Some Dream for Fools Read online

  "She's knocked up, the little thing. Pregnant up to her eyeballs. Crazy right?"

  And there you go, every time she ends with "Crazy right?"

  She told us two or three stories that had to be whispered before she left us with a smile that made everyone wonder what our secrets were and that shields me from the outside world and its cold.

  The platform is black with the crowds, there are service disruptions on the line. One train in four, I think, at least that's what they said on the radio.

  So I'm forced up against the pole in this car. There's no air in the RER, everyone's pushing me, blocking me in. The train sweats and me, I feel smothered by all these sad silhouettes, all looking for a little color. You could say that all the air in Africa wouldn't be enough. They're phantoms, they're sick, contaminated by sadness.

  Me, I'm going back to Ivry to see my neighbor, Auntie Mariatou, and her children. My asthmatic RER will cough me up in my zone where it's even colder. There are some days like that where you don't know anymore where you're going, you feel like you don't have any luck at all, and that's just too bad. It's true that it's sad, but fortunately, at the end, there's always this little thing that gets us up in the morning. No guarantee, but you think that one day, one day it will be better. Like Auntie says: "The most beautiful stories are the ones that start badly."

  The Dollar Tree

  I envy the kids in this house. It's beautiful the way that they are surrounded by love and warmth, this family is a true poem. Auntie Mariatou is motherhood in all its splendor, so soft you might even say she was made of cotton itself—the better to wrap her little ones snug. I'm fascinated every time to see her teach them so firmly but always dripping with honey. When I talk about her I get a little carried away, it's true, but this is the woman I want to become some day. For me she is a model, all at once a woman, a mother, and a wife. Auntie is very beautiful, her lips are full, her hips broad, and her curves fed the dreams of more than one man in the village back in the day. And though she's a plump woman, she does have something in her that makes her naturally walk as light as an antelope. A certain je ne sais quoi, as the French would say, that would make those 60-pound mannequins tremble.

  She and her husband, Papa Demba, have made four beautiful children who came one right after the other and resemble one another just like Russian dolls. The oldest is called Wandé, and she's eight years old. Today I came over to help her do her homework. She dreams of becoming a singer and complains that no toubab in her class wants to be her boyfriend because she has fake hair. Then come Issa and Moussa, the twins. They are too mischievous these two, and they scare me the way they will believe anything anyone says. As for the last one, he only knows how to scream for now—he's barely six months old. He's my pride and joy, the little one. It was me who whispered his baptismal name to Auntie Mariatou when she was at the end of her pregnancy and running out of ideas. I chose Amady because it's the name of the first boy I ever loved. I remember being so crazy about him. He would always play with me on the merry-go-round and push with all his strength. I would go so fast that my little pleated skirt would rise without anything to stop it because my hands would be glued to the bars. I was always too afraid of falling on my face to ever let go of them.

  That devil Amady regularly used this little strategy in order to get a peek under my skirt. I didn't understand it until a long time afterward because I was only five years old at the time.

  Anyway back to the subject of baby Amady. While Auntie was walking him in his stroller around the big park, she was stopped by the old Gypsy woman, the one everybody thinks is crazy. And she told her that this baby would one day become an exceptional man who was going to change history forever, that he would do something very great and that it would take everyone by surprise. She said that the baby carried the promise of an entire people in his belly.

  Of course, like most of the people here Auntie Mariatou didn't take her seriously. She even laughed when she thought about it again later as she changed her son's diaper.

  "If all the promise that this little one carries in his belly turns into crap, then those people are up shit's creek, no?"

