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  “Oui, ma grande. I love it.”

  After dinner, I hurried to hand my story to Papa before he left the table.

  “What’s that?” he said, sucking in his cheeks.

  Blood whooshed into my neck. “It’s a story I wrote,” I blurted out. “Mrs. Denis said, ‘This is how a story should be written.’ ”

  My father picked up the sheaf, squared himself in his seat, and read. Searching for the faintest hint of approval, I fastened onto his face like a sunflower locks onto the sun, and by the time his eyes reached the bottom of the last page, my nerves thrummed like viola strings.

  Pa raised his head and brandished the sheets. “What kind of trash is this?”

  The viola strings sagged. “But, Papa, Mrs. Denis liked it. She even read it to the whole class.”

  “I don’t give a shit what she says. I want you to stop reading crap, let alone writing it. Better spend your time and energy on calculus.” He tossed the sheets across the oilcloth. “This will not put food on your table later in life.”

  I gathered the jumbled sheets, averting my eyes to hide my disappointment and humiliation. On my way out, I wrung the pages in a wad, tight as the hurt closing my throat. In my room, I threw my balled story to the floor. Kicked it across the room and threw myself on the bed, soaking my pillow with tears and saliva from my gaping mouth.

  When I had no tears left, I sat on the floor, picked up the crumpled sheets, smoothed and folded them on the cold tile with the flat of my hands. Then I rose to my knees and opened the lower doors of the china cabinet. The green tin box I had stashed away long ago was still there. I took it out.

  L’oeil de Malika—the glass bobble gentle Malika had given me when I was a little girl—shone softly. A comforting touch of the moon.

  I laid the folded pages at its side with the care I would a broken butterfly and closed the lid. I returned the box to the bottom of the cabinet and buried it under its stack of never-used table linens.

  Two days later at school, one of the pink-frocked frou-frou girls laid a sheaf of paper on the teacher’s desk. “I wrote a story too, Madame Denis.” She turned around, shook her curls at me and waltzed back to her desk.

  I was crushed. The miserable bitch wants to take away my only achievement. A sudden wave of anger filled my chest—an overwhelming resentment that made me want to hurt that girl.

  The teacher read the piece, laid it flat under her spread hands and surveyed the hushed class. “Does anyone know what plagiarism is?”

  I searched my mind and shook my head along with the other girls. God, I hope it’s bad. Madame Denis stared at frou-frou. “Marie Terrine, do you know what plagiarism is?” Frilly’s sausage curls batted her apple cheeks as she waved her head side to side, her cow eyes brimming with anticipation.

  “The word ‘plagiarism’ comes from the Latin verb ‘to kidnap.’ By extension it means stealing someone else’s work or idea and passing it as one’s own. It is morally wrong and, in some cases, leads to criminal charges.”

  Marie-Curlies’ angelic face turned crimson. Halleluiah! My heart rejoiced. My fists craved to thump the carved top of my desk with a celebratory tattoo. Easy, Nanna. We shall be magnanimous now that the little angel had her wings clipped. The venomous side glance Miss Plagiarism threw my way from across the room filled me with a satisfaction I could barely contain. Oh, the sweet taste of revenge!

  My need to strike had vaporized and my lungs swelled with the same light-headed joy that once engulfed me as I stood in a field of poppies.

  Papa could say I was stupid all he wanted, but I knew, now, I could be better than any spoiled and empty-headed Pappy’s girl like this one. All I needed was prove it to him.

  Chapter Twenty

  The opportunity to show my father I wasn’t so ‘stupid’ after all arose a few weeks later, while I watched him bend over his drawing board propped on top of the kitchen table and trace the outlines of a grave as part of a proposal to a client.

  Back to the Drawing Board

  Summer, 1956

  “Look, ma fille,” he said, “I don’t have time to work on these plans right now. Will you do that for me?”

  Increasing road ambushes had severely curtailed Papa’s out-of-town cemetery business. Money became tight, especially as he refused to lay off the older workers like Moustache and Debbah. However, thanks to his knowledge of the Arabic language and customs, he had found a job as investigator and interpreter for the police. In addition to this full-time work, Pa supervised jobs done during the week at the cemetery. He had put Maman in charge of customer service at the cemetery shop and let Debbah manage the work team.

