but my shirt stayed on. We stayed together in the street until very late. The many hours gave him enough time to tell me about his life, his parents, his childhood in Spain. Even though he spoke Spanish perfectly, French was the language we used. Then at dawn he walked me back to camp.

The counselors were furious. They scolded me and said they were going to tell my mother about my escapade. My only response for them was to shrug my shoulders a few times. I was tired that morning but in a great mood, and contrary to my ways I ended up talking at the breakfast table. I looked at my peers, especially those of Tunisian origins, with new eyes, as if they were the siblings or cousins of my momentary boyfriend. No longer did I feel the same uneasiness or mistrust. Rachida with her fatness, or Malika with her endless acne seemed more deserving of fondness than of anything else. I’d never imagined that going out with a boy could have such an effect on me, and I would probably have become a friend to one and all in the camp had my mother, alarmed by the counselor’s report, not come to pick me up in her friend’s car. My brother decided to stay ten more days, until the end of summer vacation, and returned enthralled by his three new friends in the building. Though in a different way, the
colonie de vacances
had helped me make friends, too. Sometimes, when heading outside, I’d run into my teepee mates. We’d greet one another with uncommon camaraderie. Some came over to tell me they’d been sorry to see me go home. Instead of making me wary, these kids now sympathized with me. I was no longer the target of their roughness, the person on which they might prey to prove their ability to start trouble. Instead, they displayed enormous vulnerability to me. I knew better than anyone that to survive in environments like my school, you needed a strong dose of courage and dignity, and the slightest affront to that dignity was worth defending with your life. In the end, in their own way, they were trilobites too.

After several years of living in Les Hippocampes—going every morning to Jas de Bouffan, eating with Cello, and spending summer vacations with the neighborhood kids—I ended up forgetting, at least partly, the world I came from. I’d become so mimetic that anyone who met me at that time would have assumed that I had either been born in Aix or had been raised there. However, that same summer, I received a significant glimpse of my country and the origins to which—sooner or later, though I didn’t know it then—I would have to return. That year, Mexico was the guest country at the Festival d’Aix. For nearly three weeks, there were Mexican writers and artists walking around the streets downtown. Among those invited was Daniel Catán, the musician we had met before moving to France. He very kindly got us into many of the events, concerts, and readings. Still very present in my mind is the memory of the afternoon when on the stone steps of the Palais de Justice he introduced us to Octavio Paz who was just about to read in the auditorium. There was no time then, or after, to speak to him. We were barely able to greet him before he rushed off to go onstage. We did, however, have the chance to listen to his poetry for over an hour. On his lips the Spanish of Mexico ceased being the intimate dialect in which my mother, brother and I spoke to one another; it transformed into a malleable and precious material. Those poems spoke of poplars of water, of Pirul trees and obsidian, sugar skulls, the barrio of Mixcoac, places and things I had loved in a distant but—I understood then—not completely forgotten time. I remembered who we were, and when I did, I felt a mix of happiness and pride. As night fell, returning home through the silent streets of Aix-en-Provence, I told myself that if some day I was to write, it would have to be in this language.

Spending the rest of the summer with me must have been torture for my mother. She complained that at camp I had picked up the speech and insolence of my peers.

“Deal with it! You’re the one who sent us there to get rid of us,” I told her angrily.

Sometimes I knew her complaints were warranted, but there was nothing I could do about it. It was a war against the world: war of the trilobites. I had enlisted and transgressions weren’t an option. My mother—by the fact of being my mother, but also because she was authoritarian and self-satisfied—wasn’t one of us. She didn’t realize it and did everything she could to be close to me, to build the bridge of complicity that according to her we were missing. Often her efforts backfired. I remember, for example, one Sunday morning while we were eating breakfast together at the kitchen table, she casually asked if I had already had sex with a man.

“It’s normal for it to happen, you know? But when it does, I want you to tell me.”

She was, I believe, right to think I had—after what had happened at camp—but she was not right to ask me about it, much less to do it straight-out like she did. Her apparently unconcerned tone sounded off-key and obviously fake.