Sirocco Page 18

  “I don’t give a fig.” I lifted my chin and proceeded to tighten the noose around my neck, “I’m going.” Then pounded the last nail in my coffin, “Nobody or nothing will change my mind.”

  She snorted. “Well, hopefully, one of the boys will ‘defrost’ you with a kiss and you won’t have to ask me how it feels to be kissed ever again.”

  I shoved her shoulder and cracked a smile. “Idiote.”

  During the thirty-six hours left before Sunday afternoon, I felt relieved that I had been brave enough to ask Papa’s permission, but sorry for my rash pledge to Zizou. I vacillated hourly between defying my father’s will and giving in to it.

  On Sunday, I helped clear the lunch dishes until Papa retired for his siesta then changed into my Sunday clothes. Maman asked, “Where are you going, ma fille?”

  I glanced at the kitchen window framing the two miles of road leading to Susanne’s building. “To Susanne’s party.”

  My mother paled. “You can’t, Nanna. Your father forbade it.”

  I resisted stamping my foot. “It’s not fair and I’m going.”

  Mireille and the boys’ eyes shifted from Maman to me as if watching a fascinating game of ping pong.

  Zizou, however, studied me like a cat would a trapped mouse scurrying for a way out.

  Maman’s hands flew to her face. “Nanna, your father is going to kill you for challenging him and me for letting you go.”

  “I don’t care.” I spun on my heels and left.

  Nanna, age 16.

  Angelo

  The intoxicating bravado that had sustained me grew fainter as my Sunday shoes trampled the road dust, whittling away at the distance to Susanne’s place. Guilt at leaving my mother in a bad spot nagged at me. The distracted glance I cast at the Arab adobe houses lining the road at my left glided to the plowed fields at my right.

  Soon, wheat would conceal the dry clods with a mantle of gold. The hairy ears would rustle and sway in the summer breeze, unveiling blood-red wild poppies.

  Zizou and I used to pluck the buds hanging from the tip of their skinny spiked stems like shepherd crosses. We peeled back the green sheaths to reveal the tightly folded petals. Then we unfurled them, careful not to tear their delicate velvet membranes, and stuck them to our lips and cheekbones—a natural makeup that would leave no trace for Papa to get mad at.

  The brief respite from worry provided by musing on the golden harvest and blood-red poppies vanished. What am I doing?

  It would be just my luck if Papa decided on this of all days to cut short his siesta. He was like that. Seemed to have a sixth sense about things. He’d drive down, pluck me from the road by the scruff of my neck and bring me back home.

  Susanne’s building loomed, blinding-white, against the ultramarine sky. Can’t go back now.

  I dusted my shoes with my handkerchief and climbed the few stories to Susanne’s apartment. Through the door, I heard music, the buzz of conversation, and laughter. I patted my hair and rang the bell, for the first time concerned about meeting girls outside of school grounds and boys I had never spoken to. Wondering whether I wore the right clothes.

  The door opened and Susanne took my hand. “I was afraid your father wouldn’t allow you to come.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “He didn’t? I’m impressed, Nanna. It’s not like you to go against him. Hope there won’t be hell to pay.”

  That expression again. Sharp fingernails pinched my guts. I forced a bland smile and cast a shy glance across the crowd. A blur of bodies writhed to the beat of rock ’n’ roll. Reluctant to make eye contact with others, I focused on the back of Susanne’s head as we waded through the crowd to greet her parents.

  Madame Schroeder had been very nice to me the two times I had goûter at their apartment after school. Monsieur Schroeder was an acquaintance of Papa’s.

  My friend’s mom smiled. “We are glad you came, Nanna. Susanne thought your father might not allow you to come.”

  I inclined my head, thus acknowledging her comment without having to lie.

  Susanne took my arm and marched me to the buffet. Her hand swept over the laden table. “Help yourself,” she said, and in a smooth motion, turned to a cluster of boys standing close by, drinks in hands, and introduced me to one of them. “Nanna, this is Angelo. Angelo, this is my friend, Danielle.”

  I was struck stupid.

  Susanne’s discreet poke moved me to take Angelo’s offered hand. He shook mine with a firm grip. “Bonjour, Mademoiselle Nanna.”