  My father asking for my help left me speechless. But I was all ears.

  “All you need to do is trace the basic drawings. I’ll take care of the embellishments and lettering.” Interpreting my stunned silence as reluctance, Pa added, a tad vexed, “After watching me for twelve years, now, you’d think you’d know how to do it.”

  Unsure whether he was serious or making fun of me, I remained silent. He lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling. “I’ll pay you for your work.”

  Yaa! This was the first time in my life that my father would not only trust me with important stuff, but also was prepared to pay for it. My delight and pride at Pa’s thinking me worthy of his trust gave way to sudden panic. What if I couldn’t perform to his standards? Was I just giving him an excuse to call me an ass, a good-for-nothing, again? “I watched you, Papa, but I’ve never done this before.”

  Pa turned on his charm. “Alors, t’es pas la fille à ton Père? Of course you can.”

  I certainly hoped I was my father’s daughter. Otherwise, I’d be a bastard, which was entirely impossible, as Papa often said, “A husband can be certain the first-born is his, but there’s always room for doubt about the legitimacy of younger siblings.”

  Pa relished retelling stories about females’ unfaithfulness and cunning. His favorite was the Arab tale of a woman whose husband went away for months. When he returned, he found his wife pregnant. He counted on his fingers and, concluding there was no way he could be the daddy, confronted his wife. She answered, “How can you be so distrustful? So unjust, my beloved husband? Haven’t I proven my love for you again and again?”

  He shook his head, “Laa! I’ve been gone six months, there’s no way I can be the father.”

  “Yaa, Habibi!” Struck with grief, the woman scratched her cheeks with hennaed fingernails and whined, “I missed you so much that I slept with your burnoose. And one night, when I missed you more than ever, it made love to me.” She kissed the tip of her gathered fingers and swore, eyes brimming with love, “That’s how I’ve become big with your child, my beloved husband.”

  Well, Pa had been away at war when I was born. Nonetheless, not only was I the first-born, but also, the finger-counting test established without the shadow of a doubt that I was indeed my father’s daughter.

  Now I needed to establish I was his daughter in brainpower as well.

  My eagerness to please, along with Pa’s display of charm, gave me the push I needed to lend a hand.

  Papa watched as I mimicked, tentatively at first, the steps I had observed him follow for years. All I needed to do was trace the basic drawings, wasn’t that right?

  I practiced tracing the lines of the three-dimensional monuments until I even became comfortable tracing the exploded drawings, which detailed the interior configurations. Papa then added the precise measurements that needed to be recalculated for each commission.

  As I gained more confidence with each successful assignment, it occurred to me that I was amassing a fortune.

  Yves had already set his heart on a mound of Caca de Pigeon—fly specks and all.

  Riri put in a request for a tawat. A real slingshot from the store. Not like the ones the street urchins made from Y-shaped pieces of wood and strips of innertube.

  Mireille said, “Nanna doesn’t have to share. It’s her money.”

  Zizou
mentioned a silk scarf. “I’ll get a red one.” She batted her eyelashes at my stone face. “I know it’s not your color, but I’ll let you wear it, anyway.”

  I planned on keeping my income for something important. Didn’t know what, but it would be big.

  Proud as a chick that had laid a diamond egg but also trembling with apprehension, I submitted my tracings for Papa’s verdict. “It’s not perfect,” he ruled, then concluded with a moue, “but it will do.”

  Relief flushed my cheeks. At the end of a fortnight, Pa elaborately searched his pockets and brought out a wad of Francs. “Here,” he said, shoving a few bills in my hand.

  My first earned money. Who said only calculus would put food on my table? I ambled out of the kitchen, counting my fortune. Zizou, Mireille, Riri, and Yves followed at close range—buzzards eyeing a road kill.

  They were wasting their time. No way would I share. I earned this money. It was mine.

  I had turned my back on them, counting the bills, when Papa’s motto pricked my conscience. “If only a bread crumb is left, you’ll share it with your brothers and sisters.”