  Even if everyone says that she's crazy and just scares the children, me, I find the old Gypsy very interesting. From time to time I get to observe her from a distance, just as she is. In the morning, she takes herself for a walk, she marches along, her shoulders covered by a big black shawl, and stops sometimes to feed the birds. And honestly, deep down, she gives me the heebie-jeebies, especially when I see her talking to the pigeons. She tricks one of them, always the fattest. Then she puts the bird in her hand, and it's bizarre, because every time he stays calm, he doesn't even try to fly away. Then she begins murmuring things to him. From far away you might think that the bird answers her and that they settle in for a discussion, all natural. This lasts a little while and then, all of a sudden, she lets out a horrible, high-pitched scream and all the birds that she has invited to her bread-crumb party let fly in every direction. They take off like maniacs. It's anarchy in the gray Ivry sky.

  When everything quiets down, the beating of wings a little farther off, you notice something very strange. The old woman is still there, standing, stiff as a stick, and in the hollow of her hand, up near her mouth, the fat pigeon stays peaceful. Usually, in the end, she leaves with the bird as if nothing happened, and gradually, the greedy little pigeons wait for the old lady to depart to come back one by one to get a little dessert.

  Sometimes I imagine the after-party: she twists the bird's neck and crunches into it, sinking her canine teeth into it like a starving she-wolf. Then she finishes by swallowing the whole thing raw, feathers, head, beak, and all.

  This old lady truly intrigues me. I wouldn't know what age she could be, or what era she's from either. It's like she exists outside of time.

  I am sitting on a wooden chair in the middle of the room and waiting impatiently for the nightly episode of Star Academy to end so I can finally start working with Wandé. Impossible to get her to leave her post, she's stuck to it like a cockroach on a Raid strip. I think it's because she's in love with one of the contestants, the little blond who's made it to the finals. She makes me think of my little brother, Foued, when he's in front of the PlayStation playing his war games.

  "Wandé! It's already seven-thirty, my love! I'm not going to wait all night for your homework."

  "But it's the finals."

  "I'm warning you—after this I'm going back to my house. Either you turn off the TV now, or you do your homework all by yourself."

  "Let it go, Ahlème . She's just going to get a zero."

  "Mama, shh! I can't hear anything!"

  "What! Who did you tell to shh? Were you raised so badly?"

  "It's because she's on a date with her future husband. He's going to sing," I said, trying to tease Wandé.

  Auntie Mariatou, furious, ripped out the TV plug.

  "Still, there are some things more important than television! This kid would rather piss all over herself than miss a second of this show, it's terrible."

  Wandé starts to get angry and takes on this sulky air that she does so well.

  Since she had her first braids, she gets such a funny puss when she sulks. Her face is all tight, pulled to the back. Corn-rows are the African face-lift. Auntie Mariatou always pulls too tight. I know, she's done my hair too. The result is right pretty but, in order to achieve it, she pulls at your head like it's a carpet and this can last for hours. If you grit your teeth it goes a little better. At the same time, she knows what she's doing, it's her career and you should never correct someone who's working, that's what The Boss says. There are clients who come from far away for Auntie to do their hair because she has a steady hand and really knows what's in style, what will make them happy, and what will work for them.

  Recently she started subscribing to an American magazine on Afro hairdressing. She says that black women in America are fearless with their hair, they're likely to try the crazies
t things. In this magazine, they tell the secrets of the stars—like Mary J. Blige or Alicia Keys for example.

  Auntie's funny when she talks about that, she gets all carried away.

  "What do you think? This girl here, Beyoncé, the one who waddles around in those clips on MTV, you think she was born with blond hair as smooth as silk? The truth is that her hair is as frizzy as mine, my dear, except that she, she has the means to make everyone forget it, that's all."

  Auntie Mariatou works four days a week at Afro Star 2000, a salon in Paris, in the Château-d'Eau neighborhood. Of all the heads she works on, mostly people from the Ivory Coast, many of them have become good friends.

  Auntie loves doing hair and has had a passion for it for a long time. Her secret dream is to move over there, to America, and open a big salon.

  "Big deal if I don't speak English, I will use the language of hair itself."