  My eyes traveled from our linked hands to the scarf folded in the opening of his shirt’s wide collar, spread over the V-neck of his Argyle sweater. He looked more mature than the other boys who surrounded him like a prince consort’s retinue. His bright smile and black velvet eyes struck me even more stupid.

  Susanne poked me again.

  The room temperature rose sharply and I blushed.

  I tried to pull my hand away, but he held onto it. I averted my eyes. “Bon—Bonjour,” and, not knowing why, added, “Thank you.” What was his name?

  His entourage watched with the keen eyes of vultures perched on the twisted limbs of baobabs.

  One boy snickered and the room temperature plummeted. My blood rushed ice crystals down to my toes. Great! Not only am I “la princesse de glace,” but now I’ve become “La STUPIDE princesse de glace.”

  Angelo—Oui, that’s his name—released my hand. “Would you like some punch, Nanna?”

  I nodded, relaxing a tad as the other boys dispersed.

  Angelo offered me a glass of ruby-red punch and raised his. “Santé.”

  I steadied my drink with both hands and, avoiding his eyes, focused on his drink. “Santé.”

  When our glasses clinked, a weird, painfully delicious shiver ran up my legs, forced my knees together. It almost felt like I wanted to pee. What’s happening to me?

  I was thinking I might need to go to les toilettes when Angelo took my glass and set it on the table along with his and grabbed my hand. “Let’s dance.”

  I had learned to dance with my sisters, mimicking the adults doing the paso doble and tango on La Guinguette’s dance floor during the Fourteenth of July’s celebrations. I’d also slow-waltzed holding my baby brothers in my arms. Yvette had taught us the One-Two-Three-Four-cha-cha-cha, One-Two-Three, and Zizou and I had made ourselves dizzy, whirling to the One-Two-Three tempo of Johann Strauss’ waltzes. But none of these tutorials had prepared me for Angelo.

  Angelo—Ange or Angel—danced with wings on his feet. My feet were made of lead. He patiently guided me to move in rhythm, encouraging me to dance on two feet instead of one.

  When a slow number replaced a twist, he pressed me to his strong body. The scarf at his neck brushing my cheek released an unfamiliar peppery scent. Stirred, I breathed it in, when a boy on the dance floor winked at him. This signal of connivance felt like a slap in the face. They are making fun of me.

  I stopped in mid-step.

  Angelo frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  I stepped back. “I don’t want to dance with you anymore.”

  He squeezed my hands, his dark eyes setting my cheeks ablaze. “Danielle, I want you to kn—” A thundering blast shook the building. The record player’s needle skittered with a whine across the forty-five disc and, for an instant, everyone in the room froze as if they were mannequins in Madame Tussaud’s wax museum.

  Voices rising from the street below revived our petrified figures. We searched each other’s eyes, connected through the conduit of common plight—the inimitable current that binds total strangers into fellowship and allows them to feed off one another’s inner strength.

  Angelo hugged me then laid a comforting forearm across my shoulders.

  Monsieur Schroeder looked out a window, his voice almost lost in the din of police sirens. “Sounded like a bomb. Looks like it happened across the street.” He turned around and gave us a warm smile. “It’s all right; you are all safe here.” He waved a hand t
o signal that the party should go on.

  Someone started a new record. Couples resumed dancing, but the music, louder now, couldn’t cover up the thuds of three more explosions, each one sounding farther away than the preceding. And yet the dancing continued as if nobody heard anything.

  Up to that point, the novel satisfaction of being with people my own age had fogged Zizou’s sober prediction of “hell to pay,” but the successive reports, police and ambulance sirens revived the flutter in my belly.

  I was in deep caca. Better go home fissa.

  I pushed away from Angelo. “I have to go.”

  “I’ll walk you home.”

  Yeah, all I needed was to show up at our house with Angelo in my wake. Hell, Papa would really love this. “Thanks, but my father is picking me up.”

  His lustrous eyes caressed my face. “Want to go to the movie next Sunday?”

  I blinked slowly like a sticky-tongued lizard that caught a butterfly in mid-air and swallowed it.

  Yeah, you, and me, and the shmala. Say yes, Nanna. Say yes.