  With a sigh and heavy shrug, I returned to the kitchen. “Thanks, Pa, but you better keep it to pay the bills.” I handed him the loot.

  He flicked his corner smile, the one that indicated he was pleased but didn’t want to let it be known. Zizou and the kids, however, weren’t smiling.

  Boiling Hot

  My brothers’ and sisters’ disappointment at losing my money didn’t last long as they started to focus on the end of the school year and the prospect of summer trips to the beach.

  For my part, a persistent fluttering in my stomach spoiled these prospects. Ruining my days. Spoiling my nights.

  I was to present the compulsory exam d’entrée en sixième, which would propel me from the sixth grade primary at l’École Ferdinand Buisson, in Sidi Mabrouk, to secondary school at the Lycée Laveran in Constantine. Failing the exam would oblige me to repeat the sixth grade, while all my schoolmates went on, leaving me behind. The prospect created chaos in my stomach. It gurgled. It shrank. It burned. It quivered like a swarm of restless moths.

  The day before the exam, needing to wash my hair, I set a pan of water to boil and later mix with cold water in the blue enamel washbasin. When the water bubbled, I grabbed the pan’s handle, forgetting its wooden sleeve was loose. The pan twisted sideways and the boiling water spilled over my left thigh, down to my ankle. YAA, that’s freezing. The bizarre thought melted like ice on a hot stove as my wet shorts clung to my thigh, further steaming my skin. I dropped the pan and jumped on my right leg as on a pogo stick, screaming at the top of my lungs, “Zizou, come, I burned my leg.”

  She sailed into the kitchen, flapping her lashes, sedate as Cleopatra. “What’s your problem?”

  “I spilled boiling water on my leg.”

  “What did you do that for?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” I yelled, still jumping up and down. “What do I do?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, wide-eyed.

  What can I do? I grabbed my leg with both hands, causing white-hot needles to skewer it. Water. I need water. COLD water. I hopped along the corridor, down to the bottom of the stairs and dunked my leg into the new tub we kept filled with water. Tepid as it was, the water soothed my screaming thigh. As the pain abated, I realized Zizou stood close, scolding. “What are you doing, you idiot?”

  “WHATTT?”

  “You’re supposed to put fat on a burn, not water.”

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot ….” Darn. “Can you get butter for me, ma Zize?”

  She took the stairs two at a time and was back in a flash with a chunk of butter in a plate. I grabbed the butter and tenderly touched it to the burns where it melted into an oil slick.

  “What do I do now?” I whined, my greasy hand aloft.

  Zizou leaned forward and examined my leg. “It’s real red. It hurts a lot?”

  “I don’t know what ‘a lot’ is, but it hurts. What do we do now?” I snarled, losing my cool.

  “Maybe we should call Ma?”

  “I don’t know, Zize. I don’t think she’d like to be called at work just for a burn.”

  Zizou bent over for a closer look at the burn then straightened up. Hands on hips, she blew her hair off her face and announced, “I’ll go to La Guinguette and call her. We’ll see what she says.”

  When she returned, Zizou announced, “Maman says she’s taking a taxi from Constantine and is calling Doctor Laurie to meet her here. She said for you to lie down.”

  Clothing littered the bed and floor of our bedroom, but by the time car doors slammed in the yard, we had shoved everything under the bed and smoothed down the bed sheets and blanket. I threw myself on top of the bed, forgetting my injured leg. “Aïe aïe aïe!” The bedsprings were still bouncing when Maman and Dr. Laurie entered the room.

  He diagnosed secondary burns on my thigh and lesser burns on my shin. Does it mean it’s so bad I won’t be able to take the exam, tomorrow?

  I kept my mental fingers crossed, letting my hopes rise. “But I will be able to take the exam, tomorrow. N’est-ce pas, Docteur Laurie?”

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid this won’t be possible. We need to watch for infection.”

  A blissful hymn unleashed inside my brain. “HALLELUAIAH, HA-LLE-LU-UUIAHH.” Zizou skewered me with her evil stare. “What a bummer,” she said, tongue-in-cheek.