  Her dream of America goes back to her childhood. She too had a face drawn tight from the back by the braids her mother gave her. And while everyone had nothing but Paris on their lips, she saw only New York. Sometimes she says that if she hadn't followed love and her husband, Papa Demba, to France, she would certainly have gone over there to join I don't know which distant cousin.

  When Auntie Mariatou lived in Senegal, in Mbacké, whenever the time for the American soap operas would come, every neighborhood would gather in front of a little television installed in the middle of the courtyard. It was practically a religious ritual. Whenever it was super-bright and sunny out, someone would get up and put a palm leaf above the screen.

  Sometimes the image would get scrambled or the worn-out set would even stop showing anything for a minute or two. An eternity for the little girl who had tears in her eyes and started cursing everything she could until one of the other viewers would get up and repair the receiver. Often it was her cousin Yahia, the one who was nicknamed Romeo in the village because he courted all the girls behind their parents' backs. He would go find a nice stainless-steel fork that he would plant in the ass of the temperamental TV. What's more, that same fork had, incidentally, served several days before to stem little Aminata's tetanus spasms.

  It always happened that this D-list method worked very well and quickly enough would have its effect: the image returned in less time than it would take to say so and the entire assembly would cry out an "aaah" of relief. Mariatou always arranged to put herself in the front row so she had the best seat. Mouth wide open, fascinated by what she saw, she was so focused that she didn't even take the trouble to shoo the flies that came and landed on her face or that tickled her naked, dry feet.

  Her cousin Yahia, alias Romeo, the one with the fork in the TV, amused by the fascination this little girl had for the big world on the other side of the ocean, fed her a line just to have a little fun with her. He told her a story that she believed in as hard as iron: The Legend of the Dollar Tree.

  "This legend says that in America there are extraordinary trees. These magic trees produce bills for leaves, dollar bills. These trees thrive under any conditions, they don't need water because they water themselves, and they're in bloom all year long. Everyone has the right to profit from these trees, and it's for this reason that these people know neither hunger nor thirst."

  Mariatou dreamed of the dollar tree from morning to night until she reached the age of reason.

  I think she still believes in it a little and that we've all believed in it once. The Boss, he was convinced that in France all you had to do was dig into the soil to make your fortune. When he told us that, it hurt my heart but I smiled all the same.

  Dignified and Standing Tall

  "You okay, Papa?"

  "It's cold here. You know, I only have five cigarettes to last the whole rest of the evening."

  "That's because they cut off the heat, I told you that yesterday, they're going to turn it back on in a week. And I'll go buy some more cigarettes at the store, they close late."

  "Weren't you just out?"

  "I was out since this morning."

  "Oh, okay. I didn't hear you leave."

  "By the way, Papa, do you keep up with Michel, our upstairs neighbor?"

  "The one missing an arm?"

  "No, the other one."

  "Which other one? The skinny guy who's always fighting with his wife, the one who's as nasty as anyone?"

  "No, the fat one with the glasses, the same one whose dog died last year."

  "What about him?"

  "It sounds like he tried to commit suicide."

  "Again?"

  "Yeah, it's the third time ... no, the fourth, I think."

  "Four times already? My God, that happened fast. And did he die?"

  "No, he failed again, he's in the hospital."

  "You see, I always told you he was a failure, that one. Couldn't even kill himself! It's not all that hard, dying."

  "Yeah, sure."

  "You know, I only have five cigarettes for—"

  "Yeah, I know, I'm going down to find some. Where's Foued, Papa?"

  "He's playing ball outside with the kids."

  "Good, I'm going to find him, he should be home by this hour, and you know it, it's ten-thirty—"

  "Ten-thirty? It's late, the smoke shop is going to close..."