  I looked at my feet. “I don’t know ….” and left abruptly to find Susanne.

  She hung onto her partner’s neck. I glanced, bug-eyed, in the direction of her parents, but other couples sheltered les amoureux.

  Siamese twins linked from pelvis to chest, they swayed to the pulse of the slow dance. Embarrassed, perhaps with a pinch of envy, I closed in on them. “Susanne—” they gazed into each other’s eyes as if sharing secrets only they could read. “Susanne—” Her hand signaled I should leave her alone. “Susanne!”

  “What do you want?” she barked, her eyes, magnified by thick lenses, devoid of their usual gentleness.

  “My parents must be worried. I have to go.”

  She broke away from her friend. “You can’t go out now. Let’s call them.” She slapped a hand to her forehead. “You don’t have a phone.”

  “I have to go. Thanks for inviting me.” I stepped closer and whispered, “It’s been the best party of my life.” I kissed her on both cheeks. “You don’t have to walk me to the door. I’ll say good-bye to your parents. Have fun.”

  Monsieur Schroeder asked, “Isn’t your father picking you up?”

  “Non, but that’s all right. I don’t mind. I can walk home.”

  “You can’t walk home.” He glanced at his wife. She nodded. He said, “I’ll drive you. Let me get my car keys.”

  On the short drive home, Monsieur Schroeder frowned. “I don’t understand why your father isn’t picking you up.”

  I worried the hangnail on my forefinger. “Uh … I think—uh … I think he’s mad at me.”

  “Why would he be mad at you?”

  I brought the finger to my mouth and tore the loose skin with my teeth. “He didn’t want me to go to the party.”

  A drop of blood replaced the pulled hangnail. I licked it.

  Monsieur Schroeder swerved to avoid a chicken crossing the road. “Why not?”

  The chicken scurried away, neck extended, wings flapping. “Because he asked if boys would be there and I said yes.”

  Monsieur Schroeder shook his head, mumbling, “Ah, Vincent, mon ami.”

  Silence settled as we arrived and parked the car along the curb. In the semi-darkness, my house crouched like a giant cat ready to pounce.

  Facing the Music

  I was so grateful for Monsieur Schroeder’s presence, I almost slipped my hand in his.

  When we entered the kitchen, the family sat at the table, faces hovering over their soups as if searching for the meaning of life. Pa’s spoon hung halfway to his lips. The stab of his green eyes burned like the puncture of a falling icicle. “Go to your room.”

  “Papa—”

  The faces no longer stared at their bowls. They stared at Papa and me.

  “Ferme ta gueule.” His voice was serene as a subglacial lake, but his words held the promise of the harsh chill to come.

  “But, Papa, Monsieur Schroeder is here—”

  “I said, ‘Shut your trap.’ ”

  Monsieur Schroeder stepped around me, into the light. “Calm down, Vincent, everything’s all right.” He scanned the weary faces around the table. “The party guests were good kids.”

  Papa’s expression darkened like roiling clouds gathering before a tempest. Only, Monsieur Schroeder didn’t see it coming. “In addition, my wife and I were present every instant.”

  Papa studied his spoon. He dipped it into his bowl and lifted it to his lips. But the soup spilled back into the bowl.

  Papa warned, “Leave, Schroeder.”

  Monsieur Schroeder shook his head. “I’m sorry you’re taking it this way, Vincent.” He nodded to Pépé Honninger and addressed Maman. “I apologize for butting in without being invited.” He turned around and left.

  I fled the kitchen and went to my room, leaving the door ajar and standing in the dark—listening.

  Amid the clinking of spoons against bowls, Maman asked Zizou to make room on the table for the next dish. Lone words strung into short sentences as she served the food.

  Papa’s challenging tone broke into the dining sounds. “Where are you going?”

  “Taking food to Nanna,” Maman replied.

  “Bring that plate back here.”

  “But, Riri, she needs to eat.”

  Maman’s plaintive pitch did not mollify him. “Let her starve.” Silverware clanged against a plate and Papa snarled, “And you shut your trap too. You’re responsible for what happened.”

  Anguish choked my mother’s voice. “What did I do, chéri?”