  For a few days, leg coated with unguent and sheathed in gauze, I relished the attention. Mireille and the boys thought it was cool to look part mummy. Papa was not mad at me. When he arrived home from work the day of the accident, Maman was tending my leg. He sat on the bed, examined the burn and asked, “What did Laurie say about scarring, Lili?”

  “He said she has a second degree burn but, barring infection, the new skin will grow in smoothly.”

  Papa nodded. “Before coming home, I spoke to the Lycée’s headmistress. She said she’ll ask the board of exams for a special exemption, but we need to present a health certificate from the doctor.”

  “So, I won’t have to take the exam, Pa?”

  He locked eyes with me. I almost flinched. Then he shook his head as if fanning off an annoying mosquito—or the ugly suspicion, like Zizou’s, that I might have had an accident on purpose to avoid the exam. But his frigid stare thawed. “You’ll have to attend the make-up exam in July.” On his way out the bedroom, he said over his shoulder, “You better use this reprieve to hit the books—the calculus books, that is.”

  I nodded. The napping moths stirred.

  The Exam

  The weeks leading up to the make-up exam became a blur of anguish. I knew. I just knew I would fail. Then my life would be a misery. I wished my leg had allowed me to take the exam on time. The nightmare would be a thing of the past now. Fini. Kaput. Over.

  The day before the exam, Papa shoved a narrow black box into my hand.

  “Pour moi?” Presents were for Christmas, new clothing for Easter, a cake for birthdays—maybe. I stared at the box, unsure what to do with it.

  “Open it,” he growled.

  Maman nodded with a smile. The boys elbowed each other to get the best view. Zizou observed from across the room. Mireille crowded me. “Want me to help you open it, Nanna?”

  I took a step back and lifted the hinged lid. It exposed a white chamois cloth. I removed it. My breath caught as the cloth revealed a black fountain pen ensconced in folds of white satin. An elegant thread of gold circled the bottom of the cap. The slick body, smooth as silk, gleamed softly like the eye of a dove.

  The boys grabbed the pen. Riri said, “It’s a stylo.” Before they had time to uncap it, Mireille snatched it. “It’s Nanna’s.” She caressed the pen with her eyes before returning it to me. “Here’s your stylo, Nanna. It’s beautiful.”

  It was beautiful. Too beautiful to lay a hand on. What was I supposed to do with it?

  Maman read my mind. “This is to make it easier to write, tom
orrow. To make it so you won’t waste time dunking your plume in the inkwell every other word.”

  I fell in love with the pen. Love at first sight. A love that quickly changed to aversion; Pa’s gift made it even more imperative that I perform.

  The days following the exam were a drone of relentless questions, “How did you do?” “Do you think you did well?” “You must have an idea how you did ….”

  Leave me alone!

  I burned to shriek, “I failed miserably. Let everyone down. Let go of me.”

  I wanted to hide, but had no place to go.

  Two long, gut-twisting weeks later, the Lycée and the Constantinois published the names of passing students. Mireille cut out the newspaper’s article and pinned it to the kitchen wall with my name underlined.

  On Sunday, Maman gave a family celebration dinner, including Pépé Vincent and Yvette and Gilles. Everyone fêted me. Papa boasted. “This is MA fille. She’s her father’s daughter.”

  I was happy for all of them, but secretly expected, any moment, now, to hear from the board of exams, informing me there had been a mistake. That I had failed.

  While I died of embarrassment over undeserved credit, Papa offered rounds of drinks at La Guinguette and la Boule Tricolore, his Bocce club.

  Day after day passed without word of my failing and I began to relax and enjoy what was left of summer.

  By the end of summer, the dread I previously experienced before the start of each school year gave way to the belief that a new dawn was rising for me. A conviction that la sixième would be the springboard that would propel me to the pinnacle of outstanding studenthood. That the daily bus ride to the Lycée in Constantine would carry me through the threshold of self-reliance and adulthood. For the first time—at least while I was away from home—my life would be free from the responsibility of caring for my brothers and sisters. Of dragging them like a cumbersome tail wherever I went. I would be free to be a unique, distinct individual.