  The Boss, he's always like that, but lately I have the feeling it's getting worse. He's been like this ever since the accident, which will be three years next month. Three years, it's not a huge deal, but to see him in this state, in the middle of sentences that don't make any sense, sitting all day in his armchair, in pajamas, you might think he had always been there. So he spends all his time in front of the TV, which has become a member of the family in its own right. It's the TV that regulates The Boss's new life, he doesn't need a watch anymore. Morning TV, that's time for coffee, news, and breakfast; Derrick, that's when he takes his nap; and the last shot from the evening movie, that's when he goes to bed. Since he went off the rails, he lives a never-ending day.

  I remember, it happened very early in the morning, he was working at the building site and he was keeping his balance up there, like he had kept his balance his whole life.

  Only that day, he wasn't wearing his helmet. Papa had given his to Fernandes—the one who never drank—because he was walking under the girders and Papa thought it was dangerous. If I know him, The Boss must have said: "Me, I'm all the way up here, so I'm not in danger of anything falling on my head except maybe lightning."

  No one knows exactly why he fell from that bitch of a beam. The fall was so spectacular that all the boys thought he was done for. The truth is that his body didn't suffer anything truly horrible, two or three broken ribs and a ridiculous ankle sprain.

  Only, as he fell over, his head hit a joist and because of the blow it doesn't turn all the way around anymore.

  He wasn't wearing his helmet, so the boss refused to pay him damages. There was first the workers union, and then the lawsuit, the lawyer, the trial. Luckily he won the case in the end. Recognized disability, incapable of working. So he gets a pension and even a free transit card.

  But I remember that with the lawyer we really had to do battle by shuffling papers in every sense, doctors' affidavits, declarations of one sort or another.

  It's true that it was hard at first but afterward we managed.

  During the first months following the accident, there were mornings when Papa woke up at 4:00, in the middle of the week, like usual, went through his ablutions, prayed, made his lunch, and dressed himself to go out. It seems to me he wasn't doing all this in a logical order anyway. When I realized that he was standing, I had to get myself up and explain to him that he wasn't going to work and it broke my heart because he answered me, confused: "Yes, it's true, you're right, I forget, it's Sunday."

  Foued really doesn't like it that I go looking for him when he's outside with his buddies, he says that I embarrass him—he's Mr. Big, you understand. In general, I avoid it, it's true, but this time I warned him and noted that
he doesn't really care about disrespecting the rules I make for the house. After all, he's a kid, he's only fifteen. He has to get up early to go to school tomorrow morning, and there's nothing for him to be doing outside at this hour.

  He's probably at the other end of the neighborhood, at the Pierre de Coubertin Stadium. I've noticed that most of the sports fields are named after Pierre de Coubertin. What a lack of originality! Me, I propose that one day we rebaptize our stadium Ladji Doucouré.

  Anyway, the stadium is at the foot of what everyone calls "The Hill," a sort of big rise that hangs over the whole neighborhood. I position myself at this strategic spot, and there an extraordinary view lies waiting. Lights come toward me from every side and it's so beautiful to me.

  I am surrounded by all these buildings with all their crazy sides that hold in our noises, our odors, our lives here. I stand there, alone, in the middle of their strange architecture, their gaudy colors, their unconscious forms that have cradled our illusions for so long. The time has passed when running water and electricity were enough to camouflage injustices, the slums are far off now. I am dignified and standing tall and I'm thinking about a whole mess of things. The events that took place in our neighborhood during these last few weeks have stirred up the press around the world, and after some face-offs between the police and the kids, everything is newly settled down. But what can our three burned-out cars change when an army of maniacs are trying to make us shut up?

  The only curfew worth minding is the one I, non-French citizen, will impose this evening on my fifteen-year-old brother.

  I see Foued down below, right in the middle of the stadium, running around, agile, he's easy to recognize. He's playing with about ten other neighborhood boys around the same age. For the most part I know them, I've watched some of them grow up. I can see that even the Villovitch brothers are here. I haven't run into these two hooligans in an eternity. They've been avoiding me since our last encounter. They must have been so ashamed that they would willingly clear away like the fog if they could.