  “She defied me with your permission. Tu fais la maquerelle à ta fille.”

  His accusation of my mother playing “Madam” to me cramped my stomach.

  “How can you say this, Riri?” she asked, the tremolo in her voice, a sign of imminent tears. “I did not know she was going until she left—”

  A chair scraped hard against the tile floor, followed by Pépé Honninger’s voice. “I’ve had enough of this.”

  He stomped out of the kitchen, his shadow gliding ahead of him along the corridors’ floor. I silently closed my door.

  I lay on my bed, staring at the dark ’til I was blind and my eyes closed. Bad move. Thoughts of what surely happened here after I left popped up. I envisioned Maman’s anguish in expectation of Papa’s fury while I danced.

  On this day I had shaken off my father’s yoke with the bravado of a Don Quixote, dismissing the key point that Papa was anything but a helpless windmill. I’d selfishly defied his authority without weighing the consequences to others.

  My eyes flew open at the sound of the turning doorhandle, but immediately squeezed shut under the sudden glare of the ceiling light. I lifted a hand against the brightness. Zizou stood at my bedside bearing a tray. She pursed her lips and blew a soft “Shush,” then pushed the door closed with her hip. “I brought you something to eat.”

  I swung my feet to the floor and sat up on the side of the bed. “I’m starving. Merci.” I set the tray on my knees and shoveled soup into my mouth with the fervor of a dog digging up a bone.

  Zizou studied me as if she’d never seen me chomp on chunks of vegetables before. I swallowed. “Why d’you look at me like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I’m a bug under a microscope.”

  “Well.” She sat on the floor and rested her chin on her knees. “You know, until you left I didn’t think you’d have the guts to go through with it.”

  I dipped my spoon into the bowl and grinned. “Me neither.” I finished the last of the potage and set the spoon down. “But I’m glad I did.”

  “You can’t believe how angry Papa was,” she whispered. “He paced like a caged wolf then sat and stared at the kitchen wall.” She leaned forward. “You know—the one with the indent from the bottle he threw at me, years ago, when we came back from Saint Arnaud after ‘La Toussaint Rouge’?”

  I nodded. “Then what happened?”

  “Noth
ing for a while, but you could tell he was planning something dreadful for you.” She batted her eyelashes, relishing the tale. “He had the same look in his eyes as Torquemada, you know, the bad guy in the movie on the Spanish Inquisition.”

  Aïe aïe aïe! This is NOT good. “Then what?”

  “Everyone was walking on eggshells.” She framed her mouth with cupped hands, as if telling a secret. “Even the boys didn’t squabble.”

  “What about Ma?”

  “She stayed quiet too, even when Papa accused her of being your maquerelle.”

  “Yaa, I’m sorry about that. I should have thought of her before I made up my mind to leave.”

  Zizou scooted closer to my feet. “So, tell me about the boys you met at the part—” her mouth clamped shut as we watched the door handle move slowly. Mireille’s nose poked around the doorjamb. She whispered, “Can I come in?”

  Zizou asked, “What d’you want?”

  Mireille shoved a small plate ahead of her like a white flag of truce. “I’m bringing this to Nanna.”

  I motioned she could come in. “And close the door,” Zizou said.

  Mireille set the plate beside me. I gave her the tray with the empty soup bowl and picked up her offering, a piece of gruyère cheese and slice of bread.

  While I ate, she shifted from one foot to the other as if deciding whether to stay or go, then murmured, “Did you find a boyfriend, Nanna?”

  My heart missed a beat. Zizou growled. “Mimi! Are you trying to make things worse?”

  “I was just wondering, that’s all.” Mireille looked about to cry when Riri and Yves sneaked into the room. Six-year-old Yves held out a piece of cake. “We brought you dessert, Nanna.” He stepped up and put it in my hand.

  I examined the crescent-shaped bite in the cake. “What happened to it?”

  Yves puckered his lips and rolled his gray eyes. I took hold of his chin and forced him to look at me. “Did a mouse take a bite out of it?”

  He pulled away and licked chocolate frosting off his fingers. “It wasn’t a mouse. It was me.” He flashed his crooked smile. “I couldn’t help myself.”